Painting: Booya the cat

click painting to enlarge

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Another good photograph of LBJ

click to enlarge. . .

Marshall Nirenberg at The White House with Robert Q. Marston, Perola Nirenberg, President Lyndon B. Johnson, and Wilber Cohen
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Vince Welnick dead at 51. . .or 55. . .no one seems to be sure

Vince Welnick, the Grateful Dead's last keyboard player and a veteran of other bands, including the Tubes and Missing Man Formation, has died, the Grateful Dead's longtime publicist said Saturday.

You can find the Mercury News story here.

A lot of us--e.g., Deadheads--never quite accepted Vince after the death of Brent Mydland...another guy who never felt like he fit in. We wanted Bruce Hornsby in that slot. Alas, after a year or so playing side by side with Vince (Bruce on the grand piano and accordian, Vince on everything else) and seeing Jerry's backslidin', Bruce opted out. I think he clicked all right with the band, but never quite did with the fans. The post-Jerry Dead did not seem to embrace him either, although I've been reading all sorts of nice things about him and his music from the Dead members...since he died.

He obviously struggled with that lack of acceptance, and depression. And he appears to have taken his own life.

I probably saw Vince with the Grateful dead eight times. The time I remember best is the last time I saw him. A lot of people say that run, and the show on 5/26/95 in Seattle was a 90's high point. It was for me. A transcendant show, really, and with Jerry finally totally embracing midi in a way he never had before, good singing, not too many flubbed lyrics or Jerry pulling back from the mike when he forgot the words. . .they were great and even Vince went off on some insanely great vocal tangents. I remember standing there with my friend Dave that fantastic warm afternoon in Memorial stadium. Tingling. Waiting for the show. The beast was unleashed. And Dave and I were inexorably in her arms. And it was good. Fire on the mountain was a complete and total mind-f*er. It was insane, it was great. They sang and played like kings! Neighbors did love neighbors at a show, and we all took care of each other a little bit. We would never again really be together as a community after that day. I would never see Jerry or Vince again. Jerry died a month after that show

The traditional Dead prayer for the missing: "May the four winds blow you safely home."

It's
so
quiet
you
hear
dust
motes
six
feet
up
bump
in
shafts
of
sunlight.

(from "the absence of footprints," (c) 2004, All This Is That).
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Uncle Romey

His calloused, nicotine-stained fingers engulfed my hand. He worked at my fingers, trying to get them into the right position. I didn't know this game. I knew other hand games like pattycake, the church and the steeple, and milking betsy.

"Naw, not like that," he said, "like this. Pull this finger down and use your tumb to hold this one down. Then you do this. Try it."

I tried, and I got it. Almost. "You perd near got it Jackie."

"Can I go?," I asked my uncle.

"Hold your horses. Remember just do it to surprise your parents some night. Show 'em that and say 'here's to you."

Romey quietly chuckled. And that night around the dinner table with the extended family, I turned to my grandma, said "here's to you," and gave her the finger.

It's one of my first memories, which means I had to be around four or five. I can also remember Eisenhower a little bit, and going to the circus, where a clown put his head in a grinder, and came out headless. I remember a flood creeping across the Kent Valley floor, edging toward our house, and stopping a block away. I remember my father telling me the drunk cop on tire-chalking duty was named Wyatt Earp. But every memory of Romey stands out because he was bigger, cruder, louder, and more obnoxious than anyone else in my life.
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Stand clear!

Part 3: My Rods - And even more cars I have owned over the years

Continuing the story of the Packard and the Pontiac, 1954 Ford Wagon and the Bug, my car saga continues.

Following the demise, and eventual resurrection of the Bug, I stumbled on a pickup for $200. It was a 1942 Dodge, with fresh paint, a clattering engine, and a four on the floor with a compound low gear. Unlike the others in this series, this is a photo of the actual vehicle.

This truck didn't last long either. . .a few months at best. I do remember owning it in the summer and driving it to the Valley Drive In several times, where we would stretch out in the bed of the truck and watch Russ Meyers movies, and movies like The Wife Swappers, Joe, Wild In The Streets, Where's Poppa, and Putney Swope. When the pickup gave up the ghost, I stumbled onto a guy who wanted a pickup truck. . .he was willing to take the Dodge in trade for his 1950 Panel truck, if I threw in another $100. And I became the proud owner of a panel truck.



The panel truck lasted a few months and I abandoned it in the low-income apartment complex where I lived with Roger Padvorac (my share of the rent was $13, one third of the $39 a month). Eventually a tow truck operator was going to take it away, but needed a title. I surrendered the title for the usual junker payment of $15.



A friend--Paul Kushner--took pity on me and gave me a pink 1959 Rambler he had parked in his yard for a year. I remember driving it back and forth to visit my college pals in Bellingham. It had a strange pushbutton gear system a/k/a "typewriter tranny." I loved the color of the car, and the fact that it was a gift made it even sweeter. It lasted a few months, and when it finally konked out, Paul came and towed it back to his place.

In September, 1973, after two years working as a barely-paid volunteer, I was moving away to college and could not afford a car. I owned no cars at all, for the next ten years, relying on buses, mooching rides, walking, hitchhiking, and from 1977 to 1982, the NYC subway system. ---o0o---

Part 2 of the rod saga -- More cars I've owned over the years

Following up yesterday's story about the Packard, here are a few other cars I've owned over the years...



My next rod ($50) was a 1956 Pontiac Chieftan convertible. I drove it for about two weeks when I was 16, until the differential locked up. I sold it to someone for $50.



In 1970 I bought a 1954 Ford Station Wagon from Moochie Dehnert for $200. It was a flat grey, the color of a battleship, and sported mags and a pair of threadbare pair of slicks on the back. I earned money working after school at the Westland Hatchery, where I was known as "the boy" or just "boy." I painted houses that summer, with my old Junior High speech teacher, Don Kinberg. I actually drove this for four or five months until it was struck by some expensive meltdown. I don't even remember. I got $15 for it when the junkyard guys hauled it away.



When I was 18, in 1971, I bought a 1962 Volkswagen Beetle for $500, paying $50 a month. It was pale green and detailed to a fine gloss. I had a stipend of $125 a month as a volunteer at a crisis center, which just barely covered the nut of my life. It was a sweet car other than the heating and defrost system. It ran for a year or so, when I lunched it in an accident. My friend Maureen's stepfather Gerry bought it from me for, I think $50. I don't know. I would have taken $10. . .so maybe he gave me the standard junker payment of $15. He restored it top to bottom.

When Mo finally got the car back it was totally pimped out, every ding and nick vanished, a frenched out new interior, totally new running gear and a breathtakingly gorgeous metallic Lapis-colored paintjob. Even more galling than seeing my Bug elevated to hip street rod status was Maureen refusing to let me take it for a spin! I can only assume that was at the behest of Gerry, who had seen firsthand the results of my malignant neglect of what another friend's father called "Hitler's Revenge."

I bought another rod for $200. Part III tomorrow.
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My First Car (a 1953 Packard Clipper)

My early car-owning years were spent nursing and cursing a succession of mainly Detroit Iron, every single one of them about one bearing, differential, transmission, or rod away from the wrecking yard gates. I was the last steward in their short lives and the person most responsible for their quick and ultimate demise.

My first car was a 1953 Packard Clipper with a straight eight cylinder engine. . .it was a washed out flat yellow color. Unlike this automobile, it never actually motated on its own power under my stewardship. I bought it from Art Pommer, a wall-eyed high school science teacher, for $15 and promised to "fix it up." One of my friends towed it to my house, where it sat in the parking strip under three enormous locust treets for two years.

My friends and I made perfunctory attempts to start it: cleaned the fuel filter, poured in fresh gasoline (@ twenty-nine cents a gallon), changed the spark plugs, bought some starter fluid. Someone "found" a used battery. The Clipper never responded to our ministrations, which was just as well, since we were only fifteen, unlicensed, and would surely have gone cruising had we actually succeeded in firing her up. God had a plan. It became our de facto clubhouse. I may be wrong, but I think one of my first meetings with "Kev" ( a frequent contributor to All This Is That) occurred in this very vehicle.
[tomorrow, Part II]
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Roller skating in San Francisco

Look, no kneepads!
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Politics, Oklahoma style

Click image to enlarge. . .

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You thought Disneyland was shopworn?

The "lake." Click photo to enlarge.

You thought Wallyworld was looking a little threadbare?

Dubaidave of here of arguably (actually, not so arguably) The Worst Theme Park In the World.

The good news: it costs seven Egyptian pounds to enter (about $1.50 US), although Dubaidave seemed to find that the admission may be based on how much money it looks like you have...

The grand entrance to Fantazyland. Click to enlarge.
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Poem: Changes 12/Standstill

1.
Heaven draws farther
And farther away,
While the earth below

Sinks into the depths
In a time of stasis
And standstill and decline

Heaven and mother earth
Are locked
In a stand-off

But heaven holds the cards
We're just actors
In a rosy farce

2.
The great depart
The small approach
Heaven and Earth are numb

What is above
Has no relation
To what is below

Confusion and disorder prevail
The dark power inside
The light power outside

Heaven and Earth do not unite
The standstill
Is the time of fear and trembling
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