It occurred to Norm one afternoon while he was cruising about in the family sedan. It’s the V6 model and when pressed, shifts down a few gears and moves along. Sometimes it is useful to accelerate strongly. Usually the time comes when a merge occurs, often during ‘stop and go hour’ on the freeway. Suddenly, a tractor trailer is coming down the ramp and there is no room for it in the slow lane (slow meaning under 75) and down it comes towards you and your road companions. Norm used to drive a Yellow cab and he knows what to do. Flash brakes and make a hole for the big rig. It makes it and often gives a little blink of the tail-lights to give a luminous thanks. Courtesy that costs nothing and is a flash of civilization that even surprises him. “Why would I do that?” It was inconvenient for me and it added at least a minute or more onto my ETA at the chiropractor!
Back to the Yellow cab: There seemed to be two types of people that Norm ferried about. People that cared about him and people that didn’t. Why would someone be interested in a 20 something cab driver? Why would the driver be interested in his fare? Maybe to generate camaraderie and get good scale? (cab lingo for tips). Perhaps a desire to get a new insight into life? Perhaps because Norm was sort of a ‘good person’ that liked to put people at ease? Who can tell, It’s known that it’s a bad thing to judge people and there are some we can tell that do that! (Putting aside that joke) there is awareness.
It is pretty easy for us to discern if someone, perhaps a very new someone is on board with us and they are easy to be with because they ask you questions and then listen to your answers. (Usually I can’t wait to talk about my favorite subject, me.) Sometimes though, there is a patience in another that is refreshing and calming to our jangled nerve endings. Too often our lives are filled with sparks of disconnect, as though we are on the subway platform seeing the power from the third rail come and go.
The endless chatter from the crowd, the drone of “how are you?’ “I’m good” It leaves Norm again famished for reality. How pleasant it is to even have someone say anything that shows the Light, a time of real interest. As though you both were sitting on Mars hill in Athens centuries ago, hungry for new ideas and connection with another persons life. The hunger for connections with another.
Calming our own chatter and constant glances in any mirror to see if our face showed the isolation and fear within. It takes a new heart, a resurrection of our internal gyroscope to stand steady and willing to look, see and listen to that fast moving thought train. People are crossing our path for a reason, always the unknown reason to be there and we can wait for it to go by or really look and listen. When we can see and be seen, that’s when things happen. The world stands still and two lives are then never the same. We can actually remember a name and a story. Brief and timeless as it was always meant to be. Always if we desire it.
Walking in the garden, taking in the beauty of the flowers nearby and hearing another book unfolding as the petals do in the dawn. Maybe even a field of sunflowers all facing you and drinking in what we all need. Light and warmth from outside of ourselves. The giver and the listener, dancing together with the incredible and irresistible but gentle power of the Son. A Monarch flits by and lands nearby,fluttering and flapping and dancing aboutl. Beauty given and when asked about it, He usually says: “I thought you would like it” It’s pretty good. Jack Gator
It was a long drive to the first big city. It was so big, people just refer to it as ‘The City’ If you had been there before, you knew the code word. Massive bridges, incredible hills and subculture ‘to die for’ as the saying goes. Good description. Best food, ethnic food. Best everything. A bridge to another big city that has six lanes in each direction. Fifty cent toll. I loved it there, it was exciting and at the cutting edge of what passed for civilization then.
One time I crossed the bay bridge on a hotted up Triumph and feeling the shocks open up and the front wheel begin to lift. Short handle bars and no oil in the transmission. Rather a short and thrilling ride. Oh well, it was a loaner from a man that was ‘away for a while’.
There was a crowd of Jaguar owners that met at a local coffee shop in Berkeley. Peets coffee. Mr Peet’s first shop on the Northside. That bunch of young men had an older mentor that showed them tuning tricks. He would put a crayon in his pocket and get in the right hand seat and tell the driver to head out to the Bayshore freeway. This man, ( Mister Denny), would tell the driver to stop on the edge of the pavement. He would get out and wait a few minutes while he slid under the rear bumper. Then the crayon would be dragged down the tailpipe a few feet to the end. “Take her out and hit it. Swing around and come back here” When the Jag came back Mr. Denny would slide under the rear again and note where the crayon line had melted. “Cut ‘er right there, that’s your exhaust extraction pulse”. Cool trick.
My new friend, crazy Micheal, played excellent boogie on a piano in his second floor apartment. It was great music for rowdy know it all mechanics. Late one night there was a visit from the local police. “Nice music, shut it down at 10 pm!” We were stupid young vets but we knew a bit about authority. So, the next night Mike stopped playing and picked up a battery powered megaphone (left over from the usual riots) He then opened a window and blasted out..”You will notice I have stopped playing at 10!”
Boy, he rocked it. There are many such stories, a lot of you have them from big cities too. Trolley cars, ethnic food, and artistic enclaves. I had a brief job at an art movie theater as a projectionist. Old style with the carbon arc and two projector switch-overs. The little dancing dot on the upper right of the film indicated the switch to the other projector. The idle projector was then available for extracting any smoke with it’s powerful exhaust fan. I would light up right next to the projector and the smoke wound up in the courtyard of the pretentious grape vine lattice décor below the film booth.
The smell attracted a bit of attention but no one found the source.
One night the movie I was presenting was about a sniper. One of the scenes was the shooting of a movie projectionist in a drive in movie. The cross hairs fixed on the little window Projectionists watch out of was the scene. The killer was waiting for the right time to shoot and the dancing dots were exactly in sync with the movies and my changeover! I started to crouch down and made the changeover just as the movie projectionist was shot. Humorous film editors, what a joke.
There were so many characters in The City that you needed a tour guide or one of ‘Humbeads maps of the world’ made by Earl Crabb that had all the names and places. I looked, but my name never made the press. Too late on the scene (motorcycle diaries at this website)
Isn’t that our way of looking for our photo in the yearbook, on a Facebook page or even in a live production where perchance the camera caught you there?
So in the bay area, everyone’s gear box was in neutral headed down Lombard Street. Risky business’ abounded. Musicians from high profile rock bands began to have a funeral now and then. The music at the funerals was sought after. life was fast and loose and somewhat deadly which was very attractive to Norm and his new friends. Youth no future. The war did that to a lot of us. We learned how to get by and how to expect miracles offering life.
“stumbling around that lonesome town in a fifty three black ford, lookin’ for the kind of woman that a laborer could afford“ Bob Frank It was pretty good. Jack Gator
It was only by a random act of kindness that I wound up at a old whore house in the middle of the city. I was living in my truck at this time. In the bed of the old International was a wood frame camper. I had built it a year ago with a saw, screwdriver and a Swiss army knife. It even had skylights of Plexiglas that were now covering up with snow. I was sleeping in the camper and was very ill with Hepatitis and with no heat in the truck, shivering a bit. The renter of record at the apartment had pity on me and let me in the upstairs shotgun apartments to sleep on the couch. After all, I had eaten there a few days before and the chef had Hepatitis.
That kind man who welcomed me in was William Teska (Bill) an Episcopal priest whose Diocese funded the New Riverside Cafe as a neighborhood ministry.
The neighborhood was mostly tie dyed with a few bpm motorcycle club members hanging out at the Triangle bar a block away from our apartment on 605 1/2 / Cedar Avenue. Second floor, above the free store.
It turned out that my recent friend, Charley Jirousek, from the Berkeley adventures lived there and sort of reluctantly, had room for me and my guitar. After all, the two of us shared a love for country blues on our guitars and we both ate a lot of peanut butter to survive. Charley still had his massive black and white Malamute and the dog was always delightful and took up about as much room as I did.
It was not long after I showed up that there opened up a job at the local restaurant/coffee house down the block. The New Riverside Cafe.The job’s wages were: Rent, food and an occasional pitcher of beer at the 400 bar, kiddy corner from the Cafe’.
There was a stage and seating at the Cafe’ and nights brought in an audience from all over the city. The big light of talent attracted as lights usually do to flying life forms. We served organic vegetarian food and it was pretty good stuff, especially the soups. For a while, we had no prices for the food. People would come in for the incredible music and ask how much for the menu items. ” Pay what you can.” I would lean over the counter and comment, “Nice shoes! Where did you get them?” People did pay well as they could afford. A few locals a bit up against it would ask for the soup and a grilled cheese sandwich. We gave them the soup and the grilled cheese was a paying proposition. Free coffee too. Working in the kitchen was a ballet and it was a good dance. I was a swamper (dish washer) and I liked it. After all, the only things I knew how to prepare were PBJ’s and Dinty Moore beef stew.
The music was also excellent and it was a mix of blues, folk and bluegrass mostly by the musicians in the small neighborhood. It was not, however, a usual neighborhood in a big city. It was Hemmed in by several freeways, a river and the downtown tall buildings along with the state university. Approximately 40 acres with small business’ that reflected the times. The West Bank of Minneapolis.
It was obvious that the population of that neighborhood consisted of a majority of eager and talented professional musicians. Singer-songwriters, Guitarists, fiddlers, banjo players, bass players and so forth. It was stunningly thick with them. I remember five world-class fiddle/violin players alone. One of them turned out to be a roommate, Bill Hinkley with his wife Judy Larsen along with a harmonica player and stand up bass player. I was invited to tour with a handful of them to the east coast.
We played college campus’ and coffee houses throughout the Midwest and east coast. This was heady stuff. A bit of a learning curve of the professional circuit sorts of things. A few of the locals were a bit puzzled by my being included in that tour. Most of the local pickers played and sang well, but the overwhelming number of them all wore cowboy hats and had rodeo buckles. Horses and corrals were never seen nearby. Their outfits were the folk music image of that time.
My new friends were the remnants of the beat generation. Tough and a bit rough around the edges, I got to play with Jerry Garcia when the Grateful Dead came to town and I was asked to join them! A good friend who was the hip radio stations night time DJ, Alan Stone, was at that music party. KQRS radio and he began recording me and my fellow veteran, Bruce Berglund of the motorcycle diary series at this web site.
The cowboy folks did not care for us. Nor did the locals who had made it to vinyl records that sold pretty well. Koerner, Ray and Glover. It was the usual musician fear and ego. We all were competitive for the stages in the area and most of the music was pretty swell really. The local guitar shop sold lots of D’Addario stirng sets for sure.
By the way, I declined the invitation to join the Grateful Dead. I knew the band name was very prophetic as all those musicians are gone now, most with heroin OD’s. Living in Berkeley and being involved with a heroin smuggling outfit, I got addicted. It takes all the pain away, physical and mental. I liked it. I remember those times vividly as we sold most of it to Sly and the Family Stone across the bay.
Another story of God’s deliverance when a voice in my private room said: “Live or death, choose now” I obviously chose life, it seemed a pretty serious event. The addiction was gone immediately and there was no withdrawal. A miracle from the Lord. It was one of ‘those events’ that are life saving and we don’t know who to thank.
The whole Cedar-Riverside scene ended when a developer (Heller and Segal) bought the entire neighborhood and began building high rises. I then quit the Riverside cafe and began a career as a railroad worker but still lived on the west bank. I eventually moved to the country, hours north. A small farm on the GI bill, about the same acreage as the old neighborhood. Rural Nothwest Wisconsin where I and my family still live.
Moving north to a farm was scary. I played fiddle in the barn before walking into the house while the rental van with everything I owned in it sat parked. It was raining on April fools day. The walk into the house was very strange. Alone and I had Never owned a house before. It smelled funny and the first challenge was to find all the light switches and figure out where to sleep. My orange cat didn’t come out of the van for a day. The house was heated with a fuel oil furnace and the previous owner left a note that mentioned the fuel oil tank was over 1/2 full and figured “It was a pretty good deal”. Of course, the new home smelled a new smell to me.
My old friend, Bruce, lived about 3/4 of a mile away, just down the road. That helped a lot. Bruce is the other motorcyclist in ‘Motorcycle diaries’ He introduced me to some of the locals and one young man became a good friend and was my roommate for a while. He taught me how to cut firewood and built a new chimney for the house and then proceeded to hook up and run a wood stove. It was a ‘step stove’ made locally and it worked quite well until it later developed a hole in it’s side. my new friend was a good man known for his kindness and smile. His nickname is Smiley, of course.
I started playing my fiddle on the back of a bunk car, feet up on the brakeman’s wheel when I worked the steel gangs on derailments down in southern Minnesota. The other men never complained. It felt like I was sitting around a campfire playing a harmonica after a long day on the trail. Folksy along with the missed notes and scratchy bowing.
At first when I began section work, I worked with the section gang at Dinkytown, just over the Missisippi from the west bank. More stories of a great foreman, Big Leroy, and all the trauma and injuries when men work around trains.
A visit to an old Cafe friends hardware store in Cedar-Riverside after work brought forth a sturdy chain saw and really swell touring bicycle. Still have both of them although the Jensrud 80 doesn’t start very well and pulling the starter cord almost breaks my wrist. My youngest son won’t even use it. Why bother when his Farm Boss Stihl weighs half as much and also starts pretty good.
I was injured at a section yard just across the St.Croix and I could not do the 12 pound hammer swinging anymore. I first began playing in a local country western band. Bars within driving distance with three other guys. Dandelion Wine was our name. . Mandatory cowboy hats for the band. No horses or rodeo buckles but nice vests and boots. I guess the lesson was to look the part as it made it easier for the audiences. We played the classics; Bob Wills and Johnny Cash sort of things. A touch of fiddle tunes and a hint of bluegrass. One of the local bars we were regulars at is about 30 miles away, Louis’, became a nice church called New Life. Appropriate.
The house business of repairing foreign cars came to life and I ran it for 40 years. It was a good income and the commute was a breeze.
Much later, I met my wife Julie, riding bicycles together (another column, (Bicycle built for Two).They built a real home together. Men build houses, women build homes. I then started playing with a square dance band as an upgrade. No cowboy hats, but Julie made me a really nice vest with ducks on it. The band was called Duck for the Oyster it is the title of a a square dance.
Bill Teska wound up marrying Julie and I about 30 years after I met him. A few of those 40 acre musicians played with me in the wedding. Bill Hinkley, Mary Dushane, Kevin McMullin and myself played a Swedish waltz surrounding Julie in her wedding gown right after the processional . It was pretty swell.
A decade or so later, I became aware of Jesus during a choir presentation up the hill from our home. Good move. It was a Christmas Cantata conducted by Hellmuth Bycoski at Zion Lutheran church. The holy Spirit got through to me during the song ‘Mary Did you Know’ and I have never been the same since. I love the changes even if they are very painful. It takes time to surrender. Julie is patient with me. I got better and continue to do so.
Our family got good at playing and singing worship music It was a big change from seeking admiration and money to the fresh air of a calling that began when I was 10. I now had discovered worship is the best music on and off the planet. Our family built and staffed a small house of prayer about seven miles away in Frederic. We were there about four years until the building was sold.
Now I write these columns about the transformational life and love that comes from Jesus, our Creator.
I still have the instruments and occasionally take them out and I play at home with recordings of some worship leaders I have met. It’s a world of growth in many ways, and the spirit within me and my family keeps growing stronger every day.
Jack gators grace notes 