Photo of a wood waste basket I made in shop classin 1960
This late spring morning as I was making our bed, I began humming my high school rally song. “Fight for dear old Henry High” I called an old classmate and had a great conversation. We went deep which was a pleasure. The school has now been renamed and the involved people wanted to name it after Prince the rock star. It didn’t happen due to my old friend who intervened.
The memories meanwhile, flooded in and Ken and I talked a long while with my cell phone on the kitchen table, volume up high with the mic turned over the table edge. An illuminating chat and went far deeper than I thought it would. Similar eye surgeries, stacks of books at hand near our chairs in the living room type of connections.
The title of this column refers to the memories of my favorite author, C.S. Lewis. Preparatory schools with all the unpleasant clothing and such for him. It’s universal among us all. We remember the odd things about those 12 or 16 years. Everyone tried to overcome the isolation and angst that came with education in a public school. The clubs, the teams of athletics and the clicks that we were part of or not. Competition for high grades or outrageous behavior. I was a combination of geek and outrageous. Harley chopper and lecturing on Einstein’s theory of relativity in physics class. Trying to fit in somewhere.
It didn’t help that my mother was the assistant principals secretary either. A connection to power and influence. Plutonium residue upon my prescience. I had three friends and sold my motorcycle to one of them after high school. It would be worth five figures or so today. Hundred bucks and I needed money to get to the exciting town of San Diego. At least I took my briefcase and slide rule with to there.
A rather interesting story that is found in the archives of this website. Auto biography of Norm chapter 2 gives more detail of this adventure.
There is a loss in our communities that seems like a gain! The texting phenomenon has made writing letters obsolete and to many, cheaper and faster. Pen and Ink started to loose ground when the typewriter was introduced. The expense of ink wells, and ink stains was replaced with typewriter ribbons and skill.
I learned to touch type in the military and I got fast. Electric typewriters and carbon paper worked well. With top secret letters there were no carbon copies allowed. Now there is a new skill, typing on the screen of a cell phone. I have not embraced typing with both thumbs while holding a phone. I am fascinated and irritated at our civilization that has become hunched over while walking or standing, holding ‘the phone’ and writing and reading letters of sorts. Texting along with fun emojis and video clips. How about a three pound Bakelite model? I remember our bag phone and of course, my hand held Amateur radio. The ham radio did not need a phone number to talk to someone. A call sign worked but many times the beginning message was; CQ anyone there?
What I am getting around to is the act of writing and reading. Sitting down quietly while doing so.
I love to write and these columns are much easier to type with Word Press as it checks my spelling and syntax as I type. I have a short term memory issue, often real short time when I am physically writing a word and leave off a letter and skip on to the next one. Leaving off a vowel for instance. I can see my mistake and the software catches it and shows it to me. But that is a byline for this column, I revere actual writing with pen or pencil and using a stamp and an envelope to have USPS deliver my letter.
The major point is keeping in touch, not speedily but with intent beyond the rush of our current lives. “Rushing in not from the devil, it Is the devil” I believe that impatience is included. C.S. Lewis
I have sent a few letters lately to some friends. Some of which I have not seen nor heard from in decades. Several of them have never been answered although I know they were received because they were not returned with address unknown or such postal information. Phone calls work too but we are usually in a rush and an unexpected phone call from a friend of years past is surprising and hard to respond to if you are driving or setting down to lunch in a cafe. I like re-reading and even have a manila envelope for personal letters. It’s good. Phone numbers are passe. There used to be a book called a phone directory. They were hanging by a chain in phone booths. The is no cell phone directory hanging there.
Is there someone you send letters to and wonder if they will ever answer? There is also a very important type of letter that is spoken in private! These letters are referred to as prayer. It’s just me and the Lord alone and I tell Him how things are going and ask questions and have requests too. If my heart is calm and I am speaking in truth and love, I know my prayer is being heard. Peaceful and knowing and feeling His presence.
Often it seems my prayers have not been answered. The way I wanted them to be. Healing, provision for me or someone else. There is also the conversion to faith of someone that I have known a long time or just met. Evangelism. God hears these requests and stretches out his mighty arm and strong right hand and fulfills that prayer. Instantly in many ways we do not see and is always a perfect response from Him. Prayer is essential for all of us. Letters to the lover of our souls.
Someone obviously prayed for me to reach out to Christ, years ago, decades. It happened just the way it was supposed to happen. Why did it take so long? I have no idea and there is no answer until I read the book about me that no one this side of eternity can read. As C.S. Lewis says: “Every chapter is better than the last one you read”
“What is truth?” An old question that goes back to Mars Hill in Greece. Also the original question in the garden. “Did god really say?” Also the question that Pilate asked Jesus a few thousand years back. Jesus did not answer as the Truth was standing right in front of Pilate.
He knew this question of all philosophers as an educated citizen of Rome. Pilate spoke and wrote in Greek, Latin and Hebrew. He wrote the sign above Jesus on the cross. In those 3 languages.A letter posted for all to see throughout history. ‘Jesus of Nazareth King of the Jews’ . Some of the locals disagreed and Pilate said what I have written stands.
The very gift of God will be all we need to keep sending those prayers/letters to him. I know so little of these things but I rely on that gift that gives me peace and confidence that my prayers are heard. Faith.
Do you ever wonder what happens when someone you know or someone you just met, says “I’ll pray about it” Do we follow through? I used to fudge it and forget the promise within a short period of time. Those four words were a dismissive phrase for me. Not anymore. I am growing up and taking responsibility for my life and the things I say and do. There is so little time left for me, and for you.
I was on an official Prayer team at a very large church that seats over 2000 people and we were told to stand in front of them just as the service had ended and with lanyards that said prayer, be available to anyone that came ahead. I loved it. Many times no one came, but the few that did are sharp in memory.
I had to be vetted and interviewed to be on that team and that is very correct to do so. You can surmise the interviews that took place. The teams prayed a lot and I learned how to do so from them.
I am now in production at that church, media, and I also love that. Presenting the songs to the room as messages of praise to the Lord right then and there. The professional musicians know that it is much more than having a good time or playing a good song. We all sing with them and we get to touch eternity.
It seems so long ago that the Re-birth occurred for me. An epiphany is a good description or a sudden awareness of being (that one sounds new age) This event was sudden but had many events and a ‘cocoon’ before it occurred. I wrote about it in the column, ‘Consuming Fire Fan into Flame”.
The back story was an escape from hibernation, a cocoon that I did not see nor notice. I was swaddled up comfy in my life of sorts before the re-birth. You have read some of those stories as well. They are all true. There is one thing about a cocoon that is necessary, growth and strength acquisition. It is common and I saw one last spring, it was hanging beneath a milk weed leaf. A place where a Monarch butterfly was taking shape.
Dangling from that leaf, built by a worm that crawled up and used it’s spit to anchor itself. It spun the chrysalis (another name for cocoon) somehow. It’s called metamorphosis and the study can be described as such. A good word would be a scientific focused study on the metamorphic process’? One such study answered the question: “Is it painful for the butterfly?” Through extensive electric wave analysis on an oscilloscope, it was determined that it was not painful. Go ahead and chuckle at that one.
The same folks that track the emotions of carrots that know you are coming to yank it out of the ground. I don’t even want to know what that would see in me. More later on that. my growth was very painful but also necessary. You don’t need an oscilloscope to see that.
To get on with the epiphany I experienced, just thinking about that monarch’s life was stunning enough.
Why was it designed that way? And the pivotal evidence seen, was the gold ring around the very top of the chrysalis. Small gold dots, perfectly spaced and a very strong message indeed is there, if we choose to look at it.
First off, what do we usually associate with gold rings? Marriage and crowns for honor. A king or a Queen. Soon enough, the chrysalis splits open and the Monarch begins to emerge. Can you even imagine what process this is? The wings fully developed and folded up like a plane in the hanger of an aircraft carrier, just waiting for the freedom of flight.
How does this miracle of transformation apply to us? I have found myself just trying out those wings I was given not too long ago. Wings that not only speak freedom but purpose and direction. A flight path, a sudden internal gyro that stabilizes my glide path or flapping through this short life I have been given. It seems short when many decades cruise by with the longing for something more.
We have been built and created for something more. We hunger for it. We do everything in our power and wisdom to live as long as possible, but it is only vanity to grasp the wind. As we grasp at the wind, the astonishing thing is an answer to that hunger for more. A meaning and purpose and beauty that we, in our chrysalis have been waiting for. Eternity to wear that gold crown and hang out with the creator of all and gaze upon His glorious splendor as he grasps us and gives us the crown, as we gaze upon the beauty of real treasure, Him.
The story and promise of crowned beauty beyond description. If we wish this transformation with all our heart, soul, and spirit, the treasure will be ours forever. It’s pretty good. Norm aka Jack Gator
My back was not so good from my Berkeley projectionist job as I had to also pick up the popcorn boxes under the seats and sweep up too. The earlier three thousand plus miles on the Enfield bike put wear on my lower back facets. A lot of bending working the theater, and my back ‘went out’ A doctor I visited told me to have a lot of bed rest, cold packs and of course, I lost the theater job. I did not know about workman’s comp and the owners were not telling me either.
After I began to heal, I was invited to go on plane rides with a pilot that had a room down the hall in the mansion. We flew into various places and it was a thrill to fly alongside an expert pilot. He flew with the German Luftwaffe in WWII. We flew sideways through Yellowstone once.
He was curious about my extensive radio background and asked me to build a portable radio that is used for ground to air communication and also ground to ground. I was paid good money just to do that in the desert for his smuggling operation. Perfectly safe and harmless marijuana from Mexico. It was almost legal in California and everyone smoked it. Why not?
I got to meet the ground crew on a practice run and they were older and liked to carry around wheel guns. They parked a miles away from the end of an inland landing strip with limited tower presence, and I went up to my designated hill.
A perfect contact to the plane and the ground crew. They didn’t know a thing about communications and just got frustrated and drove back to a rendezvous area. The plane landed spent a short time, did a 180 and roared away. I had an odd feeling about this, and so went out to where the plane made a U turn. The sand was packed and hard and when I puttered up I saw a lot of ‘sea bags’ in the moonlight.
Somehow I buried all of them but two and took those to the rendezvous area. Knocking on the camper door, I got a gun in my face. I proclaimed what I had done and I unloaded the two sea bags. Something illegal for certain. VW beetles are rather scarce in roominess. They do have good traction and that made traction in that sand easier. I made two more trips and the drill was over. “Well done” the pilot said back at the mansion. I wondered what the bags really had inside and was told it was smuggled pot from Mexico! The money man was a famous rock star, Sly Stone who lived right across the bay in San Francisco.
Not too much later, I was really getting used to the money with the pilot and his girlfriend, and whole business. Rent was not an issue and I was wanted as a team member. Just like being useful back on board ship. There was a lot of my back pain and the team got me comfy with a powdery pain reliever. Heroin.
The pilot that paid the rent was very kind to me and the heroin was very pleasant and I liked it, a lot. One day, in my room alone, I was eager for another snort of the powder and heard a clear voice behind me say: “Life or death—choose now” I quickly turned around and there was no one there. The door to the room was still closed. I stared at the pain reliever and remembered how good I felt using it. The pain of all the rejections in my life as well as my current back issue. I no longer lingered on my recent Minneapolis fiance that I met just after discharge that ran off with an actor from the Guthrie and my hard childhood trauma. It was more than pleasant to not be consumed with any pain.
After a short while, it was obvious what the voice meant and I said “life?” My addiction was gone instantly and there was no withdrawal either. Of course it was the Lord saving me for His plan. I bundled up the remaining heroin and took it down the hall to the pilot’s room. “I don’t need this” and the pilot was surprised with an odd expression on his face. Another friend introducing me to drugs. I never searched out those things, they found me. No income and shunned by the pilot and co-pilot (RAF vet)
Obviously, I saw homelessness coming and I bought an old International pickup truck and built a camper in the bed. It was finished and cozy with French doors on the tailgate area and those two rugs I thought I bought from the earlier resident in what was now my room. I slept on the narrow one. Wool Oriental. Class again. There was even a skylight of Plexiglas and windows on the French doors in the back. The couple that I replaced in the mansion lived down in the flats and helped me build the camper. A chop saw, jig saw, some hand tools and a Swiss army knife did the job in short order. Time to get mobile.
After being told to leave the mansion, a new job came into view. Playing guitar in front of the Safeway grocery store in Oakland for while and garnering enough change to buy a can of Dinty Moore beef stew, drive over the bay bridge and park at McClure’s beach. Enough money for Bridge tools and gas too.
Open those French doors, get out the little one burner stove and enjoy an ocean like one I so recently used to be on. I still have a can of it now and then a half century later. Looks and tastes the same. Julie is amazed I would eat the stuff but it IS nutritious and the potatoes stay firm in the sauce.
The chow was OK. Plain but it satisfied. Out of the mansion and into homelessness. Not by choice, but it worked. Sometimes people would put groceries in the open guitar case. A banana or two, things like that.
The smugglers acquaintances found out where my new venue was. They offered me sympathy for the loss of my ‘job’ and said they had a place for me to stay and clean up a in ‘the city’. The tenant was gone for a few weeks and I enjoyed the luxury of a real house. A few days later, there was a knock on the door and I opened it up to a well dressed man with a pistol in my face and a badge to back it up. Just like the movies with cars parked diagonally and other guys in suits next to them.
The official from Federal immigration told me “Hold it right there. He called me by the pilot’s name from the mansion job. After a ‘pleasant’ conversation in the living room, I convinced the government men with the badges that the pilot had left the country with my girl. I was a very controlled angry man and it was a good improvised act and they left. One of the other agents was fiddling with the telephone in the living room. The fellow that that was obviously in charge told him to ‘knock it off’. One of the agents came dashing in the door stating: “It never was red!” I realized they were confused searching for a red truck. My truck was green. I had painted it with a brush under the eucalyptus trees up in Tilden park. It started out primer black. Pretty good job painting an old pickup with a brush. The painting was thorough but thick here and there. Brush was a toss.
The pilot’s truck was in Mexico by then. Later, after all the afternoon excitement, I was interested’ in leaving and looking for a broom to clean up for my unknown host, I found some book sized plastic bags stacked in the closet about waist high. I then knew what was in the sea bags! I grabbed my meager belongings and my guitar and decided to hit the road with my homemade camper. Quickly.
It seemed that I had been set up to make sure disappeared for a while. The shower had hot water and the pressure was good too. But It seemed prudent to leave. The broom went quickly back into the closet and it was time to head back across the bay bridge. Safeway was waiting for my Martin D-28 rosewood guitar. It still has a good tone.
I lived in the camper for a while, and played at the food market. A bully from Oakland approached me as I was playing an old country blues song. He said; “whatcho gonna do if I take dat guitar?” Big guy. With conviction and eye contact, I told that man: “I’ll just fight you for it till one of us dies” After a stare down, the man turned away and said “That’s cool” Oh well, work place harassment. That Martin was the only thing that allowed me to make it for the can of stew, gas, and bridge tolls. Death and taxes. One or the other, nothing new. Bluffing worked in Kansas and I am good at it. Poker face. Actually, I meant it and he saw that in my calm demeanor.
An old friend of Bruce’s found me at the Oakland Safeway sidewalk and he had a big sack of rice with him. Change of menu. He said: “Want to get out of here and go with me to a commune in Oregon?” Sure! We put the bag of rice in the back of the camper and headed off to Eugene.
Another adventure ensued and that was the end of that part of the motorcycle pilgrimage. Off to live with the hippies up north in Eugene. A typical commune of the sixties story. 30 people in one house and with one bathroom. Shortly back to Minneapolis via Omaha. Next stop, West bank. Check out ’40 acres of musicians’ It’s pretty good. Jack Gator
Bruce left a week or so after we arrived in Berkeley. He had enough adventure after our ride out. I am not certain how he got back. He stayed over in town at Earl Crabb’s (Humbeads Map of the world creator) place for a while and in Hollywood at John Braheny’s. After that, we lost touch. I stayed on at the mansion on Shasta Road in Berkeley.
I got a good job at the local art theater as a projectionist. We showed odd films like ‘The Apu Trilogy’ and it was fun. I knew carbon Arc’s as that was what we used on our ships to signal night or day. They were bigger than the movie projectors. Bright.
I Showed a picture about a crazed sniper that had a scene where he was shooting a movie projectionist just as he was peeking through a small window to see the next switchover to the second projector. It’s old tech. There are small white dots in the upper frame of the movie, on the third dot I would pull the lever to turn one on and the other one off. In the movie, the sniper was drawing his bead at that changeover time. Exactly. I started crouching down and getting weirded out. Post production staff humor.
I had to clean up all the popcorn boxes after the show and it took a toll on my back. I was most in a front bend from all the riding and bouncing about as well. I got some doctoring and workman’s comp for a while. I had to lie on a window seat bench at the mansion until Charlie moved out. I got his room and things were doing OK. An interesting German pilot was in another room down the hall and he had a fireplace.
There were other tenants. An English professor that taught at the college and an odd girl that had emotional fits now and then. She would throw herself down the stairway on occasion and sob at the bottom. I went over and held her until she calmed down once or twice. I knew what she needed as I can be like that. Self esteem and frustration in communication for sure. The other tenements were lase and used to it. I was used to the feeling from childhood. I am worthless, unloved.
The owners were overseas acquiring art work of some sort and life there was working out for me. It seemed to fit as I was another art fixture in the house as were we all. Musicians, Professors, An ex Fighter pilot from WWII and the like. Nice place, fireplaces everywhere and you could see the San Francisco bay from the western windows. 5 Million dollars plus even then. Rent was affordable!
I fell in with a crowd of Jaguar owners at the local coffee shop (Mr. Peets first one on the Northside) and they, of course, were as crazy as the rest of the Bay Area people were. Janis Joplin, Big Brother and the holding company, Grace Slick and Jimi Hendrix. Sly stone was somehow connected with the fighter pilot.
It was gloriously crazy in 1968 and I was finally where I wanted to be. Living with people that were on the same path of Timothy Leary’s dreams of “Smash your brains, Crack Em’” LSD, pot and other drugs flowed down Lombard street to Haight Ashbury and then across the bay bridge to Berkeley. Mario Stavio and the free speech movement and my new friend that played Boogie Woogie piano, crazy Mike. A Chinese Jag mechanic in the mix and I fit right in with my Martin D-28.
Joan Baez played a parlor Martin and she was . Bob Zimmerman was still back in Minneapolis at the 10 o’clock scholar getting warmed up for world fame. It was pretty good.
One night, crazy mike had us jumping with his piano. It was an upstairs apartment and there came a knock on his door. It was the police. They told him after 10 he had to stop making ‘noise’ as the neighborhood was not on board with bold rhythm. Oscar Peterson stuff with swing extraordinary skill.
The next night, at precisely ten o’clock, mike blasted out the window with a big battery bullhorn. “You may have noticed that I have stopped playing” He did and we loved it.
Joan Baez played a parlor Martin and she was the musical ballerina of folk. Bob Zimmerman (Dylan) was still back in Minneapolis at the 10 o’clock scholar getting warmed up for world fame with Joan and other class acts. They all had National Enquirer possibilities but Rolling Stone was rolling of off the press along with Mad Magazine. Hipsters and hucksters abounded in the bay area and I got entwined with Sly Stone after a little more adventure. Any musician that was riding the surf roaring under the golden gate was there.
Music was on the move in the bay area and we were riding that wave. We thought we were pretty neat and inside the sine wave of progress and coolness. Rebels with a cause. Obnoxious with charisma.
Sitting at their campsite, Bruce and I talked the day over. “we agreed no weapons with” We wondered what we would do if the local boys came as told they would. “We’ve got the tent poles that we aren’t using tonight!” I believed this was Bruce’s solution. “We can carry those poles under our right arms so that only the metal Farrell’s show! They will think we have shotguns” We wondered if this was possible. “Is that the best idea you’ve got?” It was settled and the we settled in our sleeping bags under the stars on this moonlit night.
Sure enough, around midnight, the sound of slamming pickup doors was heard from the parking lot of the campground. “Well, here we go” We started walking towards the young toughs side by side on the pathway. Our tent poles pointed at the ground and the moonlight reflecting off of metal exposed. The metal that was just meant to join one pole to another. “ Don’t shoot till we’re a little closer” Bruce said in a very loud whisper. Those small town punks took one look at us and those pickup doors slammed shut again. There was a roar of a small block engine, and the townies were gone.
Not long afterward, the town cop showed up with his squad and somewhat surprised asked: “You boys OK?” Sure, quiet night officer we answered. Puzzled and baffled that weren’t a couple of bodies lying about, the town cop nodded his head and drove off. Tipped off by the townies, just checking for the carnage. we decided to break camp early and slipped away at midnight. Headed for the Oklahoma panhandle and close to the famous route 66. Seemed a safe and promising thing to do.
The next town was indeed in Oklahoma and it was a bright Sunday morning when Bruce pulled over to the side of the road with his engine racing up and down. “What’s going on Bruce?” It seemed the BMW did not want to connect the engine with the desired ahead motion. Sitting next to one another on the ground of the well groomed grass, we began to disassemble the drive train of the bike. We were getting pretty good at those sorts of things. A short time later Bruce announced: “It’s the woodruff key on the driveshaft, it’s sheared off!”
Looking at the Sunday afternoon one horse town was not encouraging. There seemed to be tumble weeds blowing down the short main street angled off the highway, no one was in sight and there was no traffic heard nor in sight. Great. Suddenly, A tall young man was in back of them asking “What’s the matter boys?” They looked at the young man and said rather sadly, “sheared a woodruff key on the driveshaft.” That man didn’t even blink about a motorcycle having a driveshaft and in a calm voice said: “My father owns the hardware store and I’ve got the keys, lets go see what we can do”
Astonished, they followed him and his keys as he walked down an alley to a door and opened it. Turning to them, he said: “go to that Graymills cabinet over there and pull open that top drawer. There, back in the third compartment, 8 millimeter.?.take a few” They took about three of them. Back to the bikes Bruce put the key in the driveshaft and fit with a perfect ‘snick’ We turned to eagerly thank the tall young man and he was nowhere in sight. It came out as: “Hey Bruce…were did he go?” It wasn’t until decades later I laughed and finally got the line “My father owns the hardware store and I’ve got the keys” Of course, the Lord, our Father owns everything!
.. After the dust- bowl town with the Angel and the woodruff key, we were on Route 66 and westward bound. Gas was cheap back then our slim wallets still had enough to get to ‘the city’ in California.
The bar up ahead looked promising after all that desert in Nevada. It appeared to have just been dropped into place. A small parking lot with two cars, one of them with California plates. There was literally, nothing visible from horizon to horizon. Just the endless highway. A few dust devils and actual sagebrush.
Out of the saddles and into the bar we strode, awkwardly as riding can do things to your body that doesn’t relate to standing and walking. It’s just the odd feeling from all that vibration that your hands are on opposite arms. Weird. Akin to my illusions at sea when land would not be visible. After a few weeks in the ‘middle’ if the ocean, it seems the ship is standing still and the water is flowing by!
Any way, most motorcycle riders get the upside down hands thing after 100 miles or so, no one talks about it. Our bikes were a little rougher on the road than today’s huge highway cruisers. Bruce’s BMW was a little smoother than the Indian Tomahawk/Enfield. I shudder even now thinking how it would have been on the 600cc Matchless single.
So after we shook off the muscle memories and went in, the bar had two women patrons and the barkeep. The two women were older and looked at those two young men like coyotes gazing upon a nice jack rabbit nearby. Smiles and almost instantly, an offer to cool down with a few cold ones. ‘Sure’! After a few (the women were drinking hard stuff) it was revealed that one of them was a California Senator and the other woman was the Senator’s aide.
Betty Fiorina was the Senators name, I never forgot it. It pops up now and then in the news and in my mind.
Lots of laughs and some mild flirtation ensued and it was time for the gals to hop into their Buick convertible and us to kick start the bikes and weave down the highway. Blood alcohol content, who cares? Not a car in sight and road hazards were an occasional sign and a few lizards or ruckchucks. 1. If you noticed, motorcycles now do not have kick starters. You have seen them in movies where you heave your body up in the saddle and push hard on the way down onto a pedal on the right side of the machine. It usually started on one kick.
Class act meets Brando and Lee Marvin and no one knew what to do except drink and laugh. Much later, a decade or two, I caught a name on some senate bill and it’s the same last name of the Senator they met. Family business. There was a photo and she looked very trim and self assured. Splitting image of mom.
Onward to Northern California and the back entrance to Berkeley on Shasta Road. Bruce was confident, I was just stunned. The place we wheeled up to had several chimneys, a tile roof and a pretty good view of the San Francisco bay . More class and style than either of us had ever experienced.
An old friend of Bruce’s, Charlie Jirousek, lived there with about six other people. He was a luthier and built guitars out of Brazilian Rosewood. So he was broke too. He also had a massive Malamute, North, that shed hair at a bodacious rate. A month later, Charlie covered the C.F. Martin logo on the tuning head with one of his, a mother of pearl arrow. His guitar business was called ‘Arrowhead’ I was concerned that even at this time, the Martin logo would encourage theft. It works. To this day musicians that hear of play it remark on it’s tone and beauty. “what is it?” I tell them to look inside the sound hole. Martin D-28.
Charlie had a big sack full of the hair and stated someday he would make a shirt out of it. 4 decades went by until the shirt appeared. It had an odd smell and dogs seemed attracted to Charlie. So The three of them spent a lot of time around the main living room fireplace playing guitars and eating peanut butter from Charlie’s jar. A half gallon jar. White bread used now and then. It was enjoyable for me to meet another person as pleasant and eccentric as we were.
To this day, I still enjoy a peanut butter sandwich with heavy butter on both slabs of bread. Add the thick crunchy style peanut butter. Those sandwich’s were free and the music was excellent and heart felt. A lot of joy around that fireplace.
We all knew what our lives were like as we played the same music. Leadbelly, Blind Blake, Willy McDowell. It’s called country blues music. There was one tune, Old Country Rock that just hit the spot. We played it a lot. It was pretty good. Norman Peterson / Jack Gator
1. Ruckchuck . An animal nearby in the weeds that makes a lot of noise. Scared away by an aluminum cooking pot swinging in front of our headlamps.
The trip was instantly planned with my new friend Bruce, just back from ‘Nam’ and anxious for safer adventures. I was fairly fresh from overseas as well, with Comservron 6 and several tours in the Mediterranean and the six day war with Russia and Egypt. We were on the Israeli side. It was dicey over there too. Lot’s of military muscle being deployed. Older Navy people know the nomenclature. It seemed our nation was muddled up in several wars. Fubar was the term. Bruce and I knew the score, or we thought we did. I was better off at sea. Bruce had just recovered from the Jungle and I had just recovered from a shipmate trying to kill me. We were both suffering from PTSD and it felt so good to just go on our own. It was the summer of love and we needed some of that whatever it was, it sounded good to us.
Older motorcycles and younger riders seemed just the solution of affordable transportation.
We had an easy itinerary: Route 66 to California. Just head south and take a right. Back in the days of paper maps and freedom to improvise and walk the line between a long trip and danger. I sold my Austin Healey Sprite and Bruce had his Chevy Bel-Aire to trade for the bikes. I was offered a Matchless 500 single cylinder. I chose an Indian-Enfield 500 twin instead. Bruce got a BMW 500. The offer to me was a Matchless single cylinder. I declined that one for a long trip. It was like riding a vibrating pogo stick.
Off they went, both bikes with ‘sissy bars’ and their guitars strapped on behind us upright and some luggage and a camping tent. Money and a hunger for vistas unseen.
Good weather and full tanks and some spare parts, we left to head south first and catch 66 down by the Oklahoma panhandle. Camping was first choice and other than that, we didn’t have a clue about what was ahead. Just in our early twenties and now free to make our own travel choices.
Bruce had made some friends when he got back from China Beach. Those friends of his lived in ‘the city’ out west and that was good enough a destination as any. Money was tight. First adventure was in Omaha. Somehow we met a group of hippies, and were embraced as sojourners to the headquarters of the love movement; San Francisco.
The hippies took us to their home, right across the street from the big race track, Aksarben, (that odd name is Nebraska backwards). Beds available and very starry eyed girls seemed a pretty good place to stop over. Schedule? There wasn’t any and that allowed leeway. Waking up the next morning, both of us were greeted with a breakfast treat of a small pill. Guaranteed to be an interesting experience. The only thing I remember was being taken to Arby’s and trying to order food. The colorful mushrooms growing out of the counter mans chef’s hat got in the way of comprehending things. ‘Have you ever been experienced?’ went the song of the times. A quick goodbye and we were back on the road for adventures that seemed to be working out pretty good, so far.
On down the road to Kansas and an uneventful ride until we stopped in Liberal. Foolishly, but with great enjoyment, we gave rides to more starry eyed and bored young girls on our bikes; exotic transportation. the young men on the sidewalk gave squinty eyed stares, the Clint Eastwood trouble for you look. We thought as veterans of two different wars, we deserved good attentions from everyone. We were not wearing our old uniforms.
It was great fun until the town’s police chief approached us and asked if we would like to stay overnight in the town jail! At first thought we wondered what we did wrong that would incur incarceration. The chief stated: “ It would be safer in my jail for you both.”
The doors to the cells only open one way and we declined the offer. that single officer in town told them: “Them boys is a comin’ for you tonight at your camp site”. “Oh. Well, we’ll take our chances chief , thanks for the offer.” was our reply.
The local young toughs came after them later that night.. (to be continued in Motorcycle pilgrimage series)
As it is, so shall it always be. Music, an indescribable and fleeting thing. The string is plucked, the drum resonates, the bowed instrument plays one note that blesses the fleeting sound. One second it is there. An eternal second, there is no time involved and the resonance goes into eternity and the joy flows abounding within the players and listeners.
There are many things that liken to music, draftsmanship or painting the light. Again, the romance of the stunning scene to the love of creating the painting. Both the musician and the painter are vulnerable to elevation of self. We do not realize the breaking of our admiration of our talents and contributing one or two notes or a splash of sienna releases real joy and appreciative laughter of the hearing and seeing the Master of all of it.
Images of musicians with the anticipated music played on perfect instruments abound. Especially for ones that have felt the joy and dance with a word sung or a set of notes played. An image from Lewis: “If one could just read the score of that heavenly music, they would never be ill nor grow old.”
So many years, so many bands and sitting in with other bands. I was consumed with applause. For me. A brief smile from a waltzing couple as they swirled past the stage as I played Faded Love is still remembered. The pride of even placing in a fiddle contest would make me proud. Of myself. I am not as fast these days (As I edit this I am 80 years old) and actually, that helps. There were so many instrumentalists in my life and the attaining of blazing speed with difficult passages was the goal and passion of so many. Just listen to bluegrass sometime. The song is over before you can even remember the words. Nice music, don’t misinterpret my words here. Nice music and really nice people play bluegrass. There were, unfortunately, some artists that would overplay and smirk at my waltz’ or jazz. That is OK now, I know who was guiding my music in that instantaneous beauty.
Emulating Bob Wills and his stunningly beautiful waltz’ was my goal. I tried the classic Orange Blossom Special when playing the bar circuit. I would not play it until the third set when the patrons were drunk enough to enjoy my fiddling of that song. I did OK with it, even the double stop slides, but it was not brilliant as the original. Still, it brought hoops and yells and that satisfied my need of acceptance.
I went to playing in the church..not A church, but THE church was my now my wish. A little mandolin to fill in the missing notes that I hear in spirit. The mandolin is referred to as the violin’s ‘walking stick’. (The tuning is the same as the violin) my last worship leader mentioned when the really high notes of vibrato ring out, it made him laugh inside. Good description of joy in worship.
Third position on the mandolin is a LOT easier than on the fiddle. It has frets. Those incredible stratospheric violin passages are pretty swell if your fingers are doing OK and you spend every day in the practice room. Playing Since a person was young child helps. I am in awe and joy when I hear those players. I wonder what they are thinking and feeling during those concertos.
So I needed applause to feel wanted and accepted. Now there is joy in worship heard or played when everything makes a brief tapestry of beauty. Offered to Jesus with love and adoration. It’s the only thing that goes to another plane of experience for me now.
As it is, so shall it always be. Music, an indescribable and fleeting thing. The string is plucked, the drum resonates, the bowed instrument plays one note that blesses the fleeting sound. One second it is there. An eternal second, there is no time involved and the resonance goes into eternity and the joy flows abounding within the players and listeners. Nevertheless, beware!
” Every poet, musician and artist, but for grace, are drawn away from the love of the thing he tells, to love of the telling, till, down in deep hell, they cannot be interested in God at all, but only what they say about Him” C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce
Applause reflects how others in the room feel that too. It’s heart felt. The thing is, that I now know they are really applauding the beauty revealed of Jesus, the creator of worship music hearts and all things. It’s pretty good. Playing or listening, it’s all the same thrill of eternal music on that sea of flaming glass.
We were blessed indeed by grace to avoid the love of the telling when my family worshiped for four years alone in a house of prayer in a storefront on main street in our local town. We had all the sound system stuff and a drum cage too. There were chairs for anyone who wished to be there, but most of the time we were alone. It fostered intimacy with our Lord. When we left after the building was sold, we had a last set that lasted for hours and started it at 7:20 in the evening. After an obvious finishing song, we looked at the clock facing us and it was 7:20.
“Let’s go down, come on down, let’s go down to the river to Pray” 1.
How many decisions do you make in a lifetime? How many in a day? How about right here, right now? Life seems to be mostly decision making. All the little things we have to constantly consider. Where, what and how mostly.
The very important decisions can be interesting. Myself, I was given an interesting decision problem five decades ago. I made the right decision because I am still alive. Things like that leave an impression on us. “Are you serious?” Some decisions are not deal breakers, they are quite simple and are mostly easy to make as well.
A few decades ago, I was given the choice to be Baptized. I was what is called ‘New in the faith’ up to that choice, I wanted to be just like God and be my own man. Just look into my heart and obey what I thought was right. Of course, I was desperately wicked as are all of us. I didn’t have a clue about those things of trust, faith, grace and repentance.
The pastor that came to minister to my dying mother spoke to me instead of her because she had died the night before his appointment. We sat at the kitchen table when he came and he asked me questions about life. I spoke of Gandhi and Buddha and all the rest. He then asked me it wasn’t about them. it was about me. He gave me a C.S. Lewis book, (Mere Christianity) and I read it. It read it a lot. It’s one of my ‘go to books’
Julie and I began attending his church that weekend and they did a funeral with all the trimmings for my mom with no charge. They even lit a candle every Sunday for a month for her. It was astounding and humbling. Not what I expected after some ‘bad’ experiences with the church in general. Usual things we go through as broken people resenting anyone that tells us there is a mending to that brokenness. “Sure, easy for you to say.” Etc. Not really understanding that narrow walk. An iron worker 50 stories up on a big I beam, just walking. What if I go off the path? “The wrong path is soft underfoot, an easy incline with no warning signs.” 2.
That Christmas I was at a cantata in a very local church and as the choir sang ‘Mary did you know’, I was stunned by a man in the choir who spoke the words of the song. Did you know, that those tiny hands flung the stars into the sky. I did not believe in evolution and said to myself, someone had to do it! The song went on and I began to cry. “It’s all true, it’s all true” I then knew Jesus was Lord of all and have never turned back since that time.
A while later, Julie was out walking on our road, up the hill from our mailbox and the Lord spoke to her about being baptized. When she shared it with me, it seemed like a good thing to do. Infant baptism just not adequate for her and thinking about it, not for me either. I was whisked away as a baby by my Uncle and baptized in Duluth. It seemed to not be my decision at that time. We felt that Baptism falls a little short of John’s style. “Repent and be Baptized” Was a breath of sweet air when Julie said that and we agreed together to do so. We both had a few things to repent of. So the Methodist camp where Julie and I had our first romance (Spirit Lake) was the place where we went to be Baptized. Friends came and we put agates in our pockets to give them as mementos. They stood and watched us as we were baptized good and thoroughly.
Pastor Barry did our Baptisms differently. He had never done a full immersion baptism before. He dunked us three times. “For the Father.. for the Son.. and for the Holy Spirit.” I was down on that perfect sand bottom and saw him above in the clear water. When I came up I knew he was looking right at me the whole time. I asked him, “what did you see when you were looking at me?” “A dead man” he replied.
I came up somewhat wet and let go of my nose. Then Julie and I started giving the agates from our pockets to our friends on the dock. They were beautiful as they glistened and we burst out saying because they have been in the water with us and we are clean too.
That was the beginning of a new us, especially a new me. I needed to die and it was a long process and still is. I am getting better as are we both. No longer dead inside but open to our King and Savior as he began breathing life in us. It’s not an instantaneous change because we have to listen and learn from Jesus and read the instruction manual He has graciously given us.
We are learning, every day it seems. Loving God and ourselves as his own and then loving all those people he gives us to love. The neighbor thing to say it, a lifetime to learn. Akin to washing one’s hands in a way. Scrubbing and washing clean. There are many things in our lives that pivot around those those words Jesus gave to us: “Love one another as I have loved you” The love your neighbor as you love yourself was stymied until I forgave myself and began loving my life with the Lord. He started it and He will complete it! Now I know how good it is.
The simplest and hardest thing for me to do. Every day, if I listen well and surrender myself to Him, He guides me to this new life. Jump in the water and it ain’t no trouble if you can, walk on the water. He offers his strong right hand and His mighty arm to us and lifts us out of death into life.
One day in Kansas City, I was sitting in a prayer room, waiting to be prayed over for my strained leg. I had a clear vision as I dozed off to beautiful live worship music. Jesus appeared to me and we were swimming together with a side stroke. “I know you love to swim, do you want to go down? You can breathe down there.” How deep is it? I asked. He replied “How deep do you want to go?” I awakened, healed and started dancing a little for the group waiting to pray for me. I told them I wanted pray for them. “Sure, come on in!” ‘Jump in the water, got no trouble if you can, walk on the water‘ Michael Mayor
It’s pretty good. Jack Gator Scribe
1. Old spiritual song; ‘Down to the river to pray’ Picture courtesy of Arron Dahl
Jack gators grace notes 