One of my best friends. Phil Kendall, drowned under tragic and mysterious circumstances (e.g., he was being chased and jumped from a bridge into a canal) when he was traveling in Amsterdam in 1974. He was twenty years old. I became fast friends with him when he was a freshman at Western Washington University, and frequently traveled up to Bellingham to visit, talk, and "party" with
Phil,
Kevin Curran, and
Jerry Melin.
This trio was responsible for introducing me to
Keelin Curran, noted attorney, and my wife, best friend, and partner of 34 years. Yeah, they hooked me up with a righteous babe, but our friendship(s) transcended that even, and became the touchstone of all my loves and friendships since.
Four of Phil's sisters—Becky, Claudia, Kacia, and Kathi—recently decided to start a blog honoring his memory. Claudia contacted me a week ago and since then, I have been beating the drum for all our friends to contribute stories, photos, and memories of Phil. I am still contacting people. It has been wonderful to touch base with Claudia again, and go back and forth on our now somewhat hazy memories.
Their blog is here. I am going to reprint our first contributions on All This Is That. After this, we'll just have a link to their blog, because this should be about Phil, and them. For you rockers, think of it as a very important side project.
Pat Spurgin remembers...Pat Spurgin (a roommate of Phil's at 1721 Iron Street in the fall and winter of 73/74) wrote in an email to Keelin Curran:
"I am a little astounded because I have had a picture of Phil in my memory (I can't retrieve a nickname) and that blog pic is exactly what I had in mind, frozen from 1974 when I left Iron Street in my deep funk about pointlessness and distractedness.
Phil's sister (maybe it was Claudia) was quite wise one night back in '73-74 to not loan me her car after I drank the better part of a bottle of tequila and sailed off into the Bellingham night. It's an old story. I wound up laying in some front yard, sans glasses and one shoe, rescued by Bart & who? Imagine me driving. Wasn't it Phil who bought the Savoy Brown albums that stuck in my head for so long that I downloaded selected cuts off of i-tunes?
I must join in the wonderment and grief over things having gone so wrong.
Jack Brummet responds to Kevin Curran with a couple of Phil stories of his ownHow moving. . .and loving. . .and your remembering is of such great clarity and depth and warmth. If you don't mind, I want to throw this on the Phil blog, and maybe this too.
Maybe this is perfect to set things in motion.
I knew Phil in high school--we were slight friends. But when I started coming to Bellingham, it was maybe after only one or two trips that I became fast friends with both Phil and Jerry. You and I were at that point old friends, and knew each other's families, and by then had a pretty long history (well, four years, say). Not surprisingly, Phil and I became friends sooner than Jerry and I did. In most ways, Phil was much more ebullient, and more open. Mel, as you remember, could also retract into toxic silence. Especially in the morning.
One other connection with Phil was books, Shakespeare, and poetry. Somehow you guys sucked me in to the point where I've been writing poems for like, what...35 years?
I agree with you on Phil's poem on the blog (See Sept. 7, on this blog). Startlingly mature. As Phil himself was easily the most mature of all of us. And yet he mostly always forgave our knucklehead ways. I think what Phil liked were my jokes, you know...my schtick...not jokes, but bent stories. I remember how much I liked telling him jokes, and stories of my hillbilly upbringing. He would just get the crazed look and howl and nearly fall to the floor. I can't remember his laugh exactly, but it was infectious and Falstaffian. It was such a great laugh that I always felt compelled to summon it up.
We got to know each other pretty quickly, and it wasn't very long before we were hooking up in Seattle too, even when you weren't around. And then, one day, something totally clicked between me and Mel. Or many things. One of us must have said or done something so funny and warped that it endeared us to each other forever.
So now, all of a sudden I had three brothers I loved in Bellingham, while I was stuck in Kent, at the Crisis Center. It was good work and important work, but at some moment in early 1973, I knew I had to go to college, and hang and create and party with you guys full time. This was not exactly easy for a poor hillbilly kid to do. In my entire family, only my mother had even graduated from high school. And my widowed mom had nary a nickel to contribute. Obviously scholarships were out. And my high school records screamed UNDERACHIEVER and rabble-rouser. It's another long story, but I was able to wheedle a letter of recommendation from both the Governor and the Mayor of Kent, and I was provisionally admitted to college in the fall (I was rid of the provisional part after my first successful quarter).
In the interim, the focus of my life became to hang with you [Kevin], Phil, and Jerry. I charged up to Bellingham every chance I got to drink it in. One of my favorite and most vibrant memories of those days were road trips to Seattle.
I especially remember the first road trip the four of us took after we were all living together. That car had a fog like Jeff Spiccoli's van as it rolled up to the prom. We were racing down to Seattle in Mel's still gleaming Pontiac, blasting the Stones' brand new Sticky Fingers, and rounding those looping I-5 turns, wending our way through the mountains with their sporadic clear-cuts, and digging "Can't You Hear Me Knockin."
And we played all our current favorites: The Dead's Europe 72; the Kinks Celluloid Heroes; Deep Purple; and Humble Pie's Rockin' The Fillmore. I don't know what we even did in Seattle, where we stayed, or anything. I do however most explicitly remember all four of us digging life to the max, and actually saying "this is the life. Whatever happens from here on, it won't get any better than this." We knew it for a fact. It was stew of friendship, being in college, being 20, and being free. And at that moment, on that road trip, we achieved a shimmering moment of eternal friendship.
As for Bleak House...it was a rathole, but I had so much fun and was so happy there that it shimmers in my memory. And that fun was all based on proximity to you, Phil and Mel. It became bleak later, I think, for outside reasons and the fact that Mel recruited a new roommate who was certifiably insane (and who, I heard later, would pick up the wedding cake at his brother's wedding and lob it at the bride and groom!). More about Bleak House next time. Maybe next time, we should delve into the pizza trick heist.
The Popcorn Story by Kevin CurranHere is one of my favorites. While living on Humboldt Street Phil would suggest that we make some popcorn to enjoy during a bone head session. He always recalled that he had made the last batch and would insist that I had to prepare the next batch. I would agree and set off for the kitchen and as I created a racket pulling the oil, popcorn and pot onto the stovetop he would amble in and quietly take over. It was downright comical because it happened over and over again. He would suggest popcorn, make a big stink how he made it the last time, insist the it was my turn, and then as I had barely started he would gently push me out of the way and take over.
Eventually, I'd just raise a clatter and sure enough he'd show up to take over. I couldn't help but tell him, and while he smiled at me with that crooked grin he never again interrupted me during my popcorn turn. I wished I had kept it to myself not because I was getting over but because he just couldn't help himself and he was so glad to be hanging out making fun with a friend.
Kevin Curran Remembers Phil (installment one)
Kevin Curran writes from New York City:
The Phil blog touched me. I loved the pics and wonder if Phil in an apron was from our stay at bleak house. Here are my first thoughts.
I loved Philip. Our friendship lasted four years and yet I think of him frequently still and recently told Kris how much I miss him, even now. For a few years after his death I regularly dreamt that he had come home with some wild explanation for his absence. I would awaken flooded with joy until it sank in again with aching clarity that he was really gone.
I don't remember the exact moment we became friends. It may have occurred during high school football since we both played, though he was a year behind me at KM, surely our connection to Tom Brush was a factor. We may have attended the same writing class my senior year. I enjoyed rereading the poem that Phil’s sisters posted to the blog, it is really sweet and better than anything I remember writing then.
It was no accident that Phil and Jerry were friends. They both were athletic and smart and hilariously rebellious but I would say Phil’s brand was slightly less edgy and more prone to giggling than confrontation. I know that I met Jerry through Phil. I remember our friendship was well on its way during my stint at the Robo CarWash which began no later than early 1971. Phil would often pick me up after my shift on a Friday or Saturday evening. We hung out regularly after I graduated. I know that we shared in weekend shenanigans after I took up residence with BM, Smoothie and the monkey at the Comstock bachelor pad.
Phil purchased a small sports car around 1972, his senior year, (an MG midget maybe) which was toward the end of my year at the dog hospital.
I remember Phil driving up with the top down one sweet summer afternoon. He was brimming with a kind of Route 66 brio just as the car conked out in the parking lot. He fussed with that car throughout the summer and struggled to keep it on the road. He got the car to Bellingham in the fall of 1973 but I don't know how. He may have towed it behind a U HAUL. I remember it parked outside the Humboldt Street house for awhile but I don't remember that we ever took a ride in it that year. He either disposed of it or returned it to his family's home and I don’t think he had a car when we moved into bleak house on Iron Street the next fall.
Do you [Jack] remember your first trip to B’ham? It must have been winter quarter 1972-73. I remember that you and Milo made the trip and arrived after dark. I think that was that the first time you met Phil and Jerry. Our years on Humboldt and Iron Streets were full of stooges moments. I will put them together over the next few weeks. [to be continued]
An amusing (and shocking story from The Phil Zone) [another story from Jack Brummet]I do remember one incredible and improbable story about Phil. Incredible, because, well, you'll see. Improbable because Phil was one of the smartest people I've known.
Kevin, Jerry, and Phil were sitting around their house on Humboldt Street one day, doing what we usually did (because it was cheap): talking. Eventually the talk somehow turned to amputations. I think they were talking about digital a/k/a finger amputations. Phil looked at them and said: "I know it hurt, but it will grow back, you know."
He was dead serious. When they finally realized he was serious, they, of course, howled and pounded the floor in mirth.
Sometime early in life, one of Phil's parents had told him that if you lost a finger or toe, it would grow back. And in the interim years, he had never seen or heard anything to ever make him think twice about that. Until that night in Bellingham. It was the most endearing thing he ever said.
I know this is hard to believe, but Phil confirmed the story to me not long after it happened. And I loved him all the more because of it.
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