The Adventures of Bloggard

Been Around the Block. Got Some Stories. These are Them.

Insult to Injury in the Drum Section

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The band room of Henrietta High School, Henrietta, Texas, 1960: I was a hot-shot rudimental drummer, the head of the drum section. My associates were Noah on the bass drum, and … Linda on cymbols.

Noah had it easy. Just hit the bass drum on every beat.

Cymbols are more difficult, because you must stand, counting measure after measure, and sooner or later you get the the one place where you clash the cymbols together with a great flourish.

Linda had a bad habit of counting wrong. Sometimes we had cymbol clashes in the middle of soft passages. Often we passed the correct spot, and when Mr. Raeke glared, we got a kind of belated cymbol crash.

All this reflected upon me, the head of the drum section, so I tried to keep an eye on Linda, and helped her count the measures, whilst playing the rudimental snare part.

Although not particularly good at counting measures, she’d grown even more breathtaking from the first time I’d ever seen her walking down the street, and on this particular day she wore a snug black medium-weight turtleneck sweater which showed off her lovely figure to perfection, each perfect breast the stuff of dreams.

Today she was counting very seriously, and we were drawing near the correct place.

As the band headed into the last two measures, Linda raised the left cymbol high, and lowered the right cymbol low. Standing upright, her head and shoulders nodding in time, she counted down the last four beats.

Up came the measure, and the cymbols swung!

“Thunk.”

No stunning crash. Just a muffled sound. I looked at Linda’s face, but her eyes were blank, staring into space far beyond the ceiling of the room. It was pain. Wordless. Pain beyond speech.

She had caught her left breast between the cymbols.

Yearning Has Faded

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Such feelings come and go,
as tides from an unseen sea
touch, spread, then withdraw.

San Francisco, Spring 1982: In the house on Tenth Avenue that I shared with Quinlan the photographer, I had a dream one night, that I saw Carolyn my high-school sweetheart. I’d like to say she came to me and that she cared for me, but she just passed nearby with a glance. And I was filled to overflowing with yearning. I awoke, and the dream left me with the yearning, as if it had been yesterday.

Last night, I had another dream …

As I crossed the street in front of the English building, I saw the Beatles in a large open Cadillac convertible parked across the street, along with three other musicians in tuxedos whom they had added for the concert. The new musicians had orchestra instruments, but they were singing along with the Beatles, a complex, multipart harmony. It was quite lovely

By the time I’d crossed the street, the car had become a bus. Good thing, as there were so many of them in the vehicle. The bus door was open, so I climbed in and sat in the first seat. Paul waved. And then I realized that the driver, in uniform, was actually Arnold Schwartznegger, the governor of California. Apparently he was showing the Beatles around. Politics.

“Hello, Arnold,” I said, as I struggled to take off my hat, but the hat’s chin cord was caught and I had to fight with it, and then realized Arnold was scowling at me. Maybe I’d been too familiar. “I mean, hello, Mr. Schwartzenegger,” I said, “Is that better?”

His expression told me it was better. Apparently, despite his behavior when he was Conan the Barbarian, Arnold is a guy who really appreciates proper manners.

And then as I mused on this, I found myself sitting at a table in a dim cafe, almost deserted. A cup of coffee sat cooling, I had the funny papers from the newspaper, and the late-afternoon light slanted in through the window across the room. I glanced up to see that at the next table, the Beatles, and everybody who had been sitting there, were all gone.

The light from the window had faded, it was hard to see clearly, and the comics were not very interesting.

The Holiday Cheer Touchstyle Club

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Weed, California November 2008: Hot on the heels of the Mobius Magnificent Layaway Plan … comes the “Holiday Cheer” Touchstyle Club, with perhaps hundreds of dollars of savings for deserving little girls and- Oops, I meant to say dollars of savings for deserving musicians around the globe.

Yes, the Touchstyle Club, strange visitor from another planet, who came to Earth with powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal man; and who, disguised as Kent Clark, mild-mannikin at the Daily Bungle, a grape necropolitan snoozepaper …

As you can see, things are going downhill fast here at the on-site news center. That’s because I stayed up late last night, and then woke up early with yet another set of bonus stuff for anybody wanting to save perhaps Hundreds of Dollars — oh, did I say that already — well, perhaps I did.

If you’ll take a quick peek, you can see why I’ve become over-excited. Be sure to *read every word*, from top to bottom, and then let me know what you think, you good little boys and- I mean, you good musicians, you.

Here it is —

The Holiday Cheer Touchstyle Club.

Fearless? Or Fear Less?

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Weed, California, June 18, 2008: The other day I woke up thinking about the word ‘fearless.’Have you ever known anybody who was actually fearless?I haven’t. Pretty much any human, any mammal, has fear. And that makes sense, because if a creature didn’t have any fear at all, sooner or later that creature would come a cropper. Adios muchacho.

And critters coming a cropper leave no progeny.

We are, therefore, the progeny of the timorous humans. Or at least of the humans with a healthy dose of fear. Oh we could call it ‘prudence,’ or something that sounds better.

But it’s fear.

However, the other thought is that, over the years, things change.

As I think back about things as a child, I recall fears and even terrors.

As I think back to the adolescent, college, and young-adult years, still fears. Fears a-plenty.

As I recall the late twenties, and the thirties. Yup. Fears.

But somewhere in the forties, a change has become visible. It is just not giving a da*n? The fears about ‘what others think’ seem to have faded away. The fears about ‘the future’ have become weak.

I’ve heard it said that it’s amazing how much mature wisdom resembles just being tired. However, it seems to me that over the years, fears fade.

I have always been afraid to be in places where there are things that can, and would, eat me.

So I don’t go scuba diving in the ocean — well, once I did — and I don’t much like camping in the woods among the bears — well, once I did — I guess I wasn’t terrified of these things, but it bugged me, worrying about them.

And now … I still don’t want to go scuba diving or wander among the woodland bears, or saunter the African savannah amongst the lions, and tigers, and cheetahs, and panthers, and … well, I say the heck with fiddling around with creatures that could eat me.

But, day to day, there is not so much fear. Not like the early years.

I guess it’s … less fear. Fear … less.

So you younger folks, racked by worries and fears. Fear not, for simply by staying alive for a bit longer you will fear less.

I think George Burns said, “There’s nothing very impressive about being old. Anybody can do it, if you just live long enough.”

I guess that’s enough muttering and pondering for today.

And now we return to the studio, and resume your life. Over to you, Chet.

Remembering John Lennon

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Entrance to John Lennon's home at The Dakota

New York, December 9, 1980: In the evening, John Lennon returned from the recording session at The Record Plant in New York. The limosine let him out in front of The Dakota, the gothic stone building pictured in the movie “Rosemary’s Baby”, and as he and Yoko Ono approached the building, Mark David Chapman called out “Mr. Lennon?” and shot Lennon five times with a .38 revolver.

Lennon was hit in the torso and the back. He called out, “I’m shot,” took a few steps, and collapsed. When policed arrived, they found Chapman standing nearby, the gun on the ground. A building security guard asked Chapman, “Do you know what you’ve done?”

Chapman replied, “I just shot John Lennon.”

Police rushed Lennon to the emergency room at the Roosevelt hospital, but he could not be revived.

Something died for many of us that day.

The sound of the Beatles, coming from the radio, startled us, back in the day. Those were college days for me. But perhaps you remember when you first heard their harmony, the enthusiasm, the sound was new and fresh.

A memory floats, quiet, like a blossom in a busy stream, and rushing around a bend, is gone.

Accumulation

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Nocona Texas, 1969: Bob Standley is my brother-in-law, because he married my sister Mary. But some time before they got married, when he was in high school, he had a Chevy Malibu.

He had a little job, I think it was at the boot factory, and he had to be very careful with his money. Each week on Saturday, he took $2, and he’d fill up the gas tank — it was a long time ago — and there was money left over to go to the drive-inn movie, and to buy a nasty little cigar called a Swisher Sweet.

Every week he followed this $2 routine, and so as to conserve his money, he drove his car only when he had to, so that the gas would last through the week.

But then one Saturday, something strange happened.

He was at the gas station, and he started to gas up.

But the gas splashed out of the tank.

He thought he’d made some sort of mistake, so he stuck the nozzle in again, and gave it a squirt.

Again the gas splashed out of the tank.

Suddenly he realized what had happened.

Just like saving money for a rainy day, his conserving the fuel had left him with almost a full tank, and the tank just couldn’t hold any more gas!

So he had the entire $2 still in his hand, today.

That night, he and his friends went to the movie, and they had cokes several times, and then they drove around, all over the place, all night long.

Margaret’s Lime

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Henrietta, Texas circa 1970: Darrel Blain went to school with my brother, David Strickland, and sometimes rode his bike out to the farm near Hurnville to visit. Like any kid growing up in Henrietta, his mother bought his clothes at John’s Drygoods, and the Library Rummage Sale was a big deal.

But he was enterprising, and he got a job at the ‘Lo Boy, cooking burgers and making cokes.

Then one day, there was this lime.

The limes were kept inside the grey metal ice-maker, in a bucket. At that time, lime cokes were a hot item at the ‘Lo Boy. The formula is simple: make a fountain coke, cut a slice of lime, and squeeze it into the coke.

But not this lime. It was too beautiful.

Large. Deep green. Unblemished and perfect. It was just too pretty to slice up and put in a coke, so Darrel stuck it into his pocket instead.

Later that day, it happened that he biked out to the Hurnville farm. to visit with my brother David. While he and David were lounging around, my mother, Margaret was her name, saw the lime.

She said gee, that would really be good with tequila. She asked if she could have it.

Startled, he was. Actually somewhat shocked, for he had never seen anyone actually drink tequila, much less have it with a lime. He handed it over.

She smiled.

Perfect Man, Perfect Woman

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Someplace, Any Date: There was a perfect man and a perfect woman. They met each other at a perfect party. They dated for two perfect years. They had the perfect wedding and the perfect honeymoon. They had two perfect children.

One day the perfect man and the perfect woman were driving in there perfect car, they saw an elf by the side of the road, being the perfect people they were they picked him up.

Well as the perfect man and the perfect woman were driving with the elf, somehow they got into an accident. Two people died and one lived.

Who died and who lived?

The perfect woman, because the perfect man and elves aren’t real.

 
 

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