The Adventures of Bloggard

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

Larry’s Last Gig

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San Francisco, July 14, 1993: Today being ‘Bastille Day’, the French National Holiday, I was hired to play a gig at a French Restaurant on Polk Street. Wearing my tuxedo, with my tapping instrument and amplifier, I was wedged into a small niche near the door, and the wine was flowing freely as the evening progressed.

I’m playing my usual blend of Beatles, Bossa Nova, and Standards, when a fellow came up, introduced himself as Tom Bullock, and said he’d been a keyboard player. Over his wineglass, he started telling me about himself and his buddy Larry, a horn player.

The Gig from Hell

As a nominee for ‘The Gig from Hell,’ I think it merits attention. Here then is the sad, sad story of Larry’s last gig …

They were trying to get this regular gig at the Officer’s Club, and so they took this free gig at the Country Club, where the Colonel in charge of booking was supposed to come and hear them. They were to receive a free meal, and if they were a hit, then they would [Read more…]

On the Road to Santa Cruz

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August 18, 2011, on the road to Santa Cruz:  Duffel bag and picnic basket packed, I’m driving, on the road to Santa Cruz, where a class of Tantra Yoga teachers eagerly awaits my vast wisdom about what works best when marketing services and products via cyberspace.

For road trips, I always put myself in a light trance, programming my subconscious mind that the journey will be safe and relaxed, and quick, and that the time will be productive. And the journey is always productive. I get some brand new idea, or a realization about how to do some, or how to do something better. Works every time.

And while we’re on the subject, I’d like to share my favorite thought about traveling …

“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Of course, it will take more than that to get there.” — Anonymous

The Poet

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Henrietta, Texas, Spring 1956 — It was the sixth grade for me, and our English teacher Mrs. Lyles gave us a huge blue textbook, which was filled with short stories, and poems, mostly Lord Boron and Percy Bitch Shelley and some other people, who seemed just a bit hysterical, but it fit my proclivities just fine.

And [Read more…]

A Report on Chinese Christmas Eve

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Marin County, July 16, 2017 — For her birthday, Adrienne came down from her Oregon home to visit with her daughters and grandchildren. Her whole family was there: Layla, Celina, Jessica, Dameon, and even Rhiannon and her puppy “Penny,” who flew in from Germany. All of them remembered …

 

Marin County, December 24, 2007 –– In our house on Scenic Avenue in San Anselmo, I made up a Christmas Eve Tradition. Because the previous month at Thanksgiving, due to Layla’s insistence, we had enjoyed a wonderful dinner of Tofurky. Ha! Enjoyed? Who am I kidding?

The Tofurky Experience

We agreed unilaterally that we would NEVER have Tofurky again. Maybe it’s ok for some things, but as a substitute for a proper Thanksgiving dinner … thank you, but no. So here we are coming up on Christmass Eve, and dinner was a problem. Because Adrienne doesn’t cook; it’s against her religion. And franky I don’t know how to do a turkey, and it’s a lot of work, and so invention being the mother of necessity … I made up [Read more…]

Margaret Ellen Hurn, a Birthday

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8 Miles North of Henrietta Texas, July 28, 2017 — My mother would be one hunded years old today, born in 1917.

In this photo near the end of her life, she leans on the front fence before the farmhouse on the farm where she grew up. She (and my two brothers David and Paul) had moved back to the farm after the death of my stepfather. She’d been born Margaret Ellen Hurn, became Margaret French as my mother, and later remarried to Dr. Strickland in Henrietta.

Two Friends

Around the base of that tree on the left, you can just make out a dark metal band. Once upon a time, long before I was born, the tree was planted inside what must have been a wheel part. A metal band about a foot tall, and maybe four feet diameter. The tree grew and grew and grew, until the band was quite snug, about 20 years before Margaret Strickland was photographed here at the front fence.

In a recent photo from google earth, the tree is gone. I wonder what became [Read more…]

Dr. Detecto Rescues a Rope

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Daly City, 1989: If you read a Dashiel Hammett book about Sam Spade, or even a modern Sue Grafton book about Kinsey Milhone, you will discover that their investigations are exciting, dangerous, and apparently pay the bills. (Though Sam Spade seemingly just throws his bills into the trash.)

When I was Dr. Detecto, the private investigator, my own investigations were neither exciting, nor dangerous, nor did they pay the bills.

As proof, I respectfully submit my most exciting, dangerous, and profitable case — the Case of the Rescued Rope …

I was musing in my Geary street office one afternoon in the early fall in San Francisco. The air had just turned crisp, and I was thinking about the gubbamint and dozing off, when a tall woman walked past the window. I knew she was tall because my office was on the second floor. [Read more…]

The Country Club

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Henrietta, Texas, 1949: If you drive north out of town, the road curves clockwise around the dam of the water reservoir, and after a sharp left turn crosses the bridge. This is the place where a car-owning teenager must determine how fast he can drive around that corner.

In my high school years, Wayne Klein’s souped-up 1955 Mercury held the record. In the movies, all teenagers have souped up hot rods, but the average teenager knows nothing about motors, and doesn’t know how to change the oil, much less how to “soup up” a car. Besides, what does soup have to do with it?

Wayne’s car was actually souped up, because his father had souped it, and it ran like a bat out of hell, so Wayne could drive that curve at 55 miles an hour. Since the posted sign says “25”, this was a wonderful accomplishment. And, unlike unfortunate Beckham Guthrie Jr., Wayne wasn’t even killed.

Now, if you chose not to take that left turn, and [Read more…]

 
 

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