Tape title stories

 That's cast rather a gloom over the evening, hasn't it     The line is poached from a Monty Python scene where death visits a dinner party and ends up taking the host with him to the underworld after much polite conversation. It seems this is the way that the god damn reaper has quietly fucked up my golden years since many of my precious memories can now be shared only with the dead. I suppose it all started with my friend Teresa who was taken by brest cancer in 2000 after really giving the disease a battle. Teresa and I had some really rough fights in letters but we remained close because we knew eachothers weaknesses and lived with the flaws. We had the rare pleasure of saying our last words together as "I love you." I let her in and she knew the soft spots and the ignorant parts. I was lucky enough to have a good group of pals that I knew had my back but I never thought about them not being there when I turned to them. When I got a worried call from Nick Caskey I...

    My Randall Knife      There is a song I love by the great Guy Clark called "the Randall knife" that explains a lot about a relationship between sons and fathers. The knife symbolized his father's humanity and when he died the son wanted only one thing from his legacy.  I was there when my Dad spit out the bit but I did not cry or moan in grief like I did when my Mom did the same. The relationships my brother and I  had with my Dad was complicated and far from ideal because he was a great provider but not an ideal role model. It is a huge cliche about how your father gets smarter as you age but in my case it is all about my understanding of his struggles with his role in polite society along with the weakness for gin that demolished part of his family life. My brother has never forgiven him for his abusive reaction to being shackled to respectable behavior that restricted his true self. He was soft in self-control but powerful in the ways of c...

 ..to live like a Lord                                       the white cliffs of dover 1967      Anglophilia had spread across America in the mid-sixties as the British Invasion flowed from radios and TVs into the old Yankee colony. I was always fascinated by the accent and the fact I had a quarter of English blood in my own veins. The coolest cat in the world was James Bond and the Beatles could do no wrong. As I finished High School and stopped and started my studies at Compton JC my English fever heated up like the weather never was in the old country. At Compton in 1967 I was very fortunate to take a class in English History from the greatest teacher in my life, the venerable Doc Umstead who made learning like listening to a favorite song. By the time Doc took me through the War of the Roses and the evil of Oliver Cromwell I just had to get to Great Britain. The topper ...

 Finish your coke...       I am from a family of eavesdroppers and this dates back to my Mom who would repeat what the clueless dopes at the next table said when we went out for dinner. It was a little treat to drive over to Long Beach blvd. for the old-fashioned Cantonese Chinese dinner at Hao's that gave her a break from cooking and pleased we spoiled kids who learned to love Egg Fu Yung, almond chicken, fried rice and dry noodles for an appetizer at a great spot in Belmont Shore. You had to stand in line for that place but Hao's was an easy walk-in. The acoustics were ideal for listening in also. We sat in a booth next to a threesome of an old depression generation couple with a neighbor. It was obvious the old man had no interest in this exotic fare and looked miserable, slumped on his side of the table. Mom was berating Pop for being a culinary stick-in-the-mud telling her lady-friend "All Paw wants to eat is ham n' beans, just ham n' beans." The sentenc...

  Dear...were you menstruating?      Strange how mentioning things that were unheard of back when they happened are now commonplace. Even in the let the freak fly 1960's it would be quite rare to speak about women's private parts or men's "business" as my Mom called the package. The P-word was quite jarring outside of boys who were not near females and being boys. In my senior year of High School, the chapter on Human Reproduction was removed from the Physiology book and left at school. You would not want the boy pervs masturbating while looking at those diagrams of fallopian tubes! What was even more rare was our parents talking openly about sex and their attitudes about forbidden topics were downright prudish. If you put five boys in a car on the way somewhere the conversation was all about sex in the vernacular but at home the mere mention of a penis would cause terrible embarassment. Even when one of the dogs let his "flashlight battery" stick out i...

 when tripping... part 2                                                                 the way back     The over three hour hike back towards our camp was some of the most grueling steps of my young life. Several times I felt I could not continue and suggested they leave me behind to die. My ankle was puffed up and my tank was on empty. We had left the creek far behind and dehydration was a factor in the exhaustion. Instead of the wonders of nature it was just rocks, dirt, dust and wheezing hikers. I was the only one lagging and felt like a hike failure. There was no more liquid in my body to sweat out the acid but after an eternity Ed's VW was in sight. I  desperately lurched into the back seat toward the cooler and found a can of actually cold Shasta Root Beer that tasted like an IV of sugar life. I inhale...

 When Tripping...be prepared and be careful- part one     In 1975 when I was a lad of 27, living on Church Lane a camping craze had gripped the fellas and the addition of psychedelics made even a mundane spot seem like paradise. As has been mentioned youth and drugs together often included poor planning and bungled results. However, if the camping trip described here lacked good sense it did provide great stories forever. In my short experience of hippy living as a part of  the Augustine Glass contingent I camped out with parts of that crew in the wilds of the Sespe Condor Sanctuary out near Filmore in the canyons of the Topatopa mountains. The wilderness area was once home for Chumash indians who named the place Sespe meaning "kneecap" in their language. Since I just followed some seasoned hippy hikers in my previous trip I had no real idea of what such a trek would entail. We got our hands on some blotter acid and drew a group together that included me, Zeke, Ed...