From the Bob Willard Collection, Volume 7
February 18, 2022 First Edition
THE BACKGROUND
I didn’t experiment with psilocybin (mushrooms/fungi/C12H17N2O4P), or take mescaline (C11H17NO3), or drop acid (LSD), or ingest angel dust (horse tranquilizer), or anything else psychedelic like that with Frisell. He was my best friend growing up.
I don’t even know if Frisell ever did any of those things. Maybe later on. Frisell may have dabbled. I’m guessing that he may have become a dabbler. But I don’t know. Not really. I never asked him. But I could. But I haven’t.
He may not want it discussed one way or the other. I don’t blame him. He lives in the limelight of international fame. He became an internationally recognized, creative jazz guitar artist (a guitartist) who composed an enormous catalogue. He’s a guitartist and a composer and an arranger.
There was a poster in Italy advertising his concerts.
I was walking through a long, long tunnel internally constructed of earth tone brick and patch-smear cement. It’s the tunnel that connects the automobile and chartered bus parking area to the doorstep of the city of Ravello. To its lively city square. And its enchanting colorful city streets. The parking lot attendant accepted seven euros straight from my jeans. I removed the lint and fuzz.
The tunnel was 3/4 miles long cut straight into and through steep mountainous terrain. When you begin walking into the tunnel you can’t see any light shining up ahead. But after you walk for ten minutes a spit of sunlight in the future reveals itself.
The tunnel was very high up ∆, above Italy’s steep, green Amalfi Coast. They could rename it the Amalfi Cliffs to convey the extreme verticality.
The inside of the tunnel smelled like lemon honeysuckle infused with the floral fragrance of hyacinth. Its air was warm and sweet. A succor to breathe in and out that curled a smile. Made you feel young. Spry. No tension.
I was walking alongside my pal, Guber, as we made our way. I said to him:
Me: ‘Hey Gubular. I’ll bet there’s a poster of Frisell on these tunnel walls somewhere.’
His retort: ‘Then let’s take a look there, young fella.’
We didn’t slow down or anything like that. Didn’t need to and didn’t dare. Our wives were walking up there in front of us and we didn’t want to fall too far behind. We wouldn’t let ourselves. I don’t know why wives walk so fast. Sometimes, they just do. You can’t control it.
Yet, Guber and I were searching the posters lining the inside walls of the magnificently fragrant tunnel. We were keeping pace. About fifteen minutes into the tunnel and eight feet up along the curve of the tube where the posters were in alignment was the poster that I knew would be there.
It was like I had a premonition or an enlightenment. It may have been an internal voice. I don’t know what it was. Perhaps old chum, Jiminy Cricket, was on my shoulder quiggling my ear. I didn’t know what the poster would look like; I just knew there would be a poster. It said bill frisell quartet.
Once we were in Ravello, taking in the sites, admiring its natural beauty, Puccini’s Nessun Dorma was pouring out open windows and open doors onto the cobbled streets. Washed clean daily. The music bounced off the walls of knickknack shops in the town center. Nessun Dorma of course from Puccini’s Italian operatic masterpiece, Turandot. Magic. That’s all it was. It was just magic walking around listening to Pavarotti. In Ravello.
I was ecstatic that my friend Frisell had an upcoming concert date with a fancy poster announcing his arrival. He had a solid following all over Europe.
Jumpin Jiminy: Below is a bonus snaptake someone took of my little green dude-buddy, Jiminy. I never snaptaked a photo of him myself. I just thought he’d always be around.
It never dawned on me that one day he might be gone. ‘It never donned…’ would also have been an acceptable spelling. ‘Donned’ and ‘dawned’ are interchangeable there. No hard cast rules with those words!
The snap below is fragile and scheduled to be returned. It is on loan. Contractually, no fingerprints or dog saliva are allowed upon return without a hefty penalty. You just don’t want the karma hit by being disrespectful to Jiminy. He’s too important. He’s too historic.
With all the terrific big and little guys out there in cartoon-land, Jiminy remains a strong candidate to be #1 even to this day. And not just because of his longevity.
1957 was the first year that many of us became aware of Jiminy. The year Jiminy entered our universe as Pinocchio’s conscience. He’d been ‘around’ since 1940 when the feature film Pinocchio was released… and had struggled but survived on sketch paper in a cartoonists satchel for many years prior to that. Also living in that satchel along Jiminy was the woman who would later become Little Miss Muffet. She’s quite a bit older than Jiminy. Her roots go back to 1805. 23andme might reveal a deeper history.
Jiminy and Little Miss mingled in the satchel.
Needless to say, Little Miss – that’s what friend’s call her – had other important things on her mind to worry about like a big black dangling spider. That, in addition to her little singing bug friend. Even if the little singing bug had the tonal sophistication of super-crooner, Bing Crosby.
1957 was a very good year. Many of us were new to elementary school or fairly new and likely wouldn’t remember Jiminy before that. Gunsmoke happened to be in its 3rd year on teevee. It was the first year for Have Gun Will Travel. And it was already a few years into the recordings of Elvis the Pelvis, for whom I cared very little. When I was a kid, I didn’t like the word pelvis.
But ’57 was also the year of the famous Chevy’s: the Bel-Air and the Impala. On The Road by Jack Kerouac was published. I need to remind myself to read that.
And there was a 1957 hit movie that everyone knows about, that forced a flood of tears at the ending from every single person to ever see it. From eight years old to eighty-two.
Even motion picture fans with glass eyes wept without control. Glass eyes tear up. Tears come from some gland hidden up in the eyelids! The eyeball has no influence. It is an ornament in this case.
Do any Readers remember the 1957 tear-jerker?
Man struggling at punch bowl: ‘Was it perchance The Bridge on the River Kwai with Fess Parker?’
Me: ‘No, not The Bridge on the River Kwai. And thank you for your answer. Good answer. Fess Parker wasn’t in that movie. But why would you pick The Bridge on the River Kwai? What happened at the end that made you cry? Go ahead. Let’s hear.’
Same man dabbing punch bowl tablecloth with yellow napkins: ‘Wasn’t The Bridge on the River Kwai made in 1957?’
Me: ‘Yes, you are sort of correct. The Bridge on the River Kwai was released in 1957. It was filmed a year or two before 1957 but that doesn’t matter. Did you cry at the end of it?’
Now dipping his shirt tail into a pitcher of water: ‘No. I don’t remember crying. It was a long time ago. Why would I remember crying? I just thought Bridge on the River Kwai was the movie because you said 1957. I think it was the Best Picture of the Year, but I don’t remember Jiminy singing in it. Was Jiminy in it? Did Jiminy play Fess Parker?’
Me: ‘No, Jiminy was not cast to play Fess Parker in The Bridge on the River Kwai. Fess had nothing to do with The Bridge on the River Kwai.’
I continued: ‘Fess played Davey Crockett, a fictionalized teevee character loosely based on the actual real life Davey Crockett. Fess did not play a World War II Japanese encampment prisoner. Plus, Jiminy never played Fess Parker in any movie. And Jiminy didn’t sing in the movie because there wasn’t any singing in the movie… they only whistled. And actually, The Bridge on the River Kwai won Best Picture in 1958… that’s when the Academy Award winners for the movies released in 1957 were announced.’
Me continuing: ‘OK! Announcement! Everyone. Announcement. Let’s take a short break and return in fifteen minutes. Grab some fruit punch if you haven’t had any. I have been handed a note that the restrooms have been restored. And before we break up, let’s give a big round of applause and ‘Thank You’ to the entire Kauvar family for their generous donation helping pay for the blackberry and cream cheese blintzes and the blueberry and cream cheese blintzes and the ricotta cheese blintzes lightly sprinkled with powdered sugar. Thanks, everyone. See you all back here in fifteen. Let’s make it twenty. Twenty minutes. Thanks everyone.’
Mrs. Kauvar shouting mildly: ‘Don’t forgot the kugela and the bag of poppy tseeds… and the trash can liners. And the white tablecloths that we shteam-ironed for fifteen minutes each for the punch tables. Even though one of the irons was on the fritz.’
I didn’t tap the microphone and repeat all of what Mrs. Kauvar had interjected, although each may have been an accurate addition. I felt a tingling down my arm and a curious buttock muscle tic for not including the kugela and poppy seeds when announcing their generous donation.
I can’t say that I have the foggiest how many poppy seeds filled that small bag provided by Mrs. Kauvar. But I do know, generally speaking, how many whole coffee beans fill a one pound bag. Those standard elongated whole coffee bean bags. You’ve seen them.
Please give it a moment to formulate a guess, if you like guessing, as to how many coffee beans it takes to fill one standard one pound coffee bean bag. Write your number on a piece of paper or on the back of your hand or somewhere convenient. I’ll circle back at some point with the answer.
If you feel confident right now, please enter your guess into http:// onepoundcoffeebeancounter. com. Our office girl, Dorothy, recently married and as happy as a girl can be, is back to work and eager to tabulate all guesses.
I didn’t know that the Kauvars’ provided the trash can liners, nor did I know that they ironed the white punchbowl table tablecloths now permanently stained with red fruity punch.
I am now no longer on the stage.
Me: ‘Dorothy. Don’t we have a service that supplies the trash can liners and provides ironed tablecloths?’
Dorothy wasn’t available for a response.
Following the fifteen twenty minute break:
Me: ‘I see a lot of you have left altogether or have yet to return from our short break. We have to remember we’re on a leash here. We only have the room til 8:00p.’
Wiping up kugel remnants at the punch bowl: ‘Do you realize that those of us remaining here are the ones that didn’t leave, and have returned? You’re talking to us about people that aren’t here. Are you high on something?‘
Me: ‘Sorry about that. You are correct. My apologies. Anyway, let me just tell you that the 1957 movie that ended with everyone tearing up was Old Yeller.
Coincidentally, to circle back to an earlier comment about Fess, he actually did star in Old Yeller. But he didn’t play Davey Crockett in Old Yeller. No, he did not.
He played Jim Coates, the father of Yeller’s boy master, Travis Coates – played by Tommy Kirk. The dog’s name was Yeller and the reason for calling him ‘Old’ was not due to his age. The dog didn’t display hip dysplasia or any ‘old’ dog symptoms. He was called Old Yeller as a term of endearment. Plus the color of the dog’s coat was yeller.’
Sadly, Jiminy didn’t have any known offspring to carry on his life’s work. His purpose. To pass on his special genetic encoding. His seed. It’s a continual lament, a vociferous wail.
From the gallery:
Tom from Arvada: ‘Did Jiminy spend a lot of time at Pinocchio’s?’
Me: ‘Pinocchio was one of Jiminy’s closest friends, yes. Jiminy was Pinocchio’s conscience.’
Truth seeker Tom blurts: ‘Any truth to the rumor that Jiminy repeatedly asked Pinocchio to lie to him?’
Me: ‘I’m sorry Tom. The purpose here is to celebrate Jiminy… not stir Jiminy’s sexual preference debate. I’ll ask you: Does every celebrity have to be exposed and Me, Too’d? Let’s just leave it alone. Let’s conclude that Jiminy was a solid bug, a caring and generous little green buddy-dude with a Honey Crisp Adam’s apple voice box. His mellifluous voice sounded a little like a stuffed up Aaron Paley.’
Tom antagonizing: ‘I also heard that Jiminy was actually a katydid and not a cricket. Have you been made aware of that? Has anyone else here heard that? Was Jiminy a katydid? Or a grasshopper? Or a winter locust? Do you have any real information here???’
Frustration from the back: ‘Shut the hell up, Tom. We don’t want to listen to your bull crap right now. We don’t want to know. We don’t need to know. We like Jiminy… no… we LOVE Jiminy! Just the way he is, and we don’t need you swatting at him or trying to douse him with bug-spray! Someone tell Tom to take a hike. Don’t let the door smack you in the ass on your way out, Tom. We love Jiminy.’
Me: ‘Let’s move on. Thank you, Tom, for your questions. We can debate whether or not Jiminy is a dead-ringer for Aaron Paley, and that’s the only debate I will allow regarding Jiminy. Let’s continue from page one where I mentioned that my friend Frisell may have been a dabbler when it came to drugs. I had made it quite clear that I really don’t know. I don’t know Frisell’s propensity for dabbling. So please don’t ask.’
As for me? I wasn’t a dabbler. I was beyond dabbling. I was generally ‘all in’. It’s a different personality type. Comes with three symptoms:
1) above average confidence
2) substantial risk taking
3) staunch reliance in luck
It’s worked out. The reliance continues to this day. Fingers crossed. That’s the key. Finger crossing.
SPECIAL SKILLS
It’s how you cross your fingers. I can cross any combination: pinky over ring, ring over pinkie; ring over middle, middle over ring; index over middle, middle over index, etc. Both hands. Easily. Quickly. In beat, with quarter note cadence, or a snappy polka tempo… two… three.
I can cross fingers with both hands at the same time, and in opposite directions. I can do it with my eyes closed, one eye closed, other eye closed, half-mast, or with my hands behind my back. I don’t think you’ve ever seen anyone do that.
Quite frankly, it’s actually embarrassing to have this skill. You’ve never seen anyone on the big screen or on teevee ever do it because a) they can’t find any actors that can do it, or b) they can’t find any actors willing to admit to being able to do it.
Apparently, it’s also the toughest CGI challenge ever encountered. Requires specially designed CGI equipment to concoct a convincing result, and there’s not enough need. I was born with it. My Special Skill.
One guy that may have been able to cross over all his fingers in the manner of my god-given rare talent was NBA 1993 Hall of Famer, Calvin Murphy. The 5’ 9” Houston Rocket All-Star guard. He could be a finger crosser extremist simply because Calvin won the U.S. National Baton Twirling Championship in 1963. He turned 16 years old in May that year.
Calvin attributes his baton twirling dexterity to helping develop his extreme basketball dribbling skills. He is one that made use of his talent. He is also the one that got those fancy fingers mixed up in the tuna casserole a few times, having fathered 14 children, believed to be the most of any NBA player ever. Something that has been purported to have involved nine different casseroles. Take that Sean Kemp. Take that Wilt the Stilt.
I have a cousin who can push his nose into his face. He calls it one of his talents. He told me he can still do it. This, some sixty years later!
The first time he showed me that he could push his nose into his face was in the back seat of my dad’s car. He was 14 and I was ten. He and the rest of his family were visiting from Los Angeles, including his father (Uncle Morey), his mom (Aunt Dorothy), my nose-squishing cousin (Bob), another cousin, Bob’s younger brother (David), and their little sister, another cousin (Bonnie).
We were driving to a Chinese restaurant. It was the same Chinese restaurant we always went to whenever our family went out for dinner.
We never went to Italian or French or Greek or Thai or Indian or Mexican or Moroccan or Portuguese or Japanese or Vietnamese or Deep Dish or Shallow Dish or Fresh Fish or Fish Fry or Fast Food or Food Truck or Cafes or Cart or Casual or Drive-In or Drive Thru or Denny’s or Bimbo’s or Bob’s Big Boy or the Pizza Oven, or even the Golden Ox on Colfax Avenue, with their expensive charcoal-grilled steaks cooked in an open kitchen so that you could watch while the chefs created Golden Ox side cuts or rib roasts or with jus or without jus or on the bone or just a slab.
We didn’t even go to outdoor picnic table restaurants, whether or not they had umbrellas. We only went to Chinese. But not often. Thank goodness, because we were forced to use wood sticks to try to eat the food. I couldn’t understand why forks and spoons hadn’t reached China, and why they were still using sticks like cavemen and cavewomen and cave children and chimpanzees.
I saw the same documentary that you saw growing up where chimpanzees used sticks to get at ant-food as well as to scoop up grubs. We aren’t chimpanzees, are we?
An additional problem with eating Chinese food was that ½ hour after eating, you were hungry again. Even with the wood sticks. We knew this as kids. Everyone knew it.
So we’d go to the Chinese restaurant about once a year and come home hungry. Why even bother going at all? Heck, let’s never go out to eat.
And we really didn’t know much about food.
The joke back then was that people said that ½ hour after eating Mexican food, they’d wished they’d eaten Chinese. So it goes in a circle.
Chinese people don’t eat a lot of pinto beans… as far as I know. I have never seen a Chinese person order pinto beans. But I’m no expert on pinto beans. All I could add is that somewhere along the way someone said pinto beans were legumes. That apparently elevates them and makes them better.
To Denverians in the 1950s, Mexican food meant ground up hamburger, pulverized on the stove top in a heavy skillet with a packet of dehydrated Mexican chili powder mixed in. This pre-dated Hamburger Helper. Hamburger Helper included little hard pasta shells or little hard pasta tubes along with flavored powder that had, for example, a cheesy taste. Food-taste reviewers said that it wasn’t really cheese. In kind of a menacing way. They said it was a chemical!
I’d just be guessing what Hamburger Helper was since I never pushed a cart down the grocery store aisle with a box of Hamburger Helper in it. You’d never find it at home in our small off-kitchen pantry. But I’d be lying if I didn’t admit I would have liked to have tried it. It looked like a sloppy Joe in a cardboard box.
None of my friend’s moms served Hamburger Helper. At least I never had it at their houses if they did. Seemed more like denial was part of the Hamburger Helper experience, but their advertising campaign didn’t mention denial. The advertisers said Hamburger Helper was actually good.
I didn’t know what to think when I saw my Cousin Bob squish his nose into his face in the back of the car when we were driving to the Chinese restaurant so I didn’t say anything positive or negative about it. I was startled, turned my head briefly and tried smashing my own schnoz into my own puss. I couldn’t do it. I failed. My puss would not be penetrated.
I said to my cousin ‘Let me see that again, Bob.’ And he did it again, and while he was repeating the impossible, I leaned in and looked real close but I couldn’t detect any trickery. Seemed valid. He wasn’t hiding his nose in the palm of his hand or between his fingers or up his bleeding Madras shirt sleeve or anything. It really disappeared into his face and didn’t poke out the back side. He must have had extra room in his head for the push in. It probably happened because during the fetal development stage when his nose was on the inside of his face, it then sort of popped out at birth leaving a retractable hole. Maybe my nose had a different path. I know I was adopted and he wasn’t. He was more of a pure-breed and they tend to have more issues.
So I had a fascinating finger crossing skill and my cousin Bob could make his nose disappear into his face. My family had some wild Special Skills.
Just after college, I lived with a guy and his girlfriend and their dog. The dog was a Rottweiler that looked like it was on steroids. That’s standard for a Rottweiler and the dog was always bouncing around, slobbering on a big hard rubber bone stuck in his mouth that you would never want to touch. Never. The dog’s muscles bulged a constant flex and it grunted while he bounced around one way and then turn and go the other way and then turn again and go back, nonstop, day after day, hour after hour. Dog-hysteria. I have to say I was scared shitless of that dog. And I am a dog savant.
I had a girlfriend at the time so it was really me and my girlfriend that lived with the guy and his girlfriend and their dog, which was the aforementioned bone-headed Rottweiler. We were all living in a small, wood exterior, bluish-grey rancher in Boulder. One story. Two bedrooms. Fenced yard. The Boulder turnpike just beyond.
My girlfriend and I had a dog, too. We were told our dog was part Collie and part Mackenzie River wolf. The Mackenzie River is far up in Canada near the top where the earth gets skinny. That’s what Julie, the dog’s original owner said. Sunny had been her dog until she gave him up to us because she couldn’t afford him anymore. Sunny was real smart. Real laid back. Bayed at full moons. Not every full moon. But some of the important ones. I didn’t know they were the important ones, but he did.
Anyway, the guy that my girlfriend and I were living with, his name was Billy. He was really thin, not emaciated thin, not creepy thin, but thin. He didn’t work at all, had long sandy hair. To look at him you’d say he was a hippie. He smoked a lot of hand rolled cigarettes and the pupils of both eyes were the shape of a cat’s. You couldn’t help noticing. He had cat eyes. Honestly. Cat eyes.
Back then Billy said he was told by someone he said would know, someone that had diagnosed him, that his condition was one in a billion, which meant that he was one of four people in the world that had cat eyes. I don’t know if the guy that diagnosed Billy was an eye doctor or a veterinarian or what he was. I never asked Billy. And I have no fucking idea how to get a hold of him now. Both irises were periwinkle but the shape of his pupils were the same as a cat. Weird genetic encodement.
Billy didn’t know anything about the other three cat-eyed people in the world. Not one eye-ota. They didn’t have meetings or anything like that.
Billy and his girlfriend, Connie, had a baby, a daughter, while my girlfriend and I and Sunny were living with them in the house in Boulder. Their daughter’s eyes were normal. So were Connie’s. The cat-eye gene must be recessive in human beings yet dominant in cats. I still haven’t seen a cat with human pupils and I’ve kinda stopped looking.
I remember that Connie didn’t brush her teeth much or properly or at all and ate a lot of table salt which made the delivery of their daughter dangerous. That’s what they said but I didn’t hear that table salt was a blocker of cat eyes. I guess it could be. Never saw a cat put salt on its food so they may have a natural aversion to salt. My Aunt Dorothy avoided salt, too. Her pupils were normal human round.
So I personally had special finger crossing skills, my cousin Bob could plunge his nose into the front of his head where the nose resides and Billy the housemate had cat eyes.
Next up. The wife of a very close pal of mine can write mirror-image, upside-down, backward on a chalkboard or lined paper or on graph paper. She can do it in pen or pencil or chalk but not with a paint roller. Pretty much any color works. I’ve seen it. She is slow but she can do it. It’s not even something she has to think about or struggle to do. She just does it. Hold a mirror up to it and you can read it.
She happens to be a brain delver, a psychologist with some specialties, and a mind expert. She teaches grad school students psychology know-how part-time in Berkeley, California. She says her talent could be the result of x-ray procedures that were performed at the swirl of her scalp during early childhood. She said it may have created some brain lesions. Brain lesions sounds like cleft palette and doesn’t seem like it would be a thing that gives the victim any advantages.
She’s also a lefty, so there’s that and all the normal pejorative baggage that that brings. Lefties all write weird like their arm is fractured at the wrist. Whatever it is, something’s fucked up with left-hand writing. Unless they’re writing Hebrew. In that case, anyone right-handed is disadvantaged. Would be my guess. I’m right handed but I don’t write Hebrew. Could be that early man was dominated by lefties and that’s why there aren’t any books from that era.
To my mind, everything in life should be nice. But each of these Special Skills: finger-crossing, disappearing nose, cat-eye vision, mirror image writing… are each like having an extra tail bone; there’s not much use for any of them. They are basically anomalies that are uncovered, or discovered, early-ish in life: at birth (cat eyes), early childhood (nose squishing and finger-crossing), young teens (mirror image writing).
Only one merits circus excitement, although it’s not technically a skill: ‘Ladies and Gentlemen. Behind the curtains of this Traveling Exhibition, we have for you today One of only Four Humans walking this planet to have this Birth Defect… witness Billy the Jungle Cat-Man’. Billy would be on stage wearing a Flintstone outfit with straggly hippie hair.
Billy really could have made it. He could have really been a star. But he didn’t work. He was a hippie. They never worked.
There used to be an Amusement Park in Chicago called Riverview Park. Opened in 1904. Old. Its original famous white wood trestle roller coaster was called the Bobs. Along with all the rest of the rides and attractions, the Bobs had its plug yanked from the electrical outlets in 1967. The whole shebang… kaput. Show over. The Bobs was the fastest roller coaster in America at the time at 60 mph. No longer.
A few years before axes chopped up the white wood trestle thrill ride, Chicago’s Riverview Park also had a freak show. One time I paid the quarter to see the freak show even though we’d already paid to get into the park and none of the other rides required an additional money outlay.
They had all the normal freaks like a bearded lady and there some dwarves walking around loose. Which was a little disturbing. The freak show also had run-of-the-mill human freaks with six fingers or webbed feet and there was a guy with a double-cauliflower-cowlick growing out of his forehead. They also had a two-headed sheep. Which didn’t seem like it should count since it was a sheep and not a human.
But they also had a lady with four legs and an extra arm and they said she was really two people and that the head of her sister was in her abdomen.
One of the ‘freaks’ hidden behind the curtain was a hunchbacked gross-looking troll that could read a paragraph from a book with an eyeball that dangled from his eye-socket. Like a wet steelie eye on the end of a Slinky. They’d cover his other eye with a black patch so he couldn’t see out of it, and the barker would hand the book to someone in the audience and the person in the audience would pick out the page and the barker would hold the book open to the page for the freak to read. The barker held the book right down by the dangler eye. Down near the troll’s mouth.
He’d read. His diction wasn’t top shelf but he’d read anyway. There may have been some amount of trickery, but I saw him do it, nonetheless, and it was indeed freaky. I’ve seen guys smoke cigarettes through their necks. But nothing matched this troll. He had a real cool, unforgettable name that just made a lot of sense. He went by ‘Popeye’.
Popeye was the star. He should have been on the Ed Sullivan Show. I thought for sure someone would have let Ed know about Popeye.
I guess it’s possible that Popeye couldn’t read with the dangler since no one verified that what had been claimed to have been read was accurate. Popeye might have just spoken some memorized horse hockey. Mr. Sullivan might have known that. Or suspected. Another possibility why Popeye was never on Mr. Sullivan’s show was because he’d scare the hell out you.
JUVENILE WAGGERY
Frisell and I didn’t do anything too dangerous while growing up. For example, we didn’t experiment with the home chemistry set that was for sale at the toy store on Colfax Avenue and Harrison Street that had the larger-than-life-size ceramic clown posing in front attracting attention. The chemistry set contained magnesium powder and potassium nitrate that when combined was explosive, as in the making of flash bombs. The booklet that came with the set didn’t tell you how to do it.
In high school my assigned locker partner happened to have the first name of Ed. Spelled it the same way that Mr. Sullivan spelled his first name. The locker partner was kinda an advanced brainiac that was allotted some leeway. He mixed an explosive cocktail in chemistry class and blew off a couple fingers. He also damaged his eyes from mortar and pestle shards.
Ed didn’t come to school for the rest of the year. So I had my own locker which was nice. Having my own locker was like a silver lining since Ed’s injuries were so frightening and devastating. I think that’s what silver linings are for, though.
I never advertised the advantage it gave me by never having my locker rearranged by a locker partner. That would have been in bad taste. The way I left my locker was the way I found it. Made me feel special.
What errant deeds that Frisell and I did, instead, was the standard assortment of Juvenile Waggery; those mischievous acts that childhood squeezes out of your system. Like throwing snowballs at cars and busses. Or smoking our first cigarettes in my parent’s detached brick garage after kyping a couple of Lark cancer-sticks out of my mom’s flat metal cigarette holder that lay hidden in the bottom of her purse. Or peeking at Playboy magazine centerfolds hoping we wouldn’t go blind while our imaginations were going haywire. Or positioning ourselves or really just trying to position ourselves to sneak a peek through crack openings in girl’s blouses. That’s a real activity. Guys do it. They don’t even have to be perverted.
I was successful once: the girl in the neighborhood was Francine Hoag’s older sister. Her name was Barbara. She was thirteen years old and beginning her journey into womanhood. In womanhood terms, she would have been called a toddler.
In the street in front of my house on the corner was an enormous street digger that was left there over a weekend. It had been used to dig down to the main water line. Apparently there was an issue with the water main but none of us kids were told what the issue was.
The enormous asphalt digging monstrosity got plenty of attention as did the crater it had dug in the street.
I climbed up onto the top of the wide scoop blade which elevated me about four feet higher than the street. Below me stood Barbara, Francine’s older sister, and I could peek right down her blouse. It was a bingo moment… my first bingo. I didn’t know then that I’d still remember that bingo all these years later, but I know that at the time, I prayed that I would never forget. Seems that prayer can work after all.
Another bagatelle Frisell and I did was ditch class in Grade 6. We agreed to ditch our Social Studies class. It was one period before our lunch period, and gave us time to leave the school grounds to race up to Hatch’s Drug Store on 8th and Colorado Blvd to eat lunch. It’s about six blocks away.
This was of course strictly forbidden.
We sat in one of their cushiony, 50’s laminate diner booths. We both gobbled down hot open-faced turkey sandwiches on the best white bread in the world, Wonder®, accompanied by perfectly made mashed potatoes covered with brown gravy and bacon bits. There was a scoop of French-cut green beans on the plate. Not sure why they were there. The cherry cokes in tall glasses with straws included free refills.
After we were done eating and sucked our straws clean, we ran out of the restaurant without paying, and it seemed like it all tasted better without paying. We weren’t crooks, really. We just did this one time. I don’t know what got into us. I don’t recall daring Frisell and I don’t recall Frisell daring me.
Didn’t seem like they should have even charged us for the French-cut green beans cuz they remained on each plate exactly where they were when they were delivered. It felt to us like we were giving the French-cut green beans back to them.
There was also the predictable reach around theft of penny candy from inside the jewel-cased candy display at a completely different drug store from Hatch’s Drug Store; in this case, the one on the corner of 12th and Madison Street. But that’s not on the scale of eating an open-faced turkey sandwich with cranberry on the side and then high-tailing it out of the restaurant.
12th and Madison Street was closer to school and conveniently located right on our walk home. It didn’t take much to distract the white-coated old man guarding the candy display. I moved over a few feet away from Frisell and asked a question about the accuracy of the shots fired from the plastic squirt guns that were on the twirl-capable vertical metal rack. Frisell reached around and grabbed a handful of penny Bit-O-Honey’s while the old codger’s back was turned.
Technically, Frisell did the robbing or the stealing or the theft or whatever you want to call it. I was getting valuable squirt gun info. Or so I thought.
The old man in the white coat didn’t know squat about squirt guns. I knew more about his squirt guns than he did. My mom may have, too. Maybe only Mrs. Batisch shared a lack of squirt gun knowledge with the old man drug store candy display guard. Mrs. Batisch hardly ever went outdoors. That, according to Willard. She lived on Willard’s block, not mine.
But neither Frisell nor I cheated on school tests… at least I didn’t. I don’t believe Frisell did, either. There wasn’t any need. School wasn’t hard for either of us. We didn’t even need to study. School was mostly a memory game: the teacher would say something and then we’d repeat the same thing back to them on a test. That’s how I treated school. It was a game of repeat-after-me.
Technically lying, but we didn’t consider it cheating, Frisell and I twice tricked our entire band class in 5th grade. They never knew. Even our teacher, Mr. Fredrickson, didn’t know.
Band class was held in Teller Elementary School auditorium. Up on the stage. Every two weeks any band member could ‘challenge’ the band member seated one ‘chair’ ahead of them. Frisell or I were always first and second chair clarinetists. We alternated several times who had first chair and who had second chair, although in 5th grade Frisell was establishing himself as the better player. Which meant he could handle the fingering of sixteenth notes better than next best, which was always me.
Even with my God-given supple finger-wrap capabilities, Frisell was the one who attacked sixteenth notes like they were sitting ducks in a pond. Neither of us the advantage over the other when it came to playing whole notes and half notes and quarter notes. Other band classmate clarinetists could handle those reliably, too.
The process for ‘challenge’ day in band was such that the two contestants, the challenger and the kid seated one chair higher than the challenger, stayed on-stage while the rest of the class left the stage with instruments in hand and went out and sat in the audience seats. Except for the tuba player, Latham. He just went out to the seats in the auditorium without his tuba.
There wasn’t enough space in the auditorium seats for a kid to hold a tuba. Apparently holding a tuba in the audience wasn’t part of the auditorium design at Teller Elementary.
Mr. Fredrickson went out to the audience seats, too. The drums stayed on stage, too. If there had been a piano, it would have stayed on stage, too. But there was no piano in band.
Once seated out in the audience, the broad purple stage curtains were pulled. Our elementary school colors were purple and grey. So Frisell and I were the only two performers left on-stage.
This is how it’s supposed to work. After playing the same piece of music as chosen by the challenger, the class and the teacher would vote on who played the piece better: player #1 or player #2. It was a blind challenge in the sense that the class and the teacher didn’t know who played first and who played second. Whoever was picked as the better player, sat in the higher seat until they lose a challenge.
But twice in 5th Grade, only one of us played the challenge piece both times. We had a pact. Since I played both times the first time, I won the higher chair. Then two weeks later we did it again but this time Frisell played both times and he got the higher chair. The coolest thing is that we didn’t get caught.
When we were older we stole a tire from inside the gas station garage that was kitty corner from the drug store with the candy on 12th and Madison Street. We were in high school at that point and that sort of behavior from us was rare. We knew we could really get into big trouble. But my mom’s car had a flattening bald tire and it just seemed to be the correct, albeit unlawful thing to do. I couldn’t afford to buy the tire but I didn’t want my mom driving around on a flat bald tire.
And Frisell didn’t want my mom to drive around on a flat bald tire, either; he liked her chopped liver too much as well as her beef stew and just about everything else she made. So did Willard and all the rest of the guys.
Frisell and I took the tire to another garage and had them mount the tire onto the rim and watched the guy spin the tire on the big tire spinner and he read some gauge and hammered on tire weights so the tire was balanced at ten trillion revolutions per second. Or some number that sounded like that. The guy used a ball peen hammer to bang on the tire weights. It’s the only time I ever saw a ball peen being used.
I don’t hide from tools. Never did. I love tools. I embrace tools. The ball peen is just an odd one. No claw. What’s the point?
Finally, the tire mounting garage grease jockey threw the tire on my mom’s car’s back right axle, replacing the flattening bald tire. It was important for traction and critical for stability. Later I was told that replacing only one tire is not a good practice. It’s safer to replace at least two… like both rear tires or both front tires. Sometimes good intentions include bad decisions. It worked out, though. It was the last tire that I ever stole. And my mom didn’t crash or anything.
FIRST TEENAGE PARTY WITH GIRLS
As far as drugs are concerned, in an indirect fashion, it started with Coors® beer. 3.2 beer. I was 15, slightly below the 3.2 beer drinking age. I didn’t really like the taste of Coors® beer. And that may hold some responsibility to the relationship I developed with drugs. I liked the drugs better. But I drank the beer anyway… for a time. Mostly at weekend parties in high school. And I would overdo it. I guess a lot of us overdid it. I had one party at my house. One.
My parents went to Las Vegas for the weekend, something they’d never done before, and so I announced a party to some friends at school. A lot of kids came. I can’t say I knew all of them. I can say I didn’t know some of them. I drank too much beer so I really wasn’t at my party. But at the party, only about 9:00p, I’m told, not at all late into the evening, Kent Lupberger threw up on one of the cushions of my mom’s green living room sofa. The sofa that was kinda back in the shadows of the living room. Thankfully it wasn’t my mom’s white living room sofa with the 100 watt bulb lamps at each end.
After the Lupberger Explosion, Blum took charge and grabbed my mom’s vacuum sweeper out of the pantry where Blum knew it was cuz he’d been over to my house 10,000 times by then, and he used that vacuum sweeper to grapple with the big throw-up pieces lying perched on the sofa. And to slurp up the liquid. Or as much as he could.
When my parents got home from their first weekend-getaway-from-the-kids, turns out my mom expected that I would have a party while they were gone and she was more mad at Blum for ruining her vacuum sweeper than she was a Lupberger for throwing up. She didn’t have any idea who Kent Lupberger was. She just flipped the cushion over and we never really talked about it. She knew I knew I fucked up. And she knew I knew she knew. I never knew if she told my dad, which could have caused bigger problems if she had. I think my mom was looking for solutions; not problems. Turns out moms can actually be allies. That was a cool thing to learn.
I was one of the youngest kids in our class, umbilical snipped in late October, so I was among the very last kids to be able to legally buy beer or legally drive a car or legally purchase rubbers from the nice smelling pretty lady working the cash register, also at the popular Hatch’s Drug Store on 8th and Colorado Blvd (I assumed you had to be of age… those were the rumors).
But I didn’t have a fake ID. I also didn’t have the gonads. It wasn’t a literal physical developmental issue. I was Jewish, after all! No, it was more about not getting caught and not getting fined and not having my driver’s license permit delayed and especially not having my parents mad at me.
Whatever the reason, I was nervous and afraid to ask the lady behind the cash register to sell rubbers to me. It bothered me then and it bothers me even now that I was, what was then called, ‘chickenshit’. Rubbers were a behind-the-counter item.
I was uncertain as to what to say if she looked straight at me; straight through me. I walked up and down the magazine aisle for about an hour (probably 5 minutes) to rehearse my speech, practice my approach as to what I would say to her, building up pretend confidence, basically trying to trick myself, and then, a peppery melon voice behind me. Dramatically, it was her. Grammatically, it was she:
Cash register lady: ‘Can I help you, young man?’
I turned to her and she was ravaging and she had a southern accent which was deadly.
Me: ‘Um. Yeah. Can I buy a rubber? Please.’
I may have blurted. ‘Damn it’, I thought.
Cash register lady, head now tilted and smiling: ‘Excuse’ums?’
Me: ‘I mean: May I buy a rubber, please?’
Lame come back, I know. It has never improved. Sadly.
Cash register lady leaning over toward me, whispering: ‘Are you sure you’re old enough?’
Me, cooking shit, also leaning: ‘Oh yeah. I’ve bought them before. How old did I have to be?’
Cash register lady smiling and arching her back, stretching: ‘You’ve got to be 16 years of age?’
Me, now more nervous and lying through all three of my bicuspids due to removal last time at the dentist: ‘Oh yeah. I’m at least 16.’
Cash register lady doing imaginary jumping jacks (my mind was going nuts): ‘All right, Hon. I’m required by law to ask your age. That’s all.’
Me, relieved and relishing that she called me ‘Hon’: ‘That’s OK. I think I was required by law to answer.’
A girl from my English class moved into line behind me holding what looked to be a PeeChee® purchase and a package of colored pencil erasers. I had been looking at the colored pencil erasers myself but forgot about them while I was pacing in front of the magazines practicing my approach.
Cash register lady pulling on her ear and licking her lips with her tongue: ‘Hon, we don’t sell just one. Do you mean that you want to buy one package? The three-pack? Or the pack with a dozen?’
Me, ready to explode: ‘Ya. That’s what I meant. How much are they?’
Cash register lady playing with her necklace with her eyebrows quizzled: ‘How about the three-pack? Do you know what style, Hon?’
Me, guessing: ‘Trojan?’
Cash register lady adjusting her blouse: ‘OK. We carry Trojan. Do you want regular or reservoir end or French-ribbed? Or scented? Extra-stretch? Band-aid colored? Clear?’
Me, trouble swallowing: ‘Huh?’
Cash register lady letting her hair down: ‘How about we just go with regular?’
Me, with dry-mouth: ‘Um, OK.’
Cash register lady calling to the girl classmate in line behind me: ‘I’ll be right with you, miss.’
So the cash register diva and I did the purchase transaction and it was a little awkward cuz the total cost including tax came out to $4.69 and I only had a handful of pocket change, no bills, but thankfully there was one Kennedy 50 cent piece in there with the rest of the change, so I only had to count out 14 more quarters, 6 dimes and 2 nickels and I told her to ‘Keep the Change’.
It wasn’t often that I would find 6 dimes in my pocket. Dimes seemed kinda hard to come by back then. Seemed like they were easier to lose than to find. They were small. Tons of nickels lying around and you’d see them on the sidewalk sometimes, and quarters weren’t hard to come by and, of course, pennies. Dimes were few and far between for some reason. Almost no 50 cent pieces. Ever. I don’t think cash registers even had slots for 50 cent pieces. Silver dollars? They were for collectors. No one ‘spent’ silver dollars. I wasn’t sure any business establishment would even take them.
As I left Hatch’s Drug Store through the inward swinging big glass double doors at the front, out onto Colorado Blvd, rather than exiting out the push-bar wooden backdoor to the small back parking lot, where Frisell and I had escaped years before after devouring the open-faced turkey sandwiches with mashed potatoes smothered in brown gravy and bacon bits, I felt good having made a grown up purchase.
The bulge in my pocket was the three rubbers. There were a few things that were cool to just carry with you back then, and a rubber was one of them along with a small Swiss army knife, and for some people, a rabbit’s foot – although the rabbit’s feet didn’t seem real and you could buy them from those big round glass balls where you could also buy gum balls or jawbreakers for a nickel. Carrying a guitar pick was considered cool, too, but I didn’t have one. Frisell did.
I didn’t know what to do with the shiny foil bulge of rubbers in my pockets when I got home and like a thief believed I had to hide them from my mom, so I opened the package of three, separated them, and pinched each behind an old cobwebby piece of board lying in front of the small two-pane half-painted windows in the garage. I figured I could always say that they weren’t mine if my mom found them; but she wasn’t going to find them. No one ever did any looking around in our filthy, narrow one-car garage.
They called it a one-car garage but the cars in the 1960s were longer and wider than our garage could handle. An uncle shoehorned a printing press in there one year, so it got some use… but mostly the garage was where our bikes and lawn mower and grass catcher and rakes and garden tools were housed with old newspapers and strung out hoses, half of which were cracked and didn’t work and should have been thrown away. The inside of our garage looked like a junk graveyard with a lot of spider webs. Frisell’s garage wasn’t much better but it was a little better. But it didn’t have any rubbers stashed away for emergency use… or he would have told me. You really get to know someone when you have become familiar with the inside of their garage.
LION FISH
In the Summer of 1969, following graduation ceremonies from high school, a month before the famous July 20 landing/walk on the moon and two months before the future concert-changing three-day music festival on Max Yasgur’s Woodstock dairy farm, another friend of mine, Willard, and I, were given permission by my mom to take her green 1968 Plymouth Barracuda fastback and drive to Los Angeles.
Our destination was my Aunt Dorothy’s house in Woodland Hills. I’d been there before. Twice. Family vacations. It was the house of my cousin who could make his nose disappear into his face, like pressing a clown’s nose except real – not fakey.
Aunt Dorothy was my mom’s youngest sister and she married a one-of-a-kind clever, charismatic, obsessive personality-type salesman, my Uncle Morey, who had an enormous 360 gallon salt water fish tank in his living room which is supposed to be super hard to maintain and hovering in the grasses inside was a venomous lion fish. (If you ever saw a Highlights® magazine at a doctor’s office or at a dentist’s office or had any issue delivered to your house in the mail, or saw a copy lying around at a friend’s house or on a cousin’s corner book table or discovered one under a couch, you have my Aunt Dorothy’s super-clever salesman husband to thank… my Uncle Morey. Yep, he was the salesman that sold Highlights® magazine to all the places you ever saw it.) The show-stopping lion fish in Uncle Morey’s tank was venomous, not poisonous. The difference is that once its 18 deadly venomous spines are carefully removed, the fish itself is completely safe to eat. They say it tastes like tuna more so than a buttery Mediterranean branzino with lime and herb vinaigrette.
I’ve never partaken of lion fish. Neither have you… would be my guess… if you’re not dead because of it. Reading this story or any story from the grave, while dirt-napping, is not well-documented.
A guess is bigger and bolder than a hunch. It’s more substantial. It’s more consequential. It’s more open. Hunches are internal. Hunches come from your gut. And your gut is often the best decision-making center – not the brain. They aren’t nocturnal. Aren’t external. Frank Capra posited that: ‘A hunch is creativity trying to tell you something,’ Isn’t life wonderful? The expression is ‘Go with your gut’. Not, ‘Go with your brain’. A guess, however, requires faith. Like in god. Which, as it turns out, believing in him, is at least partially, a guess. Guesses originate in the brain. Guesses employ analysis and cataloguing. The other bi-lateral backbone of a guess, in addition to faith, is research. Absolute truth doesn’t always become known through research. Its ongoing, it’s a process, yet research leads us in a particular direction. In the case of god’s existence and his or her making us people in his or her image, the research says we evolved from monkeys and they in turn had evolved from whatever they evolved from and that ultimately there was no requirement for god with regard to ‘us’ cuz we ‘evolved’. For me, I guess I have faith in the research. That’s my hunch, anyway. I can’t pretend to accept the unknowable. My gut knows. So does yours. Unless your gut isn’t working right.
Sexually entwinkled, my Aunt Dorothy and Uncle Morey produced four terrific cousins for me: a semi-serious academic boy who obtained a law degree (his name: Dennis, now deceased from old age cancer), his next younger brother (*) who had the very soft nose cartilage so he could actually press his nose into his face but other than that it looked normal and you would never have guessed (he became a poet and a San Francisco State University writing professor and has numerous books published that he would love for you to read and calls his nose pushing just one of his talents), another younger brother who was into the L.A. music scene at the time (he was closest to my age and his name: David), who I thought had said that he had been the manager of Strawberry Alarm Clock (the band that in 1967 wrote and performed Incense and Peppermints, which rose to #11 on the charts) and lastly, their precious little sister (Bonnie) who had quite a mouth and used it so as to be heard above all else. I have had repeated difficulties verifying that my L.A. music scene Cousin David had ever been the manager of Strawberry Alarm Clock. I may have misheard him back in 1969 but I’ve carried it with me since.
* Off-Topic Insert #1: If you have internet connectivity capabilities combined with an inclination and interest in sports, please enjoy The Bob Emergency, found in two-parts on YouTube. It’s a study of athletes named Bob; not Robert. If you gander on over to it, enjoy yourself. Please do not get distracted watching another video analyzing what would have happened in the 2004 MLB season had Barry Bonds come to the plate without a bat in his hand all season, yet the pitchers weren’t told. Hint: He would have been really, really, ridiculously good anyway. With no home runs.
DRIVE TO LOS ANGELES
So Willard and I began our Summer of ’69 road trip to Los Angeles by heading south out of Denver, on I-25, at about 9:30a, and then we turned west two and a half hours later, at the town of Walsenburg, in southern Colorado, where we had filled up the gas tank, and paid cash.
We bought a couple candy bars, paid cash, and said ‘Keep the Change’ like big shots. I bought a Look candy bar and Willard bought a PayDay. We travelled west across the bottom slice of Colorado wheat toast on US Highway 160 toward what eventually would become a sunset eight, or nine, hours later. We let US Highway 160 guide us to and through Alamosa, to and through Del Norte, to and through Pagosa Springs, continuing on to and through Durango, and then Cortez, the dot in the southwest corner of Colorado, just forty miles short of the lowest rated monument in the U.S.: drumroll……. drumroll……. CYMBAL CRASH……. drumroll……. Four Corners.
That’s right. Four Corners: originally the 30’ x 30’ Portland cement slab with two straight lines etched diagonally by ruler, meant to be hypotenuses defining New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, and Colorado boundaries.
For those of you who didn’t grow up hearing all about it, for those of you who never felt a swollen bosom because of it, it’s the only place in the United States where four states touch.
Just let that soak in.
Which impresses absolutely no one. Anywhere in the United States. It doesn’t matter how old you are. This ‘prank’ monument fools no one. It continues to capture the imagination of no U.S. citizens. Not even residents of Utah!
There is only one geographic location talked about less than the Four Corners throughout all the miles in the U.S. And that’s Canada. Which is why the Four Corners is mainly visited by Europeans. They don’t even sell tee-shirt souvenirs saying Four Corners in any language other than English. Not even French or Italian. The assumption is that visiting Finlanders and Hungarians would buy the English tee. Souvenir tees in Finnish or Hungarian have never been available for purchase anywhere throughout all of South America and you can’t buy them at the Four Corners, either. Not even special order.
Construction of the Four Corners monument began in 1868, the year Colorado became a state, with the first edition completed a mere forty-four years later in 1912 followed by the final sprint to open in 1931 which was nineteen years after the final cement pour had hardened.
But in advance of agreeing to skip the Four Corners monument altogether on this trip, it was straight up 5:00p upon our arrival in Cortez and that’s what Bob and I had to do: p. After our zipper pulls were returned to full mast we gassed up again and stopped at some Mexican dive fast food drive-thru, just down the block. We each bought chicken burritos which came with a complimentary cherry coke with crushed ice in a tall waxed Dixie that had a side-picture of a mountain, and the name Ouray, Colorado wrapping around the exterior even though we were in Cortez, Colorado.
I said to Willard: ‘Why would Cortez have cups that say Ouray on the side?’
Willard: ‘I don’t know. Why you asking me?’
Me: ‘Don’t they have high school football team rivalries down here?’
Willard: ‘Yeah. Good point, Sherlock. Can we get the fuck out of here now?’
Two black plastic forks, two small tubs of medium salsa, and two yellow napkins were included with the chicken burritos.
We paid cash, and said ‘Keep the Change’, like big shots at the top of our game. Although it was a drive-thru, we decided to park and eat our burritos and drink our cherry cokes at the festive wooden picnic table sitting outside the cantina. After we’d finished eating, belched and wiped our mouths clean, we both strut and saddled left and right back into the cantina like we were gunslingers with holsters strapped to our sides and bought two extra-girth tubular churros. The exquisite taste found a permanent memory location inside the shrinking folds of my lumpus (11th century term for brain). Thus sated, we continued our early summer quest by driving southwest with bellies full, having a great time.
We had a few hours left of sunlight.
SHIPROCK
Not long afterward, although nearly 25 miles behind us toward the southeast, we saw the towering Shiprock in the northwest corner of New Mexico. It’s a landmark beacon and sacred Navajo peak sticking up one hundred sixty stories, 1583 ft, out of nowhere. The height is called its prominence. Its elevation is 7177 ft above sea level. Upon examination, it has the appearance of an outgrown vertebrae above the ribbed spine of some 60 million year old ancient geologic dinosaur. In actuality, Shiprock is the 1.3 mile tall remains of a volcanic plug from 30 million years ago. The volcanic plug dimensions includes what is above ground and what is below ground. All the other volcanic mountain gravel eroded long, long ago. The plug is what remains.
So there is an ancient volcano under Shiprock. It’s in the mantle where we can’t see it. But it’s there.
Shiprock and its immediate surrounding geology is the perfect bookend to another Navajo Nation superstructure: Agathla Peak. One of the most photographed geologic structures in the United States, Agathla Peak is located in the southwest corner of Monument Valley in Arizona. Like Shiprock in New Mexico, Agathla Peak is also a volcanic plug from 30 million years ago. It is said that Agathla Peak is the first cousin to Shiprock. But that is only meant geologically. Not literally, as through a familial blood line. It is one application of a poetic use of the word ‘cousin’.
Monument Valley in Northern Arizona, slightly extending north into Utah, has been brought into all of our homes because of its wonderful awe-inducing geologic structures. Made even more famous through the film lens by Director John Ford’s iconic western movies, The Searchers, with John Wayne in 1960, and predated in 1939 when John Ford used Monument Valley for the first time as a setting in his western, Stagecoach. That film also starred John Wayne along with Andy Devine, Roy Rogers’ sidekick that went by the name of Cookie, for years. Stagecoach was John Ford’s first western that used real sound; not dubbed.
MONUMENT VALLEY
The film connection to Monument Valley began in 1938 when John Ford, already a renowned film director in Los Angeles, took a glance at several b/w photos brought to him by an unknown and insistent fellow named Harry Goulding. The b/w photos were of a location he called Monument Valley.
Harry Goulding was the owner of the only place to get a bed in Monument Valley. It was called Goulding’s Lodge. Still is. Like a trading post. The next closest place to stay was more than 25 miles distant. The 1938 automobiles didn’t go sixty miles an hour… especially over treacherous dirt trails and deep sand. Think 20 miles per hour. Lower. 15.
At first glance, John Ford knew Monument Valley would become the backdrop for his next western: Stagecoach. And so it was. It took six weeks to film Stagecoach if John Wayne’s memory is to be believed. Later, Monument Valley became the backdrop for Marlboro cigarette ads… as well as for new car commercials many times. As well as over 100 teevee shows and motion pictures.
When John Ford saw Monument Valley in person for the first time, he was struck speechless for two hours, didn’t touch any whiskey, and said after the silence that the black and white photos that Mr. Goulding brought to him of Monument Valley didn’t do the area justice. ‘No justice at all.’ Then he filmed Stagecoach in black and white. But below is what John Ford saw that the black and whites couldn’t deliver.
Early morning and later afternoons are considered the best times of day to visit Monument Valley. But truthfully, the lighting throughout the day transforms the scenery magically.
Neither Willard nor I wanted to leave Monument Valley, but with the sun setting, it was time to hit the road.
We didn’t realize you had to book a room at Gouldings Lodge nine months in advance.
Hell, we didn’t even know we were going on this poorly planned trip three days ago.
Sleeping amongst the monuments was a Navajo No-No.
FIRST NIGHT
We stayed the night pulling off the road somewhere on our way to the Grand Canyon. Both of us slept in the car. We didn’t get that far out of Monument Valley. I think we only reached Tuba City, which sounded by name like a shit hole. But it wasn’t. It was worse.
Having a fastback allowed every seat to drop flat. So we both had full leg extension capabilities. We each brought a sleeping bag and pillow. And pillowcases. And a bunch of other stuff that we knew we’d need, like clothes, but I’m not gonna go into the ‘list’ right now.
Suffice it for you to understand, Dear Reader, that the car sleeping-arrangement was totally comfortable. No issues. Not a single problem. Everything was fine. We were at peace. Peaceful and relaxed. Pretty relaxed. A little thirsty. Bob had a crick in his back. But otherwise, it couldn’t have been more perfect. Better than perfect. Content.
But, alas, Willard’s pillowcase had a troublesome rip in it. A mighty tear. He brought his pillow and pillowcase from his dirty, grimy log cabin on the South Platte River. Near the town of Deckers, back in Colorado.
Both his pillow and pillowcase were yellow-stained from mold or mouse pee or rat pee, or squirrel pee or pee-pee, or spider pee, I suppose. I guess spiders pee. The pillowcase could even have been partially discolored from bat pee since bats got into his cabin more than once. Pretty much everyone knew that that is what bats do when they get trapped in a smelly cabin; they uncontrollably pee on everything. They use echolocation to direct their tiny controlled squirts.
Ppsshhht. Ppsshhht.
Bulls-eyes. Learned that in Boy Scouts.
Both Willard and I were in Troop 1 of the Flaming Arrows. I earned seven merit badges, and I think Willard managed two. I don’t know that. But I never saw his sash and if there was anything on it, I’m pretty sure he would have wagged it in my face multiple times at some point.
My older brother earned 21 merit badges – Eagle Scout. So what! BFD! I don’t care. That’s been my position on this accomplishment of his for the past lifetime. My mom told him to include his Eagle Scout accomplishment on his college applications. Maybe that helped him get into Stanford, along with good SAT scores and the fact that he entered an orator competition even though he didn’t win. Frankly, he wasn’t the best on the trombone, either. Who picks the trombone?
I asked my mom later, when it was my turn, if I should include my merit badge total of seven on my college applications and she advised me not to do so.
I don’t like to even think about it. It is not uncommon to hear about people going back to college to earn their college degree. That’s for certain. But you don’t hear that much about people going back to Boy Scouts to earn more merit badges… at least I haven’t heard of anyone doing it.
To many people, my brother was Gallant and I was Goofus. But he took my parent’s car out one night before he had a driver’s license and swiped the side of a parked car. That’s right. That’s your big shining Mr. Gallant.
But why Willard would bring that particularly horrible, smelly head-cushion ensemble from his spider webbed cabin on the road trip was beyond me. Except that it was Willard. So it wasn’t surprising. It’s part of his childhood charm.
Willard: ‘This pillowcase is the worst. I can’t put my head on this smelly piece of shit. Do you have an extra one?’
Me: ‘Let me check. Oh, I’m sorry, Bob. What a shock, I didn’t bring a 2nd pillowcase. Are you kidding me? Who brings two pillowcases on a road trip like this?’
Willard: ‘My mom would.’ (He’s right. Thelma would indeed have brought two pillowcases.)
Me: ‘Well, next time have your mom pack your bag, you douche.’
Willard: ‘I’m not a douche.’
Me: ‘That’s debatable. But anyway I don’t have another pillowcase. Who needs pillowcases, anyway? Pillowcases are stupid on a road trip.’
Willard: ‘Well I like pillowcases. Maybe I can use my shirt.’
Me: ‘Now that’s a great idea. Your shirts are size 45 XXX and as big as your sleeping bag. What about wrapping your pillow in a towel? Didn’t you bring a towel?’
Willard: ‘That’ll work. Good idea.’
Me: ‘OK. Good. Can we get some sleep now? We’ve got to leave early if we’re gonna be at the Grand Canyon at dawn.’
So Willard wrapped his disgusting flea-ridden yellowed cabin-pee pillow and pillowcase in his freshly laundered full body 100% cotton dark green bath towel that had his name indelibly written on it by Thelma to prevent it from getting lost at some Boy Scout’s overnight camping trip.
I knew he wouldn’t want to use his towel later because of using it as a protective shroud around his pee-pillow and his pee-pillowcase. But we’d driven all day, ate a Cortez burrito, chased by churros, saw incredible scenery, and it was time to call it a night.
Willard asked me again, now completely dark outside somewhere in Tuba City, lying down in the back of the Barracuda fastback after it had been transformed into our double bed with a thin pad and sleeping bags, if I was sure that I didn’t have another pillowcase. I said I was sure. He asked if he could look. I said, ‘No’. I told him that I knew I didn’t have a spare pillowcase.
My mom, however, had given me an extra towel before we left my house in Denver that morning, and when I objected to her about bringing another towel, she said there’s going to be some use for it. And sure enough, I knew that before long, Willard was going to be wanting to use my extra towel. He had no idea that I had it, though.
SECOND MORNING: GRAND CANYON
We woke up at 4:00a and cut out almost immediately. It was dark with a yellow moon on the right. The overhead Milky was still visible as our car pulled onto the highway.
As we drove on and on, guided by our headlights, eventually turning off to race toward the Grand Canyon South Rim, quite a distance off the main state highway, we could hear the squish-squish-squish-squish-squish-squish-squish-squish of our tires running over baby scorpions on the road. There must have been a million of them. Well, there was certainly a bed of them. That’s what a group of scorpions is called: a bed. Willard and I love that kind of shit.
They should have been called a carpet of scorpions because there were so many, but as a group, they’re called: a bed. You could see them reflect off the headlights. Shiny. Like movable gems. Unaware of the danger. Stupid little beasts.
Willard was driving this stretch and he wanted to stop and get out and I knew he’d want to do that since he likes to handle snakes and chase toads and partake of worm and apparently, now scorpions, but I interjected in a loud burst, ‘No Fucking Way’.
He didn’t always listen to me, but he acquiesced and he just kept driving toward Grand Canyon’s South Rim. Out of the corner of your eye, in the desert fields, I could see a coyote or two in the brush moving around not far from the side of the road. I don’t think coyotes eat scorpions but I don’t think much of anything eats scorpions. Except bats and giant centipedes, which are poisonous. Or venomous. Maybe the same people that would eat lion fish would enjoy saute’ed scorpion but I’m out of my element now and I’d just be guessing. Hell. I do enough guessing in my element.
Our arrival at the Grand Canyon eventually came. The sky included the sun. We were late. The canyon was open for business as we drove up to the zebra-lined parking spaces. There were loads of yahoo’s and zips walking around the parking lot. There was a line outside the men’s bathroom, often a bummer, and true to form it was indeed a bummer this time, too.
For some reason, whenever possible, when girls leave to go to the bathroom they almost mechanically prefer to go as a group. Or in pairs. That has never been properly explained. Guys don’t do that. But then when the girls get into the bathroom and look around, it’s elbow to elbow and cheek to cheek.
Once they finally evacuate the bathroom and return to the table, they reliably complain: ‘It sure was crowded in there.’
Upon the successful relief from our bathroom break, both Willard and I got coffee, which wasn’t an automatic thing for us to do at that age. But we both got a cup of black coffee which as it turned out was Instant Sanka decaffeinated and I tolerated drinking it even though I knew my mother never had Instant Sanka at our house and Bob seemed to like the Sanka, or so he said. Thelma, you know, his mom, had no problem serving Instant Sanka.
The Grand Canyon store had fried egg sandwiches available for $2.35 at the little food kiosk so I got one of those and Bob got one of those and then we both got another one of those and we grabbed a couple Big Hunk candy bars and paid in cash and said ‘Keep the Change’ like big shots spending big money, making a difference.
As we left the visitor’s lodge at the Grand Canyon, we filled our canteens at the drinking fountain. It had the slowest draw for a drinking fountain that actually operated that I’d ever experienced that wasn’t just broken and came out as a drip. I never liked metallic canteen-water: tasted like tooth fillings, yet there I was, standing at the drinking fountain filling up my small metallic Cub Scout canteen. Mostly I was just looking around pretending it was someone else filling my canteen.
A couple of people got in line, relishing a swallow. I didn’t have a legitimate Boy Scout canteen or an Army canteen or anything good. The world hadn’t discovered water bottles yet. My canteen was more like a pathetic fake canteen… like it was just a crappy toy. I always wanted to chuck that thing into the trash… or over the edge of a canyon, any canyon, but I never did. But I should have. It’s a regret. My toy canteen had a canvas-like cover with a drawing of a bear cub that looked more like the drawing of a fox. The reason I had the Cub Scout canteen rather than our larger Boy Scout canteen is because my brother threw away our Boy Scout canteen after receiving his final 21st Eagle Scout merit badge. That’s your big Eagle Scout with all the merit badges. You know, eh.
So, we were done getting coffee and fried egg sandwiches and Big Hunk candy bars and filling our canteens and headed outside to see the site; the reason for our long drive to the park. To see the ‘attraction’, but we were both anxious to keep going, so we only spent about five minutes looking at the Grand Canyon and then Bob said it just looked like a big fucking hole, and we got back into our hatchback. I backed out from our parking spot, hands properly positioned at 10:00 and 2:00, and off we went.
I’d actually been to the Grand Canyon before and I knew I couldn’t get too close to the edge, or I’d accidentally fall over and kill myself. Apparently, that’s a rare occurrence… but it’s still 2-3 visitors annually that fall over the rim each year, and their lives end as a statistic only because often they aren’t found.
Off-Topic Insert #2: What was it with the Slinky toy as kids? Every kid wanted one. The toy never worked. It didn’t flop over itself ‘slinking’ down the stairs like in the teevee commercial with a couple kids beaming excitement, and satisfaction sporting big grins, and toothy smiles. My Slinky flipped over itself once. If I nudged it. With the perfect amount of nudge. Apparently, the stair steps had to be the exact height and depth for the thing to work. That’s giving the toy the benefit of the doubt. And then the coiled metal contraption would get bent all by itself. It was a normal looking Slinky one day… and then the next day, the coils got stretched, and the thing looked like to two smaller pieces connected by the finger-cutting thin metal. It wouldn’t stay together correctly any longer, and then it wasn’t worth having, and then you’d get your fingers stuck in it, almost sliced off, and you really didn’t want to throw it out, cuz it was a Slinky… but you kinda wish you never had it. You always had the box it came in because it got stretched out of shape so quickly, so soon, that you hadn’t even had time to chuck the box into the trash, so you just jam the thing back into its box, and hide it in the back of a drawer.
LAS VEGAS
After exiting Grand Canyon National Park, which became a National Park in 1919, I drove over hill and dale and around all the corners that the road threw at me and eventually we saw Las Vegas in front of us – America’s exciting plastic neon horror show.
We were too young to do anything good in Las Vegas, like pull slot machines or place bets on craps or roulette or see live Go-Go Girls up close bouncing around in a cage. Instead, we stopped to freshen our legs at a hotel that had Disneyland-like rides in the basement. It was one of those major hotels on the outskirts of The Strip.
The first ride we conquered was called Runaway Train. We bought our tickets, paid cash, got in line, and sat in a seat made up to be like one found in an old train. The lights went out and it was black as pitch and you could hear steam released and you could hear the wheels of the train begin to move and our seat jiggled as we began to move and a couple seconds later, a deep throaty voice announced in a slight Germanic accent, ‘Welcome Aboard. Next Stop is Interlaken’.
The large screen lit up, and spectacular snowy mountain peaks of Switzerland were projected on the large wall in front of us. The platform contraption we were sitting on jerked a little and we began to really move now, thrown about on the platform more so as the seconds ticked by. And then more and more.
We were noticeably picking up speed, curling around the mountain, then traveling over a high trestle bridge. It was a mile of non-supporting air to the bottom. Suddenly, there was a shrieking announcement that the train’s brakes had failed and we were thrown left and right and forward and back and steam was spitting out as the train gathered speed, until it was uncontrollable. We began rocketing down the mountain with cliffs on the side flying by and it’s all very effective, and you feel like you’ve been dragged through the ringer when it ends. We exited thrilled and got back in line.
This time we bought tickets for the Spaceship Ride, paying cash money, and after we took our seats the ride started by projecting the internal walls of a huge cave with lit up dials and pipes and water drips and people in protective hazmat clothing walking around pushing buttons while holding clipboards in their hands. Monitoring the launch. And then the countdown began.
On a screen larger than the one used for Runaway Train, the camera tilted up to show an enormous aperture slowly opening itself to the dark sky. It was all very authentic looking. It could have been a scene in a James Bond movie. An important depot with lighted dials. Almost immediately after the rockets fired, and white smoke surrounded us, the launch began.
Only seconds later, some loud bang made us jump and got our focused attention and the spaceship broke free and went askew, crashing through a barrier wall and now we’re propelled sideways, free-falling straight down into space with stars, planets and space dust.
We whisked through an asteroid field, dodging left and right. Like the Runaway Train excursion, the platform shook violently and we were thrown in all different directions. There were plenty of near misses and near collisions, and close calls with the space debris whooshing by, and the sound effects included children screaming and crying (which seemed demonic, quite frankly) and there were sirens going off, and red lights flashing and our spaceship finally gets righted and limps back to the its docking station, and that ride ended.
Each ride lasted about five or six minutes and made us want more. We didn’t have screen-projection rides back home at Elitch Gardens or Lakeside Amusement Park or I would have gone more often to each one, even though both amusement parks were all the way across town.
Aunt Dorothy’s house was only 280 miles from Las Vegas from my calculations by adding up the small red numbers on our road map. We were pretty sure that the Barracuda hatchback had enough gas left in the tank to get there, but we had repeatedly heard how bad the traffic is in Los Angeles, and figured that getting gas in Los Angeles was going to be a huge pain in the ass, so we decided to fill up while we were still lolling in Las Vegas. We quickly discovered, however, that we didn’t have much cash left, since we’d been like big shots leaving cash tips everywhere we went for a day and a half. Thankfully, it wasn’t difficult to find the cashier in the hotel. There was a line of several window cages with a big sign above it that could be seen from anywhere in the cavernous casino room flashing CASHIER in red. I got cash using the credit card that my mom loaned me for the trip in case of emergency. There were no ATM machines… this was June, 1969 and the first ATM machine installed in America didn’t occur until later that year, September, 1969. The world’s first ATM-like machine debuted only two years before that, in 1967, in London, and after a two-year test period, the first next generation machine utilizing magnetic encoding found its way onto American soil… more accurately into the lobby of Chemical Bank in Rockville Center, on Long Island, in New York. We gassed up, paid cash, and took off for California.
TOMMY: THE WHO
One month before we arrived at my cousin’s house in Woodland Hills, The Who released the album, Tommy. It came to define what was then called a rock opera; a cohesive tied-together collection of song-storytelling; this time about a deaf, dumb, and blind kid named Tommy Walker who could really play pinball. I guess. That’s what I got out of it. Tommy’s father had died, apparently in the war. He was a captain. I was consistently terrible at identifying hidden meanings behind things, and I continue to think Tommy is about a deaf, dumb and blind kid, believing there may have been some other purpose beyond my reach.
Tommy was a hit. Not because of the far-fetched subject matter. It was a hit because of the music. Because of Pete Townshend playing music he mostly wrote himself, for 75 minutes, as lead guitarist. And drummer Keith Moon, one the greatest drummers of all time, making his drums sound like music, like musical notes, rather than only creating wonderful, imaginative complex thud, and trill beats. And, of course, Roger Daltrey, up front, brandishing a microphone, singing vocals, expressing mood. It was the fourth album from the English band, The Who. Released May 17, 1969. It was a smash success by many measures. It was a double album… four sides… but the first album contained Side 1 and Side 4, while the second album carried Sides 2 and 3. This, it was said, was done to accommodate record changers onto which you could stack albums that would flip like they were slapjack pancakes once the first sides of both stacked albums had completed. As for the actual oil-based physical albums, they were thicker than standard – they weighed more. More petroleum. Noticeably. Seemed that whoever made it or pressed it, whatever the term, 1) cared more, 2) respected the work more, 3) idolized the result for obvious reasons and 4) knew what they had and the importance of what they were about to release to the world.
My Cousin David, the cousin that was deep into the L.A. music scene, the ‘possible’ prior manager of Strawberry Alarm Clock, was smitten by Tommy. Well, The Who, specifically, and in general. As for Tommy, he’d say it was the ‘Best album ever made, not made by the Beach Boys.’ That kind of smitten. If you were living in L.A. in the 60s, the Beach Boys were the shit. Not to me and Willard. We didn’t grow up in L.A. We liked most of the Beach Boy songs, but they weren’t the shit to us. Neither Willard nor I had yet to hear Tommy. I’d heard of it, but hadn’t heard it.
SMOTHERS BROTHERS
I generally waited to buy albums until after I’d heard them at a friend’s house. There were lots of great individual songs. Hits. Top 40. But there were far fewer great albums. One time, I rushed out and bought an album, I was younger, ten years old, and I picked the album out with my mom, and it was a Smothers Brothers album, Live at the Purple Onion (a nightclub in San Francisco probably with strippers, but sometimes the Smother’s Brothers went up on stage, is how I thought it worked). It wasn’t really an album you’d buy for its music content… it was an album you would buy for its comedy. My friends heard it, and laughed along with it, and liked it, I THINK, but none of them, not even one of ten of them, bought it. Turns out, it was mostly all a lie. The title of the album: The Songs and Comedy of the Smothers Brothers at the Purple Onion, San Francisco is not accurate. The Smothers Brothers performed at the Purple Onion. That’s fact. But only the introduction on the album came from the Purple Onion. The majority of the songs and their comedy came from tapes recorded at shows, in Houston, Texas, ergo, not the Purple Onion.
Discography Historians, from household name discography historians, to upstart unknowns, will tell you as individuals, as a group, and as an industry, that the cover of the album created a purple tsunami wave of controversy when it was released. Everyone in those circles were talking about it at its launch, in May, 1961. One historian would interrupt, and tap the shoulder of another historian, and ask how this could happen. Wouldn’t even waste a moment looking at his name tag. The problem was normal: failed execution, lack of detail, quality assurance fallen on its face. It’s easy to spot once you know. Tommy Smothers almost always stood on Dickie Smother’s left, as viewed from the audience, when they performed. But not on the cover of this debut album. To discographers in the know, this was tantamount to the work of an amateur. It was flawed. Even the small white pencil drawing caricatures in the upper left corner of the album had Tommy Smothers and Dickie Smothers positionally reversed. None of us knew!
Maybe that all played a little secret hidden part, though, as to why no one I know, other than me, ever bought this album. I can tell you for sure that it was a better album when I didn’t know that the songs were all recorded somewhere other than where the album says they were recorded. And when I didn’t know that the album’s cover picture was a misrepresentation. It was also a better album because I was ten years old, and I thought Tom Dooley was an actual Poor Boy that was Gonna be Hanged, and someone needed to speak up about it. One more thing, and I’ll leave it alone: I never understood how the album could be High Fidelity, and monaural, at the same time. It didn’t sit with me very well. Monaural is like flat paint, and High Fidelity is like semi-gloss or gloss, and a single thing can’t be both. Can it? A single thing can only be one or the other… but the Discography Historians never said a peep.
COUSIN DAVID
My Cousin David was a real cool California cousin… laid back… droopy eyes… not blonde… but rather dark hair, black, and he wore black, oversized clothes, including a similarly oversized grimy, black coat, like what comedian Richard Lewis wore all the time, and my Cousin David even had Richard Lewis’ same stooping posture. Richard Lewis is recognizable by his posture. He made his living as a great comedian, partially due to his incessant pacing back and forth, and because of his stooping posture. Cousin David didn’t pace, though. He wasn’t that ambitious. Pacing requires vim.
Cousin David had a great nature about him, and you couldn’t help liking him, but boy could he be singularly focused. His life, at the moment, seemed to be all about this album, Tommy by The Who. From the minute we entered the house after driving up the steep driveway in Woodland Hills up to his parent’s ranch style green-gray wood-siding house, with an expensive-looking shake roof, surrounded by perfectly manicured bushes and fruit trees, and highlighting the broad oak double-door entrance all the way to the far window, Cousin David talked about Tommy. His mom, Aunt Dorothy to me, wasn’t home. Cousin David said she’d be gone most of the day.
I introduced my Pal Willard to my Cousin David after he’d answered the front door and welcomed us in. We looked around for a few minutes and then went back out to the green Barracuda hatchback to get our stuff. We both brought our bags into the house to the back bedroom where we were going to be staying. As we entered the long hall, I glanced into the living room and saw my Uncle Morey’s aquarium… but it didn’t have any lion fish in it. In fact there were no fish in it. None. Zero. It looked like the pump was still circulating the water because I could see the bubbling water-spout rising to the surface and I could hear the same bubbling water-spout gurgling. The aquarium was alive, or at least operational, with no sea life in it!
MARY JANE
After dumping our stuff in the back bedroom, we followed Cousin David to his room, five paces down the hall which is where he had his Gerrard turntable set up with big no name speakers. There were posters of Pink Floyd, and The Beach Boys, thumbtacked to the cork board on the wall. Cousin David asked if we’d smoked pot before and we both lied and said ‘Of course’ so that we would seem ‘cool’, but we clarified that although we had smoked before, neither of us thought that we’d gotten high; what he called ‘stoned’.
Basically, Willard and I were both talking out of our asses. Something we’d grown up learning to do together and had become quite good at it. I felt like I was a black belt at talking through my ass.
Cousin David rolled a marijuana cigarette with crispy paper called Zig-Zag. He called the cigarette a ‘joint’ and sometimes a ‘jay’ or a ‘doobie’… terms we learned from him that apparently all meant the same thing. This marijuana smoking business had its own nomenclature. He lit the joint and we watched him pierce his lips together as he took a ‘hit’, and watched him hold the smoke in his lungs for as long as he could. Our understanding was that was the correct procedure.
While we sat there taking ‘hits’ off the ‘jay’, we learned more language specific to this drug culture. You don’t want to smoke the ‘stems’. You do want to smoke the ‘bud’ or ‘flowers’ or the ‘tea’. It was generally sold an ounce at a time, called a ‘lid’ or a ‘can’ or a ‘bag’ or a ‘baggie’. And there were different types with names like ‘Maui Wowie’ and ‘California Gold’ and ‘Panama Red’. Or just local ‘weed’ or ‘shake’ or ‘Mary Jane’. So we kept inhaling and Cousin David rolled another ‘log’ and after ten to fifteen minutes he looked at us and told us that we were both ‘stoned’ but we couldn’t tell the difference. Or didn’t think we could tell the difference.
It was at that point that Cousin David put Tommy on his stereo system after taking yet another hit from the joint and passing the joint to Willard. The cover of the album was that blue hatch-cross mess that didn’t look so great. Willard took a whale of a hit and instantly coughed out a cloud even though he was experienced at that point (he had smoked cigarettes). Cousin David laughed and told Willard to take a smaller hit because it expands in your lungs. There already seemed to be a lot of rules to smoking pot.
It was a transformative experience and augmentation to my life listening to the Overture of Tommy. It was an absolute marvelous thing happening. For the first time I could pick out any instrument and follow it’s sound as though it were a solo – the other band members somehow playing in the background. Every individual note and its importance was amplified.
Pete Townshend was one of the greatest lead guitarists I’d ever heard. I couldn’t stop listening to him, and broadened my grin, and laughed audibly. I turned to Willard and he was in the same state of euphoria and his eyes looked glazed. I refocused my listening to Keith Moon’s drumming. Jesus F. Christ, he was the greatest drummer I’d ever heard. I’d never really ‘listened’ to a drummer before. Drumming was drumming. It was supposed to be the background. But Keith Moon taught me differently. Every staccato trill and pounding beat reverberated and echoed in my stoned brain chamber.
The first time Keith Moon performed with Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend, he was so aggressively ‘killing it’ that he broke his entire drum kit. Just playing. The Who were never the same. They had taken on Keith Moon’s aggressive nature. Pete Townshend would play his lead guitar so forcefully that the strings snapped and his amplifier would screech and the audience would go crazy and he’d bang his broken strings guitar against the stage floor and fracture the neck and throw the entire guitar out into the crowd, grab another guitar and keep playing. That was showmanship. That helped define a new era of rock and roll music. The Who had risen to the top of the class. Super musicians, super melodic, super special, historically important. Still a memory.
CORNED BEEF
After about an hour of smoking weed and listening to Tommy, Willard and I were starving even though we didn’t want to leave Cousin David’s bedroom rock concert. But we did. We had major league ‘munchies’. Along with cotton mouth. Plus it was later than normal dinner time.
Cousin David told us to eat whatever we wanted. Shaking our heads in amazement at the bedroom concert, we struggled down the hall, looking for the kitchen. I opened my Aunt Dorothy’s refrigerator and found a new package of corned beef. At least it looked like it was corned beef. I pressed the package to my face to read the words and I was pretty sure the second word was ‘beef’ but I had trouble focusing the first word.
I believed it was ‘corned’. I struggled for a long time opening the package. It took forever. Willard was laughing. Finally opened, the contents peeled in long strips across length-wise just like corned beef.
Willard and I ate it right out of the package. All of it. The entire package. It was the best corned beef I’d ever eaten! Even though, to be truthful, I wasn’t a corned beef connoisseur. Rarely ate it. But still. When we were done eating and done making a mess that twenty paper towels handled with ease, I threw the corned beef packaging and remnants into the trash under the sink. Both Willard and I washed our hands in the kitchen sink, as they were quite greasy at this point. We headed back to Cousin David’s bedroom concert hall.
Along the way, getting momentarily distracted, I approached Uncle Morey’s giant sea aquarium, moved closer, and peered in. Nothing there. There was really nothing in the tank. Until I looked at its bottom where there was a whitish bleached frog or toad lying motionless. I tapped gently on the glass exterior but it still just lay there. I found out later that it was alive and that it was a Suriname toad.
It apparently really only moves at night when it’s safe and dark or when it’s being fed, whenever that is. Likes worms. Like Willard. He liked worms, too. Not my thing. The white monster lying in the bottom of the tank looked prehistoric. Fake. Amazing. Scared the hell out of me. I didn’t want that thing jumping the aquarium walls, and attaching itself to my face.
The next morning Willard and I and Cousin David at breakfast in the kitchen. OJ. Eggs. Toast. When I opened the door below the sink to throw my soiled napkin away, on the top of the trash bin was the wrapper remnant from the previous evening’s corned beef.
I pulled it out to discover that Willard and I had eaten a one pound package of raw bacon. It wasn’t any kind of beef at all. It was pork; bacon, the best part of the pig. In my opinion.
Needless to say, we were as much alarmed as we were beside ourselves with humility and all three of us laughed at it. We knew that worms were gonna grow inside our intestines, and we were gonna get whatever it was that you’re supposed to get that can kill you if you eat raw bacon.
To combat our slight nervousness (for some reason we weren’t that concerned), we huddled back in Cousin David’s den and smoked more pot and got stoned again and listened to the same album we heard for hours the afternoon/night before.
Willard tried to blame me for not reading the package correctly the night before but he didn’t push it at all. He’d been my partner in crime for years. And years. And if there was one person that went more overboard than me on such things, it was Willard.
For example, when we were in Boy Scouts, members of the Flaming Arrow patrol, there were a couple times each summer that there would be weekend-long overnights at Camp Tahosa, which was west of Boulder about 30 miles, up into the mountains. Probably a little more than an hour from the church where we would meet prior to starting the drive. That church was on 10th and Detroit Street. It became standard procedure at the church gathering before a scout trip that Willard and I were assigned the task of digging the latrine for our scout troop, for the Flaming Arrows.
That was our punishment for doing things the last time we were at camp that you weren’t supposed to do… like lighting M-80s and throwing them into the johns. And who brought the M-80s? Well, it wasn’t me. I only brought one Black Cat. So Willard didn’t have much to complain to me about with regard to scarfing down peeled strip after peeled strip after peeled strip of what turned out to be raw bacon. Neither one of us got tapeworm, or trichinosis, or toxoplasmosis, or diarrhea beyond normal daily diarrhea. Disclaimer: I am not advocating eating raw bacon. I’m just pointing out that both Willard and I survived none the worse from wear from our corned beef booboo.
HEADED HOME
You can probably guess what Willard and I did the remaining days that we were visiting Cousin David in Los Angeles. No, not eating more corned beef. No, not staring at the pancake toad hibernating at the bottom of the salt water aquarium. I avoided going near the thing. Yes, we did go to Marine World. And yes, we got stuck on the freeways in L.A., but not that, either. Yes, we did go to the beach in Malibu… but not that. No, we didn’t surf but Cousin David did. Yes, we went to Universal Studios and saw Mrs. Bates’ house up on the hill used in the movie, Psycho. And we saw the lake where they shot Creature from the Black Lagoon. We must have been on the same tour. But I’m not talking about either of those. C’mon. It’s not that difficult.
Yep. Finally! We smoked more pot and listened to more music. Mostly Tommy. Memorized the words. Perhaps permanently!
Captain Walker didn’t come home
His unborn child wouldn’t ever know him
Believe him missing with a number of men
Don’t expect to see him again
It was time to leave, so we packed up the green 1968 Plymouth Barracuda fastback in the afternoon. It took about thirty seconds to throw our crap in the back hatch.
Cousin David offered us a couple marijuana jays for the road but we declined, not wanting to have it smelling up the car in case a cop pulled us over for some other reason; like we were kids driving around with out of state license plates who were up to no good.
We finally got out of there in the late afternoon. We were really only planning on escaping the traffic and getting to the outskirts of L.A. We stopped and filled the gas tank and bought a couple cokes for the road and a couple gas station sandwiches; not the corned beef.
They didn’t have corned beef sandwiches and we wouldn’t have gotten corned beef sandwiches even if they did. We both got tuna. Yes, it was a bold choice with the mercury scare that was going on at the time, but we survived raw bacon so mercury in tuna wasn’t so scary. The bread was a little soggy and Willard’s tongue glowed green after he ate his mercury tuna. Not really. The mercury tuna was fine. The key was the mayo. The cokes were great.
We bought it all with cash, and said ‘Keep the Change’ like big shots passing through town, making the economy run.
Off-Topic Insert #3 : There are not that many types of astrophysical entities that can actually blow up out there in our enormous universe. Here’s the short list:
- supernovae (collapsing stars at their death followed by a big explosion)
- black holes colliding
- neutron stars colliding
Of these, neutron stars have recently captured intense interest from the astrophysics community worldwide. They are amazingly dense and not even large; ~12 miles in diameter is all they need to be. They substantially bend the fabric of space-time due to their beyond-belief, gravitational pull. But what I want to mention here is a couple surprising discoveries about our solar system’s closest planet to the sun; Mercury. Neutron stars will just have to wait their turn. Another time.
The planet Mercury is not the same mercury as found in mercury tuna fish sandwiches purchased at gas stations. It’s just the name given to the planet, as a nod to the swiftest Roman messenger God, Mercury. The planet Mercury is the fastest flying planet in the solar system, racing around the sun at a little more than 100,000 miles per hour. Hence the name. The earth runs at about 67,000 miles per hour.
When we grew up, we were taught that there are four internal rocky planets: Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars, four gas giants: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, and an icy planet far away named Pluto. Here’s a tidbit about what’s changed: Pluto is no longer considered a planet since 100s of similarly-sized ice orbiters have been discovered. No one wanted to force school children to memorize the names of 100+ planets!
Recent news about Mercury is that it is no longer considered a rocky planet… or shouldn’t be. It will headline a brand new category of planet in coming years. That’s my hope. That’s my prediction. The Metal Planets. It’s crust and mantle are very thin, and its iron core (partially liquid) comprises the largest bulk of its composition at ~85%!
Metallic Mercury. Who knew?
Plus, it’s no longer just a dead little rocky-planet barely larger than our moon circling the sun. There is water on Mercury! Water! One of the basics for life as we define it. While the surface temperature of Mercury facing the sun is 800˚F, coupled with the fact that Mercury does rotate on its axis (albeit slowly, at one point it was thought it’s face was locked to the sun as our moon is to earth), the entire planet does get exposed to the sun’s extreme heat.
No one anticipated that Mercury could have water. However, because Mercury’s orientation is almost straight up and down relative to the sun, water ice has been discovered in craters at its north and south poles – the areas of the planet that have never been directly exposed to the sun’s heat… for the past 4.5 billion years.
Willard and I only drove for little more than an hour after leaving L.A. We stopped at a long narrow sandy beach just off of US Highway 101 and decided to sleep there. This was a new experience for both of us, sleeping on the beach.
The ocean was blue just like in the picture books and the waves were loud and crashing just like the movies. We didn’t have a tent but we had our sleeping bags which we set up for all to see that drove by. We were right off of Highway 101. And plenty of cars and trucks did drive by but no one stopped to yell at us so we figured we were allowed to sleep there.
We were the only ones on the beach and didn’t know how rare that could be. We placed our sleeping bags on top of the red tarp I had brought. We set up next to an existing fire pit that already had some logs pitched teepee style the way a Cub Scout would be taught.
We had a frisbee. So we tossed it around and we both ran through the waves a little bit. I can convey that the ocean is not heated. It was not particularly warm. I used the extra towel to dry off that my mom had given me before we left Denver.
Scout Willard lit the fire with his blue Bic lighter.
When Willard saw that I had an extra towel, he had a cow and said he’d wished he had known about it earlier because he could have used it to cover his stinking yellowed pillowcase back on our first night sleeping in the green 1968 Plymouth Barracuda fastback. Once he settled down, after delivering his cow, once his moo was moot or mute, all was fine.
The sky was clear and Milky was bright that night. Lots of visible stars while lying there on the beach in our bags staring up, heads pillowed. Even though we were just an hour and a quarter outside of L.A. That’s because US Highway 101 goes farther west than north down there, and the glow from the lights of L.A. don’t traverse the ocean very well.
In fact, L.A. is actually east of Reno, Nevada and San Francisco is located more than 200 miles west of L.A. I never thought that you’d have to drive east at all from Reno to get to L.A.
We could have slept in the back of the 1968 Plymouth Barracuda fastback but we figured we never get to sleep on an ocean beach since we live in Colorado. We’d slept outside by the Platte River up by his cabin a lot of times and the sound of the river was always a plus. But listening to the waves of the ocean was new and spectacular. It wasn’t that late when we laid down.
Me: ‘How many stars do you think are up there?’
Willard: ‘Why didn’t you tell me you had an extra towel? I really needed it.’
Me: ‘It’s not your towel. How many stars do you think are up there?’
Willard: ‘Well, you could have let me use it. I don’t know. Millions!’
Me: ‘How many millions?’
Willard: ‘How the fuck should I know? Ten million? Fifty million? You still could have let me use your towel.’
Me: ‘Ya, I don’t know, either, but I think they think there are ten million. I didn’t want my towel to ever touch that cabin pillowcase goo rag of yours in case I needed it later… and I needed it… today.’
Willard: ‘If we were up at the cabin, I would have let you use a towel if you needed it. How many names of stars do you know?’
Me: ‘If we were up at the cabin there would be a lot of extra towels. Not just one. And we could hang them on the railing on the deck to dry them out in the sun. I know there is a star called Beetlejuice (Betelgeuse), but it’s not visible in the summer. Only the winter or late fall or something like that. It’s in the constellation Orion, the left shoulder. It’s supposed to blow up soon. They say it’s a red giant, but I don’t know how they would know that. It would be cool if it blew up tonight. But other than that, the only other stars I know the names of are the sun, and Sirius, and Rigel, another star in the Orion constellation. It’s the right knee. I THINK.’
Willard: ‘If Betelgeuse blew up tonight, we’d be dead before we’d know about it.’
Me: ‘Too far away?’
Willard: ‘I read it’s 500 light years away. I think that means that if it blew up tonight, we wouldn’t see the explosion for 500 years. We’d be dirt-napping way before that. If we saw the explosion tonight, then it would have blown up in 1469.’
Me: ‘Wow. Cool. Not the dirt-nap part. Are you gonna be buried next to your parents?’
Willard: ‘Nah. I’m gonna be cremated. I haven’t really decided. I’m not afraid to die, though.’
Me: ‘Ya, I don’t know, either. I might go the pine box route.’
Willard: ‘So you can be eaten by worms?’
Me: ‘Well, like I said… I don’t know. I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about it. Just sometimes.’
Willard: ‘You still could have let me use your extra towel.’
Me: ‘Next time. Next time.’
We were brand new high school graduates. I, at least, had good grades. Willard was sharp as a whistle, but his grades didn’t show it. When asked where he was going to go to college he’d say:
Willard: ‘MIT’
Knowledgable Questioner: ‘Really? In Cambridge, Massachusetts? How’d you get accepted to MIT?’
Willard: ‘No. MIT in Denver. Metro-In-Town.’
That’s what Willard called Metropolitan State University in Denver. M.I.T. Location: Downtown Denver, Colorado. Of Speer Blvd. Maybe a lot of students called it M.I.T. Stands for Metro In Town.
I didn’t know anyone other than Willard that was going to be going to school there. Not because he was dumb. Willard was anything but dumb. He just didn’t care about school grades the way you’re supposed to care about school grades. The way they reward you for caring about school grades. He did stupid things and I did a lot of those stupid things with him, but he wasn’t dumb. But as two high IQ recent high school graduates, we indeed were pretty stupid regarding where we set up our red tarp and sleeping bags on the beach.
We both saw bright flashes of shooting stars slashing through the night sky. It was a veritable sky show. They were the brightest and longest I’d ever seen. It could be pitch black in the mountains of Colorado, allowing for great shooting star watching… but the horizon at the beach was so much lower than the 11,000 and 12,000 and 13,000 and 14,000 foot peaks back home. Listening to the waves crashing and watching the night sky light show was unforgettable. Before long, however, we both fell asleep listening to the ocean symphony.
The following morning the crashing waves seemed louder than the night before when the air had been calm other than the imagined crackle of shooting stars. Laying there still in a half-sleep, the serenity of it all was interrupted abruptly.
Unexpectedly, the ocean actually moved inland to surround us! It was in attack mode. Waves spread out, and covered the foot of our sleeping bags, then receded and did it again. And again. Our sleeping bags became ocean sponges, sopping wet. The tide had arrived. We hadn’t anticipated the tides.
The ocean could have swallowed us. Drowned us. And then deposit us five miles down the coast against some rocks on the beach. It could have provided us with our dirt-nap sooner than desired. That could have been the result… if it didn’t carry us out to sea, never to be heard from again.
With more immediacy than a full-on panic, we scampered out of our sleeping bags and got to our weary feet and hurriedly bunched and shuffled everything, including the sopping wet red tarp, and sopping wet bags, and sopping wet shoes and jeans, and rushed toward the car dragging the wet cocoons through the sand.
Shoes, wet. Socks, soaked. We did the best we could getting the sand off our wet things, which wasn’t that successful. We needed a hose. It wasn’t really sand the way a Coloradan thinks of sand, as actual pieces of sand. Individual grains that you can brush off your clothing with the swipe of a hand. It was super fine. River silt. You couldn’t really distinguish one grain or one speck from another.
It was more like ash. It was difficult to be rid of it. Black tar stuck to the bottom of our feet. White beach silt and black tar. And everything soaked. We’d almost died. Maybe that was an exaggeration. Willard almost died. I’m quicker on my feet.
We managed through it nevertheless, and learned an indelible lesson about sleeping on the beach. Primarily, make sure you’re far from the waves when you set up tarps and sleeping bags, as the waves are going to move in for the kill in the middle of the night as the surf’s cradle sounds hypnotize you. California kids learn this at a young age. They are probably taught it in school. Elementary school. Day one, two or three.
Colorado kids find out about ocean creep from experience; failed experience. Perhaps similarly, Colorado kids learn at a tender age are taught to avoid the Four Corners National Monument, while Californians discover the failure called Four Corners National Monument from depressing visitations; failed experience.
Schools of California parents apologizing as they rush their kids back into the backseats of their cars. It’s the Four Corners experience. Pleading with the kids not to look back. ‘Cover your eyes.’ The kids crying uncontrollably, sucking up red dust, making them cough. And choke. Needing water… or a hose… just like what Willard and I could have used to remove the beach silt.
Not that many miles from where we had pitched the tarp on the beach, and wiped our feet in the parking lot, and did our best to carefully clean between our toes with the towels, we gassed up in Santa Barbara. The needle pointed beyond ‘Full’. We each bought a couple of breakfast sandwiches, paid cash, and told the attendant to ‘Keep the Change’ like big shots.
Santa Barbara was where the major Union Oil Platform A crude oil spill occurred from off-shore drilling, five months earlier, in January/February, 1969 (~100,000 reported barrels). We hadn’t connected the June beach black tar and the January/February crude oil spill together. Didn’t occur to us. We had both heard of the oil spill when it happened. It made front page headlines.
But we knew nothing about ocean beaches. Even if the Union Oil Platform A crude oil spill hadn’t occurred (it was the largest in the US at the time, and fifty years later, still ranks #3), it seemed like a bad idea to be drilling for oil in the ocean only six miles from shore. The only two ocean crude oil spills that were more devastating in the next 50 years were the 1989 Exxon Valdez Supertanker oil spill in Prince William Sound, off the coast of Alaska (>11,000,000 reported barrels), and the 2010 British Petroleum Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico (>210,000,000 reported barrels).
NOTE: Quantities of crude oil spilled by the three largest oil spills off the U.S. coastlines are reported in barrels. The reported numbers are huge. The devastation was staggering. The environmental impact is still being calculated. But considering that each barrel contains ~42 gallons, the numbers of gallons of off-shore crude oil spilled are, then:
1969 Santa Barbara Union Oil Platform A: ~42,000,000 gallons (42 million gallons)
1989 Exxon Valdez Supertanker: >462,000,000 gallons (462 million gallons)
2010 BP Deepwater Horizon Explosion: >8,820,000,000 gallons (~9.0 billion gallons)
I think we can be confident assuming that these sums of ‘reported barrels spilled’ do not scrape the bottom of the proverbial barrel. In other words, these reported numbers are lower than actual.
Both Willard and I were anxious to get back home, buy Tommy by The Who (if we hadn’t already stopped to do so along the way), find someone we trusted from whom we could buy marijuana (whoever that could be), roll a joint or two with zig-zag cigarette papers, smoke it and ‘chill out’. We sped up US Highway 101 to San Francisco. Stayed the night, saw a couple sites including crooked Lombard Street, and the Golden Gate Bridge, which we drove over to Sausalito, had lunch in a sit-down restaurant on the Bay, recrossed the Golden Gate Bridge (which is red, not gold) and hit Interstate 80 East early afternoon.
We drove over 100 miles an hour at times across Nevada since there was no speed limit, gassed up again, in Winnemucca, Nevada, passed the Great Salt Lake on our left hours later, angled up to Wyoming, sped through the high plains there, and stopped to buy the 10¢ ice cream cones at Little America. Which is where we filled the gas tank once again, but not the last time (told the attendant to ‘Keep the Change’ like big shots), kept traveling eastward until we reached Laramie, Wyoming, where we cut southeast on US Highway 287 and passed the Welcome to Colorful Colorado sign as we raced through the northern border.
We stopped for grub in Fort Collins and I filled the tank once more. Willard had run out of money. It’s not far from Fort Collins to Denver and after taking the 6th Avenue exit off of I-25 we drove down Monroe Street so I could drop Willard off at his house.
His mom, Thelma, smiled as she was watering their hill with a hose as we pulled up.
Willard grabbed his stuff out of the back of the green 1968 Plymouth Barracuda fastback. I said ‘Hi’ to Mrs. Willard, her son ran indoors and came back out moments later and offered to pay for his share of the last gas tank fill-up. I didn’t accept it. I just said ‘Keep It’, like a big shot.
Oh, before we depart, I had promised to tell you, Dear Readers, the number of coffee beans that are necessary to fill a one pound bag. The number is shockingly ~3300. I never had anyone guess more than 1500. One experienced and competent barista guessed 80.
Cantations 