My First Time

It was difficult but not impossible

I remember the first time I had sex in a car. It was in a '65 Volkswagen. Imported from Germany after the Big War, Volkswagens were renowned for their economy but not for roominess. As I remember, they had an advertising campaign that really worked despite competition from American made cars with big engines. Anyway, the VW belonged to Mike Bennett. Old Mike, (I call him Old Mike now because he's old, but he wasn't old at the time I borrowed his car. Matter of fact, we were the same age.) Mike's father gave him the car to go back and forth to school. Mr. Bennett Sr., now that was a man's man. I heard that one time he and his buddy Eduardo had been drinking and Eduardo got so drunk he wanted to fight everybody in the bar. Not a problem if you’re built like Bennett Sr. but Eduardo was only about 105 lbs of skin and bone. Well, Bennett Sr. being Eduardo's best bud stepped in to stop him from getting hurt, so he cold cocked him, threw him over his shoulder and took him home to Magda. You don't mess with Magda even if she's just a wisp of a woman. Once her mouth starts working you won't stop her. You had to let her wind down no matter how long it took. She said to leave Eduardo on the step and go on home. So, Bennett Sr. got in his car, not the Volkswagen, that comes later. 

Bennett Sr's sweet ride

No, his car was a white-over-powder blue '57 Chevy. I'll tell you no finer looking car's ever been designed than that Chevy. It had a bright orange 283 cu. inch V8 engine. Everywhere he went, guys wanted Bennett to pop the hood so they could look at that orange motor. V8's were a big thing back then. They sounded different from a straight six; most of us could tell just by hearing if it was a V8 or a six. My father told me when that when he was a young, guys with Model A Fords would compete to see who could set the idle lowest on the four bangers and keep running. He said it was a real treat to watch the engine fire one time, pause a bit then fire again and keep going like that. You had to keep the engine running at least a minute to qualify. Nowadays you look under the hood of a car and you don't see anything that looks like a motor. It's all hoses and pipes. Hell, you don't even see spark plugs. The way I grew up, you took the spark plugs out and cleaned them with a wire brush. I had to borrow a gap gauge from Juan to set them. Those things cost about a buck, but why buy one if Juan would lend you his? He was a nice guy who let you borrow his tools but you had to clean them before giving them back. One time Mr. Bennett let him drive his '57 Chevy. Juan took it on the FM256, got it up to about 90 miles an hour before the State Trooper pulled him over. Juan figured he was in trouble but his Mom always told him to respect the police so he just pulled over expecting the worst. This was going to be bad. The Trooper was a badass that nobody wanted to cross. Everybody called him Thumper because he looked like a rabbit. His eyes were close together, pinched looking, and he had a bit of a hare lip that he tried to hide under a mustache that made him look like a rabbit with a mustache. Turns out Thumper just wanted to look at that orange 283 V8. But his judgment left him and he told Juan he would let him go if he let him drive the Chevy one time. Juan could follow in Thumper's Ford Cruiser. Off they went. Thumper got the Chevy up to 85 with Juan in the Cruiser close behind. Competition among men is built-in to every cell so Juan gunned the Ford and started pass Thumper now hitting 90. As they got bumper to bumper, Juan thought about what his Mom, Rosario told him about respecting the law. Rosario had been brought up hard, working the cantaloupe fields in Marfa, Texas and she knew a thing or two about disrespecting the law. If you’ve ever tasted a cantaloupe from Marfa, no other cantaloupe will ever satisfy you again. The good ones are bigger than a softball but smaller than a soccer ball she told me once. Cut ‘em open, get the seeds out and you’ll get tastiest, sweetest orange fruit that doesn’t taste like an orange. Whenever I went to the store for my mother to buy cantaloupes she told me to ask Mr. Barrera where the fruit came from. Mr. Barrera owned a grocery store two blocks away from my house. An old guy, if you went in to the store, he’d be asleep on a stool next to the cash register. A lot of his customers would get their stuff off the shelves and leave the money on the counter. Well, I know that’s shocking to hear but that was in the 60’s when things were different. These days, even 10 year olds are staging holdups. Matter of fact, just today I read in the paper about just such a thing. Don’t laugh. I still get my newspaper delivered. I pay once a year by check now because of an incident with the paper boy that I won’t get into now, except to say that the kid conned me and my neighbors paying him twice. Mr. Ramirez got so mad he went to the kid’s house and got into a fight with Howard Johnson, the kid’s father, not the Howard Johnson motel magnate. The nearest Howard Johnson to our town was in Fort Stockdale, 10 miles away. We never got to use the swimming pool because you had to be a guest there except once when my Uncle John came to visit and stayed at the motel. My father said Uncle John thought he was big stuff and our place wasn’t good enough for him since he sold some gadget he invented to Montgomery Ward’s for a lot of money. Back then Sears and Montgomery Ward were each trying to beat the other for customers until “Monkey Ward” (that’s what my Dad called it), got in trouble and had to sell out to Sears. And Sears was different then, too. Their name was Sears Roebuck and Co. I don’t know what happened to Roebuck but one day it was gone. Now I hear that Sears and Kmart are the same company. What a world. I never had much truck with Kmart. I was 12 when they opened their first store at the edge of town. You’d think they were giving stuff away; and if you thought that, you’d be right. The place was packed with shoppers who were getting some free stuff; balloons and hot dogs, Cokes for two cents. Cokes had been five cents all my life for a six ounce bottle. 

Pepsi, better than Coke

You could buy a 12 ounce Pepsi for seven cents and get two cents back when you returned the bottle. We kids did the math and the Pepsi was the better deal. Problem was, where to get seven cents. Enrique figured it out. Two of us would go into Barrera’s store real quiet. If Mr. Barrera was asleep we’d steal some empties from behind the counter then wake him up and ask for the deposit money. It was the perfect crime that only worked once. You know, I haven’t thought about Enrique in a long time. Margarita, the waitress at the Knock Knock Diner, said she heard he was a big time mortgage broker now. The Knock Knock wasn’t exactly a diner. It was Manuel’s house. You had to knock on the screen door and wait for Manuel to come out to take your order then wait on the porch. Margarita would bring it out and set it on a little table for you. If I’m right about it, this was the origin of knock knock jokes that become popular once every generation. “Knock, knock. Who’s there? Ham & Eggs, How? Over easy”. 

But I could be wrong.  

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Important Note from Time Served

The foregoing should serve as a tip that you won’t find in books on How-To-Write-Good.

Never write while under the influence of powerful antihistamines that are likely to make you dopey like the bourbon your mother used to put on your gums when you were teething.

Roll Over, Beethoven

A true story

A friend of mine and I met Chuck Berry in the Spring of 1964 when he performed at an old skating rink on Dyer street, past the Rocket Drive-In in Northeast El Paso. That area at the outskirts of the city was known for its predominantly white and somewhat redneck population so it was with a little trepidation that we went to the show. Not that we expected trouble but the Southwest has lots of rattlesnakes, some of which are bipeds. We called the kids who lived there Stompers but I don't know why. The cultural divide between us could be measured in astronomical powers of 10 given their preference for The Beach Boys’ surf music. That's right -- surf music in the deserts of West Texas. All the Stompers needed to realize their bikini laden surfing fantasies was a few quadrillion barrels of salt water added to the several million acres of sand that surround the city. And a massive wave machine.

Just add water

Chuck had been released from prison a few months before and was now attempting a comeback. I don't know if he chose the El Paso venue because it was obscure enough to hide a possible failure or because given his prison records, better venues weren't ready to hire a convicted rapist and armed robber. He had served a prison sentence for armed robbery when he was a teenager in 1944, then again for violating the Mann Act in 1959. Even the city's most popular and influential DJ, Steve Crosno, who counted many celebrities and top musical acts among his friends didn’t risk appearing with Chuck, though he regularly defied his Program Director and played Berry's records several times out of the normal rotation.

 

  In the 60's only one radio station in El Paso played Chuck Berry's records. His music and other music like it were considered uncivilized but kids like me liked it a lot. We couldn't wait for school to let out so we could listen to the Top 40 on KELP. The Top 40 was mostly populated with smarmy doowop songs freighted with teenage angst, lost loves, untimely teen death, unrequited passions, and one song that ended with a romantic double murder. But interspersed within the treacly flotsam were the golden nuggets of the real Rock & Roll we longed for. We didn't bother with KROD or KTSM and the sterile offerings by Pat Boone, Perry Como and the like. KSET billed itself as "El Paso's Fine Music Station" featuring familiar classical music excerpts and atrocious instrumental covers of songs by Connie Francis, Frank Sinatra and the cast of TV's Hit Parade. KHEY played country music and I didn't know anyone who listened to that station save one of my classmates and me. We both listened for the same reason. If we could ignore the content of the songs and the singers we could hear some creative licks, riffs and counterpoints from the backup musicians whom I guessed weren’t listening to lyrics or the singers either. Late at night, if the weather conditions were just right I could tune my radio to KOMO, 800 miles away in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and hear more Rock & Roll. The static was awful and the station faded in and out but it didn't matter. Across the border in Juarez, border blaster XELO with its 150,000 watt transmitter spread Garner Ted Armstrong's evangelical polemics worldwide on weekends from 10 PM 'til midnight.

The powerful signal swamped many stations in the U.S.

I could pick up KOMO on this radio

Berry's music was new and exciting. Defying their parents and pastors, kids danced to it and begged for more. It felt good to use up the energy that our elders kept hammering down. It made musicians want to play harder and louder. Dozens of future Rock & Roll stars credited Berry for his influence on their music. Though by current musical standards his music and onstage antics are considered quaint, at their inception they were revolutionary. He was among the first musicians to venture into the unknown ocean of lifelike, exuberant musical expression; not dipping his toes cautiously in the water but jumping in, guitar and all, without a safety line. Chuck didn't teach anyone how to play, he just showed them the way. Play what's in your head ---- not what’s expected. Jimi Hendrix, admittedly influenced by Berry’s music, would lead the next generation of rockers into even deeper waters.

Berry's music broke many radio traditions. Music like his and the musicians who inspired him weren't played on typical radio stations. There were things wrong with "Colored" music. It wasn't fit for the civilized. During the Flapper Era of the 1920's the saxophone’s seductive sound was blamed for causing young women to lose their virtue. (If only!) Now Rock & Roll was believed to be the on-ramp for the highway to hell. Before Americans had genitals, TV audiences watching Elvis on the Ed Sullivan Show were not shown his gyrating hips lest America's youngsters think there was something down there besides pocket change. Chuck broke other traditions as well such as the tradition of paying income taxes. Over his lifetime he would make and lose small fortunes and earn convictions for violating tax laws.

"The highway to hell is that way! Let's go, people!"

On the afternoon I met Chuck I was surprised to see that his band was made up of local guys I'd seen playing around town. Where were his sidemen? Where was the tour bus? Why were those kids on stage? I looked around and wondered why he would play at an old skating rink with its lousy acoustics and rickety bandstand. I understood then what the term rinky dink meant.

The band began to play and I thought they must be the warmup band. Chuck and his men would be up next after the local guys got the audience revved up. But, no. Two songs later Chuck walked on stage wearing a white suit, white shoes, red shirt, white tie, and, of course, his duck tail hair. The band backed up to make room for Chuck and got ready to play.

It wasn't until the late 1980's when I was watching a documentary* celebrating his 60th birthday that I learned Chuck Berry didn't have a band, a tour bus, or a manager. He did as many as 100 shows each year, all one-nighters, using unrehearsed local bands who were paid by the concert promoter. His requirements were that the promoter pay his air fare, one hotel night, pay him in cash, and that the local band had to know all his songs. It was the cash that got the IRS' attention.

We cheered when he opened the show with “School Days”. It was a rough start for the band. They were nervous and it showed. For starters, the drummer was an eighth note late with the first beat, then the bass fumbled the bass run. Chuck continued playing until they caught up. After the first song they got better and the show got better with Chuck doing the stage act we had all seen on American Bandstand, including his trademark duck walk across the stage. The acoustics was crappy and the only pro on the bandstand was Chuck Berry but we loved it anyway.

By 1967 he was a headlining again

By the time they had played six or seven songs they were in sync with Chuck and were able to pick up his cues for the bridges and the beat. They began playing "Johnny B. Good" and the exhilarated crowd dove into it, roaring the chorus along with Chuck and the band. It was a shared moment of discovery, kindred spirits, exuberantly shouting out joy and fun. The bass player who had been rock steady in support of the song decided to show off his improvisational skills. Chuck and the other musicians looked at him -- what the hell was he doing? They continued playing and when the chorus came around we roared again:
        “Go, go, go Johnny go! Go, go, go Johnny go!"
Chuck turned his back on the audience to face the bass player. He cued the drummer to increase the tempo. He turned back to the audience, tossed his head in the direction of the bass player then cued the drummer to up the tempo once more. The drummer was having the time of his life taking direction from Chuck Berry! By this time the beat was so fast that the bass player could barely keep up. He was standing high up on his toes, leaning back as far as he could, holding his breath, and seemed about to fall over. Chuck brought the beat down to normal and gave the bassist a little smile maybe to remind him to never upstage the marquee act.  

Go! Go! Go, Johnny! Go, Go, Go!

When band took a break my friend and I went looking for a bathroom. We got lost and found Chuck sitting near an exit at the end of a hallway backstage. He was sitting by himself on a rusty folding chair smoking a cigarette; the exit door propped open to let the smoke out or fresh air in. He saw us and nodded acknowledgement. We were alone, face to face with Chuck Berry. I could ask him anything. I was afraid to lose the moment and tried to think of intelligent things to ask. Instead, I became a standard issue “fan” babbling nonsense ---- Great show! Love your songs! Have all your records! What do you call your guitar?! His responses to my stupid remarks were appropriately courteous and laconic.

Many musicians have a sort of affection for their instruments. The attachments might be based on some superstition or maybe they truly have a favorite instrument that "fits" them better than any other. B.B. King's favorite guitar is named Lucille. He has an elaborate story about how he came to name it following a fire at a club where he was playing. Willie Nelson's acoustic guitar which has as many miles on it as Willie's face, has a large hole worn into the wood below the strings where his picks scrape when he hits hard chords. Chuck took a drag on his cigarette, looked out the door at the desert then said to me, "What do I call my guitar? I call it my guitar". 

Almost 50 years later, paraphrasing Sigmund Freud, it’s clear to me that sometimes a guitar is just a guitar.

Come on, Baby, Light My Fire

 A mostly fictional story

We were standing outside singing loudly when the firemen and paramedics drove up. The Chief, who to us looked about 12 years old, hustled over trying to look tough ordering us to move away from the fire in my front yard. "Move back!" he squeaked. Naturally, we all ignored him. We were all his senior in years, experience, and cussedness. This pipsqueak knew nothing of what we had seen and had to do decades ago. On this day of all days his power had no power over us. Through our lost youth and lives we had earned all the authority we needed to ignore this kid and his over-sized Chief's hat. Meanwhile, the other fire fighters had located the garden hose and were putting out the fire.

It had all begun when Spence had suggested a reunion of the bunch of us who had served together in Vietnam. We had been a tight group, bound together by our circumstance, our distaste for the authoritarian demands of the military, our coincident tastes in music and reading, and on a few occasions enjoying R&R together in some of the sleazy recesses of the Far East from which no man returns the same as when he went in.

It was decided that we would get together in Florida where I live because it has the mildest weather in January. Russ would come in from Idaho, Spence from Baltimore, Sergio from San Francisco, Max from Austin, Marc from Alaska. No formal plans were laid. The only thing set in stone was that everyone arrive at my home on the same day. Our wives, who had known each other and us when we were single, immediately agreed that we should get together without them.

Luckily, the guys landed at the airport within an hour or two of each other and I picked them up in my van. Russ and Max had their guitar cases and a small suitcase each. Marc, the most fastidious among us, had 3 suitcases; beach wear, formal wear, and everyday wear, he explained. Sergio carried only his backpack which I hoped contained some of the herbal remedies we had used to calm our nerves back in the day. More than forty years had gone by since we had all been together. None of us looked familiar to one another anymore. We'd been just kids long ago. Now we were old men but the light behind our eyes still shone as it had back then.

We trundled into the house, got some beer and sat on the couches and chairs I'd set up in the den. As they talked and sipped their beers I looked at each of them in turn.

Russ, the gunsmith, had quit his successful criminal law practice and purchased 300 acres of mountainside in Idaho. The land was far enough from the general population to ensure privacy but near enough to have some creature comforts that included electricity and internet service. His private forest was posted with numerous and very specific warnings about the consequences of trespassing and even more severe warnings about hunting on his property. His income came from making meticulously handcrafted replicas of various historical firearms. Though it took him several months to complete each piece, the collectors who bought them didn't mind the wait or the sums he charged. Each piece was constructed so that it could never be fired. Other gunsmiths so respected his fine craftsmanship that they refused to modify his creations in any way. The guns were too perfect. Any change would lower their value. His wife of 35 years was an artist and naturalist by inclination, content to work her art and live in isolation in their snug home in the woods; their library, and their crafts.

Spence had become a forensic accountant for the IRS who could seemingly spot phony numbers just by reading the cover page on an accounting report. His supervisors weren't comfortable with his work, however. While he was an unparalleled expert in detecting falsifications in a report, he also knew how to make them undetectable. It made his bosses wonder if some of companies that had been cleared by other agents had been coached by their star accountant.

Marc ran his own charter service in the Northwest. His youthful dream to be a pilot had been partially fulfilled as he flew hunters and fishermen to remote sporting lodges in which he was a silent partner. His real ambition to be an airline pilot collapsed when failing to take his unreported medications, he had two extended outbursts of Tourette's while welcoming the passengers to their transoceanic flight aboard his 747.

Sergio had become a professional pharmacist. When I first met him he was an amateur pharmacist mixing cold remedies using various over the counter drugs and one or two under the counter drugs. He knew exactly how much each of us needed to be boosted to improve our odds of survival 'way back when'. Nowadays, his small neighborhood drugstore gave him enough income to vacation in Hawaii once a year and drive a nice car at home.

I don't think I ever saw Max more than a few feet away from his 12 string guitar. He was an excellent player who had been good enough to be a sideman for some of the luminaries of the rock and folk music of the 60's and 70's and through the revivals of those genres in the following decades. Like thousands of musicians who shine but never explode as super novas, Max lacked stage presence. His work was widely admired but he disappeared as soon as he stopped playing. The stars who remembered his playing if not his face still hired him for their studio sessions.

We spent the next couple of hours insulting each others wrinkled, flabby bodies; missing hair and the youthful six-pack abs that were now more like soft-side party kegs. When we ran out of beer, Max and Marc made a beer run but forgot the beer. Instead, they bought whiskeys, mixers, and a bag of ice. On the way to buy beer they reminisced about an R&R trip to Singapore where they had tried to teach a wretched hotel bartender how to make mixed drinks "American Style". His bad English and their slurred English didn't help. It finally came down to Max or Marc pointing to the liquor bottles and mixes, pantomiming how much of each ingredient to make Max's Southern Comfort Old Fashioned or Marc's complicated Black Russians. Naturally, we were obliged to consume both the successes and the failures, though it wasn't long before none of us knew the difference.

Back at the house, Marc became the bartender. He knew the formulas for dozens of cocktails. Russ and Max took out their guitars and Russ tried earnestly to replicate the speed and skill of bygone days. The speed was gone and his hands moved along the strings as though his fingers had become 2x4's. But it didn't matter how it sounded. There was enough of the old sound to remind each of us of how we had been once upon a time; a few good times in the middle of a real bad time.

Obviously frustrated with his wooden fingers, Russ went outdoors with Max to sit on the porch with their guitars. The rest of us settled in our chairs to talk about all that had happened to us after our service; the divorces, remarriage, kids, grandkids, jobs, triumphs and failures. All in all we had survived and made it this far in life. Sergio dug into his backpack and found his cigarette papers along with a baggie of grass. Unlike Russ, his fingers were in fine shape and he deftly rolled a fat joint which he lit then passed to me. I nearly passed out from the first hit just as I had the first time I inhaled the weed at Russ's behest decades ago. Spence took a shallow hit and passed it on to Marc who declined. A curious fellow was Marc. Though he consumed and smoked the same things we all did, he never appeared drunk or high. He never got the giggles or the munchies and I never saw him stagger even though he had matched me drink for drink or hit for hit.

Spence scooted down in his chair resting his head on the backrest. Sergio squatted on the floor. Marc sat by the window sipping his custom made Mai Tai watching Russ and Max out on the porch starting and stopping several tunes. I went looking for my laptop where I keep my digitized music. My collection of vinyl LP's and reel to reel tapes was gone but I had converted them to digital files over the years. I selected the folder labeled "The Devil's Handbasket" which contained the supposedly satanic music that had driven my older sisters, their spouses and their entire cohort into righteous rages and condemnations back in the 60's. Reflecting on those memories I concluded that they're probably still raging about everything they wish they had done but never had the courage to do.

I started the music, keeping the volume low so that we could hear each other talk. In a few minutes we were very mellow and starting to get the giggles watching Marc sip his drink while he made funny faces at us as though he were entertaining infants. Sober as a judge was he. Out on the porch I heard Russ talking to someone. I looked out and saw Charon, my neighbor from across the street, and Fred from next door. Russ assumed they were my friends and invited them in for a drink. Fred practically burst through the door looking for the booze. Charon stopped just inside the door, acknowledged everyone then sat down next to Spence who was humming to a Simon and Garfunkel tune playing on my computer.

Sergio rolled another joint while Marc mixed more drinks. Fred told me he was hiding out from his sister who had been on his case all day about him losing her copy of "Anger Management Made Easy" for which she had “paid 25 goddamn dollahs at the traffic school the %&*@!!&$ judge had forced her to attend after her arrest for calling the cop a #*&@#$%^, $%^&*!@#, and a &^*#$%# thug, stomping on his foot, and tearing up the traffic ticket”. I told him he could stay until my party was over. After that he was on his own.

Charon was telling Spence and Russ about himself and his work as some kind of civilian minister at a local church. I saw Sergio sit up at the mention of Charon's conversion to The Church of The Second Coming of The First Christ in The Last Millennium (TCTSCTFCTLM for short). Sergio had been raised in a very religious home but had left the faith at the age of 14 after decking a priest whose ideas of the holy sacraments were not exactly holy. He saw the tiny Bible Charon had in his shirt pocket. He reached out and snatched it. His eyes narrowed as he flipped the pages until he found the passage he was looking for. He was about to read out loud but Spence, knowing Sergio's temper, quickly told him to go with him to get more ice and snacks at the liquor store. He took the Bible and passed it off to Max, who opened it to the title page and read that it was a condensed, abridged version.

"My grandmother", he said, "has a First Edition signed by the Author. She used to read me her favorite parts like 'the meek shall inherit the earth'. I always wondered if that included the shitty parts of the earth. What do you think?"

Then Russ averred that the Blessed Peacemaker he owned would bring a man to a dead stop at 50 yards either from fear or the impact of high velocity lead. “Remember Dirty Harry?” he asked. Then he clenched his jaws, gritted his teeth. Squinting hard he rasped a quote from the movie:

"I know what you're thinking. "Did he fire six shots or only five?" Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement I kind of lost track myself. But being as this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world, and would blow your head clean off, you've got to ask yourself one question: "Do I feel lucky?" Well, do ya, punk?"

Charon thought they were jesting and began to recite his favorite Dirty Harry lines. He must have seen the movies dozens of times since it appeared to me that he was reciting entire scripts. He'd only had two drinks so far but was acting as though he'd had a lot more. He tried his Clint Eastwood impressions, first threatening Marc, then Max but stopped when he turned to Russ who was not amused, Dirty Harry being his all time hero. Russ was no Bible scholar but he did know some movie dialog. He gathered himself, assumed a wrathful look then delivered a quote from Pulp Fiction with all the malevolence and thunder he could muster:

'The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides with the iniquities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who in the name of charity and good will shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother's keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon those with great vengeance and with furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know that my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee.'

Charon panicked when he saw the rockets' red glare in Russ's eyes. He knew his Bible inside out but had never read that passage. Had he missed it somehow or did he have the wrong version? He was afraid to ask. Besides, Russ and Mother Nature had placed an urgent call to his loosening bowels and he moved fast to find the bathroom.

Meanwhile, Fred was scarfing up more booze and occasionally looking out the window in case his sister came home.

We slowly ran out of reminiscences about old times. Each of us had added to or subtracted from the recollections until we came to silent agreement that "Yeah, that's how it happened". As the liquor and the second hand smoke from Sergio's joints began fuzzing our memories even the smothering weight of the bad times began to lose its power to crush. We started to have fun.

Max told a story about the time he gave a ride to a chubby girl he met during one of his gigs. His next job was in Tulsa where the girl was from so he said ok when she asked for a ride. Late that night as they were heading up I35 from Austin to Tulsa the fan belt broke. Max remembered that in a pinch, a panty hose could be used as a fan belt so he asked the girl if she had any in her stuff. She was wearing the only pair she owned so she opened the door to take them off but being wide hipped she was struggling. Seeing her struggle, Max came around and started pulling on the waist band. The Texas State Trooper coming up the road saw a woman's legs kicking in the air and a man hunched down between them.

The trooper's siren scared the girl who started screaming. A few seconds later Max was face down on the ground, handcuffed and knocked silly, his head having had a momentary but violent collision with the trooper's 8 cell flashlight. It took a half hour for Max and the girl to convince the trooper that there was nothing untoward going on. I told him he should make the experience into a song a la Bob Dylan, working title: "I Didn't See the Light But I Sure Felt It."

Spence, the IRS auditor, told stories about how he would mess with the finely coiffed big shots and their slimy tax attorneys who thought they could intimidate him by flashing their cuffs and pinky rings to show how much status they had and how little he did.

His favorite thing was to stare dejectedly down at the desk and say, "You know, six months ago I lost my wife to assholes just.......... like......... you. She was the only thing in life I ever loved; the only thing that ever mattered to me. She's gone. She's not coming back. I have nothing left to lose if I take you and your pissant lawyers down. So, let me ask, are you feeling lucky? Well, are you punk?"

We were so high and giggly we even toasted the IRS. There was a knock on the door and I went to open it. There was Fred's sister, Patti, in her favorite string bikini. I couldn't look away from her tanned hide. She was a natural Florida blonde who in her youth had refused to believe that the sun was her skin's enemy. In the course of her 50 some years the sun's relentless rays had turned her once creamy skin into five and half feet of beef jerky. I had purposely put up a hedge between her yard and mine to shield my eyes when she sunbathed by her swimming pool.

"UPS delivered this to my house. I didn't know it was for you so I opened it. It's a cake. The note says Happy Birthday from your sister. Sorry", she singsonged.

All eyes were on Patti. Even Fred looked up from behind the couch where he was hiding. I had a flashback to Engineering 101 when I had struggled to understand Newton's Laws of Motion. Now here, Fred and Patti were about to teach me with flashbulb clarity the meaning of the First and Third Laws.

First Law
An object in a state of uniform motion tends to remain in that state of motion unless an external force is applied to it. 

AKA -- the law of inertia.

To wit, they saw each other and Fred made a dash for an exit. The the one he chose was a sliding glass door that my wife had thoughtfully cleaned in anticipation of my friends' visit. In a word, or in four words, actually, the glass was invisible. As a result of my wife's diligence, Fred was unable to pass to the other side of the glass, bouncing off, thus demonstrating Newton's Third Law. (To every action there is an opposite and equal reaction.) He got up fast and ran out the kitchen door with Patti close behind.

"Did you see that?", Marc giggled. Through the patio door we saw Patti tackle Fred then kneel on his back, yelling at him as she banged his head up and down on the dirt.
Q.E.D - Newton's Third Law

Everyone got the giggles all over again. Then we smelled smoke. On her way over to give me my birthday cake, Patti had tossed her cigarette in the pile of leaves on the lawn. I was still holding my cake as we stumbled into the night to admire the spreading flames.

Max started it: "Happy Birthday to you. Happy Birthday, Dear Fernando ......."
We were still singing when the Fire Department showed up. 

Killjoys, punks.

The Blue Rockers

A story about a 60's garage band that didn't make the big time and some of the reasons why it didn't.

March,1965

We played our break song, put our instruments down and got off the stage. One more 30 minute set and we would be done for the night. Sylvia had just finished “Ruby Baby”. The kids liked to dance to it so we had played it three times in the last 90 minutes. Our gig was for 2 hours plus 2 twenty minute breaks. Good thing, too. Our song catalog only had 17 songs so we did a lot of repeats. I kept track of which songs got the kids dancing and which ones didn’t. We played “Ruby Baby” one more time.

As we headed out the door Jer asked me how many kids we had in the audience. I said the ticket guy told me 143. I thought Jer was figuring out our ‘take’ from the receipts but he was thinking about the heat in the club. Jer kept to himself a lot. It was hard to tell his mood just by looking. His quirky humor put some people off so maybe that’s why he was a quiet guy most of the time – once burned, twice shy.

 “Average body temperature is 98.5 x 143 means it's about 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit in there!”, he said. Well, it was not exactly the way to gauge the ambient temperature, but he had a point. It was hot under the lights all the time but we didn’t feel hot and sweaty until we put our instruments down between sets. The low ceiling, which was ok for the retail store it used to be, was too low for masses of sweaty, fast dancing teenagers giving off heat like animated kerosene heaters.

We were playing at a Teen Club in a strip shopping center that was going to seed because larger shopping centers were siphoning away the tenants. Tonight we were playing for a half fee but we had gotten another job out of it for next week. I went outside to cool down. Sylvia was there. She was the spark plug of our group. Her charisma and great smile made us and our audiences feel good. “We need new songs”, she said. 

Teen Club: You could dance, meet your friends, but no alcohol was served

That wasn’t all we needed. We were high school guys who knocked together a rock and roll band in an age when rock and roll was fairly simple. All we had to know was a handful of chords on our guitars and have enough musical sense to arrange them in the order required by the cookie cutter songs of the day. Or to put is as humanely as possible, we were a notch or two below an average garage band. 

Typical 60's garage bands. Note the "massive" guitar amplifiers. The one at the far right was probably about 50 watts, max.

Delicados Ovalados

I could see Alex across the parking lot chatting up a girl as usual. Our lead player, Vic, and our drummer, Jer, were smoking nearby. They were sharing one of Vic’s awful cigarettes. We never let him smoke those things in the car. They were called Delicados and Vic thought they were really cool. They were oval instead of round and the tip that touched the lips was lightly sugared. But, God, they stank. We could tolerate Jer’s Camels and Bobby’s Luckies but the Delicados? No.

Bobby was nowhere in sight but I knew he and his long time girlfriend were in his car making out. They had been dating for over a year and it looked as ‘serious’ as any relationship between any pair of 17 year olds – volatile then treacly by turns - depending on who knows what. I don’t remember how he became our bass player but he was better at bass playing than Alex, Jer, or I, were with our guitars and drums.

When the break was over we went in and finished our last set. Next week would be playing at the Army base for money.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

April, 1965

By the time I dropped everybody off at their houses it was 1:30 AM, Sunday morning. I stopped off at Tiko’s Tacos for a nightcap. It was nearly full. Well, it was a small walk-in diner across the street from a cemetery you wouldn’t know was there because of the tall evergreen hedge. The only thing missing now was the beer to go along with the tacos and the tasty salsa. You had to be 21 to buy beer unless you went across the border to the bars in Juarez where the legal age is nobody’s concern. I was wishing I had taken my girlfriend dancing at the Copa Banana just over the Mexican border instead of driving 18 miles past the city limits to play at the EM club on the Army base.

After paying for gas our split was $15 each for a 3 hour performance in front of 100 or so freshly recruited Army boots. After nine weeks of womanless basic training anything resembling a woman looked sexy to them. Sylvia could have commanded them to do 100 laps around the club if she wanted. With only 17 songs, we didn't have a "repertoire", just 17 songs, so we repeated a lot of them. As she sang “Ruby Baby” for the fourth time, she looked like she was ready to pull up a chair and sing it sitting down instead of rocking with the music. That was trouble. Sylvia could almost always be described in one word – upbeat. If she was down, that meant that tonight we were so stale even she can’t save us.

I decided to talk to Alex and Jer about adding new songs but that would have to wait till Monday at school. And the other problem was where can we practice? The last time we practiced at Bobby’s house his mom caught Vic and his girl making out in the kitchen. I don’t think they were doing anything really heavy or she would have made us all leave. She just made the girl leave. No problem for Vic. He’s the lead guitar. He has lots of groupies. Whoever that girl was, there’ll be another one to replace her. Vic and Alex were in a silent competition to see who could attract the most girls. By my calculations, Vic was up by about three since Alex had fallen in love with one of his victims and had been dating her steadily for a couple of months. Alex was a social climber but Vic was a collector. We all envied Vic.

Alex could sound as though he actually played tennis.

Alex’s criteria for girlfriends were simple but fairly high for a guy from a lower class background. The girls had to be good looking and they had to be two or three steps higher than he in the social ladder. He was a charming guy, able to affect a sort of sophistication that fooled a lot of girls and some adults. He never found out that for three months last Fall his girlfriend and I had been busy learning about each others bodies in her parents’ bedroom. For all his charm, pseudo-sophistication and numerous girlfriends, Alex’s explorations with sex were very timid and his girl was really curious about the carnality she was feeling. She confided her frustration to me and to use a time worn cliché, one thing led to another and we managed to satisfy each others curiosity. They continued dating for a few more months then broke up when Alex found what he thought was a better looking girl.

We got together at Bobby’s to practice but Bobby couldn’t get the bass runs and that threw Jer’s drumming off which threw Alex off so we gave up on two new songs after two and a half hours of trying. Bobby’s mother looked in and counted heads. Satisfied that everybody’s feet and hands were where they were supposed to be she went back to her gardening in the back yard.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

May, 1965

The next show was in a little farming town about 30 miles south. We had to go with the same 17 songs again but we figured we’d be ok. The kids there were starved for live entertainment even if it meant hearing the same songs several times. It was a school dance in a good sized auditorium called El Rancho Grande. It was on a Friday night so we had to hustle out of school, pack our stuff and race to make it in time. The problems started right away. Bobby wanted to bring his girl and Sylvia’s cousin visiting from Colorado wanted to come too. So we were eight people, guitars, amplifiers and a full set of drums stuffed into a smallish station wagon and a 4 door sedan. It was summer. It was hot. We were packed in so tight we could barely breathe. Ten miles out of town Sylvia’s cousin announced that she had to pee. There were no bathrooms for miles around this farm country so I told her she’d have to hold on for the next 20 miles or get out of the car and pee by the roadside. Five miles later she said I gotta go now. So we stopped. We all laughed when Jer said, “I wonder if she’ll be pissed off when she comes back”. 

The Blue Rocker's Tour Bus

 

If I meet him I'll ask him to forgive us

I guess there were about 150 kids at the Rancho Grande waiting for us to arrive. The stage was about 4 feet above the dance floor, much higher than at the other places where we played. The kids had to look up at us at steep angle which made them look like hungry puppies waiting for us to give them treats. The chaperones assigned to guard the virtue of the girls were stationed at the entrance, the three exits and at various points along the walls. We started the show as usual with Vic playing a credible version of “Memphis”. Vic was good and the rest of us were just adequate for this number. It didn’t matter to the kids. They jumped and danced, working off weeks worth pent up energy. Then we did “Johnny Be Good” with me and Alex singing a duet followed by an extended version of “Twist and Shout”. The dancing kids were exhausted and some of them looked to us hopefully, as though asking us to give them a slow dance so they could rest a little and to have an excuse to rub their bodies against each other. It was time for Sylvia to show her stuff. That girl had a mellow voice that belonged in a bikini, and her body was a perfect 34-34-34. She sang “Sixteen Candles”, another slow song then ripped into “Kansas City”. We took our first break.

Vic had already singled out a nice looking girl who was alone at the dance. He’d given her several looks as he played so when we took our break he moved fast to cut her out of the herd. Alex watched from the stage, biting his lip as he mentally added one more win in Vic’s column. Jer and Bobby went outside to get some air. I went to get Sylvia a coke while she talked with several guys who had gathered around her.

We were about to begin the second set when we noticed that Vic wasn’t there. Jer hustled out to look for him but came back a couple of minutes later shaking his head  --- no Vic. We had to go without him. Alex said let’s play “Green Onions”. Good choice. It was simple to play and he knew that I had been practicing the lead portion of the song. But there were two problems. I would have to use Vic’s guitar because his amp had more power than mine and he played with the guitar high up on his chest so the strap was too short for me. To solve this I sat on a chair off stage and we played it through. Towards end of the song we saw Vic out in the crowd stretching his neck up, standing on his toes trying to see who was playing the lead. He was angry about us playing without him but got over it when he saw that I was the usurper.

It was over at 11:30. Our audience was tired but excited. A few of them told us they liked our band and when were we doing another show. I helped Jer with his drums while Bobby and his girl were cooing at each other against a wall. Alex was trying to score some points with the girl Vic had captured but she only had eyes for Vic who had most likely promised to call her the next day. Sylvia, whose only gear was an enormous purse, watched us pack up.

Driving home everybody was in a good mood. We kidded each other about playing the wrong notes or losing the beat but we were tired and soon a few of us nodded off.

$2 would buy 6 gallons of fuel

Five miles from the city limits we stopped for gas and everybody got out of the cars and stood around while I pumped $2.00 worth of gas. I gave the attendant a $20 bill. It was from the cash we’d been paid for our show and it was the smallest denomination I had. He couldn’t make change because the owner only left $10 in the till after midnight. Since the gas was already in the car he couldn’t let us go and be short in his register tally so he called the owner to ask him what to do.

The guy couldn't break my $20 bill

 I leaned on the counter as I waited. Outside, the guys were leaning against the cars. Vic had set fire to one of his stinky Delicados and was probably bragging to Alex about the girl he corralled at the dance. I could see Alex giving Vic his man-of-the-world smirk, “Yeah, I did that, too”. But Vic knew better. Jer was drumming on the fender with his fingers, apparently explaining to Bobby some new rhythm he wanted to try. I could tell Bobby was listening because every time his girl pulled his arm he would shrug it off. Sylvia and her cousin were talking, their heads close together.

What a crew. We were the Blue Rockers who together could string enough guitar and drum sounds in unison to make people dance. None of us had enough talent to play at a higher level than the one we occupied. None of us had aspirations to move on to better bands. We didn’t kid ourselves that we would ever be any better than we were now. But, damn, it was fun.

      Disclaimer 1: Some of the characters in this writing are fictional and some are not. Some of the events described actually happened and some did not but more than 45 years on, I don't remember which is which

~ Time Served

     Disclaimer 2: No musical instruments were harmed by the Blue Rockers, unlike the music on which they visited much violence.
~ Time Served

Just nod and say, "Uh, Huh"

On December 31, 2007, 12:00 PM I left my office for the last time. There was no one there to bid me farewell, wish me luck, or lament my leaving. All my co-workers were on Christmas holiday. I redirected my phone line to the secretary’s phone, turned off the lights, locked the doors and went home. I was unemployed and officially laid off but eligible for recall by my former company though I was pointedly told that that would not happen. The company I worked for had been sold.

Some people think it’s ironic that after spending my entire adult life working on and with consumer electronics (TV’s, stereos, satellite dishes) I don’t own a TV. The same people might think I’m being elitist in some way that lets me brag about the fact that I don’t watch television like the vast majority of lesser folks. Actually, the reason is more prosaic. I don’t have a TV because there isn’t much I want to watch. Paying subscription fees to DirecTV or Comcast doesn’t make sense if you’re only interested in a handful of programs; and furthermore, if you miss those programs, there is a ‘so what’ moment in which you understand that if you never see those shows again your life will not change in any way whatsoever.

"Everybody lies" ~ House

The other night I was watching an episode of “House, M.D.” on Hulu. “House” is about a brilliant doctor whose misanthropy closely mirrors mine. My mastery of my profession doesn’t remotely resemble House’s fictional one but we are pretty close in our views about human nature. But all that aside, Hulu provides its internet users with current TV programs for free but has periodic commercial breaks. The frequency of the interruptions is about the same as regular TV watching but with a curious addition. The commercials are interactive. As the commercial plays a message appears at the top right of the computer screen asking: “Is this advertising relevant to you?  “Yes”  /  “No”. You can click “Yes” or “No” and Hulu responds with a polite thank you message.

I usually respond “No” because commercials for women’s makeup don’t apply to me. I already have good insurance; I don’t eat fast foods; my pets eat store brand kibble; I don’t suffer from high blood pressure, anxiety, chronic back pain, irritable bowel syndrome, or rickets; I’m not looking for a new car. In fact, based on my “No” responses my relevance to Hulu’s commercial sponsors is zero. I cement my disinterest even more by muting the sound during commercials, which if there is some way they can know this too, the advertisers could in theory, block my access but that would be overkill. Besides, I could be watching the program, muted commercials and all, with someone for whom the advertising is relevant. 

Dr. House was busy solving yet another mystery that had baffled the entire medical community. The scene closed as House insulted his staff for 137^th time. I looked away as the commercial played and saw a photograph of me petting Nipper, our company mascot, almost eighteen years ago. Considering that the pup was about 4 years old at the time, he must be over 150 years old now. And I’ll bet any money that I’m in better shape than he is. The color picture has been fading steadily and in a few years it will scarcely be visible. I’m fading from that memento as surely as I’m fading into irrelevance in the workaday world. 

 

In Doggy Dollars he earned 7 times my salary

Even though that sounds gloomy, the opposite is true. Anonymity has been sort of an unplanned goal of mine for many years. Just as I did, nearly every working person I’ve known in the last forty years has said that they daydream about being ‘out of the rat race’. Well, it feels great to be free of office hours, frequent travel, annoying co-workers, deadlines, freeway traffic, and PTA meetings, among dozens of other demands of pre-retirement life.

I've Fallen and I can't get up

My cell phone is permanently turned off. Telemarketers are discouraged from calling my home phone because I signed up with the Do Not Call directory. When LDS members knock on my door I tell them that I’m a lapsed Mormon and they flee as though from the devil himself. I got that tip from a friend who told me LDS members are commanded to have no contact whatsoever with members who have “fallen” into apostasy.

I actually like people but only for short periods unless they know something I want to know. My reserve of small talk so tiny that I have to prepare and rehearse bits of information whenever I know I’m going to be among people other than my family. Using a trick I learned from my dog, I do a lot of nodding and cocking my head when someone tells me details about their lives that they shouldn’t be telling anyone but their Confessor. 

No......... I did not know Snooki was such a bitch

A long time ago I read a dedication to book whose title I’ve forgotten now. To paraphrase the dedication it said that if you can sit perfectly still, the world will unfurl itself at your feet. I took that to mean that if you paid attention and listened closely you could know everything you would ever need to know. With today’s technology I can sit perfectly still and watch the world unfurl itself on my laptop. My fast internet connection allows me to know of events large and small from the world over. I partake of lots of silliness as well as hard news about various predations taking place here and elsewhere. Thanks to the internet I can take a long view of history which tells me that the arrival of Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse isn’t imminent. In fact, they haven’t even saddled up yet. 

Lots of horsepower and horse pucky

It’s really hard to organize even a smallnumber of individuals to do anything in unison. Just ask any high school basketball coach. 

Just once, can you do it like you practiced?

 

The world may not know or care who or where I am but I know where the world is.