CHAPTER 35 A Little To The Right, Please
Shortly after the bust, came the call from KRDS dismissing me. I couldn't blame old Charlie, he had worked hard to create the station. After a few days absence, I got a call from the owner. Charlie had been dismissed. I was Music Director. Let's go buy some records. I wish I could have told him it was simply, a bad move.
I could not pull it off. The people at the station were not with me, and no cohesive sound could be developed. I had to opt for a discharge. I placed myself on the unemployment rolls again, and shopped for a new path in life. I took a clerk's position at Circles Records which a few years before, had been the Honda House where I had met my benefactor with the Dodge Phoenix convertible. Deja' Vu.
They moved me to a T-shirt shop nearby, which folded (excuse the pun). After a few weeks, Bonnie found me a very nice looking Dodge Crew Cabpickup truck for a few hundred bucks. Why not. I went into debt with that phrase "Why not" on my mind. The truck was a gas hog and mostly worn out. I painted the words "Ecologistics" on the truck and my toolbox, in hopes that something businesslike would happen in the area of alternative energy. I experimented with methane and solar power.
Bill called from KDKB wondering if I would take the night shift. Hoping for some resurrection of our friendship and perhaps a return to the spirit of the KCAC days, I agreed. I lasted about four nights. Cocaine was resident in the radio station and I was provided with a "blow" by one of the staff, every night before my air shift. After the fourth night, I realized I was playing almost the same music every night and I simply could not bring myself to mess up such a fine artistic presentation with a commercial. Even one. I missed the commercials on the log every night. Don't ask me. Mahavishnu John McLaughlin and the other artists weren't THAT good, but I just simply couldn't commercialize the show, in any of the five hours of that shift.
I (and my Ego) were getting hooked on the cocaine. There was absolutely no doubt about it. Bill Cosby in later years did a rap on cocaine, interviewing an unseen friend who was a user of the drug; "Why do you do cocaine?" he asked. His friend responds `Well, it intensifies your personality!' Cosby's retort; "Well, what if you're an asshole?".
It was part of our job to write down the titles, artists and times of the records we played. I began to review the sheets and realized there was a pattern to what we were all doing. I scribbled "Behold, the path of the snake." across the bottom half of my last page for the night, scribbled a very brief resignation on another sheet of paper, posted it on the bulletin board, and left. Cocaine and I were arguing. One of us must become the master of the other.
Back at the house I loaded all my stuff in the truck and headed again, north. I pulled into a beautiful glade north of Flagstaff and headed for a wooded area where I would be secluded for a few days. I hoped to sleep it off. It took more than just a few nights. I seem to recall that this was a Labor Day weekend and I wondered if I would ever bother to be found again. It was beautiful. After several days I awakened to the sound of bulldozers nearby. It really shook me. I thought I was miles from anywhere. In a short time, I emerged from the camper to see a Forest Service truck pull up with a Ranger inside, Smokey The Bear hat and everything. I was asked to move. I was in the path of an expanding area of the Flagstaff City Landfill. I was camped at the edge of the city dump. I cranked up the truck and went looking for supplies, money or whatever God was going to show me next.
Radio has always been good to me, especially when I needed work the most. I had a couple of bucks, just enough to make some phone calls from a booth where Superman had probably changed clothes once in the 1930's. I connected with a little station KCYN in Williams, Arizona just a few miles west on highway 66. That's right, the famous Route 66. Been there. Done that. The owner of the station had just inherited it. His bag was TV in Kingman, some miles further west. He needed help, I needed a job and a place to live. The owner was able to trade out a room for me at the local Ramada Inn. I went from living in a truck to a hotel room with cable TV in one phone call. I settled down to doing the radio station and watching a new TV series, "Kung Fu".
We are curious puppets. Fate pulls funny strings. We dance funny dances. On the way out of the local post office, I ran into Crazy Ted, my old friend from Phoenix. The one who used to walk into the room naked from the shower. He had a shack up on the hill and a delicious, fiery lady named Sharon. Subdued though she was, there was a smoldering quality to her that gave her a slightly dangerous appeal. It was a reunion of old friends, a revival of old feelings brought over to new times. We grew, we shared. Bonnie visited often.
I changed the call letters of KCYN to KNYN and directed the format to tourism. It should have worked, had there been any promotion with national agencies. There wasn't time. One day the owner blew up in frustration. He simply wasn't happy with our doing the best we could with what we had to work with, which was next to nothing. Our production tape recorder for instance was an old Wollensak, which had been already old, some ten years before. At any rate, he began throwing things around, ruining some of the paneling we had so laboriously installed in our effort to revitalize what had once been the town jail. That was it. What did I need with the Ramada Inn, cable TV and one extra asshole in my life? I loaded up the truck and
headed up past the Grand Canyon.
Somewhere near Kayenta, I stopped and made a long distance call to the Program Director at KSPN-FM in Aspen, Colorado. "I'm coming up, I need a job if you have one." I said. `I don't have a thing right now, we're automated'. "I need to learn that - I'm coming up, job or no job." There was a pause. `I can give you a hundred and twenty five a week'. "I'll see you in a day or two". I said, and hung up.
I took a room at the motel where I had stayed in a dormitory on my previous visit to Aspen, some chapters back. This and a couple of other places were owned by Lou Willie and his wife, thinly disguised Christians. The deal was the same. Work a day, stay a week. I was still good with a welding torch, Lou was still building eagles and
horses from car bumpers. These were remarkably kind, generous people. Aspen was beginning to really thrive in those days, although it retained a sleepy, small town quality to it. Mark "Marco" Wadmond and I became friends and shared a few adventures while I let my beard grow to ZZ Topp length.
In the process of developing a steady, consistent, sophisticated morning air sound, I played a few cuts from "Buckingham Nicks" an album by Lindsey Buckingham and Stephanie Nicks. It turned out that Stephanie Nicks happened to be in town and I was treated to a phone call and subsequent live interview with her. Later, we attended a party that was an embarrassing disaster for both of us. One of the local art gallery operators had invited me to a whing-ding. I picked up Stephanie and we went. Another gay assemblage. No one there but gay males and Stephanie as the only lady. Oh, boy.
A few weeks later, Stephanie and I chanced to meet on the streets of Aspen. Finding a private place to live for myself had proved even less than unlikely. I had about burned out on the town and was ready for something new. As for herself; "I have an offer to join Fleetwood Mac. What do you think I should do?" I gasped. `Are you talking about "Oh, Well" Fleetwood Mac? "Bare Trees", Mick Fleetwood - Fleetwood Mac - THAT Fleetwood Mac?' She nodded yes. `Go for it. Don't hold back, do it, do it, do it.' I said. She smiled and we parted. I still wonder what she would have done if I had told her to drop the Fleetwood Mac offer.
Aspen ran out of room for me, shortly after the first snowfall. It was ski season. If I stayed, I could take a phone booth if I could kick someone else out of it. There were paying guests. It was time to find two other jobs to pay my way, or go elsewhere. I headed south for Phoenix again. I spent the winter and early spring at Bonnie's. Damn hot, it was.
Summer never really ends in Phoenix, it just has it's cool spells. It was around this time that I had a chance encounter with a delightful hippie family that fairly exuded mysticism. They had an enchanting young daughter named Summer. It was the first time I had ever heard the name. I told her I thought it was a perfectly lovely name and that I wished I had a daughter named Summer. There was a brief pause, a slight communion of eyes among them. "You will". She said. My daughter, Summer Rose was born about ten years later.
Without an income or a job, the truck had to be sold. I was back on the street more or less, at Bonnie's house again. I had to take a breath and again, start from scratch. This I did on a fine little Italian Bultaco motorcycle that had been in someone's garage too long. It was cheap, and ran well.
I moved up to an apartment in north Phoenix again, near the Sunnyslope area where I had lived in my first cottage during that first summer in Phoenix. It was a bit pricey for someone on unemployment but this time there was a swimming pool and life was a bit easier. Food was a real problem and I visited the irrigation canal once or twice for crawfish. Not lobster, but not bad if you are very patient with small portions.
After a few weeks and a brief encounter with a really wigged out girl who was a shameless tease and celibate, I moved again just a few blocks away. She was nice enough to come see me and apologize. I was nice enough to thank her. A nice man appeared in a nice suit and tie on my front porch a day or so later to let me know without saying so, that I was being watched. I was nice enough to thank him and wonder why he didn't perspire in the 107 degree heat and a fulo suit. Probably an alien, maybe even a lawyer.
This was not a fate worse than death, but Bonnie came to my rescue, anyway. There was an old frame house on south Central close to South Mountain Park, that could be had for $65.00 per month rent. I would even be able to eat on my meager unemployment stipend. I took it. I had the utilities turned on and the water from the kitchen faucet literally ran stinking, sewage black for the first hour. It had been stopped in the pipes for years.
9822 South Central Avenue no longer exists. The spot is marked though, with the shell of an experimental 30-foot yacht weighing probably 20 tons, that had been literally poured from concrete. A concrete boat. No kidding. That's not as strange as it sounds, several large ships were built of concrete by the U.S. Navy in World War II. This one never saw the water, though. It was hauled in by truck and placed there by a crane while I was living at the place, apparently by someone who knew what they were doing. It is the only thing that marks the location. The rest is desert except the old stone house next door. My nearest neighbors at the stone house was a black family with very definite African persuasions. They had me over for dinner a time or two and treated me to Elk. The way he said it though, it sounded like "Ilk" as in descendant(s) of.... The meat was lean, tender and suspiciously succulent. It was not the least bit gamey tasting though, and I wondered what I was eating. He had ducks, geese and turkeys in the back yard.
In those days of 1975 through 1978, my place was a clapboard frame house built probably around 1910, painted gangrene green and had a patchwork roof that somehow, did not leak. The motorcycle had self-destructed and I bought a tiny 90cc Honda from Bonnie's neighbor for trips to the store. I had to convert it to a battery ignition, since the ignition coil was blown. It ran. I drove it for most of a year, while I made repairs to the house and added a telephone that almost never rang. Jobs were non-existent, except for part-time work at a lawnmower shop where the boss was as uptight as a starter spring.
1975 was more or less uneventful and boring. I found a room mate, a wonderful, crazy on-again off-again friend of Bonnie's and mine, named Kevin Reedy Webb. Kevin had been part of the TERROS group in the KCAC days. We worked together for a short time driving a truck for a nearby thrift store, enjoying our down-and-out camaraderie. That ended though, when we just couldn't make ends meet. During the stay, he somehow picked up an old 1959 white Cadillac convertible. The man was definitely moving up, if back.
Thanksgiving day I woke up feeling very nostalgic and very lonely. The phone actually rang. I had forgotten it was there. It was an old friend who had been very much in the distance in years past. We really didn't know each other well at all, except that he may have been part of the sales staff at KCAC. I could recall rumors of Italian Mafia connections, but he seemed to be making a straight life of it, like myself. He was in town, unconnected, just passing through and saying hi. We decided to get together.
That day was one of the warmest connections I have enjoyed with a near-stranger. It was mid-morning when we met. By noon, we had rounded up corn on the cob, some tea, bread, dressing, cranberry sauce and two Rock Cornish Game Hens that were our substitute for turkeys. I gave the blessing, the first such shared prayer in years. It was totally spontaneous and soul satisfying for both of us. We have not seen each other since that very fine Thanksgiving Dinner.
Christmas for the first time in six years, was spent with my parents. They hosted me at a skiing trip in Colorado which was sponsored by their church. I hitched to Glenwood Springs and met my folks there. Barry McGuire ("Eve of Destruction" 1965) was the featured singer and teacher at the retreat. I was very surprised to find him working in Christian life and music. He was definitely turned away from the fame and glory that had just destroyed Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin. He had even divorced himself from any identity with his hit single. That was fine, I certainly understood. In my own way, I was doing something similar. I behaved my Christian Self at the ski resort and was given a lift by my folks to Albuquerque, as well as a bus ticket to Phoenix. I thought seriously of getting a refund on the ticket and hitching it, but decided to enjoy my relative comfort on the bus. Surprise.
A sweet young thing came cruising down the aisle looking for a seat. She sat down without being invited and with more than a little enthusiasm. From Albuquerque to Winslow we became friends. After dark near Flagstaff and almost all the way to Phoenix, we did everything any two young people can do on a Greyhound bus. What was really a gas about it was that the couple in front of us knew exactly what was going on. There was no way they could misinterpret the movements. They were Indians. Native Americans - the ones who were here before us. They had brought some of the blessed humanity with them from their heritage, they didn't mind if the couple in the next teepee were making love. Their conversation provided a wonderful cover for us.
On arrival in Phoenix, the girl split in one direction and I went the other, directly into the arms of Bonnie, whom my folks had alerted that I was arriving. Surprise.
The following year found me spending time and drinking beer with two of the most outrageous biker people that God has ever blessed me with. I was living in poverty as were they, in the toughest economic recession in many years. Bob and Susie were bikers of the old school. I mean boots, sweat, beer, sweat, no colors but who needs them when you're this ugly, sweat, grease and sweat. Nicknames; Rivers and Snooze. Their motto: "Keep a wet chain and dry rear wheel". It means Stay On Top Of It. A dry chain will burn out. A rear wheel wet from chain oil, will allow oil into the wheel through your spokes, thus eating the rubber of the inner tube of your motorcycle, causing a blowout or flat. You gotta keep the chain wet, you gotta keep the wheel dry.
Rivers was red-headed, Snooze was sweet and ugly. She had crossed eyes as an inherited birth defect and despite her sweetness, liked to cuss. These two people saved me from some of the most depressing times of my life. They never mentioned it, but they were visiting Christians, unchurched and unfunded - unlike the Consecrated Missionaries to Las Vegas and other needy Meccas. These were some of the finest and nastiest people I have ever known. It was through these friends that I learned to tube the Salt River and make love to ugly women.
I had made a deal through some gay friends of Dan's, on a 350 Honda with a half-running, poorly overhauled engine. I fixed the points, removed the mufflers and had a fully running motorcycle. I was in the process of starving myself to pay for it when wonder of wonders, I was offered another job. I was to be employed by the City of Phoenix (oh joy, a lucrative, secure position with a Major Municipality under the guidance of the Carter Administration) - on a garbage crew at South Mountain Park. Food. I took it. Thus began my celebration of our National Bicentennial Year of 1976.
God Bless America.
I could not pull it off. The people at the station were not with me, and no cohesive sound could be developed. I had to opt for a discharge. I placed myself on the unemployment rolls again, and shopped for a new path in life. I took a clerk's position at Circles Records which a few years before, had been the Honda House where I had met my benefactor with the Dodge Phoenix convertible. Deja' Vu.
They moved me to a T-shirt shop nearby, which folded (excuse the pun). After a few weeks, Bonnie found me a very nice looking Dodge Crew Cabpickup truck for a few hundred bucks. Why not. I went into debt with that phrase "Why not" on my mind. The truck was a gas hog and mostly worn out. I painted the words "Ecologistics" on the truck and my toolbox, in hopes that something businesslike would happen in the area of alternative energy. I experimented with methane and solar power.
Bill called from KDKB wondering if I would take the night shift. Hoping for some resurrection of our friendship and perhaps a return to the spirit of the KCAC days, I agreed. I lasted about four nights. Cocaine was resident in the radio station and I was provided with a "blow" by one of the staff, every night before my air shift. After the fourth night, I realized I was playing almost the same music every night and I simply could not bring myself to mess up such a fine artistic presentation with a commercial. Even one. I missed the commercials on the log every night. Don't ask me. Mahavishnu John McLaughlin and the other artists weren't THAT good, but I just simply couldn't commercialize the show, in any of the five hours of that shift.
I (and my Ego) were getting hooked on the cocaine. There was absolutely no doubt about it. Bill Cosby in later years did a rap on cocaine, interviewing an unseen friend who was a user of the drug; "Why do you do cocaine?" he asked. His friend responds `Well, it intensifies your personality!' Cosby's retort; "Well, what if you're an asshole?".
It was part of our job to write down the titles, artists and times of the records we played. I began to review the sheets and realized there was a pattern to what we were all doing. I scribbled "Behold, the path of the snake." across the bottom half of my last page for the night, scribbled a very brief resignation on another sheet of paper, posted it on the bulletin board, and left. Cocaine and I were arguing. One of us must become the master of the other.
Back at the house I loaded all my stuff in the truck and headed again, north. I pulled into a beautiful glade north of Flagstaff and headed for a wooded area where I would be secluded for a few days. I hoped to sleep it off. It took more than just a few nights. I seem to recall that this was a Labor Day weekend and I wondered if I would ever bother to be found again. It was beautiful. After several days I awakened to the sound of bulldozers nearby. It really shook me. I thought I was miles from anywhere. In a short time, I emerged from the camper to see a Forest Service truck pull up with a Ranger inside, Smokey The Bear hat and everything. I was asked to move. I was in the path of an expanding area of the Flagstaff City Landfill. I was camped at the edge of the city dump. I cranked up the truck and went looking for supplies, money or whatever God was going to show me next.
Radio has always been good to me, especially when I needed work the most. I had a couple of bucks, just enough to make some phone calls from a booth where Superman had probably changed clothes once in the 1930's. I connected with a little station KCYN in Williams, Arizona just a few miles west on highway 66. That's right, the famous Route 66. Been there. Done that. The owner of the station had just inherited it. His bag was TV in Kingman, some miles further west. He needed help, I needed a job and a place to live. The owner was able to trade out a room for me at the local Ramada Inn. I went from living in a truck to a hotel room with cable TV in one phone call. I settled down to doing the radio station and watching a new TV series, "Kung Fu".
We are curious puppets. Fate pulls funny strings. We dance funny dances. On the way out of the local post office, I ran into Crazy Ted, my old friend from Phoenix. The one who used to walk into the room naked from the shower. He had a shack up on the hill and a delicious, fiery lady named Sharon. Subdued though she was, there was a smoldering quality to her that gave her a slightly dangerous appeal. It was a reunion of old friends, a revival of old feelings brought over to new times. We grew, we shared. Bonnie visited often.
I changed the call letters of KCYN to KNYN and directed the format to tourism. It should have worked, had there been any promotion with national agencies. There wasn't time. One day the owner blew up in frustration. He simply wasn't happy with our doing the best we could with what we had to work with, which was next to nothing. Our production tape recorder for instance was an old Wollensak, which had been already old, some ten years before. At any rate, he began throwing things around, ruining some of the paneling we had so laboriously installed in our effort to revitalize what had once been the town jail. That was it. What did I need with the Ramada Inn, cable TV and one extra asshole in my life? I loaded up the truck and
headed up past the Grand Canyon.
Somewhere near Kayenta, I stopped and made a long distance call to the Program Director at KSPN-FM in Aspen, Colorado. "I'm coming up, I need a job if you have one." I said. `I don't have a thing right now, we're automated'. "I need to learn that - I'm coming up, job or no job." There was a pause. `I can give you a hundred and twenty five a week'. "I'll see you in a day or two". I said, and hung up.
I took a room at the motel where I had stayed in a dormitory on my previous visit to Aspen, some chapters back. This and a couple of other places were owned by Lou Willie and his wife, thinly disguised Christians. The deal was the same. Work a day, stay a week. I was still good with a welding torch, Lou was still building eagles and
horses from car bumpers. These were remarkably kind, generous people. Aspen was beginning to really thrive in those days, although it retained a sleepy, small town quality to it. Mark "Marco" Wadmond and I became friends and shared a few adventures while I let my beard grow to ZZ Topp length.
In the process of developing a steady, consistent, sophisticated morning air sound, I played a few cuts from "Buckingham Nicks" an album by Lindsey Buckingham and Stephanie Nicks. It turned out that Stephanie Nicks happened to be in town and I was treated to a phone call and subsequent live interview with her. Later, we attended a party that was an embarrassing disaster for both of us. One of the local art gallery operators had invited me to a whing-ding. I picked up Stephanie and we went. Another gay assemblage. No one there but gay males and Stephanie as the only lady. Oh, boy.
A few weeks later, Stephanie and I chanced to meet on the streets of Aspen. Finding a private place to live for myself had proved even less than unlikely. I had about burned out on the town and was ready for something new. As for herself; "I have an offer to join Fleetwood Mac. What do you think I should do?" I gasped. `Are you talking about "Oh, Well" Fleetwood Mac? "Bare Trees", Mick Fleetwood - Fleetwood Mac - THAT Fleetwood Mac?' She nodded yes. `Go for it. Don't hold back, do it, do it, do it.' I said. She smiled and we parted. I still wonder what she would have done if I had told her to drop the Fleetwood Mac offer.
Aspen ran out of room for me, shortly after the first snowfall. It was ski season. If I stayed, I could take a phone booth if I could kick someone else out of it. There were paying guests. It was time to find two other jobs to pay my way, or go elsewhere. I headed south for Phoenix again. I spent the winter and early spring at Bonnie's. Damn hot, it was.
Summer never really ends in Phoenix, it just has it's cool spells. It was around this time that I had a chance encounter with a delightful hippie family that fairly exuded mysticism. They had an enchanting young daughter named Summer. It was the first time I had ever heard the name. I told her I thought it was a perfectly lovely name and that I wished I had a daughter named Summer. There was a brief pause, a slight communion of eyes among them. "You will". She said. My daughter, Summer Rose was born about ten years later.
Without an income or a job, the truck had to be sold. I was back on the street more or less, at Bonnie's house again. I had to take a breath and again, start from scratch. This I did on a fine little Italian Bultaco motorcycle that had been in someone's garage too long. It was cheap, and ran well.
I moved up to an apartment in north Phoenix again, near the Sunnyslope area where I had lived in my first cottage during that first summer in Phoenix. It was a bit pricey for someone on unemployment but this time there was a swimming pool and life was a bit easier. Food was a real problem and I visited the irrigation canal once or twice for crawfish. Not lobster, but not bad if you are very patient with small portions.
After a few weeks and a brief encounter with a really wigged out girl who was a shameless tease and celibate, I moved again just a few blocks away. She was nice enough to come see me and apologize. I was nice enough to thank her. A nice man appeared in a nice suit and tie on my front porch a day or so later to let me know without saying so, that I was being watched. I was nice enough to thank him and wonder why he didn't perspire in the 107 degree heat and a fulo suit. Probably an alien, maybe even a lawyer.
This was not a fate worse than death, but Bonnie came to my rescue, anyway. There was an old frame house on south Central close to South Mountain Park, that could be had for $65.00 per month rent. I would even be able to eat on my meager unemployment stipend. I took it. I had the utilities turned on and the water from the kitchen faucet literally ran stinking, sewage black for the first hour. It had been stopped in the pipes for years.
9822 South Central Avenue no longer exists. The spot is marked though, with the shell of an experimental 30-foot yacht weighing probably 20 tons, that had been literally poured from concrete. A concrete boat. No kidding. That's not as strange as it sounds, several large ships were built of concrete by the U.S. Navy in World War II. This one never saw the water, though. It was hauled in by truck and placed there by a crane while I was living at the place, apparently by someone who knew what they were doing. It is the only thing that marks the location. The rest is desert except the old stone house next door. My nearest neighbors at the stone house was a black family with very definite African persuasions. They had me over for dinner a time or two and treated me to Elk. The way he said it though, it sounded like "Ilk" as in descendant(s) of.... The meat was lean, tender and suspiciously succulent. It was not the least bit gamey tasting though, and I wondered what I was eating. He had ducks, geese and turkeys in the back yard.
In those days of 1975 through 1978, my place was a clapboard frame house built probably around 1910, painted gangrene green and had a patchwork roof that somehow, did not leak. The motorcycle had self-destructed and I bought a tiny 90cc Honda from Bonnie's neighbor for trips to the store. I had to convert it to a battery ignition, since the ignition coil was blown. It ran. I drove it for most of a year, while I made repairs to the house and added a telephone that almost never rang. Jobs were non-existent, except for part-time work at a lawnmower shop where the boss was as uptight as a starter spring.
1975 was more or less uneventful and boring. I found a room mate, a wonderful, crazy on-again off-again friend of Bonnie's and mine, named Kevin Reedy Webb. Kevin had been part of the TERROS group in the KCAC days. We worked together for a short time driving a truck for a nearby thrift store, enjoying our down-and-out camaraderie. That ended though, when we just couldn't make ends meet. During the stay, he somehow picked up an old 1959 white Cadillac convertible. The man was definitely moving up, if back.
Thanksgiving day I woke up feeling very nostalgic and very lonely. The phone actually rang. I had forgotten it was there. It was an old friend who had been very much in the distance in years past. We really didn't know each other well at all, except that he may have been part of the sales staff at KCAC. I could recall rumors of Italian Mafia connections, but he seemed to be making a straight life of it, like myself. He was in town, unconnected, just passing through and saying hi. We decided to get together.
That day was one of the warmest connections I have enjoyed with a near-stranger. It was mid-morning when we met. By noon, we had rounded up corn on the cob, some tea, bread, dressing, cranberry sauce and two Rock Cornish Game Hens that were our substitute for turkeys. I gave the blessing, the first such shared prayer in years. It was totally spontaneous and soul satisfying for both of us. We have not seen each other since that very fine Thanksgiving Dinner.
Christmas for the first time in six years, was spent with my parents. They hosted me at a skiing trip in Colorado which was sponsored by their church. I hitched to Glenwood Springs and met my folks there. Barry McGuire ("Eve of Destruction" 1965) was the featured singer and teacher at the retreat. I was very surprised to find him working in Christian life and music. He was definitely turned away from the fame and glory that had just destroyed Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin. He had even divorced himself from any identity with his hit single. That was fine, I certainly understood. In my own way, I was doing something similar. I behaved my Christian Self at the ski resort and was given a lift by my folks to Albuquerque, as well as a bus ticket to Phoenix. I thought seriously of getting a refund on the ticket and hitching it, but decided to enjoy my relative comfort on the bus. Surprise.
A sweet young thing came cruising down the aisle looking for a seat. She sat down without being invited and with more than a little enthusiasm. From Albuquerque to Winslow we became friends. After dark near Flagstaff and almost all the way to Phoenix, we did everything any two young people can do on a Greyhound bus. What was really a gas about it was that the couple in front of us knew exactly what was going on. There was no way they could misinterpret the movements. They were Indians. Native Americans - the ones who were here before us. They had brought some of the blessed humanity with them from their heritage, they didn't mind if the couple in the next teepee were making love. Their conversation provided a wonderful cover for us.
On arrival in Phoenix, the girl split in one direction and I went the other, directly into the arms of Bonnie, whom my folks had alerted that I was arriving. Surprise.
The following year found me spending time and drinking beer with two of the most outrageous biker people that God has ever blessed me with. I was living in poverty as were they, in the toughest economic recession in many years. Bob and Susie were bikers of the old school. I mean boots, sweat, beer, sweat, no colors but who needs them when you're this ugly, sweat, grease and sweat. Nicknames; Rivers and Snooze. Their motto: "Keep a wet chain and dry rear wheel". It means Stay On Top Of It. A dry chain will burn out. A rear wheel wet from chain oil, will allow oil into the wheel through your spokes, thus eating the rubber of the inner tube of your motorcycle, causing a blowout or flat. You gotta keep the chain wet, you gotta keep the wheel dry.
Rivers was red-headed, Snooze was sweet and ugly. She had crossed eyes as an inherited birth defect and despite her sweetness, liked to cuss. These two people saved me from some of the most depressing times of my life. They never mentioned it, but they were visiting Christians, unchurched and unfunded - unlike the Consecrated Missionaries to Las Vegas and other needy Meccas. These were some of the finest and nastiest people I have ever known. It was through these friends that I learned to tube the Salt River and make love to ugly women.
I had made a deal through some gay friends of Dan's, on a 350 Honda with a half-running, poorly overhauled engine. I fixed the points, removed the mufflers and had a fully running motorcycle. I was in the process of starving myself to pay for it when wonder of wonders, I was offered another job. I was to be employed by the City of Phoenix (oh joy, a lucrative, secure position with a Major Municipality under the guidance of the Carter Administration) - on a garbage crew at South Mountain Park. Food. I took it. Thus began my celebration of our National Bicentennial Year of 1976.
God Bless America.
posted by freespeak@gmail.com at 5:17 AM
<< Home