Earlier this morning, I thought I heard singing coming from our
back yard. Stepping out, there he was…up above, looking East, deep in his own
musical celebration of the dawn:
“Here comes the sun, here comes the sun,
And I say, it’s all right…”
“Catchy” I thought, convinced that his tune could be a hit
if he ever recorded it.
We spotted a
small rectangle of tissue paper, lying in the garden, festively wrapped with
multicolored ribbons.
No
identification on the outside.
Inside, a
beautifully painted stone, like a gift from an elfin world.
---------------------------------
About a week
ago, I had posted an ode of sorts, to our special dog, Kira, on our “We Love
St. Dogustine, FL.” website.
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This stone,
along with a line from my post, had apparently been created as an awesome
remembrance …by an artist who understands.
Kismet, I
believe.
Kira
stopping by to remind us of her loving soul, by way of a talented and generous
artist.
All of our
hearts beating in tandem for one of life’s special moments…
Many thanks
to this generous artist… who walks the walk, leading by example…
Use WD-40 To:
1. Lube a
shovel. Spray WD-40 on a shovel, spading fork, hoe or garden trowel. The
soil slides right off—especially helpful when digging in clay.
2. Clean
tile. The spray removes spilled mascara, nail polish, paint and scuff
marks from tile floors, and also help you wipe away grime from the grout lines.
Clean up with soapy water.
3. Scrub
stains from stainless steel sinks.
4. Unstick
gum. A squirt makes it easier to pull gum out of carpet and even hair.
It's better than cutting out the gum and leaving patchy carpet or a bad
haircut.
5. Soften
leather. Oil can help break in a stiff leather tool belt.
6. Free
stuck LEGOs. Your kids will thank you.
7. Erase
crayon. When crayon ends up on toys, flooring, furniture, painted walls,
wallpaper, windows, doors, and television screens. Spray on WD-40 and wipe it
off.
8. Prevent
flowerpots from sticking when stacked together.
9. Get rid
of rust. Spray and rub away rust from circular saw and hacksaw blades. It
can also clean blades of tar and other gunk.
10. Remove
goo. Unstick gooey residue from price tags, duct tape, and stickers.
11. Clean
and polish the tactical knives gathered from the living room.
All my adult
life, I’ve avoided crowds. It’s as if Covid 19 has always a thing. Large groups
freaked me out. Huge gingivitis and methane scented gatherings of bodies packed
way too tightly.
I don’t like
to be touched by strangers or savor the air that was in their colon only
moments before. If jostled too aggressively, I react in kind.
Don’t push.
Three
artists drew me out though, three concerts in 50 years, Gordon Lightfoot, Eric
Clapton, and Jackson Browne. They were almost three too many, but all were memorable.
The Gordon
Lightfoot concert almost doesn’t count though. I needed a place to take Carla
on our first date. That was at Wolf Trap Farm Park in Northern Virginia, lying
on a grassy hill that sloped down to the stage. Lightfoot was drunk, his performance
something of a shit show. I didn’t care. Carla and I were on a blanket. She
wore white cotton slacks with an elastic waistband. Oblivious to Lightfoot’s
sputtering, my greatest memory after four decades, is the smell of her long
auburn hair.
I saw
Clapton at the Capital Center arena in Landover, Md. He was deep in his “I Shot
the Sheriff” cocaine/reggae days. Yvonne Elliman sang her balls off. Paranoia
and claustrophobia had me ready to go postal in that packed crowd. The music so
loud it physically hurt my ears. Fools in the balcony seats lobbing cherry
bombs out over the packed bodies making lazy arcs like flying sparklers,
exploding overhead like incoming mortar rounds. That shit infuriated me.
Claustrophobia was replaced with rage. I wanted to hunt the perps down and kill
them. A tactical knife always a close companion, I fantasized that in the din
of the chaos it could be a perfect murder. Several well-placed kidney and neck
thrusts and no more cherry bombs. People were focused on the stage. No problem.
Of course,
that never happened, but a small level of regret for a missed opportunity,
still lingers.
I love
Clapton and his music but that shit was way over the top for me.
Never again.
Not, at
least, until Jackson Browne came to Meriweather Post Pavilion in 1977 on his
“Running on Empty” tour. That one was epic for all the right reasons. Many of
the usual suspects: Craig Doerge, Danny Kortchmar, Russ Kunkel, Leland Sklar,
and the amazing David Lindley.
Great music
that I already knew by heart, a mellow crowd. It’s where Jackson recorded his
version of the great Maurice Williams tune, “Stay”.
The funny
thing about that one was the high chorus:
“Oh, won't
you stay
Just a
little bit longer
Please let
me hear
You say that
you will”
When that
lone voice soared out over the crowd, cutting through the din like a laser, we
all assumed it to be Jackson’s blond powerhouse singer, Rosemary Butler. But it
dawned on everyone at the same time when the amazing David Lindley stepped out
front and center, that he was doing the honors. This little gnome of a man with
a brown river of hair as long as he was short.
Killing it.
Recognition
caused me to point and yell out: “It’s David Lindley! Hooray for David!”
It reminded
me of a “Little Rascals” scene where Darla got sick while playing Juliet to
Alfalfa’s Romeo. Backstage, Spanky told Buckwheat that he would have to stand
in for her on the balcony scene. When Alfalfa implored: “Juliet, my Juliet…
wherefore art thou?”, there was a short pause of expectation, waiting for Darla
to appear. When Buckwheat popped up on the balcony, grinning with a loud “Here
I is!”, the silence of another pause of recognition was broken by the crowd of
kids going nuts: “Look! It’s Buckwheat! Hooray for Buckwheat!”
That concert
was memorable, with David Lindley’s vocal being the high point.
Literally.
I wrote a
note to David a few years later, comparing his entrance and the crowd reaction
to that of Buckwheat’s, many years before. E-mailed it to him and forgot about
it. Days later I got a note from David’s wife. She told me that most of the
band had been gathered around her big wooden kitchen table when she read my
story to them. Most of the crew being my age, they too loved the Little
Rascals, and Buckwheat, everyone loves Buckwheat.
And my
story, they loved my story, “a lot” she said. I wish I had been there to read
it to them myself. I'm always up for coffee and scrambled eggs.
Ms Lindley
admitted that everyone loves the Amazing David too, a real-life version of the
Adams Family “Cousin it” singing and playing incredibly beautiful high harmony
to Jackson’s musical comfort food.
That concert
and the entire body of work from Jackson Browne and the Amazing David lindley,
always a very filling and satisfying meal.
Death is a
shadow cast by all living things, from their moment of creation to their end.
Where there is life, death follows. Neither one exists without the other.
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My friend
Clyde…
We walked
similar paths as English majors, sharing classes and a bit of a social culture
clash. Young Northern boys cloistered away in a Methodist college smaller than
the High School I graduated from, although still the biggest thing in that
little Alabama town, just a few miles South of the Tennessee border.
It was the
late 1960’s and the times were changing all around us, but it was still 1955 in
downtown Athens, Alabama.
Clyde and I
did four years there and then four more in a huge bachelor townhouse on the
side of a lake in Reston, Virginia. Crazy fun times, creating memories, stories
to tell ourselves and others for the rest of our lives.
I worked at
the local newspaper, Clyde started climbing the corporate ladder. He worked the
bell stand at a Marriott hotel in downtown Washington, D.C. He brought home
fistfuls of cash, recharging nightly as we all did, there at party central.
Adulthood
called, we resisted, but all things run their course.
Although he
and I occasionally touched base over the following 35 years, it wasn’t until
e-mail came along and then Facebook popped up that we truly reconnected.
Clyde had
fought his way up in the hospitality business, becoming the President of the
Days Inn Hotel chain, a big job that was his passion.
I went in
several directions with my career, never really knowing what I wanted to be
when I grew up. While Clyde was married to his career, his passion, I was
married to Carla, and our family.
They were my
passion.
We spoke of
our mutual love of good food and his appreciation of fine wine, mine of vodka, fine or otherwise.
Like many
brothers, we may not have spoken on a weekly basis, not even monthly, but we
could pick it up anywhere, anytime, unbroken.
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This picture of Clyde and Beth is from a college reunion we had ten years ago. They were telling a funny story about their “children”, twin Carin Terriers.
She was a
bright light, always in motion. Then one night she stayed too long in her ritual
bath. Clyde found her there, gone without warning or even a quick goodbye.
Sometimes
the shadow is like that. It has the last word.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Carla and I
were supposed to meet Clyde in New Orleans for a three-day celebration of great
food and old times. He had lived there and knew every spot that wasn’t on the
tourist maps and had much better food than most that were. He was eager to show
us around his favorite spots. We agreed to meet sometime in the coming weeks.
The ball was in his court to free up the time.
Although I
was mildly surprised when he didn’t contact me to set a specific date, I knew
he stayed busy and there was plenty of time to get together when he got out
from under, so I didn’t pursue it.
Obviously
now, I wish I had.
When I
finally did hear from Clyde a few months later, it was by way of this e-mail
letter he sent out to 29 recipients:
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear
Friends,
I wanted to
give you a heads up on something very personal and ask your assistance.
Some months
ago I was diagnosed with early onset of dementia. It has progressed fairly
steadily since then. I have had to resign from my consulting assignments some
six months ago. And lately my SCORE volunteer work.
I have tried
to conceal this (my apologies), I think relatively successfully except to my
clients, as long as I could, but I no longer can.
My Mother
and her sister both died of dementia/ Alzheimer’s. Having witnessed all of that
pain in the end of their lives... and what our families went through over
months... years.. I resolved long ago that I would not go down that road; nor
would I do that to my family. Lord knows, they have suffered way too much from
this disease.
Unfortunately,
there is also a significant incidence of depression in our family which is a
contributing factor in my case, according to the docs.
And so
tonight I have ended my life.
My request
of you is that you please inform our mutual friends who are not on this
message. I don’t have emails for everyone. I just don’t want friends to think I
am ignoring them. There will be no funeral or celebrations, so no urgency.
No
regrets... I was blessed with a great, great life: Wonderful family, incredible
loves, great friends, exciting career, world travel, fascinating
experiences..... all good.
Thank you so
much for our friendship and so many wonderful times together.
And I want
it ended on that note. And so it shall be.
Love to you
all.
As was true
with most of his life, Clyde chose to make the end happen on his own terms.
In the end,
this isn’t just about my friend, Clyde, of course, it is about all of us.
I’ve managed to dismiss the memory of this whenever it came to me. A year even makes it more... final. It hurts... at least until I remember a few dozen funny “how about the time...” stories I begin to tell him out loud, and he chimes in with punchlines delivered like a perfect nightcap.
------------------------------------------------------------------
RIP, my
friend, hope to see you again...not today though, I'm pretty busy and just
can't free up the time.
Our morning
walk was windblown, wet & sandy. Intermittently
muddy, we splashed through salty pools nestled in shoals of low-tide mussels,
now exposed.
I thought of
the black-lip bowl at Ned’s, momentarily lost in memories of chopped garlic and
white wine.
The scent of
salt flats stirred by new morning breezes chasing their own tails ushered in a
dramatic new sunrise, a solar orchestra rising from the pit, instantly wowing an
appreciative audience.
Before
leaving, we rolled on our backs, squirming with delight atop a skeletal catfish
tossed unceremoniously into the high grass next to the car. Our own smells masked,
we were energized, rejuvenated and hungry for breakfast, as well as for the new
day itself.
Bits of
cheap hot dogs, cold from the fridge, torn into toss and catch treats for the girls,
a toasted bagel for me. I ripped off a piece of bagel, lobbing it up over my
head, just to see if I could catch it in my mouth to show solidarity to the
kids. They scrambled for my failed attempt as it bounced off the oriental rug,
into an empty shoe.
After bathing
the girls in the laundry tub, I even took a shower myself, cognizant of my responsibility
to lead by example.
Damp, now smelling
of shampoo, they collapsed at the foot of the bed, coma twitching in their squirrel
dreams, as I read my book.
Always
thankful.
Took the
dogs to the beach yesterday. Chica’s favorite place. She frantically runs up
and down the surf-line, 1,000 miles an hour, clearing out all those nasty sandpipers.
Then she goes straight in and enjoys being tossed around by the waves. A happy,
wet mutt.
But it was the first visit there for our new dog, Coco.
She stood in the shade of my shadow the whole time and looked at me asking:
“What is this sandy, wet nightmare of a place you’ve taken me to and when are we
going back home and lie on the couch like normal people?”
I think next time I’ll just take Chica and let Coco stay home.
Coco likes to sit on the couch and watch the Spanish version of “Jeopardy”.
Being from Estado Libre y Soberano de Chihuahua in Mexico, she seems to know all the answers.
