In 1956 I was 14 years old and living in Detroit with my grandparents when Hound Dog, by Elvis came out and I bought it to take to school for our weekly sock-hop in gym....I soon transplanted to my mom's home in Houston and attended my first concert at the Houston Auditorium, where I had a job selling peanuts, popcorn, and cracker-jacks at the wrestling matches. Since the rock & roll concerts were held at the same auditorium, and I knew that all the doors would be open all day on the eve of concerts, my buds and I would head down there in the late afternoon and sneak in and hide under the stage. My first concert was one of Alan Freed's shows.
I was into Bo Didly, Chuck Berry, The Coasters, The Platters, Laverne Baker, Paul Anka and had seen all of them in live performances at Houston's Central Auditorium in 1956-1958, I can still sing along with the hits of Dion and The Belmonts, Curtis Mayfield andThe Impressions, The Ink Spots Clyde McPhatter, Sam Cooke, The Drifters, The Cadilacs, The Flamingos.
My personal taste in music has always skewed towards rich black voices, having grown up in Detroit, Cleveland, and Houston where passionate Top 40 radio exploded over the airwaves, and I never lived anywhere that I couldn't hear the The Wolfman. ( listen to The Wolfman here )
I was in Houston when "Further On Up The Road", Bobby Blue Bland, went to number one ) the first black artist to cross over from what they had called "Race music"and crack the Billboard list. This was long before sterophonics, but the "wall of sound" roared out of those Wurlitzer juke boxes, and AM radio that had no line of sight issues, playing the same 40 records over and over in no time, you could sing along with a thousand hits that could be heard from coast to coast, and seen on American Bandstand every afternoon after school...and they played them loud when I was a kid.
I saw many shows at the auditorium for the next 2 years returning to Detroit in 1958. Chuck Berry, Laverne Baker, The Coasters, The Platters, Bo Diddly, and Paul Anka. (the little prick was about our age at the time and tried to run us off from back stage as The Coasters were coming in with their suits over their shoulders and doo-rags on their heads...they told Paul Anka that we were with them and let us hang out with them in their dressing room).
It's fall 1958 and upon my return to Detroit, my father enters the picture and for the first time in his life offers to give me a home with him and his high-strung girlfriend in Cleveland. I didn't have much trouble bonding with my peers there and soon joined a small clan of mixed nationality "baby hoods", and set about blending in. Cleveland in the 50's was a hoot, my buds were, Italian, Polish, German, Greek, Jewish, and assorted combinations thereon. We did our little doo-wop thing, as I had in Detroit and Houston and for a kid my age I did have some pretty good tales to weave when things were slow.
We had been having a rough patch on the bonding side, and the girlfiiend, Wilda, wasn't used to sharing my dad with anybody and my days were numbered early in the drill. One day we were coming out of my dad's $2 barber's shop, and I was pissed, my head looked like someone had put a bowl over it as a guide.
It was around Halloween time, and there was frozen snow pack on the ground and small pools of melted snow here and there. There were frozen grooves from tire treads and as we gingerly navigated down the alley to the car, I made the passing remark to Wilda, "if you think I'm going to school like this, your nuts", she went balistic, shreeking, "don't you call me crazy", and took a spastic kind of a swing at my face, I just slipped the blow, and let her momentum carry her on down into the street. When her ass hit the ground and that ice water shot up her too-tight skirt, she went to screaming her head off.
Now my dad was walking ahead of us, oblivious to her distress and I just kept on walking followed him into the car. We're sitting there, he starts the car, "where's Wilda?" he asks and starts looking around. She's having trouble getting a grip and keeps slipping back town out his view. Finally, he get's out of the car and discovers her, all in a heap, tears flowing out of her eyes and invectives from her mouth. When we got home, she told him I had hit her and knocked her down and she didn't want me living in her house any longer. I know of this conversation because I read her notes to him after they went to bed.
Now it's time to start school, Myrick T. Herrick Junior High, at 55th & Broadway. My dad had a very small business, repairing radios and TV's. I say it was a very small business because with his handicap of 10% hearing in only one ear, he relied mainly on a small disability pension. When it came time to get me some clothes for school, my dad didn't have any money for it, so he told me we needed to go down to the welfare department and get some money for clothes. I had no idea we were on a dual mission, mine to get "clothes", and my dad's to get "rid of me". We walked down a long hallway and entered an office that had a second door out the back, the second door led into the Detention Home, and that was my exit door. Another Christmas behind bars. Back in 56' i spent my birthday and Christmas in the Detroit Detention Home and that was when they decided to send me to Texas to my mom's.
Now it's the summer of 1960, I'm finishing up a year and a half of misadventures at the George Junior Republic in Freeville, New York. Now this is a high-dollar, self-governing, co-educational private school sitting on 40 some acres in up-state New York near Ithaca. Admission requirements include having an above average i.q., excellent health and physical abilities, all dental and medical needs brought up to speed before admission, a wardrobe that will outfit you with a sport-coat for breakfast and lunch, and a suit and tie for dinner, seven days a week.
All that and $5,200.00 annual tuition plus transportation home twice a year for two week vacations, and you were good to go. All of this was furnished by the Cuyahoga County Welfare Department, Cleveland, Ohio as I had been declared a ward of the state of Ohio when my dad had taken me down to the welfare people to "get me some clothes for school". They just kept me and after much testing, poking and prodding sponsored me to a two year stay at the George Junior Republic private school.
One of my best buds at the GJR, whose motto by the way was "nothing without labor", was a fine fella from Hells Kitchen, New York, by the name of Arthur Matthews. He had a rapier wit, intelligence, great conversation and the charm and good nature of an Irish New Yorker. We were fast friends and partners in mischief at school and although separately, we left with high hopes, and no regrets, and neither of us let the door hit us on the ass.
After 2 years, two months and 20 days, and two round trips to the western Pacific, I decided to retire from a navy unresponsive to my long range needs, and finessed myself an immediate and honorable discharge.
My recruiter in Houston had promised me sonar school, and after scoring high on the GCT test, number six out of 90 some-odd guys in my company in boot camp, I was confident that would happen. My folks were gonna be so proud of me with my headphones on, defending my shipmates from enemy submarines. My folks were deaf and would never have had such an opportunity.
My mother was stone deaf and my father only had 12 per cent hearing in one ear. My mom lost her hearing in a plague that hit southern Louisiana when she was about 4 years old. She lost her mother, 2 sisters and a brother, and her hearing all in 6 days. At that time there were damn few orphanages that would take the hearing impaired, much less offer them any specialized training. It just happened that one of the best schools for the deaf in the country was right there in Baton Rouge, run by the Catholic church. They must have been awful good to her, because she was a loyal and dedicated Catholic her entire life.
My father, born and raised in Detroit, lost his hearing to a bout with rheumatic fever, about the time he recovered from that, he was hit by a truck delivering newspapers on a bicycle. Since both my parents hearing-loss was due to illness, and not hereditary, my hearing was unaffected, and I think my mom would have enjoyed seeing me in pictures with a head-set on looking all important running around in some submarine. My dad had a younger brother, by two years, and right out of high school he joined the Army and when he came home from the war he went right to work on the assembly line at Dodge main making apparent strides in his young life.
My dad on the other hand, although a handsome and charming man was constantly mistaken for a hearing person and as soon as he saw the disappointment in their eyes, it was like getting shot. My dad didn't' hang around Detroit for long after he got out of high school and like so many deaf people, soon found himself acquainted only with other hearing impaired people and coaxed into a gypsy kind of life runnin' the roads, traveling from one big city to the next and hanging out at the deaf clubs. In this picture he has found work in Baton Rouge, Louisiana at a munitions plant and he meets my mother. They fall in love, marry, have me, and before too long, my dad gets bored or whatever and runs out on us. My mom takes me and my half brother on a train to Detroit and gives me to my dad's parents because she could'nt afford to keep all of us. Twp years later, my dad is back down south runnig around and hooks back up with my mother and has another child. They named my brother Edmund Alfred Chatham. I was named after my father, Edward Albert Chatham. All of this had no effect on my life and I remained in Detroit. My grandparents spoiled the shit out of me and I lived the life of a Lord Fauntleroy. When I was about 13, my mom, with my brother, and a half brother, Freddy, came up to visit me for a week and not long after that asked my grandparents to send me down to Houston to live with them. Reluctantly, they put me on a plane, and off I went.
Upon graduation from boot camp, most of the guys were sent to schools. I was sent to the fleet and the deck force of the U.S.S Cacapon, AO 52, an oil tanker home ported in Long Beach, California. It was a fine enough ship, as tankers go, and safely carried me through Typhoon Nancy in 1961 and the inimitable experience of having waves passing over the bridge for a couple, three days. Not to mention that it didn't break up and sink in that typhoon.
Super Typhoon Nancy (18W) was a powerful tropical cyclone of the 1961 Pacific typhoon season. The system with possibly the strongest winds ever measured in a tropical cyclone, Nancy caused extensive damage and at least 173 deaths and thousands of injuries in Japan and elsewhere in September 1961. The destruction was so heavy that the Japan Meteorological Agency gave the typhoon its own special name, one of only eight systems to have been named.
A reconnaissance aircraft flying into the typhoon near its peak intensity on September 12 determined Nancy's one-minute sustained winds to be 185 knots (215 mph; 345 km/h). If these values are reliable, they would be the highest wind speeds ever measured in a tropical cyclone.
"Wickapedia"
They did keep the "see the world" part of they're promise, I celebrated my 18th birthday in the Cherry Bar in Hong Kong, but I never forgave them for denying me the opportunity to advance my position in life through the confidence-building experience of being schooled to a specific task.
The Navy obscenely explained not sending me to school because I lacked a high school diploma. I passed the H.S. GED and failed a 2 year college equivalency test two weeks later, by such a narrow margin I could have insisted on a retest. But to no avail, I was strictly "blue collar fodder," just another refugee from the industrial grade elementary school system of Detroit, Michigan, and by god, so I would remain.
"my town was fathered by orphans, praise god
who came from across the sea
time gave them plenty of nothing praise god
so why do they ask more from me
they preach to me of the factories
and tell me to take my place
but I'll stay here in the willows,
erasing the shame from my face
My Town
Paul Seibel © 1971
Woodsmoke and Oranges
Upon securing my strolling papers from a Navy psychiatrist, I was transferred to Treasure Island and after two months of haunting the discharge barracks, I was finally scheduled for discharge. The process took three days. One day for a physical, one day of signing forms and listening to speeches about taxes and what not, and on the third day you would assemble at building 218 promptly at 10:00 am and you would be payed off and discharged. Once you made the list, it was a well oiled machine, satisfaction guaranteed. Literally, thousands of discharges, without interruption...until they got to me.
The room was full of sailors and their families, they processed us out in groups of eighty, many family members and loved ones had traveled across the country to retrieve their loved ones and the hum of anticipation was buzzing with rumor. Ten-o-clock rolls around and nothing happens. The date is 25 October, 1962.
About eleven-thirty am, a 3 rd class yeoman, a very low ranking beaurocrat in the navy, comes in and nervously reads us a telegram. “Due to the missile crisis in Cuba, the President has extended the active duty of all members of the armed forces of the United States, indefinitely. At 20 years of age, having pretty much had my way up until then, I was stunned that fate could deal me such a blow, with one foot literally out the navies door.
That afternoon I received orders to report to the U.S.S. Bon Homme Richard CVA 31, an Essex Class aircraft carrier, home ported in San Diego, CA, but temporarily berthed at Bremerton, Washington.
That evening, I went to San Francisco with my phony I.D., as was my custom, and went to my favorite bar. The Brown Jug on Eddy Street in the Tenderloin District. The Brown Jug was a typical Tenderloin neighborhood bar, located in a rough neighborhood but steadfastly attended by a loyal, warm and fuzzy clientele. You just kind of had to stay inside the bar..
It was barely dark when I began hammering gin and sevens, my drink of choice, for its lack of odor, and commenced to ponder my future on a ship that my tanker had refueled in the past, that in fact had a reputation with the "salty dogs" on the Cacapon, of having a bad rudder that could render the ship helm-less at the worst possible moment.
Now, as I lower my third or fourth empty rock glass and peruse the growing assembly of Saturday night all-stars, my eyes lock in on a gorgeous, Elizabeth Taylor\Ava Gardner caliber, raven-haired beauty in a full-length white mink, sharing a toast with none other than my old pal Arthur Matthews. The ladies name is Angel, and she too is from Hells Kitchen. She loves dancing, drinking, shopping, and the immortal classic Rock and Roll dirge, "Death of an Angel" by Donald Woods and the Vel-airs. The knowledge of which sealed our bond for life.
They are toasting their engagement, joined by most everyone in the bar and when Matty's eyes meet mine, bridging the length of the bar, we both lite up like Christmas trees. He, for what he envisions as sharing a golden moment in his life, and yours truly, for what this unexpected reunion was taking off my mind, at warp speed.
As the night wore on, I was dancing and snuggling up to a little cu-tie from Chicago, who was being chaperoned by her lounge lizard mother, and was reinforced by the drivers license of a girl-friend back home masking her true age, in fact, like me, she was a minor.
Later, when it was decided that Angel and Matty were going to Reno to get married, Mary and I were recruited as brides maid and best man and I commenced, unknowingly, to violate the Mann Act, right off the top.
The bartender, one of the brothers who owned the Brown Jug, pony'd up a new Imperial for the trip and the regulars passed the hat and we soon had in excess of $200 for the trip. In 1962 money, that was quite a chunk of change, considering a gallon of Red Mountain and a large tasty dinner south of market street could be had for less than a buck.
Now anywhere else in the world, this chain of events would be freaky and extremely unlikely, but in the magic that was San Francisco, even then, it was as natural and effortless as fartin' in the bath tub, nothing you'd want to brag about, but hardly worth the effort to deny.
We spent some of the money closing the Brown Jug, and then proceeded to drink-drive our way up to Reno. We traveled all night and rolled into Reno at first light. As providence would have it, Arthur and Angel, who looked decidedly older and unquestionably more mature than little Mary and myself, couldn't find a living soul that would accept their phony I.D.s.
In the frenzy of a drunken blitz to find a typewriter to improve the credibility of their phony I.D.s, I put my shoulder to a glass door to an office that had a typewriter on a desk in my line of sight. The door was locked, and in fact had an arrow and sign at eye-level directing me to use the other door. Mary saw it but failed to mention it in time and my forward momentum carried me through, landing in a heap at the foot of a frightened secretary's desk in a pool of broken glass.
The judge, who happened to own the building, kept me sitting in a chair at his desk for 2 hours while awaiting an appraisal for the repair before presenting me with the bill for $100 to fix the door.
Nobody in our party was anxious to return to the Brown Jug broke, hung over, with our faces hanging out, and no bride and groom to account for the lost time and money. No problem, everybody loved our IDs, so we got a quick license and married for about $15 in one of those street-corner chapels, allowing once more, the sun to set slowly in the west.
When we got back to San Francisco I spent the night with my new bride and returned to Treasure Island the following morning with Arthur, Angel and Mary in tow and told an un-imbelished "amazing" little story to the Duty Petty Officers at the barracks. The story was so outrageous it could stand no embellishment.
Yuk, yuk, they thought it was a great story and in view of the Cuban thing, and the fact that the free world might soon be in harms way, gave me absolution and told me to go ahead and return to the city for the night, and return the following day for one day of duty, followed by another 3 days off while waiting for my traveling money to transfer up to Bremerton, Washington.
In fine fettle and good grace, I returned to the base and made inspections in my last uniform sans glove-leather lined pointed Italian shoes, my very first pair of San Remos in fact, and proceeded to move on. It was common practice to sell what you could and give away the rest of your navy wardrobe once you began the discharge cycle, and I had saved one dress uniform and one hat for musters. That afternoon, two armed Marines came and escorted me and my duffel bag full of "civvies" from the discharge barracks, to the restricted barracks.
This I thought was a little strange but I wasn't locked in or anything so I wasn't too concerned, and wrote it off to some kind of navy base B.S. About midnight, here comes two more armed M.P.s and cuff me and escort me to the brig.
There, they shave my head, and stand me up against a wall, in a cell with a chicken-wire ceiling and a sentry wandering up and down a cat-walk over-head making sure I don't sit down. I'm thinking, "boy, when they change their mind around here, they really change their mind."
I was totally unaware of the fact that my "naive, quiet-as-a-mouse like" little cu-tie from Chicago, who was already married to a 3 rd class Petty Officer right there at Treasure Island, dropped me off at my barracks, and proceeded to the administration building, marriage license in hand, and filed a second Dependents Military Allotment application against my name.
It was about a week to ten days of frat-house hazing type captivity before they finally stood me up before an extremely up-tight Lieutenant Commander, a mid-level line officer, that had been temporarily trapped in limbo, assigned to Treasure Island awaiting a fresh assignment somewhere in Navy-land and assigned to dispense a military type spin on justice to people like me "who acted so crazy".
Hearing my straight forward, almost casual account of the events leading up to this alleged dastardly deed, he was convinced that it was all my idea, and declared that I must be thinking he's a complete idiot. "In the best interest of the United States Navy, and you, I'm going to give you an immediate General Discharge under Honorable Conditions, and you can skip your two year reserve obligation as well. "Now get him out of my sight."
"I don't want you hangin' round, I don't want to see you after the sun goes down
I said, I don't want you hangin' round
go and spread your lies on the other side of town
when I first met you,
you talked those words so sweet
now you lied to me
you was livin' in a tree
and you didn't have nothin' to eat
so head your feet towards the edge of town
cuz, I don't want you hangin' round...
in my vicinity
no I don't want you hangin' round
Hangin' Round
Patrick Sky© 1965
They did keep the "see the world" part of they're promise, I celebrated my 18th birthday in the Cherry Bar in Hong Kong, but I never forgave them for denying me the opportunity to advance my position in life through the confidence-building experience of being schooled to a specific task.
The Navy obscenely explained not sending me to school because I lacked a high school diploma. I passed the H.S. GED and failed a 2 year college equivalency test two weeks later, by such a narrow margin I could have insisted on a retest. But to no avail, I was strictly "blue collar fodder," just another refugee from the industrial grade elementary school system of Detroit, Michigan, and by god, so I would remain.
"my town was fathered by orphans, praise god
who came from across the sea
time gave them plenty of nothing praise god
so why do they ask more from me
they preach to me of the factories
and tell me to take my place
but I'll stay here in the willows,
erasing the shame from my face
My Town
Paul Seibel © 1971
Woodsmoke and Oranges
Upon securing my strolling papers from a Navy psychiatrist, I was transferred to Treasure Island and after two months of haunting the discharge barracks, I was finally scheduled for discharge. The process took three days. One day for a physical, one day of signing forms and listening to speeches about taxes and what not, and on the third day you would assemble at building 218 promptly at 10:00 am and you would be payed off and discharged. Once you made the list, it was a well oiled machine, satisfaction guaranteed. Literally, thousands of discharges, without interruption...until they got to me.
The room was full of sailors and their families, they processed us out in groups of eighty, many family members and loved ones had traveled across the country to retrieve their loved ones and the hum of anticipation was buzzing with rumor. Ten-o-clock rolls around and nothing happens. The date is 25 October, 1962.
About eleven-thirty am, a 3 rd class yeoman, a very low ranking beaurocrat in the navy, comes in and nervously reads us a telegram. “Due to the missile crisis in Cuba, the President has extended the active duty of all members of the armed forces of the United States, indefinitely. At 20 years of age, having pretty much had my way up until then, I was stunned that fate could deal me such a blow, with one foot literally out the navies door.
That afternoon I received orders to report to the U.S.S. Bon Homme Richard CVA 31, an Essex Class aircraft carrier, home ported in San Diego, CA, but temporarily berthed at Bremerton, Washington.
That evening, I went to San Francisco with my phony I.D., as was my custom, and went to my favorite bar. The Brown Jug on Eddy Street in the Tenderloin District. The Brown Jug was a typical Tenderloin neighborhood bar, located in a rough neighborhood but steadfastly attended by a loyal, warm and fuzzy clientele. You just kind of had to stay inside the bar.
It was barely dark when I began hammering gin and sevens, my drink of choice, for its lack of odor, and commenced to ponder my future on a ship that my tanker had refueled in the past, that in fact had a reputation with the "salty dogs" on the Cacapon, of having a bad rudder that could render the ship helm-less at the worst possible moment.
Let me back up a couple of years to the summer of 1960, I'm finishing up a year and a half of misadventures at the George Junior Republic in Freeville, New York. Now this is a high-dollar, self-governing, co-educational private school sitting on 40 some acres in up-state New York near Ithaca. Admission requirements include having an above average i.q., excellent health and physical abilities, all dental and medical needs brought up to speed before admission, a wardrobe that will outfit you with a sport-coat for breakfast and lunch, and a suit and tie for dinner, seven days a week.
All that and $5,200.00 annual tuition plus transportation home twice a year for two week vacations, and you were good to go. All of this was furnished by the Cuyahoga County Welfare Department, Cleveland, Ohio as I had been declared a ward of the state of Ohio when my dad took me down to the welfare people to get me some clothes for school. They just kept me and after much testing, poking and prodding sponsored me to a two year stay at the George Junior Republic private school.
One of my best buds at the GJR, whose motto by the way was "nothing without labor", was a fine fella from Hells Kitchen, New York, by the name of Arthur Matthews. He had a rapier wit, intelligence, great conversation and the charm and good nature of an Irish New Yorker. We were fast friends and partners in mischief at school and although separately, we left with high hopes, and no regrets, and neither of us let the door hit us on the ass.
Now, as I lower my third or fourth empty rock glass and peruse the growing assembly of Saturday night all-stars, my eyes lock in on a gorgeous, Elizabeth Taylor\Ava Gardner caliber, raven-haired beauty in a full-length white mink, sharing a toast with none other than my old pal Arthur Matthews. The ladies name is Angel, and she too is from Hells Kitchen. She loves dancing, drinking, shopping, and the immortal classic Rock and Roll dirge, "Death of an Angel" by Donald Woods and the Vel-airs. The knowledge of which sealed our bond for life.
They are toasting their engagement, joined by most everyone in the bar and when Matty's eyes meet mine, bridging the length of the bar, we both lite up like Christmas trees. He, for what he envisions as sharing a golden moment in his life, and yours truly, for what this unexpected reunion was taking off my mind, at warp speed.
As the night wore on, I was dancing and snuggling up to a little cu-tie from Chicago, who was being chaperoned by her lounge lizard mother, and was reinforced by the drivers license of a girl-friend back home masking her true age, in fact, like me, she was a minor.
Later, when it was decided that Angel and Matty were going to Reno to get married, Mary and I were recruited as brides maid and best man and I commenced, unknowingly, to violate the Mann Act, right off the top.
The bartender, one of the brothers who owned the Brown Jug, pony'd up a new Imperial for the trip and the regulars passed the hat and we soon had in excess of $200 for the trip. In 1962 money, that was quite a chunk of change, considering a gallon of Red Mountain and a large tasty dinner south of market street could be had for less than a buck.
Now anywhere else in the world, this chain of events would be freaky and extremely unlikely, but in the magic that was San Francisco, even then, it was as natural and effortless as fartin' in the bath tub, nothing you'd want to brag about, but hardly worth the effort to deny.
We spent some of the money closing the Brown Jug, and then proceeded to drink-drive our way up to Reno. We traveled all night and rolled into Reno at first light. As providence would have it, Arthur and Angel, who looked decidedly older and unquestionably more mature than little Mary and myself, couldn't find a living soul that would accept their phony I.D.s.
In the frenzy of a drunken blitz to find a typewriter to improve the credibility of their phony I.D.s, I put my shoulder to a glass door to an office that had a typewriter on a desk in my line of sight. The door was locked, and in fact had an arrow and sign at eye-level directing me to use the other door. Mary saw it but failed to mention it in time and my forward momentum carried me through, landing in a heap at the foot of a frightened secretary's desk in a pool of broken glass.
The judge, who happened to own the building, kept me sitting in a chair at his desk for 2 hours while awaiting an appraisal for the repair before presenting me with the bill for $100 to fix the door.
Nobody in our party was anxious to return to the Brown Jug broke, hung over, with our faces hanging out, and no bride and groom to account for the lost time and money. No problem, everybody loved our IDs, so we got a quick license and married for about $15 in one of those street-corner chapels, allowing once more, the sun to set slowly in the west.
When we got back to San Francisco I spent the night with my new bride and returned to Treasure Island the following morning with Arthur, Angel and Mary in tow and told an un-imbelished "amazing" little story to the Duty Petty Officers at the barracks. The story was so outrageous it could stand no embellishment.
Yuk, yuk, they thought it was a great story and in view of the Cuban thing, and the fact that the free world might soon be in harms way, gave me absolution and told me to go ahead and return to the city for the night, and return the following day for one day of duty, followed by another 3 days off while waiting for my traveling money to transfer up to Bremerton, Washington.
In fine fettle and good grace, I returned to the base and made inspections in my last uniform sans glove-leather lined pointed Italian shoes, my very first pair of San Remos in fact, and proceeded to move on. It was common practice to sell what you could and give away the rest of your navy wardrobe once you began the discharge cycle, and I had saved one dress uniform and one hat for musters. That afternoon, two armed Marines came and escorted me and my duffel bag full of "civvies" from the discharge barracks, to the restricted barracks.
This I thought was a little strange but I wasn't locked in or anything so I wasn't too concerned, and wrote it off to some kind of navy base B.S. About midnight, here comes two more armed M.P.s and cuff me and escort me to the brig.
There, they shave my head, and stand me up against a wall, in a cell with a chicken-wire ceiling and a sentry wandering up and down a cat-walk over-head making sure I don't sit down. I'm thinking, "boy, when they change their mind around here, they really change their mind."
I was totally unaware of the fact that my "naive, quiet-as-a-mouse like" little cu-tie from Chicago, who was already married to a 3 rd class Petty Officer right there at Treasure Island, dropped me off at my barracks, and proceeded to the administration building, marriage license in hand, and filed a second Dependents Military Allotment application against my name.
It was about a week to ten days of frat-house hazing type captivity before they finally stood me up before an extremely up-tight Lieutenant Commander, a mid-level line officer, that had been temporarily trapped in limbo, assigned to Treasure Island awaiting a fresh assignment somewhere in Navy-land and assigned to dispense a military type spin on justice to people like me "who acted so crazy".
Hearing my straight forward, almost casual account of the events leading up to this alleged dastardly deed, he was convinced that it was all my idea, and declared that I must be thinking he's a complete idiot. "In the best interest of the United States Navy, and you, I'm going to give you an immediate General Discharge under Honorable Conditions, and you can skip your two year reserve obligation as well. "Now get him out of my sight."
After an exciting year there, I moved on to another station and launched a career in radio spot sales. My last station was KTAL, in Shreveport, Louisiana, the year was 1983 and to supplement my income, I hired on at the local Panasonic dealer, learned camera operation, purchased an industrial level system, at cost, and launched EC Video Productions.
In late 1984, the bottom fell out of the oil industry in the Ark-La-Tex and I was forced to return to California.
when I returned from my big adventure in Louisiana, I just happened to roll up when he was finishing up a remodel of his house and it was time to paint.
The house is right across the street from the Pacific Ocean. It's so close, you can hear the breakers at night from his front yard. I stayed in the guest house for a couple of months and put back some dough, Laguna Beach is paradise, the weather reminds me of Hawaii, but it is expensive.
Once I had finished his house, one of his neighbors hired me to re-paint her five buildings and light house. I shot some video of Scott's house and the spread up the street. When Scott and his wife moved into the house , I moved into the motel, my room was $140 a night, winter rates and no dogs. I soon arranged a trade out for re-painting the entire motel, which got into the better part of a year and I never did get to finish it.
After a year in Laguna Beach, literally, I left the Motel Laguna, and migrated back to the SF Bay Area, met Cathy, sold my camera, focused on house-painting, and worked our way on to living comfortably in Marin County. We moved into an RV park, 10 miles north of the Golden Gate Bridge and set about the most rewarding and enjoyable period of my life.
In 2000, I bought a Canon XL1, 3 chip video camera and sprung back into the video production business with my very own little company, Bebop Video Productions, this turned out to be very much like buying a big boat. By Xmas time 2003, web sites were all the rage and I thought I'd "get on board". I had an account with Earthlink for my high-speed internet access and with their free web-building software I put together bebopvideos.com and the rest isn't history.
In 2005, with total disregard for reality, I launched a second website, kfmlnooze.com, a sort of tribute site to KFML. With photos I had taken back in 71-72, I put together a sort of "who's who, and what are they doing now" collage kind of thing with some old recordings and air checks, and mosey'ed on down memory lane.
I recently parked it and moved eveything over to a feature on bebopvideos.com, A BRIEF HISTORY OF KFML, because I can't afford to host two web-sites that generate no income. I've been doing video production for about 25 years now and I think it's safe to say I don't know how to not make a living on the internet.
If you read any of my comments on Huffington Post, a current pastime, you'll no doubt I.D. the ramblings of a man with a 10th grade education...which I had to repeat because I didn't quite get it the first time...(I got some mail at KFML for miss-pronouncing Thailand, "thigh land") manage to Forest Gump my way through, venting till' relieved. I don't know how good I'm doin' cuz' nobody ever responds, or maybe that's how I'm doin'.
One of my KFML alumni, Jim Clancy is working for CNN International now and I'm the "old crypt keeper" down here by myself tendin' to kfmlnooze and bebopvideos...When they sold KFML out from under us, Jim eventually migrated to the bay area to see what I had been raving about when we worked together back in Colorado. While he was shopping another job in radio, he taught banjo lessons at my friends' music store, Amazing Grace Music, in San Anselmo and played gigs all over the S F Bay Area with his brother, the guitar picker, earning way better money than he had ever made at KFML.
Starting at KCBS AM radio, and advancing to anchor work at channel 2, He was soon snagged by Ted Turner and off to the races. I tried to get him to come back out here but he's in some kind of a rut down there in Atlanta with a big ol' house, a wonderful family, and of course, makin' a shit ton of money so he won't be comin' back to us any time soon...and speakin' of KFML alumni, Dan Fong, official KFML photographer is currently selling Rock & Roll photos, printed and framed out of his studio, The Creative Eye, http://www.thecreativeye.net/ Dan's an extraordinary cook, just ask The Rolling Stones...and how can I not mention Bill Ashford the only one of us that's still playin' the tunes 5 shows a week at the Rock Garden...sadly Bill died this last November but the rock garden marches on based on Bill's library and algorithms.
I hope you'll follow the link to bebopvideos.com and join me in celebrating a lifetime of rollin' with the rock. Lots to listen to and view and very little reading.
diamond ed
My buddy, Reg G Williams is one of the original founders of the Straight Theatre on Haight Street back in 1966. He's put together one of the best "Haight Ashbury" oriented web sites of all time. You can virtually (pun intended) spend days rambling around such features as "The Scrawl On The Wall" where you can swap tales of those "head'y" times. Or review the many posters of the bands that were born, nurtured, and yes fostered, by The Straight Theatre, Chet Helms Avalon Ball Room, and many another grass roots venue, untill Bill Graham came along and pulled the first corporate "raid" on Chet Helms and built the contractual clause that bands that signed on to play for him weren't allowed to play at the Straight Theatre, or The Avalon, or any other venue that wasn't controlled by Bill Graham. Reggie was Peter Albins roomate at USF and introduced him to Janis Joplin which led to the formation of Big Brother And The Holding Company.
Early in 1971 my neighbor, and new best friend, Brian Kreizenbeck (The Super Warthog) got me started in radio at KMPX FM in San Francisco and in a few short weeks of taping "shows" in the production room, skipped through and graded at the end of his shift, my brand new friends all got fired. My little heart was broke. But, in a couple of weeks time Brian called and told me if I wanted to come to Denver he could get me plenty of week-end work, no pay, so I could finish getting my 3rd Class Radio License, which was required back then, and once I got my license I could start getting paid. I packed my stereo, and some clothes into my pristine, 1964 Alfa Romeo Spider Veloce and followed them to clean and fresh Denver, Colorado, and a brand-new start at counter-culture living with the added benefit of a seasoned sizzling psychedelic history in my kit. KFML AM\FM “in the mile high city, Denver, Coderado” as the Persuasions so poignantly “id’ us.
I first saw the Persuasions at one of our sponsors clubs we were running ads for, and I got in free, My personal taste in music has always skewed towards rich black voices, having grown up in Detroit, Cleveland, and Houston where passionate Top 40 radio exploded over the airwaves, and I never lived anywhere that I couldn't hear the The Wolfman. ( listen to The Wolfman here )
The Persuasions - Gypsy Woman
I was into Bo Didly, Chuck Berry, The Coasters, The Platters, Laverne Baker, Paul Anka and had seen all of them in live performances at Houston's Central Auditorium in 1957-1958, I can still sing along with the hits of Dion and The Belmonts, Curtis Mayfield andThe Impressions, The Ink Spots Clyde McPhatter, Sam Cooke, The Drifters, The Cadilacs, The Flamingos, Bobby Blue Bland,( I was in Houston when "Further On Up The Road" went to number one ) the first black artist to cross over from what they had called "Race music"and crack the Billboard list. This was long before sterophonics, but the "wall of sound" roared out of those Wurlitzer juke boxes, and AM radio that had no line of sight issues, playing the same 40 records over and over in no time, you could sing along with a thousand hits that could be heard from coast to coast, and seen on American Bandstand every afternoon after school...and they played them loud when I was a kid.
My first job was as a newsman, which consisted of gathering local counter-culture features and mixing them with music and sound effects that would be pleasing and interesting to our well buzzed audience. About Christmas time I was awarded, two 6 hour radio shows of my own. Midnight to 6am, Saturday and Sunday. I reveled in this joyous free-form experience for a year, the first complete year I had stuck with anything in my life.
During that year I was fired \ laid off at least 3 times and soon learned that it was par for the course in "show biz". These interruptions seldom lasted more than a week and were rooted in the politics of "radio land".
0 comments:
Post a Comment