I will (at some point in this post) get around to talking about the last rock band I was ever in... But first - I'm not sure that I've adequately explained what was going on during that year in Tyler... To sum it up, I was searching (in vain) for the rest of my life... And the more I searched the more confused, frightened and frustrated I became...
The hardest part was falling asleep at night. That's when the obsessive thoughts crept into my head. I'd think about how much my life sucked: I'd never had a girlfriend (never even been on a date)... Nobody really cared about me... Had no skills - couldn't get a job - wasn't sure I wanted one... The worst part was that I couldn't see anything ever changing. Sometimes I'd search for solutions but my mind would erect new obstacles faster than I could tear them down... Other times I would just lie there with tears streaming down my face...
Even when my thoughts weren't out of control I still couldn't figure out how to get to sleep. It's impossible when you're trying... Seriously - I've fallen asleep over 20,000 times in my life and not once have I remembered exactly how I did it :-)
But sleep always came eventually ... And when I woke up it was a new day with new possibilities and I couldn't believe I'd been so freaked out the night before... In retrospect I was clearly depressed - but I at the time I couldn't entertain the notion that there was anything wrong with me. After all - I was mom's perfect angel :-)
Of course - sometimes I didn't bother with sleep - just stayed up all night. At first light Karina and I (and whoever else was around) would grab some donuts and drive down to "Love's Lookout" north of Jacksonville to watch the sun rise... It was one of our rituals - and one of my fonder memories :-)
Enough of that...
At some point during 1970 Karina connected me with a group of guys who were trying to re-form a rock band. They were all professional musicians who did session work at local recording studios and a couple of them were in the "house band" at a place called "The Red Barn" in a neighboring county. (I don't recall exactly where, I think there's a Red Barn in every county in Texas...) But the point is that they were good - by far the best I ever played with...
BTW: I'm not sure exactly how Karina knew them. I know she was doing vocals for radio and TV commercials around that time so she might have met them at a studio. Also, the drummer's girlfriend (Laura) was the sister of one of Karina's former boyfriends (Val) so that might have been the connection. I'm not really sure - and it really doesn't matter.
I worked with those guys for 3 or 4 months trying to get a playlist together, and what really sticks in my mind was what perfectionists they were. We'd play a snippet of a song over and over again - 20 or 30 times - making minor tweaks - until they were satisfied that it was "exactly right". I had never encountered that mindset before (must be a "studio musician" thing) and it really slowed down the pace - we were only learning 4 or 5 songs a month... When we did get to where we were practicing complete songs it wasn't unusual to peek outside and see a crowd of 20 or 30 people gathered. And no - they weren't there to complain about the noise :-)
It's always interesting playing with guys who've known each other for a while. Here's an example:
We were working on "To Cry You a Song" by Jethro Tull. We did the intro differently from the record - started with a single guitar, then added the second guitar, then the bass and finally the drums. When we got to the spot where the drums were supposed to come in the drummer (Bobby) just sat there. We stopped and the bass player asked Bobby what the #$%#$ was wrong. Bobby just grinned and said: "You didn't say toodaloo".
The bass player cursed a bit, said "toodaloo" and we started again. For the rest of that practice the bass player said "Hey Bobby... toodaloo!" before every song - and nobody would tell me why... To this day I have no idea what that was all about :-)
Unrelated, but also funny, was the "dramatic exit" incident. It didn't involve the whole band - just Bobby:
One day his girlfriend Laura was over at our house - I have a vague recollection that she was a singer and Karina was helping her out... Her and Bobby had been arguing about something and he came over to "have it out" with her... After a couple of minutes of mutual yelling and screaming Bobby made his "closing statement" and headed for the door.
But what Bobby didn't know was that the threads on the door knob were partially stripped - so instead of dramatically storming out of the house (and slamming the door behind him) the knob came off in his hand... The expression of bewilderment on his face was priceless :-)
It must be hard to stay mad when you find yourself unexpectedly holding a door knob because after a few awkward seconds everyone started laughing (including Bobby)... Yes - it's amazing how easily a "comic prop" can defuse even the most emotionally charged situation... Well - I thought it was funny :-)
In the end the band suffered the usual fate. It was brought down by one of the ultimate forces in the universe - the same force that destroyed the Beatles: A clingy, overbearing girlfriend... The band was a non-revenue producing activity and the bass player's fiance made it clear that his discretionary time was to be spent at her discretion... He folded and so did the band...
I certainly performed in public many times after that but never playing the music I really wanted to play... Then again - if that band had been successful who knows where I'd be. Its demise might well have been a blessing in disguise :-)
Saturday, July 30, 2011
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
Cars and Guitars
We all tend to get a bit "jaded" as we get older and that's a shame (albeit inevitable, I guess)... I'm thinking about how it felt to be 16 years old and have a car of my own... Sometimes I would sneak out at night and sit in the driver's seat just to look at the gauges and touch all the controls... Other times I would lay down in the back seat... I'm not sure why I found that so comforting. It probably reminded me of the late night trips home from Aunt Aggie's house during my early childhood. (That was in the days before seat belts.) ... But the point was that it was my car and I could darn well lie down in the back seat if I felt like it :-) ... I especially liked being out there during storms. The rain would hammer on the roof just inches from my head but the car kept me safe and dry. It was much better than any security blanket :-)
Here's a picture of me behind the house in Tyler with the 1963 Fairlane:
BTW: I really hated that haircut. Way too "foofie"... It was done by one of the "guru followers" who was a hairdresser... He used to chant really funny too. Instead of a nice quite "ohhmmm" it was a really loud "AUOMMM". It was hard not to laugh when meditating with him...
Also, I had totally forgotten that the owners of the house had the roof done while we lived there. The shingles on the ground are a dead giveaway... But I digress :-)
Actually, the Fairlane wasn't quite mine yet. There's a bit of a story there:
The car was from California and we bought it for $75 from someone Mom knew in the repo business. When we took the paperwork to the Texas DMV they told us we couldn't title it without a copy of the "chattel mortgage" (a loan security document). So we contacted the bank that had authorized the repo and were informed that chattel mortgages were not used for car loans in California. We reported that to the Texas DMV but they did not care. They still asserted that we could not title the car without bringing them the non-existent document...
So - I just went ahead drove it around with California plates that had expired during the Johnson administration :-) ... After well over a year of that I decided I was pushing my luck so I contacted the bank again and after a number of phone calls the woman I was dealing with took pity and offered to personally title the car in California and sign it over to me... She explained that she would be violating a whole bunch of bank rules (and at least one law) by doing that but she did it anyway (at no cost) - and the car was finally legally mine :-)
Now -the coolest thing about having a car (in my view) was actually getting to work on it. I had been reading magazines like Popular Mechanics, Hot Rod and Car Craft for years but it had all been purely hypothetical - I'd never actually touched a car with a tool in my hand...
Actually ... it wasn't until after we left Tyler that I applied my OCD to working on cars so I will hold off on all those stories :-) For the time being we were still at the mercy of a mechanic whenever the Fairlane needed repairs (which was quite often).
One of the car's more interesting quirks is that it would overheat if you cruised on the highway at more than 45 MPH. Yeah - that's when engines typically run the coolest - I never did figure that one out. So whenever we went to Dallas I always took the back roads... I remember breaking a fan belt on one of the trips and having to stop every mile to let it cool off before I finally limped it to a gas station (couldn't afford a tow). On another one of the trips I had to stop and get a tuneup at a garage in the middle of nowhere because it was barely running... And if you took it through a carwash it would die and wouldn't start again for 10 minutes... There was always something :-)
And then there were the drum brakes... That's one of those "rite of passage" things that younger drivers are missing out on... You see - drum brakes don't do much when they're wet. So when driving in heavy rain you have to remember to pump them a couple of times to dry them off before you actually need to stop... It's amazing how many prayers you can say while standing on the brake pedal watching a stop sign go by :-)
And that's enough about the Fairlane. On to the guitar:
I've mentioned that back when we lived in Escondido I traded my Vox Phantom XII Stereo guitar straight across for a 1953 Telecaster. And one day in the summer of 1970 Karina decided the guitar needed new paint. Here's the result (Click to enlarge):
I really wish this picture was in color because B&W doesn't quite capture it. Just imagine the wildest color combinations you can think of and you're probably in the ballpark. (The lower right was the stars and stripes.)
Over the next few years my sweaty left forearm took its toll on Karina's paint job and I ended up refinishing it in dark brown. And many years later (1989) I sold it to a working musician.
No regrets, but a couple of old Polaroids (and my memories) are all I have left of this little bit of Karina's whimsy :-)
Here's a picture of me behind the house in Tyler with the 1963 Fairlane:
BTW: I really hated that haircut. Way too "foofie"... It was done by one of the "guru followers" who was a hairdresser... He used to chant really funny too. Instead of a nice quite "ohhmmm" it was a really loud "AUOMMM". It was hard not to laugh when meditating with him...
Also, I had totally forgotten that the owners of the house had the roof done while we lived there. The shingles on the ground are a dead giveaway... But I digress :-)
Actually, the Fairlane wasn't quite mine yet. There's a bit of a story there:
The car was from California and we bought it for $75 from someone Mom knew in the repo business. When we took the paperwork to the Texas DMV they told us we couldn't title it without a copy of the "chattel mortgage" (a loan security document). So we contacted the bank that had authorized the repo and were informed that chattel mortgages were not used for car loans in California. We reported that to the Texas DMV but they did not care. They still asserted that we could not title the car without bringing them the non-existent document...
So - I just went ahead drove it around with California plates that had expired during the Johnson administration :-) ... After well over a year of that I decided I was pushing my luck so I contacted the bank again and after a number of phone calls the woman I was dealing with took pity and offered to personally title the car in California and sign it over to me... She explained that she would be violating a whole bunch of bank rules (and at least one law) by doing that but she did it anyway (at no cost) - and the car was finally legally mine :-)
Now -the coolest thing about having a car (in my view) was actually getting to work on it. I had been reading magazines like Popular Mechanics, Hot Rod and Car Craft for years but it had all been purely hypothetical - I'd never actually touched a car with a tool in my hand...
Actually ... it wasn't until after we left Tyler that I applied my OCD to working on cars so I will hold off on all those stories :-) For the time being we were still at the mercy of a mechanic whenever the Fairlane needed repairs (which was quite often).
One of the car's more interesting quirks is that it would overheat if you cruised on the highway at more than 45 MPH. Yeah - that's when engines typically run the coolest - I never did figure that one out. So whenever we went to Dallas I always took the back roads... I remember breaking a fan belt on one of the trips and having to stop every mile to let it cool off before I finally limped it to a gas station (couldn't afford a tow). On another one of the trips I had to stop and get a tuneup at a garage in the middle of nowhere because it was barely running... And if you took it through a carwash it would die and wouldn't start again for 10 minutes... There was always something :-)
And then there were the drum brakes... That's one of those "rite of passage" things that younger drivers are missing out on... You see - drum brakes don't do much when they're wet. So when driving in heavy rain you have to remember to pump them a couple of times to dry them off before you actually need to stop... It's amazing how many prayers you can say while standing on the brake pedal watching a stop sign go by :-)
And that's enough about the Fairlane. On to the guitar:
I've mentioned that back when we lived in Escondido I traded my Vox Phantom XII Stereo guitar straight across for a 1953 Telecaster. And one day in the summer of 1970 Karina decided the guitar needed new paint. Here's the result (Click to enlarge):
I really wish this picture was in color because B&W doesn't quite capture it. Just imagine the wildest color combinations you can think of and you're probably in the ballpark. (The lower right was the stars and stripes.)Over the next few years my sweaty left forearm took its toll on Karina's paint job and I ended up refinishing it in dark brown. And many years later (1989) I sold it to a working musician.
No regrets, but a couple of old Polaroids (and my memories) are all I have left of this little bit of Karina's whimsy :-)
Saturday, July 9, 2011
Chaela and Silly
At this point I've pretty much given up trying to keep the story in exact chronological order, but given how often we moved the geographical order is pretty darn close... So about all I can say is that everything I've been talking about recently happened during that year or so we spent in Tyler...
I've mention our cat (Chaela) and our miniature dachshund (Silly) before. We acquired them when we moved into the house on Chilton Street. I've also talked about how fond Silly was of cat droppings. Yeah - we never could break him of that... But there are other stories (some sad - some not).
Both of them were still in kitten / puppy mode when we got them - lots of chasing around the house. Chaela would use the back of the sectional sofa like the banked turn on a Nascar track - she'd jump up onto one end and run through the 90 degree arc to the other end. It was pretty cool to watch - and it made Silly really mad because he couldn't follow her - he never seemed to catch on that he could intercept her at the other end :-)
One of most vivid memories of Silly (other than the cat poop thing) was when he got his head stuck in a milk carton. He couldn't get his head free and was walking into walls and stuff. We watched for a good long time (laughing) before we finally took pity and pulled it off of him.
Another time I was out in the front yard watching some gathering storm clouds with Silly sitting right next to me. A bolt of lightning hit a tree in the yard next door (about 100 feet away) and dropped a huge limb onto the neighbor's car. There was no warning - just a simultaneous flash and ear-splitting crash / thump... I spent the next 45 minutes trying to figure out what happened to Silly. I looked down right after the strike and he had disappeared... After a quick check of the house (the front door had been open) I canvassed the neighborhood - there was no sign of him. I finally did a thorough search of the house and found him under a pile of laundry in my closet. I don't why he didn't respond to my calls... He probably figured it was all my fault :-)
Unfortunately Silly was in the habit of sitting in the middle of the road. One day I looked out and noticed him out there but just as I opened the front door to call him a car topped the rise by our house going about 50 MPH (in a 25 zone) and clipped him. The driver didn't even slow down. The girl across the street drove me to the vet and Silly died in my arms on the way. (It still brings tears to my eyes to think about it.)
Now on to Chaela:
When Chaela was little she was constantly crouching in the "ready to strike" position - poised to attack some imaginary prey (practicing her hunting skills I guess). One day she was under the coffee table ready to pounce and I got to wondering if she realized that she didn't have very much headroom under there... Apparently not - I balled up one of my socks and pegged her in the butt with it. She was facing away from me and didn't see it coming. She jumped straight up and whacked the bottom of the table so hard it almost knocked her senseless... I felt absolutely horrible about it - I honestly didn't think she was that unaware. She never did practice her pouncing around me again...
And here's another one I felt even worse about (although it wasn't really my fault):
I've mentioned Bernie before (the amazing jazz guitarist). I don't recall precisely when, but he and Karina were briefly married - she had it annulled. Of course - that didn't imply that she didn't want to be with him - she just didn't want to be married to him... At some point he moved to Dallas to work in a music store there and Karina would go stay with him when she felt like it.
One weekend Karina insisted I come visit her in Dallas (I don't recall why). This was after the demise of Silly but I still had to figure out what to do with Chaela. It seemed like a cat should be able to survive a day or two without a human so I blocked the back door open just enough for her to get in and out and left a bunch of food and water in the kitchen.
When I got back home on Monday Chaela greeted me out front. She was acting really upset and walking funny. When I took a closer look I realized that her left femur was completely separated from the hip and was poking up next to her spine... I have absolutely no clue how that could have happened - aside from the fracture there wasn't a scratch on her...
So I rushed her to the vet. I still remember having to hold her down on the examination table while he worked her leg like a 4-speed shifter - she didn't like that very much... He told me that the femur had broken off from the ball and it was too small to put a pin in - they usually euthanized cats when that happened. When I asked him if there wasn't anything he could do he mentioned an experimental surgery he had heard about - it involved sticking the bones back together and suturing the femur to the hip to hold it in place while it healed. It didn't always work but it was the only option.
The surgery was a success - Chaela recovered completely. But even more amazing was the bill: For the X-rays, the surgery, the anesthesia and a couple of days of recovery time the vet charged a grand total of $20. (That's less than $120 adjusted for inflation.) The guy was simply amazing. It was obvious that he cared more about the animals than making a living... Of course - it hadn't been that long since I had shown up there with a dead dachshund so he might have taken pity on me... Regardless - he was a godsend :-)
Out of the whole incident the thing that really upset me was wondering how long the poor kitty had been wandering around with a broken leg waiting for me to get home. It made me sick to my stomach just thinking about it...
It's no secret that I don't like having pets, but it's not because I don't like animals - it's because I do like them... I just can't help thinking about my first dog (Bozo) who had to be force fed when we left him in a kennel because he wouldn't eat without us around. (I'm sure he had to be euthanized when we left for Germany.) And seeing Silly get hit by the car - and Chaela getting badly injured the only time I left her alone... And that poor squirrel getting flattened by a car when I was 9... Hmm - I never did blog about that... I was so upset that I had trouble sleeping for a month and I didn't even see it happen...
Yeah - some of the absolute best and worst moments of my life involved animals. Unfortunately - the worst seem to affect me a lot more than the best... I assume that all of my kids will eventually read this and when they do I hope they'll better understand why I was always so resistant to having pets.... (Of course - that never stopped us from having dogs, cats, birds, fishes, lizards and turtles.) I always blamed it on my allergies but it was really more about my memories...
I've mention our cat (Chaela) and our miniature dachshund (Silly) before. We acquired them when we moved into the house on Chilton Street. I've also talked about how fond Silly was of cat droppings. Yeah - we never could break him of that... But there are other stories (some sad - some not).
Both of them were still in kitten / puppy mode when we got them - lots of chasing around the house. Chaela would use the back of the sectional sofa like the banked turn on a Nascar track - she'd jump up onto one end and run through the 90 degree arc to the other end. It was pretty cool to watch - and it made Silly really mad because he couldn't follow her - he never seemed to catch on that he could intercept her at the other end :-)
One of most vivid memories of Silly (other than the cat poop thing) was when he got his head stuck in a milk carton. He couldn't get his head free and was walking into walls and stuff. We watched for a good long time (laughing) before we finally took pity and pulled it off of him.
Another time I was out in the front yard watching some gathering storm clouds with Silly sitting right next to me. A bolt of lightning hit a tree in the yard next door (about 100 feet away) and dropped a huge limb onto the neighbor's car. There was no warning - just a simultaneous flash and ear-splitting crash / thump... I spent the next 45 minutes trying to figure out what happened to Silly. I looked down right after the strike and he had disappeared... After a quick check of the house (the front door had been open) I canvassed the neighborhood - there was no sign of him. I finally did a thorough search of the house and found him under a pile of laundry in my closet. I don't why he didn't respond to my calls... He probably figured it was all my fault :-)
Unfortunately Silly was in the habit of sitting in the middle of the road. One day I looked out and noticed him out there but just as I opened the front door to call him a car topped the rise by our house going about 50 MPH (in a 25 zone) and clipped him. The driver didn't even slow down. The girl across the street drove me to the vet and Silly died in my arms on the way. (It still brings tears to my eyes to think about it.)
Now on to Chaela:
When Chaela was little she was constantly crouching in the "ready to strike" position - poised to attack some imaginary prey (practicing her hunting skills I guess). One day she was under the coffee table ready to pounce and I got to wondering if she realized that she didn't have very much headroom under there... Apparently not - I balled up one of my socks and pegged her in the butt with it. She was facing away from me and didn't see it coming. She jumped straight up and whacked the bottom of the table so hard it almost knocked her senseless... I felt absolutely horrible about it - I honestly didn't think she was that unaware. She never did practice her pouncing around me again...
And here's another one I felt even worse about (although it wasn't really my fault):
I've mentioned Bernie before (the amazing jazz guitarist). I don't recall precisely when, but he and Karina were briefly married - she had it annulled. Of course - that didn't imply that she didn't want to be with him - she just didn't want to be married to him... At some point he moved to Dallas to work in a music store there and Karina would go stay with him when she felt like it.
One weekend Karina insisted I come visit her in Dallas (I don't recall why). This was after the demise of Silly but I still had to figure out what to do with Chaela. It seemed like a cat should be able to survive a day or two without a human so I blocked the back door open just enough for her to get in and out and left a bunch of food and water in the kitchen.
When I got back home on Monday Chaela greeted me out front. She was acting really upset and walking funny. When I took a closer look I realized that her left femur was completely separated from the hip and was poking up next to her spine... I have absolutely no clue how that could have happened - aside from the fracture there wasn't a scratch on her...
So I rushed her to the vet. I still remember having to hold her down on the examination table while he worked her leg like a 4-speed shifter - she didn't like that very much... He told me that the femur had broken off from the ball and it was too small to put a pin in - they usually euthanized cats when that happened. When I asked him if there wasn't anything he could do he mentioned an experimental surgery he had heard about - it involved sticking the bones back together and suturing the femur to the hip to hold it in place while it healed. It didn't always work but it was the only option.
The surgery was a success - Chaela recovered completely. But even more amazing was the bill: For the X-rays, the surgery, the anesthesia and a couple of days of recovery time the vet charged a grand total of $20. (That's less than $120 adjusted for inflation.) The guy was simply amazing. It was obvious that he cared more about the animals than making a living... Of course - it hadn't been that long since I had shown up there with a dead dachshund so he might have taken pity on me... Regardless - he was a godsend :-)
Out of the whole incident the thing that really upset me was wondering how long the poor kitty had been wandering around with a broken leg waiting for me to get home. It made me sick to my stomach just thinking about it...
It's no secret that I don't like having pets, but it's not because I don't like animals - it's because I do like them... I just can't help thinking about my first dog (Bozo) who had to be force fed when we left him in a kennel because he wouldn't eat without us around. (I'm sure he had to be euthanized when we left for Germany.) And seeing Silly get hit by the car - and Chaela getting badly injured the only time I left her alone... And that poor squirrel getting flattened by a car when I was 9... Hmm - I never did blog about that... I was so upset that I had trouble sleeping for a month and I didn't even see it happen...
Yeah - some of the absolute best and worst moments of my life involved animals. Unfortunately - the worst seem to affect me a lot more than the best... I assume that all of my kids will eventually read this and when they do I hope they'll better understand why I was always so resistant to having pets.... (Of course - that never stopped us from having dogs, cats, birds, fishes, lizards and turtles.) I always blamed it on my allergies but it was really more about my memories...
Friday, July 1, 2011
Stranger Nights
My prior post (in which I described the evening I inadvertently spent hanging out with a bunch of stoners - 8 hours of my life I'll never get back) brought back a lot of memories about the drug subculture in Tyler Texas back in 1970.
I didn't consider myself to be part of that crowd (although I was known to inhale from time to time), but (like them) I tended to be "out and about" in the wee hours of the morning. That was because Wayne started work at 5 AM and slept afterwards (during the day). He usually spent the early evenings with his girlfriend (when they weren't split up). BTW: I was the best man at their wedding - they've been together for 40 years now - surprised the heck out of me... But the point is that when Wayne and I hung out it was usually in the 11 PM to 3 AM time frame.
There were only two places in town that were open 24/7: A convenience store and a Dunkin' Donuts - both excellent sources of munchies for those in need :-) So when Wayne and I stopped by those places we tended to encounter the same people over and over. (Including that blond girl who had the bad trip in my prior post...) The guys who worked graveyard shift at the convenience store were "cool" and seemed to enjoy the company (although they did get a bit irritated when people had "flame thrower" fights with the cigarette lighters and hairspray)... The Dunkin' Donuts wasn't quite as popular because there were usually cops there... Yeah, I know - it's a stereotype - but that doesn't mean it's not true :-) Still - it was an OK place to go if you were in any condition to "act normal".
The other major hub of drug activity was Bergfeld Park. (That's the park where I played tennis.) The south end of the park was where all the dealers were - you could get just about anything there... The transactions were going on totally in the open - there was absolutely no effort to conceal it. Everyone was laughing at how incompetent the Tyler police were because it had been going on for quite a while and the cops seemed oblivious... Personally, I tended to avoid that scene - I've always been "risk averse" - but Wayne was known to hang out there from time to time. Let's just say he was willing to try things I wasn't :-)
Then late one night Wayne and I were cruising up Broadway in his Mustang when we got pulled over. The officer did the usual license and registration bit and said "Wayne, the reason I stopped you is there was a report of a hit and run involving a car like yours a while ago and I just wanted to check for damage". The cop walked around the Mustang (which was intact) and went on his way.
After the cop left I waited for Wayne to start the car but he just sat there staring straight ahead... When I looked over I realized he was trembling... I asked what was wrong and he said "That p*g just called me Wayne..." And I was like "Yeah - what's your point?" He didn't say a word - just handed me his license. That's when I remembered that Wayne was his middle name and his license only showed his middle initial...
He was completely freaked out for the rest of the evening - just kept muttering about how he'd never seen that cop before - how did the guy know his nickname? He decided (wisely) to avoid the south end of the park in the future and not too long afterward there was a major drug bust... We later speculated that the cop might have been a friend of a friend of his family and was giving him a subtle hint... We'll never know.
Aside: We were totally paranoid about the cops in Tyler back then and it later turned out that it was justified... In the late 1970s there was a major scandal involving planted evidence and perjured testimony in a drug case there. The events were later fictionalized and dramatized in the movie "Rush"... So yeah - there was good reason for concern :-)
Now - for the highlight of our Friday nights:
The John Birch Society office in Tyler had a "Dial a Commie Plot" line. (That wasn't the official name - that's just what Wayne and I called it.) You dialed the number and got a recorded message telling you about the latest plot to destroy America... The messages ran the gamut from how Unicef money was used to buy arms for Red China to the assertion that all rock stars had short wave radios and got regular instructions from Moscow on how to corrupt the morals of America's youth... The guy who did the recordings was so incredibly serious - it was hysterically funny :-)
They changed the recording every Friday afternoon and we looked forward to that new message all week... Now - this was back in the days before people had phone extensions all over the house so Wayne and I had to listen to the message one at a time (I remember arguing about whose turn it was to go first). Either way, seeing the other person's reaction made the whole thing that much funnier... I've never laughed so hard :-) It was part of what made living in Tyler almost tolerable.
I didn't consider myself to be part of that crowd (although I was known to inhale from time to time), but (like them) I tended to be "out and about" in the wee hours of the morning. That was because Wayne started work at 5 AM and slept afterwards (during the day). He usually spent the early evenings with his girlfriend (when they weren't split up). BTW: I was the best man at their wedding - they've been together for 40 years now - surprised the heck out of me... But the point is that when Wayne and I hung out it was usually in the 11 PM to 3 AM time frame.
There were only two places in town that were open 24/7: A convenience store and a Dunkin' Donuts - both excellent sources of munchies for those in need :-) So when Wayne and I stopped by those places we tended to encounter the same people over and over. (Including that blond girl who had the bad trip in my prior post...) The guys who worked graveyard shift at the convenience store were "cool" and seemed to enjoy the company (although they did get a bit irritated when people had "flame thrower" fights with the cigarette lighters and hairspray)... The Dunkin' Donuts wasn't quite as popular because there were usually cops there... Yeah, I know - it's a stereotype - but that doesn't mean it's not true :-) Still - it was an OK place to go if you were in any condition to "act normal".
The other major hub of drug activity was Bergfeld Park. (That's the park where I played tennis.) The south end of the park was where all the dealers were - you could get just about anything there... The transactions were going on totally in the open - there was absolutely no effort to conceal it. Everyone was laughing at how incompetent the Tyler police were because it had been going on for quite a while and the cops seemed oblivious... Personally, I tended to avoid that scene - I've always been "risk averse" - but Wayne was known to hang out there from time to time. Let's just say he was willing to try things I wasn't :-)
Then late one night Wayne and I were cruising up Broadway in his Mustang when we got pulled over. The officer did the usual license and registration bit and said "Wayne, the reason I stopped you is there was a report of a hit and run involving a car like yours a while ago and I just wanted to check for damage". The cop walked around the Mustang (which was intact) and went on his way.
After the cop left I waited for Wayne to start the car but he just sat there staring straight ahead... When I looked over I realized he was trembling... I asked what was wrong and he said "That p*g just called me Wayne..." And I was like "Yeah - what's your point?" He didn't say a word - just handed me his license. That's when I remembered that Wayne was his middle name and his license only showed his middle initial...
He was completely freaked out for the rest of the evening - just kept muttering about how he'd never seen that cop before - how did the guy know his nickname? He decided (wisely) to avoid the south end of the park in the future and not too long afterward there was a major drug bust... We later speculated that the cop might have been a friend of a friend of his family and was giving him a subtle hint... We'll never know.
Aside: We were totally paranoid about the cops in Tyler back then and it later turned out that it was justified... In the late 1970s there was a major scandal involving planted evidence and perjured testimony in a drug case there. The events were later fictionalized and dramatized in the movie "Rush"... So yeah - there was good reason for concern :-)
Now - for the highlight of our Friday nights:
The John Birch Society office in Tyler had a "Dial a Commie Plot" line. (That wasn't the official name - that's just what Wayne and I called it.) You dialed the number and got a recorded message telling you about the latest plot to destroy America... The messages ran the gamut from how Unicef money was used to buy arms for Red China to the assertion that all rock stars had short wave radios and got regular instructions from Moscow on how to corrupt the morals of America's youth... The guy who did the recordings was so incredibly serious - it was hysterically funny :-)
They changed the recording every Friday afternoon and we looked forward to that new message all week... Now - this was back in the days before people had phone extensions all over the house so Wayne and I had to listen to the message one at a time (I remember arguing about whose turn it was to go first). Either way, seeing the other person's reaction made the whole thing that much funnier... I've never laughed so hard :-) It was part of what made living in Tyler almost tolerable.
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