Dot to Dot
The Creative, Comical and Covert Adventures
of dick boak
Preface:
Connecting Dots
A long chain of experiences and circumstances led me first to the gathering of this book and
subsequently to the title “Dot to Dot.” Please indulge this brief delineation.
Drawing has certainly been one of my most important pursuits. My illustrations have always
emanated from a more technical approach, given that much of my formal training had been in the area of
mechanical drawing. As I committed myself to conceptual art and as my illustrative direction gradually
congealed, I began to envision the completed drawings as representing small islands or oases of time.
They seemed to beg for explanation, being inextricably “connected” to my personal thoughts,
relationships, travels and history.
People will always extract their own meaning from art, but the thematic and technical progression
from one piece of work to the next can reveal a directed and logical evolution. While artwork is a form
of captured history, a particular piece can’t reveal the passage of time and experience that caused it to
unfold in the first place. In fact, the increments between outbursts of inspiration contain the critical
creative plasma, providing the perfect context with which to truly understand the art. In my own
experience, the time gaps were strewn with journal entries, songs, discarded sketches, photographs,
poems, stories, and hundreds of other life fragments. Here, I have attempted to arrange them, and while
many of the endeavors included here do not deserve great attention, they do in context show a logical
progression.
As I struggled to produce this book over the course of more than three decades, my task increasingly
became one of connecting the dots – the dots being the drawings and other tangible offspring of my
varied creative diversions – geodesic domes, guitars, simple architectures and an assortment of
fabricated objects, all destined to meld into a personal culture of sorts.
In the simpler sense, I suspect that nearly everyone has drawn dot-to-dot pictures as a child. Tiny
numbers adjacent to their corresponding dots guide the child’s pencil zigzagging through a maze that
gradually evolves into a semblance of recognizability. It’s rather like life, I’d say.
The notion of connecting the dots is obviously pertinent to the drawings themselves, especially the
extended exercises in pointillism that characterized the last decade of my tediously neurotic pen and ink
illustrations. These pieces are made up of tens of thousands of dots and the literal space between them
represents a significant contribution of time and concentration.
At the intersection of architecture and mathematics, I have always held a deep reverence and
fascination for Buckminster Fuller and his multi-faceted geodesic designs. Domes have many vertices –
dots if you will – geometrically positioned on the surface of a sphere. Connecting the dots creates struts
that yield a delicate strength and spatial beauty.
Dabbling in a variety of mediums can reveal one’s intuitive sense and develop a consistency in the
approach with which tasks are executed. In the end, the intuitive approach becomes the art itself and any
resulting by-products are merely representations of an individual’s method. Jumping from medium to
medium is a dot-to-dot process, and before long, the skills begin to meld until a stability of purpose
emerges.
Early in my fifties, I underwent coronary bypass surgery. This was a hereditary wake-up call to say
the least. While recovering from the operation, I had six weeks to myself to face my mortality, to delve
back into the book, to furnish the written context, to connect the dots of my life. Oddly enough, below
the primary incision, there had been three drainage tubes that left a neat row of dot-like scars on my
abdomen, and the center dot formed a perfect exclamation mark with the incision. This pattern of a line
and three dots soon became a significant personal symbol and I readily adopted it as my logotype.
When I was laying out the title page for this book, I was startled and intrigued to discover that the
centers of the O’s in “Dot To Dot” aligned perfectly when superimposed upon the three dots from my
adopted scar-tissue logo. To me, this was a clear vindication and indication that my choice of titles was
at least pertinent.
I could philosophize further about my symbology and reasoning for assigning
each of the three dots a primary color, but there are after all only three, and color does ease the
monotony of black and white.
Connecting dots implies movement. Like cities on a map, they are destinations of the future and
footprints of the past. Connect them with me if you will, or simply jump..... from dot to dot.
Introduction
I started working on books when I was about four years old. I don't really remember anything very
tangible before then. I was a somewhat hyperactive child, but given a specific project, I was quite
capable of extended self-entertainment. My mother was very good at keeping my energy well focused.
She gave me some paper and told me to make a book, so I started making books.
I have been working on this particular book all of my life. Every time it came close to being done,
some new project or technology would emerge that seemed to invalidate or supersede everything
beforehand, so I would begin compressing and chopping until everything was once again in a state of
disarray. It never occurred to me that I could simply write a second book. Maybe now I will.
In art school, they teach budding artists to develop a single recognizable style. I certainly developed
a very specific style of illustration, but eventually I reached a point where I could no longer maintain the
level of time and concentration required to take it any further. So after nearly two decades, I abandoned
pen and ink drawing in favor of woodworking, then guitar design, then a dozen other mediums. I have
never hesitated to move into new areas, but I do regret leaving the old ones behind.
At the age of seven, I was determined to become a doctor. I spent an unnatural amount of time
reading medical journals in the waiting room of our family physician. He didn't seem to mind.
Eventually, my thirst for medicine led to medical illustration, then to the purity and idealism of art. I
have been an athlete, a poet, a musician, a hippie, a revolutionary, a woodworker, a builder of geodesic
domes, a teacher, a jeweler, a potter, a husband, a desktop publisher, a concert promoter, a guitar maker,
an advertising director, a computer nerd, a father, and I suppose an author. I don’t believe I’ve mastered
any of these things, but I certainly have immersed myself.
I like to compare the accumulation of skill to scattered droplets of mercury on a mirror – each
droplet representing a different artistic medium. As one acquires seemingly unrelated abilities, the beads
of mercury gather and fuse, solidifying one’s creative confidence. Oddly, I had collected a significant
amount of mercury in a small jar as a child. Back then, no one suspected that it could cause children to
begin thinking like this.
My oldest brother Tom went to Philadelphia to audition for Dick Clark's American Bandstand. We
watched for him with great pride that afternoon on the TV, but we didn’t see him. Even though he wasn't
picked, he was still our hero. When he returned, he gave me a white business card with an illustration of
a goofy-looking cross between a dog and a man. Beneath the drawing it simply said “Clyde Clod.” I
thought this was so cool. I copied that picture over and over and over again until I could draw Clyde
blindfolded. Clyde became my alter ego, my trademark, my personal Alfred E. Neuman. I drew tall
Clydes, short Clydes, fat Clydes, and Clydes with glasses. I drew Clyde’s wife, Clydia, and little baby
Clydes. I earned the admiration of my schoolmates with my steady and unrelenting barrage of Clydes.
Without ever realizing it, the muscles in my right hand were getting very used to drawing.
When I entered my years of puberty, “blank books” started to become popular. Some marketing
genius had zeroed in on me as the target. After I filled one book, I would begin another. All and all I
have filled nearly twenty journals. For a while I numbered them. That became senseless. I could never
find anything in them anyway.
My fascination was in the process of filling a blank page. Some fantasy in the young mind leads one
to believe that one’s personal experience is in some way valuable or important; that others may perhaps
find benefit or inspiration in the occurrences of the past. This is of course an idealistic, arrogant and selfdeluded fallacy.
Many nights I would sit down with my journals and write demented, boring, uninspired gibberish.
Sometimes I would draw frighteningly embarrassing pictures. I would usually try to remove or cover
these failures with photographs or magazine clippings if I had the energy. Sometimes I would create
something that seemed right. While in the process of creating, I always believed I was embarking upon
something of great importance.
That's the fuel of dreams. I dreamed I would be famous some day. Power didn't interest me very
much. Money interested me, but only on the coattails of fame. I figured that I would pump out a
miniature sub-culture that, in a roundabout way, would bring me respect, admiration, acceptance,
notoriety, women, and multiple offers from talk show hosts that were willing to indefinitely fund my
irresponsibility.
I suppose that may be what has happened.
Respect For Vision
At age six, I found myself sitting on the curbstone with Richie Redline, my next door neighbor,
counting the broken metal bristles from the giant orange street cleaner that invaded our block once a
month with its spraying water and wide circular brushes. These bristles were seven or eight inches long,
jagged on one end from where the brittle metal had snapped from a sudden bump or manhole cover, and
sharply pointed on the other from constant grinding against the asphalt and gravel of suburban streets.
We had collected fifty or sixty of these treasures over about a five-block area. We undertook various
projects with the bristles, the most intriguing of which involved flexing them between the thumb and
middle finger until they sprang with a pinging sound out of our hands, across the street with lightning
speed toward Mrs. Downey's picture window. This was great fun for us, though Mrs. Downey, goodnatured as she was, failed to see the humor in it.
It was then on that clear and vivid June afternoon near the yellow fire hydrant that one such missile
backfired its way into the pupil of my right eye. A red curtain draped downward across my vision and I
ran to the back door screaming, holding the blood back with my hand.
Horrified, my mother provided immediate aid with a clean moist dishtowel. Holding me with one
arm, she dialed Gaylord Ojers with the other. Dr. Ojers, a neighbor and friend of the family, was an eye
specialist and surgeon. Ironically, the local optician’s daughter had had a similar accident weeks earlier
in Dr. Ojers’ back yard.
Within twenty minutes, we met him at the hospital. After a quick assessment, he cautioned that there
was a 50/50 chance that I would lose sight in that eye. Several hours later, I awoke in bed with both eyes
bandaged shut. The darkness helped prevent any motor activity from disturbing the stitches in my
cornea. For the better part of a month, I was totally blind. My mother and an assortment of nurses and
family friends read vivid stories to me daily. In the adjacent bed, there was a young weight lifter who
had sustained serious injury to his face while bench pressing a heavy barbell. I remember the nurses
talking about his jaw. They said there was an opening from the underside of his chin to the inside of his
mouth. Naturally he couldn't talk to me, and I couldn't see him. What a pathetic pair we were. There was
a mysterious partition between us. Eventually he was removed for oral surgery.
After a few weeks, the doctors finally removed the bandages from my good eye. They had taped a
blue translucent cone over the other that prevented any direct light from shocking the healing tissues.
The operation had been somewhat successful since I could see patches of light. For the next week my
world was shaded in blue, but a small portion of the cone was snipped each day revealing an
increasingly larger circle of the world until finally I found myself back at home in wrap-around
sunglasses.
Many years later on a bright afternoon, I walked the four meandering blocks to Dr. Ojers’ home. On
the way, I savored the fresh chlorophyll of the grass, the collage of lime, grey and tan in the sycamore
bark, and the ant-colonized crevices between the worn sidewalks. Since emerging from my darkness, I
have never taken these small details for granted.
Dr. Ojers had retired from practice. When he answered the door, he looked different than I had
remembered; weary perhaps, his skin looser and lacking color, but his eyes were still clear and kind. I
presented him with my framed illustration of The Old Grist Mill and he understood.
Visual Distortion
Not long after returning home from the hospital, I stood in the hallway and gazed at the light
streaming in through the windowpanes. Sunrays seemed to be entering my eye through the damaged
portion of the iris and an unusual diffraction was occurring. I envisioned giant atoms, electrons, and
molecules floating in thin air, emblazoned with pastel rainbows and illuminated star patterns.
With my left eye closed, my vision could be broken down into split images. A slow and careful
rotation of my head could increase the separation of these images. With careful concentration, it became
apparent that one image was emanating from the natural opening of the pupil; a second less distinct
“ghost” image came through that area of the iris that had been surgically removed.
Remaining stationary for any length of time would cause my right eye to focus differently from the
left. By allowing these two disparate images to merge, I could cause objects to distort and expand,
though the effect could be terminated quickly by redirecting my focus into the distance.
The natural surface of the cornea is smooth and glassy, but with significant scar tissue from sutures,
mine had become quite irregular. With my head at just the right angle to a light source, I learned to
manipulate my vision to produce rather spectacular and entertaining prismatic effects.
Since very little contraction of the damaged portion of the iris was possible, being in bright sunlight
was very difficult. Tossing a tennis ball into the air for a serve was especially hard. My right eyebrow
began to hang slightly lower to compensate and facial lines became more defined from squinting.
Only in rare instances of very bright light, did I actually see vibrant color out of the right eye. In normal
light I perceived primarily diffused or muted color as lesser fractions of their full intensity.
Ironically, I grew thankful for the accident. It provided me with a unique and bizarre perspective that
enhanced my visual appreciation and provided fuel for my creativity. Poor eyesight forced me to work
in very close proximity to my drawings and to examine objects with a progressively more neurotic
obsession for detail.
Conventional art instruction encourages standing back and looking at the whole picture. Of
necessity, I defied convention, making a concerted effort to construct larger images from smaller pieces.
In a sculptural sense, this was more akin to assembling shapes with grains of sand as opposed to
chipping away from a block of stone.
The temporary deprivation of any perception is perhaps vital to the true appreciation of that sense.
The complete loss of a sensation is known to strengthen the remaining ones. The five perceptions
(seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, tasting) are our only connections with reality. Without them, we
have no vantage point for consciousness.
Dexterity & The Covert Childhood
While recuperating from the eye accident, my Uncle Jack had presented me with a popular toy called
a “Labyrinth,” a well-crafted wooden box about 14" square with a floating table. The tilt of the table
could be controlled with two black knobs on the sides of the box. Sixty numbered holes were drilled into
the table and an inked path wound a convoluted course that bypassed the holes. The object was to
navigate a small marble-sized metal ball through the maze without dropping into any of the holes. I was
obsessed with this game and spent many thousands of hours mastering it to the point that I could
traverse forward and backward as many as twenty five times throughout the course without failing. I
began experimenting with two, then three balls at the same time. My eye/hand coordination was
progressing at such an amazing rate that any developmental setbacks from my injury were certainly
recovered and surpassed.
There were other childhood games that followed my obsession with the maze. One was “Tantalizer,”
a platform of sorts with an open top so that you could peer into it from above. There were two open
sides as well, so that the right and left hands could perform various manual tasks within the arena. A
visual blockade was placed so that you could not see what your hands were doing without looking into a
mirror on the back wall of the platform. This forced the reversal of all operations into a backwards
mode. I spent hours making backwards tracings of various geometric patterns supplied with the game,
and my ability to work through the mirror became fairly refined.
I mention these two games because I believe that some perceptual changes were occurring. The optic
nerve makes a crossover from the brain to the eye. A right-handed person generally develops a dominant
right eye, so it naturally follows that the left side of the brain will develop more fully as a result. With
such a severe impairment to my right eye, a forced shift in eye dominance was occurring. The weaker
right side of the brain was developing. My manual dexterity gradually increased. I became fascinated
with vision and medicine, and my natural childhood creativity started to intertwine with an unnatural
obsession for mathematics.
Frog Medicine
As a child, I practiced calligraphy and spent an inordinate amount of time developing my
handwriting. I made many tedious books ranging from illustrated flags of the world to collections of
short poems in haiku meter. My experience in the hospital and my general proneness to accidents left me
intrigued with the idea of becoming a doctor, and I spent many afternoons reading medical journals that
were given to me by our family physician. I memorized the names of all the bones, arteries, muscles,
nerves, and internal organs of the body and kept rather crude illustrations of this medical knowledge. I
was particularly drawn to the many medical models like "The Visible Man,” “The Visible Woman”
(with fetus), "The Visible Brain,” "The Visible Tooth,” "The Visible Heart,” and many other visible or
dissectible biological specimens including frogs, lizards, dinosaurs; even the Visible Ford V-8 engine
which seized up on me because I used vegetable oil instead of “3-in-1.”
I remember dissecting frogs during summer vacation. This was done strictly in the name of research.
The notion that animals might have rights had not yet merged with the social consciousness. After an
involved explanation of my elaborate plans, I managed to bamboozle the local pharmacist out of a small
vial of chloroform so that I could anesthetize my green patients with tiny gauze face masks. This proved
ineffective and I was forced to secure their arms and legs to my corkboard surgical area with an
assortment of my mother’s hatpins. Following the textbook instructions, I made an incision with my
scalpel in the shape of an “H” on the tender white underbelly. At the time, this reminded me of the small
individual Kellogg’s breakfast variety packs that if opened carefully, could be transformed into a
makeshift milk proof cereal bowl. I carefully unfolded the skin, revealing each of the digestive tract
organs one by one. With most of the entrails removed from the abdomen (but still quite attached and
functional), I accidentally poked a nerve with the probe. To the horror of my gallery of nine-year- old
onlookers, the frog twitched. Freeing itself of several pins, it hopped off awkwardly under my nearby
bed, dragging the organs in tow. This effectively ended my career in medicine.
A Frog Leg Fantasy
We were young and there was a crystal clear Canadian gleam in our eyes. We would practice our
agility by running along the jagged rocks. At that time frogs were certainly primary elements in our lives
and we would spend our days corralling their slippery green bodies into bait buckets for the local
fishermen.
So it was one day that Uncle Bob came up to us, thumbing his way through the almanac, explaining
that the water was predestined to freeze in exactly 10 days, 4 hours, 17 minutes, and some seconds. This
tiny fact intrigued us and we carried it around with us for a few days, allowing it to evolve from an
improbable reality into an absurd fantasy.
And so, acting on blind intuition, we spent the next few days preparing for the freeze. I kept a sloppy
record of the water temperature, attempting to forecast the exact moment. We covered the entire edge of
the bay, planting small arsenals of Black Cat firecrackers and M-80s left over from the Fourth of July.
Carefully, we attached high speed fuses between the power nests. I checked my system to the last detail.
On the day of the freeze, I sat patiently with my thermometer immersed at the water’s edge and
waited. Uncle Bob was right, even though it didn’t happen exactly when it was supposed to.
Just before nine o’clock, the thermometer read 31.9° and the firecrackers detonated. As planned, all
of the frogs were instantaneously startled. They all jumped head first into the water just as the water was
freezing. A few lazy frogs that jumped too late hit their heads on the new-formed ice and went limping
off in confusion, but the majority hit the surface perfectly and were caught head first, frozen at their
waists, their legs skyward and kicking.
Two days later, when the ice was hard enough to walk on, we rigged up the canvas basket on the
electric power mower and quickly cut eight bushels of frozen frog legs. They taste like chicken drum
sticks when they’re lightly breaded.
That was years ago though. Now I am in favor of frogs and would never allow a frog leg fantasy to ever
become a reality.
The Darker Side
In the meantime, my brother Tom had devolved into a lifeguard at the local pool. While not engaged
in the rescue of innocent pubescent girls in bikinis, he spent his time mastering the art of braided
lanyards. These brightly colored relics were fashioned to bear shiny chrome rescue whistles, a necessity
of the job. Hence I was introduced to the art material “gimp,“ at the ripe age of seven.
At the time it seemed that there were few fruitful directions for a child’s burgeoning creativity to
follow. I fashioned tiny gimp handles that could be applied with three color-coordinated Indian beads
onto the shaft of an ordinary sewing pin. These made very attractive miniature swords with highly
decorative hilts; novelties that sold quickly and easily to droves of second graders at Edgeboro
Elementary School for a penny apiece. Armed to the teeth with their Boakian weapons, a near-riot
ensued on the playground that afternoon, resulting in my brief but traumatic one-day suspension from
the second grade. My parents were cautioned to regulate my commercial enterprises thereafter.
During these relatively uneventful but highly formative years, I observed my friend Timothy Sloyer
crash his bicycle into the front of an Impala. I cried with confusion at my grandfather’s funeral
following his aortic aneurysm. Dared by a classmate, I vented my frustration one evening by breaking
off several car antennas in sheer terror, hiding in the dark bushes, my heart racing. I smoked sugartipped cigars and attempted to mask the odor by gargling with mouthfuls of Crest toothpaste prior to
facing my father as he unlocked the front door. Lacking a proper can opener, I broke the neck off of a
quart bottle of Budweiser and guzzled it away, jagged glass to my lips, all as a subconscious
contribution to my impending machismo.
Speaking of machismo, my older brother Bill was quite the athlete. An entire wing of the
cheerleading squad was assigned to his personal bolstering. He was a particularly exceptional tennis
player and had attained the #1 position on the high school team in his sophomore year. We worshiped
him!
From the age of five, I had been carefully groomed to follow in his competitive footsteps. I practiced
incessantly and could fire up a serve or put away a slam with the best of them. My one significant
shortcoming was that at 4’ 10”, I could barely see over the net.
Billy Buck was my tennis friend and though he was older, we shared the same age bracket. We were
equally matched, but given that he was several feet taller than I was, he had a natural advantage. To my
great frustration, he would generally beat me, or I would defeat myself, especially in the important
matches.
So Billy Buck ranked #1, and I was #2. We would carpool off to tournaments together in station
wagons. He would win all of his matches and I would win all of mine, and accordingly we would end up
in the finals opposite each other. Without
exception, he would take home the winner’s trophy. In a remarkably short time span, I amassed several
dozen trophies that were quite impressive until close inspection revealed the sad epitaph “Runner Up”
engraved on each of the brass plates.
I became increasingly frustrated with this predicament and began to vent my anger by banging my
racket against the court. On one sunny day in July, I found myself at the Sand Island Tennis Club in
Bethlehem for the city tournament. I looked around. I couldn’t believe it. There was no sign of Billy
Buck anywhere. This would be my lucky day, my shining moment. To the delight and applause of an
overflowing spectator gallery, I pounded my way through four quick matches only to find that I was
pitted in the finals against none other than the king of lobs himself, Philadelphia’s finest, Richard
Cohen.
Richard Cohen was not an inspired or exciting tennis player. In fact he was immensely boring, and
to top it off, his annoying mother accompanied him to all of his tournaments. He was, however,
persevering and consistent to a tee. I would serve up a fireball to him – one that would easily singe any
other opponent – and Richard would calmly angle his racket at the ball, lightly lobbing my thunderous
serve back across the net in a high arc. I would squint into the sun, position myself carefully, and slam
the living daylights out of the ball. Ping. He would lob it back. Slam, ping, slam, ping, slam, ping..... for
twenty volleys until I would lose patience and impale one into the back fence.
He pulverized me. At match point, I slammed my racket down so hard that it shattered into a dozen
pathetic splinters. I was so ashamed. I couldn’t even look him in the eye or shake his hand like the good
sport that my father had so carefully tried to groom. Instead, I ran off the court into the bushes where I
fell apart in an uncontrollable breakdown.
I never entered another tennis competition. With this, the termination of my tennis career, I placed
my temper on permanent notice. I would never again expose myself to a situation that would allow such
venom to be released. For better, or more likely for worse, I, like so many of my fellow males, would
learn to suppress any undesirable emotions, packing them firmly down into the compressed murky well
of the psyche.
One positive aspect was that with more time on my hands, I gradually acknowledged my more
sensitive side. I became enamored with my schoolmate Nancy Cliff, and I showered her with platonic
poetry and Mars® “Forever Yours” candy bars during our covert meetings at Holly’s Woods between
the school playground and the cemetery.
In my sphere of male comrades, there were two kinds of kids. There were the cool guys with their
tight T-shirts, pegged pants, white socks, pointed shoes, and greased-up dos. These Marlboro-puffing
Fonzarellies were from Pembroke Village across the tracks, better known as “the project.” I, on the other
hand, was spawned in the cozy middle class splendor of Edgeboro Manor. My fellow pre- pubescent
cronies were an array of pimple-faced mini-Mafiosos and dorky street urchins. To the delight of my
parents, I was a well-dressed little cake with my hand-knit sweaters and penny loafers. But to be cool
and stay popular, I made sure that I nurtured the Mick Jagger within, risking detention with the
occasional thirty-second butt break in the boys’ room, or chancing certain expulsion by flushing
contraband M-80s down the toilets.
Honestly, I wasn’t faring well as a teenage hoodlum. I just didn’t look the part. I was only 85
pounds, barely five feet, and my mother had outfitted me with a pair of light gray and blue plastic
glasses with temples that resembled the tailfins of a ‘57 Chevy. I did, however, have a well-developed
sense of humor. So armed with my monaural 33 1/3 LP of Vaughn Meader’s comical parody of John F.
Kennedy, I thrilled my classmates in a bold and highly successful bid for Student Council President.
Rodney Butch, a handsome, red-headed, highly qualified straight-A genius was no match for my
perfectly intonated Bostonian rendition of “Ask not what your school can do for you....” especially since
the entire front row in the auditorium that morning was stocked with hand-picked female campaigners
who upon the conclusion of my comical oratory, stood up and held brilliantly colored letter panels that
spelled out: “VOTE FOR BOAK.” It was breathtaking..... a nearly unanimous shoe-in.
Six months later, I was personally devastated by the assassination of the young and charismatic
president and I was quickly faced with the fact that I was grossly unqualified as a politician and equally
unorganized. But with the very patient counseling and understanding of Mr. Mavis, our Social Studies
teacher and Student Council advisor, I immersed myself in social consciousness. Through an incredibly
high-pressured sales campaign of very low quality confections, my little constituency of Northeast
Junior High School student council members were able to coerce enough cash from the local community
to install 48 linear feet of wooden benches in front of the school, plant two lovely red maple trees near
the bus stop, and “adopt” two destitute Asian refugee children through a mail order contribution of $244
each. This last altruistic effort, we were assured, kept our adoptees fully supplied with milk, food and
clothing for a year, though now I suspect that the funds probably never got much further than Paramus,
New Jersey.
As Student Council President, it became even more of a challenge to balance my image and remain
popular. To keep my darker side alive, I perfected my billiard skills under the wry tutelage of my pool
hall professor, “Fast Blackie” Krajczar. At Blackie’s, I maintained my connection with the less
fortunate, often returning home with their precious dollars, gambled and won in thrilling money games
of eight-ball, nine-ball and straight pool.
In junior high school, I became engrossed with soccer. Brother Bill was center halfback for the
Liberty High School “Hurricanes,” a team that drew its talent from thousands of immigrant European
families that had moved to Bethlehem to work in the steel mills. The effect on the local soccer team was
dramatic. They were undefeated for more than a decade. In fact, they went for several years without any
goals being scored against them. It was both exciting and pitiful to watch.
Louie Vida was a terrific player and we became great friends. His family had fled Hungary during
the communist insurgency. The family had been well off in Hungary, but had used their money and
influence to flee the country. Louie’s father was a tailor of extraordinary talent, but he spoke very little
English and it was difficult for him to get a decent job. They settled out of necessity in a very poor
ethnic section of southeast Bethlehem.
One weekend, Louie invited me to come over to his neighborhood to play soccer. I went in my clean
corduroys and button-down shirt. Let’s just say I got a little “roughed up” by some of the project kids
and I went home looking considerably worse than when I arrived. I was determined that I would learn to
act and dress in a way that would gain acceptance into their circle.
On my next visit, I dressed in a torn oil-stained gray sweatshirt with a pair of frayed jeans. Louie
expended some energy toward my protection as well, and so through soccer, I learned to empathize with
the less fortunate. To the dismay of my parents, I was aspiring to be one of them.
Louie’s family gradually worked their way out of the project into a nicer suburb just north of town.
During my visits there, Louie’s mother embraced me (quite literally) as her own. She would sit me down
on her old couch and serve me up a huge plate of home-baked Hungarian pastries. I was vigorously and
repeatedly encouraged to consume several times my body weight of these offerings, washed down with
illicit sips of cognac. I suspect that my bloated cries did not translate well into Hungarian language or
custom. Mrs. Vida remained intent to put some meat on my lanky bones.
“Dickie... eat! Dickie.... eat!” was her plea until I would apologetically beg leave of the Vida
household and wobble home.
And so, I learned the ways of the real world and my sense of social conscience and justice
developed. Regardless of any latent integrity, I was still entangled in the web of hopeless adolescence.
An overabundance of neighborhood necking parties led to a fairly debilitating case of mononucleosis.
This did not bode well for my tenth grade attendance record or for my report card in general, especially
considering my near-nightly deception of library excursions that generally led me to the stairwell of
Blackie Krajczar’s Golden Cue Billiard Parlor. I didn’t know it at the time, but my public school days
were numbered.
Blackie, Billiards & The Road To Ruin
During junior high school I continued my focus on drawing, science and mathematics, though the
billiard parlor down the street began to lead me astray. A colorful and charismatic character named
Blackie Krajczar owned and occupied the premises. Blackie schooled me in the art of handling a cue
stick and I was introduced to the cocky jargon that pervades such places. In return, I brushed down the
tables and swept the floors. At the age of eleven I was earning a modest income gambling with high
school students who thought they could shake a few dollars out of a naive kid.
Blackie was an extraordinary pocket billiard player. There was a steady stream of billiard greats in
and out of his establishment, from Minnesota Fats to Ralph Greenleaf to Willie Mosconi. They would
drive in from New York and invariably a big money game would transpire. Most of the time Blackie
would win.
One day there was a big money game going on. The air was very tense. Blackie was behind, but it
was his shot and he was on a run of nearly 100 balls. There were a lot of people watching. I was
standing in the corner with a bottle of ice-cold orange soda. Blackie reached across the table to make a
difficult shot and that’s the moment the orange soda bottle slipped out of my hands and smashed on the
floor. Blackie missed the shot and his opponent ran the rest of the rack. I was devastated. He didn’t
speak with me for days, but eventually we got back on track.
Though I never observed this first hand, Blackie loved to go the race track where it was rumored he
would wager the substantial winnings from his billiard gamblings. In due time he lost the pool hall, but
he was remarkably resilient if not outright lucky. He would soon resurface in another location – his loyal
clientele following him wherever he might go.
Blackie was respected as one of the top billiard players in the world, but he was resented by those
who envied his talent. When he died at the age of 54, an inadequate eulogy appeared in the obituary of
the local papers, accompanied with a photo that showed him with his coveted cue stick and that
devilishly confident gleam in his eyes that was his trademark.
Several years later, I acquired a beautiful antique Brunswick billiards table with a three-piece slate
surface. As part of the restoration of the old table, I inset a small ebony plaque about the size of an index
card into the Brazilian rosewood rail above the ball return. On it, inlaid in mother of pearl, is the
inscription: “In Memory of John “Blackie” Krajczar.”
Song For Blackie
"Blackie Krajczar; Billiards Expert,"
headline in the news.....
silver cue stick, khaki pants,
and worn out Navy shoes.
Strutting round the table
with his cocky boyish grin;
looking up, he takes a stroke,
the seven ball drops in.
Gamblers gaping, Blackie pacing
looking for a duck..... Sees a dead one lying there
glistening with luck.
Smack! The cue ball rebounds.
The nine ball hits its mark.
The eight balls in his sockets
illuminate with sparks.
Ten ball in the corner.
Two ball in the side.
Twelve ball off the cushion.
Four ball on the slide.
One ball, low left english.
Three ball, double kiss.
Five ball, combination.....
never did he miss.
I started cleaning tables
and sanding reglued tips.
I based my pride on excellence
and flawless pinball flips.
Blackie was my hero,
my teacher and my friend.
He taught me billiards graciously
until the bitter end.
Some bastards drag his name down
because he hit the tracks.
They say Mosconi beat him
but they didn't have the facts.
Blackie was a hustler.
He sometimes played his best,
and when he did not even Fats
could put him to the test.....
If you go to the pool hall
be sure to chalk the stick.
Keep your eye upon the object ball
and everything will click.
Be aware of your position.
Gamble if you choose,
but never take the apple
or most certainly you'll lose.
"Blackie Krajczar; Billiards Expert,"
headlines in the news.....
died the other evening
and left me with the blues.
Keeping Store
A week following my sixteenth birthday, I boarded a Greyhound bus for Pittsburgh where I met up
with fifteen other teenagers who had the distinct fortune of being hired for a summer of work at Iron
City, a members-only fishing club just south of Parry Sound, Ontario, Canada. We bussed to Buffalo,
then around Toronto and up to the beautiful windswept islands of Lake Huron’s Georgian Bay.
I had worked the previous summer as a waiter and had graduated to the lofty and more desirable
position of storekeeper. My storekeeping partner and roommate was Rusty McCrady, who took to
calling me “old man.” I wasn’t very old, nor was I even remotely close to manhood, but I was generally
looking for new ways to test my cleverness and bold defiance. Rusty was a willing co-conspirator and
the store provided a daily array of prime opportunities.
The store was tiny; perhaps sixteen feet square, with a hinged flap that folded up, yielding a large
window and service counter. The store existed to supply basic provisions to the members and their
children during the two-month outing period from early July to late August. The inventory was limited
to an assortment of candy bars, tonic and soda (referred to in Canada as “pop”), crackers and nuts, toilet
paper, light bulbs, post cards, stamps, worms for fishing and gasoline for boating.
I had a terrific little eight-foot hydroplane that I had built in junior high school shop class thanks to
my very open-minded and patient shop teacher, Les Gosling. The plans were gleaned from a cover story
in Science & Mechanics magazine that falsely boasted: “Build Your Own Hydroplane For Under $15 In
Eight Hours!” After $300 and eight months, the boat made its glorious emergence from the shop. I
accurately dubbed it The Whiplash and painted it bright yellow with red racing stripes and a small eight
ball dotting the “i.” In spite of a bewildered customs official, the boat made it into Canada atop the
family station wagon. Upon arrival, the transom was christened with a ten horsepower Scott Atwater
outboard engine that zipped the tiny wedge across the bay at thirty-eight miles an hour – a veritable
Harley on the water. Might I add that there were several adorable teenage girls that were titillated with
me and my little racing boat, and they lined up for free fifteen-minute rides. After several weeks of
storekeeping, however, my meager summer salary was nearly fully consumed refueling The Whiplash.
In desperation, I sought alternative methods for maintaining my mobility and popularity.
In order to reach the boats at the dock, the gasoline hose was quite long. Accordingly, it held about a
half a gallon of gas between the meter and the nozzle. The pump was very primitive, as was the
Canadian Borough of Weights & Measures. One day I discovered quite by accident that after servicing a
customer, the meter could be keyed off and the hose could be drained. Conveniently, there were dozens
of empty quart containers in the garbage can on the dock. These were left over from dispensing oil into
the gas mix, one bottle per five-gallon tank. I drained the hose into two of these quart bottles that by
some stroke of luck had just enough oil residue left over to produce the perfect ratio for my little engine.
I tucked these two quarts away. A few minutes later the next customer pulled up to the dock for gas. The
moment I squeezed the pump trigger, I watched with fascination as the meter jumped instantaneously
ahead to $0.85, accounting for the gas I had drained. It occurred to me then that the trick was to engage
each customer in conversation when the dispensing began so that they didn’t see the pump jump ahead.
Fortunately, all of our customers were fairly well to do. Rusty and I rationalized our deception as a
sort of taxation for our courteous services. Rusty thought it gave new meaning to the term “a proper
hosing.”
So the quarts accumulated into gallons and The Whiplash sped endlessly around the bay. A few
miles away was Camp Hurontario, a rustic summer facility where parents could deposit their offspring
for three- and-a-half weeks of canoeing, island-hopping, camping and character building. Every day, the
supply boat from Parry Sound would bring a large gray canvas bag full of Iron City mail. It was our job
to unpack and sort these letters and packages into alphabetized cubbyholes so that the members could
pick up their mail after lunch. Occasionally (and quite by accident), we would receive Camp Hurontario
mail mixed in with our parcels.
Hurontario mail was mostly comprised of hastily wrapped care packages from guilt-ridden moms
and dads. The boxes were usually dog-eared or badly damaged in transit and often the contents were
exposed or ready to spill. With such cases Rusty and I took it upon ourselves, unauthorized postal
inspectors that we were, to confiscate any items we considered contraband (or useful) prior to sealing up
the packages for eventual forwarding. Such items included, but were not limited to, chewing gum, home
baked chocolate chip cookies, bikini bathing suits, risqué paperback novels and loose change.
After the canvas bag was fully assimilated, it would reside up on a hook in the corner until the next
morning when it was exchanged for a full load of mail. A raucous band of little kids were always
hanging around the store. Given the right ratio of sugar and carbonation, they could rise to
unprecedented obnoxiousness. Rusty and I usually took this in good stride until one of the little varmints
would cross the line. This would require drastic and immediate action. We would seize our “prisoners”
through the open counter window, hoist their pint-size bodies head or feet first into the store interior,
stuff them into the canvas mailbag and cinch them up onto the hanging hook. Of course we left an ample
opening at the top for air, and if there were ever any sign of tears or panic, we would negotiate their
quick release. Typically though, the children flocked to our perimeter and misbehaved with the sole
intent of becoming our captives.
There were many loopholes in the loosely knit storekeeping system and as red-blooded American
teenagers, we sought to uncover them all. For one, the Canadian government had made one major error
in planning their six percent provincial sales tax chart. A customer could come in and buy a bottle of pop
for a quarter and not pay any sales tax, but if they spent twenty-six cents or more the tax would kick in.
So when the cabin owners came by to replenish their supply of soda and mixers, we would diligently
calculate and collect their payment, including all applicable taxes. After carting the cases away, Rusty
and I would ring each bottle into the register individually and throw the extra change into a cigar box for
staff-related entitlements.
So that the members, especially their children, did not have to carry around cash or change, a punch
card system was initiated wherein five or ten dollar cards could be charged to each member’s account.
There were at minimum four inherent flaws in this system, Rusty and I being flaws number one and two
respectively. Flaw number three was that the younger children, let alone the general membership, were
incapable of tracking even the approximate amount of expenditures made on these cards. Flaw number
four was that people would depart camp without checking to see whether there was any remainder left
on their cards, which there almost always was. Multiply these flaws times the hordes of campers that
arrived and departed every summer, then add in the tenuous earnings from the Canadian sales tax kitty,
and the result was that the storekeepers were cunningly, albeit unfairly, treated to free sodas, candy bars,
worms for fishing, peanuts for our domesticated chipmunk population, and only when absolutely
necessary..... Ivory soap.
In revealing these misdemeanors, I extend my sincere apologies to any unsuspecting victims. I am
hopeful that the same statute of limitations and leniency toward juvenile offenders exists in Canada as it
does in the USA. In the event that I have unveiled any deviant behavior still being applied by modernday teenagers, I’m sorry but you’ll just have to rise to a higher level of resourcefulness.
Blair
The Boak family’s creative, athletic and witty third son was going down the road to ruin. This was
unacceptable. My parents had close friends whose son Buzzy was attending Blair Academy, a private
boarding school for “young men” in the tiny hamlet of Blairstown, New Jersey. I was ushered there in
my suit and tie for a meeting with an overly starched admissions director who explained to my parents
with great concern and detail that my prior year’s showing would require that I repeat a sophomore year
at Blair. With great dismay, I packed my bags and left my entire world behind me.
It didn’t take me long to reinvent myself in my new environment, though I had a difficult time
accepting that I was now what I had previously come to despise.... a preppy. I was effective, however, in
projecting an Eddie Haskell charade upon my dormitory masters and classroom instructors. For my
fellow students I maintained my truer self perhaps: the devious and clever prankster, cigarette smoker,
dare taker, Beatles mop-top, and impish comedian.
To Blair’s credit, strict discipline forced me to maximize my capabilities and pursue my interests.
An open-minded creative writing instructor exposed me to the beat poetry of Lawrence Ferlinghetti that
fermented well with the Bob Dylan lyrics echoing from my contraband record turntable. Robert
Atkinson, my drafting mentor, concurrently recognized my drawing skills and opted to develop them by
tormenting me toward compulsive perfection of drafting detail in India ink. I responded well to these
challenges and raised the ante by tackling the complete works of England’s biting social satirist Evelyn
Waugh.
I skipped sports for a semester in order to undertake a solo writing project wherein I isolated myself
in the student lounge. Through a process of staring in deep contemplation, I managed to churn out daily
mini-tragedies, often accompanied with crude and confusing illustrations. These were gathered and
pruned into my first publication unoriginally entitled “Meta-morphosis,” a Kafka-esque transformation
of sorts to which, in my cockroach splendor, I was beginning to relate.
And so, my rare and forgotten first edition of 250 was painstakingly silk-screened and personally
published on a hand-churned A. B. Dick mimeograph in the dusky basement of Locke Hall.
I was on my way.
My little publication was popular with the student body. I think they related to the general terror of
being a teenager. As a self-appointed spokesman for my peers, I considered it my regular obligation to
shock adults, especially my parents, at every possible opportunity, At home, this typically happened at,
but was not limited to, the dinner table. The poetry I was writing certainly had the desired shock effect.
My family as a whole had a difficult time understanding The Middle Class Tragedy. I had painted a
rather dismal portrait of my father as an alcoholic, which he definitely was not. My mother was
beleaguered in her noble attempt to raise four rambunctious sons, but she was not the frenetic or
unstable socialite that I had described. And my brother John was doing the best he could do, given the
calculated harassment that I put him through. In hindsight, it appears I had borrowed images from my
relatively normal, albeit “middle class” family and woven them into a web of exaggerated parity and
satirical shock.
At last I had found my style!
The Middle Class Tragedy (from Metamorphosis, 1967)
(8:00 am)
And the sun rises again
over the white-washed microcosm.
Then through the arteries of the house
flow simultaneously the tired bodies
down the staircase,
two by two,
upon the sunny side down eggs
lying cold in the kitchen.
Father’s munching his corn flakes
guaranteed to stay crisp
(provided you keep him dry)
“Just a little squirt of rum
in my coffee please,” he says.
“No cream or sugar.
It’s much too early for that.”
Mother’s in complete frantic
(as Mother’s usually are)
Grandfather didn’t like the eggs,
Or the coffee, or for that matter, anything.
So he drank her cooking wine
And now there’s nothing left for Mother’s tantrum.
The kid’s are crying already.
It seems that one wanted Kartoons
And the other wanted Kaptain Kangaroo!
So they compromised as children do,
To watch the channel 5 news
And seeing that neither wanted news
They cried instead.
(11:00 am)
But things are softer now.
Father’s off to the office
And Granddad’s out cold on the couch.
The baby’s locked in the crib
Secured with cotton and barbed wire.
And the kids have gone to school
secured with smoke bombs and squirt guns.
Mother’s fixing onion dip and crackers
with sprinklings of rare sugared ant wings,
and her hopes of maintaining
the utmost social status
are vain
without the garden delicacies
discussed with disgust
in the Wednesday Morning Flower Club.
(1:00 pm)
The party’s over now and Mother,
again in complete frantic,
rants and raves
over the Gin, Vermouth and Bourbon
that so coincidentally walked unnoticed
out the door with the
Wednesday Morning Kleptomania Club.
A Salem to soothe the nerves
and a slow slow count
from one to five hundred.
Oh the hell of it all!
The kids will be home soon
Trailed by the usual toothleth leeches
And the stray wounded animals
Seeking the refuge of security.
If only they knew what security was like…
(3:00 pm)
“Bang you’re dead!” and the kids are home
to crayon the walls
and trampoline the beds
and pinch the baby
and burn the sickly gray dog until –
it goes plowing out the door,
tail in mouth, seeking refuge.
(5:00 pm)
And then to Mother’s pleasant surprise
the cute one has buried himself
in scores of Downy disposable diapers…
And the dog returns with father,
newspaper in mouth,
teethmarks to the “Great Society.”
(6:00 pm)
Father’s in his chair
slurping his martini
avoiding the olive
at the same time
staring through his toes
at the human comic strip.
And Mother’s in the pantry
cooking marshmallows and Rice Krispies
with a pinch of arsenic
to keep the spirits up.
A smile of chagrin at the thought
of her cunning witch-like craft.
Granddad’s playing double solitaire
with himself; jumping up
as fast as his heart will let him
to take the Queen of Hearts.
(the only card without a move)
He always did beat Grandma
when she was alive.
And John’s in the cellar
with his beer and his billiard cue
shooting a masse with a left hand twist
on the twelve ball.
He made that shot once, but never since
and now he’s a cross-eyed neurotic
locked happily in the cellar.
Only one member left in this family.
The dog, so wrongly named George,
and George’s rabies shot is tomorrow
though he has no teeth;
he sits contented nibbling grass
and swallowing roaches that constitute
his healthy rabid diet.
(6:45 pm)
The house is quiet now
except for an occasional explosion
of Granddad tripping over a spade
or Mother’s hungry disposal
or the cow-bell on the dog’s tail.
Yes, all is quiet now
except for the kid who dared to cry.
(6:46 pm)
But then it happened, without a word
and Father gulped six martinis
in amazingly rapid succession
over the King of Black Spades.
And the dog howled, and the kids cried
and Mother spilled the Rice Krispies
and John growled in the cellar.
Everyone wished they were dead
except Granddad, who lay outstretched upon the paisley carpet
and Father said one holeymary
and Mother crossed herself
and the kids cried some more
but the stillness prevailed…
(7:00 pm)
Then Mother exclaimed, “Dinner is served.”
Father staggered to the table
and George’s dog food rolled unnoticed
under the cellar door.
No one said grace, except Granddad
who had other commitments (obviously)
as did everyone.
And then the roof fell in!
(from Tears, 1968)
To A Janitor Crying In A Closet
Behind a locked door
with brooms and cleaning fluid,
brass door-knob polish and dirt stained rags;
his companions and possessions –
he sits, the sad king
of his own linoleum world,
with dust streaked tears,
dripping from a plaster face
into a waste can.
his friends are the neat jars
with their keen patented odors
sitting like grandmothers
on their dark wooden shelves
and the brushes and brooms hang
intently upright
listening to his inward sorrows
that never escape
closet doors.
the day is black behind his hidden door.
the keyhole is a star
in a universe of midnight secrets.
unseen in the dark
unseen in the smiling streets
he vanishes to the night – behind a locked door
labeled “Custodian”
where he weaves his crown of thorns.
Georgy Kessel’s Dog
georgy kessel's dog died today
standing alone in the wet cement sidewalk
he waited eternally.....
frozen..... like a Greek statue.
people walked by and laughed.
they'd never seen a dog cry
before.....
georgy kessel's dog died today
and a little boy with a beard
lay wounded in the grass and wept.
someone said it was georgy himself
but his parents denied it.
"georgy never had a beard"
until his dog died...
an immortal dog died today.
the mayor says he's very sorry
and he'll buy the kessels a new dog
after the sidewalk bill is paid
and this will never happen
but.....
georgy kessel's dog dies today
and everyday..... yesterday and tomorrow.
nobody cares
except a dog
and a small boy with a beard
running silently and still
toward an ice-glazed hill of Calvary.
A 3 1/2 X 2 1/2 Wallet Sized Photograph
I found you
waiting
in all of your platinum beauty
lying face down
on the wet sidewalk
dropped by some false grinning lover
by mistake (or otherwise)
into a thought
and I picked you up
wiped the grime from your textured face
dried your tears
smoothed out the cardboard wrinkles
and brought you back
to a black and white life
in my mind
I loved you
cherished you
as the only beauty in my world
your gentle image was close to me;
closer than you could have ever been
then
as if you knew my love
you walked away
mysteriously
through my fingers
away from my wallet
lost in a gutter
face up and waiting
with your posed smile
Love Is
Love isn’t purple miniskirt
to green-eyelid kissed
or fancy flake fingernails
coated with silver Cutex
glowing in
a darkness
or fake eye-brow blue
with comb and brush
teased
into tweezer desire.
Love isn’t naked
navel
or pink pearl on paisley
or spider leg webbed stocking
cherished
in left rear levi pocket
Love isn’t visible
to mascara drip-teared eyes
of un-beauty
these may be
but
Love Is.
The Last Page
The first word
and the last blood stained page
the last of faded frustrations
i feel diffused now
like the star’s light
miles away yes
this word game
it’s no good
the last page ruins it all
everything I say
is torn
by smiling prodigies
and frowning idiots
i’ll tell the truth.
this page is five minutes of thought
unlike the rest
but don’t worry about me
it’s all a phase
and i don’t believe a word i say
(even these last pages)
College Prepped
Although I was #4 in my class of 100 at Blair, I didn’t fare very well on my SATs. I was naturally
adept at mathematics and I came away with very high scores in that area. But my real aspiration was to
continue along a literary path as an English major so that I could pursue the lucrative field of poetry. My
verbal scores, however, left serious doubt about my general intelligence. A second round of testing
didn’t improve the situation very much. My aspirations for Duke and Bucknell were shattered.
Given that I was a relatively good student left some hope for a college with more relaxed standards. I
was, after all, a fine citizen, well rounded in athletics and extra curricular activities. My darker side
remained my secret for the most part; at least it didn’t come up during my token interview with the
Admissions Director of Gettysburg College. Paying students were a valuable commodity for underendowed barely liberal arts institutions, so I was quickly swept up with several of my fellow Blair
graduates who shared my predicament. I rationalized all of this by extolling the virtues of small colleges
where individualism wasn’t sacrificed to numbers. Anyway, I had a nifty job lined up at Bethlehem
Steel to occupy my summer and fill my coffers.
My long hair wasn’t well received on my first day of work at the #1 Bridge Shop. In hindsight, it
was perhaps a mistake to express my Conscientious Objector sentiments to my fellow steel workers. Nor
was it popular for me to actually sweep with the broom I was issued, as this made the other union
workers look bad. Painfully I learned the rules and eventually graduated from scale grinder to chain
hooker to part number painter, a clear acknowledgement of my artistic calling.
After a small scuffle wherein Frank the redneck nearly pushed me to my death from the third story
fire escape into a semi-molten ingot, I was transferred to Central Tool. There the metal lathes were
spinning out beautifully crafted shells for the Vietnam War effort. My job was to shovel the sharp scrap
metal spirals into a wheel barrel and cart them off to the re-melting hopper.
One day, one of the metal lathes jammed up and needed to be rebuilt. There were an assortment of
gears strewn across the shop that day and one of them found its way into my lunch pail in the name of
the peace movement.
Of course, they machined a new gear and had it all polished up by the end of the next day, but that
was a full day’s worth of bombs that didn’t get made, and the gear made a handsome ashtray.
No question, I was pushing my luck, but I squeaked though that job intact with a few weeks to spare.
Before summer was over, my parents, my younger brother John and I headed up to Iron City Fishing
Club, our family summer vacation spot on Georgian Bay in Ontario. As I have previously mentioned,
Iron City is a beautiful and remote spot, accessible only by boat or seaplane. My grandfather had joined
the club in the 1920’s and all of my uncles, aunts and cousins on my mother’s side attended almost
every summer.
MC5
A few days after our arrival, my notorious cousin “JC” Crawford appeared in camp with my Uncle
Jack and Aunt Marty. JC was a year or two older than I was and had always been very talented and
popular. As a child, he excelled as a magician and developed a business performing at parties. In his
early teens he became proficient on the drums and piano, but his real talent rested in his personality and
in his ability to tell incredible stories.
JC had been residing in the Ann Arbor and Detroit areas of Michigan that were epicenters of the ‘60s
radical movement. He had been playing drums with “The Prime Movers Blues Band” and “Commander
Cody” for few years prior to hooking up with John Sinclair, a counterculture entrepreneur who was
heading up the notorious “Translove Energies” commune.
Translove booked bands and provided concert staging and lighting, and it wasn’t long before John
Sinclair began to manage a local hard rock band called the Motor City Five (MC5). John invited JC to a
gig to see the band at the University of Michigan Student Union and JC was blown away by the band’s
live performance. Later John asked JC whether he might like to help manage the group. JC said “yes”
and that was that.
The MC5 soon signed with Electra Records, and with the prodding of activist Huey P. Newton, John
Sinclair formed the White Panther Party. Soon the MC5 gained national notoriety for their politically
insurgent live concerts and record releases. Their first album yielded a hit song of sorts called “Kick Out
The Jams,” the lyrics of which were just a bit too far over the edge for the radio. Although JC was not
one of the five musicians, he was certainly a critical force in the band, being mysteriously credited on
the album cover as the “Spiritual Advisor.” For all practical purposes, JC acted as the road manager and
“MC” of the MC5, providing fervent narration before, during and after the show using his highly
developed charisma and rhetoric to whip the audience into a frenzy. There was no question that JC was
Mr. Cool. With his long blonde hair, leather moccasins and sunglasses, he possessed an aura of mystery
and his peers at Iron City, myself included, found him awe-inspiring. The fact that he was a rock star
was simply icing on the cake.
One evening, I found myself with JC on the back boardwalk toking on a bowl full of hashish and
listening to one of his outrageous stories. This was my first real encounter with cannabis, at least it was
the first time that anything actually happened. I must confess that I was puzzled about the big
controversy. Being high on pot seemed rather creative and fun; not the evil and addictive criminal vice
that society had warned me about. The ritual of passing the pipe seemed quite social. Listening to music
was a particularly heightened experience and song lyrics from my favorite groups took on a new level of
meaning. After analyzing the situation, I came away feeling that I had been deceived about the dangers
of marijuana. Of course I kept this to myself as I packed up my Beatles and Stones records and headed
off to Gettysburg College for freshman orientation.
Gettysburg Address
I settled into my new dormitory life at Rice Hall. I’m afraid Blair had prepared me a bit too well for
college. I had already covered nearly all of the course matter offered in my freshman year. That gave me
plenty of time to expand my consciousness.
On urban college campuses around the country the counter culture was going strong, but at
Gettysburg the hippie movement was limited to a meager band of colorful but pathetic outcasts. Without
hesitation, I enlisted in this group.
My friends from Blair really stuck together: Al, Lucy, Tucker and myself. They’d all experienced
similar summer diversions. I told them about my adventures with cousin JC and with a grin, Al revealed
a small slab of hashish. This kept us occupied for the first semester. We furthered the significant
parental investment in our education by attending several legendary rock concerts: Jim Morrison and
The Doors in Philadelphia, The Grateful Dead at Shippensburg, and on our own Student Union stage
Spirit. When Cream went on their “Goodbye” tour, we all hitched rides down to the Baltimore Civic
Arena for the concert of a lifetime. Afterwards, we walked from Baltimore back to Gettysburg in a rain
soaked-stupor. An entire volume could be written about that defining evening.
Though I kept up with creative writing, my real interest was turning toward art. To the complete
exclusion of my distribution requirements, I signed up for some courses with an impassioned sculpture
professor named Norman Annis. I found him to be a tremendous inspiration. I’m not sure he wanted to
admit it at the time, but I sensed that he liked me too and saw some promise in the unusual directions
that my art was taking.
I drew a simple drawing called The Wave which was inspired by a classic Japanese painting and with
Norm Annis’s skeptical encouragement, the drawing came to life in the form of an under-lit light
sculpture. Individual topographic cross sections of a wave were scroll cut from 1/8” masonite, painted in
variegated aqua tones, mounted in evenly-spaced succession in a sturdy free-standing frame and draped
with black fabric on all four sides to prevent any leakage of light. With head-scratching faculty approval,
I arranged to occupy the corner of one of the heavily-traveled lounges in the Student Union Building.
With all of the lights out in the room, I would crawl underneath The Wave in a cramped, almost fetal
position and rotate a spotlight in slow circular motions. The effect was very dramatic.
Actually it
was quite psychedelic, especially when accompanied with an appropriate Pink Floyd instrumental. Each
scroll-cut section would light up and then darken in a graceful but staccato visual progression. I suppose
you had to see it to truly “get it,” but The Wave was a happening of sorts. Friends and Wave enthusiasts
would relieve me from time to time, each taking a surprising degree of pride in their individual approach
to animating the light sculpture.
A second extended sculpture project was called Life Sculpture #1. This consisted of five successive
scroll cut Celtic crosses signifying Birth, Action, Reaction, Death and Rebirth (or some such lofty
philosophical progression). Each cross was circumscribed with three concentric rings signifying The
Mind (center ring, yellow), The Body (middle ring, red) and The Environment (outer ring, blue). The
crosses were stabilized with steel pipe fittings in a straight row, with about five feet separating each
section. The base of each section was curved to allow the entire sculpture to rock when touched, and
touched it was!
The concentric circles were joined with an array of indexed strands of color created with tightly
stretched colored twine which rotated 90o from section to section. The entire monstrosity was 20 feet
long and quite difficult to move within the art building, let alone across the campus, but it was striking. I
pity the poor maintenance person who had to disassemble and dispose of this monolithic yet abandoned
dust magnet from the long hallway in the basement of the college chapel.
Norman Annis received the prestigious commission for the Dwight D. Eisenhower sculpture outside
of The Eisenhower Library on the Gettysburg campus. We both spent late evening hours in the studio
and I helped him on many occasions with the drudgery of his project. He possessed the classic artistic
temperament and at one point he scrapped months of work and started over. It took its toll on him, as did
the realization that my talent might take a back seat to pot smoking and the counter culture. But he got
through it, and so would I.
Not Necessarily Stoned
As an artist and musician in the late sixties, smoking pot was nearly a prerequisite. I smoked plenty
of it and unlike Bill Clinton, I inhaled. While I certainly wouldn’t encourage the youth of today to
jeopardize their brain cells as I did, I have no regrets. In fact, the bulk of my drawings were influenced
in some way by cannabis sativa.
While we’re at it, I guess I’d better come clean with regard to LSD, peyote cactus, mescaline,
psilocybin mushrooms, and an assortment of other available drugs of the era. We were followers of
Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert. Though there was certainly an element of uncharted adventure
involved, we took these experiments very seriously. We read books about psychedelics and we spent a
lot of time planning our “excursions.”
I had taken LSD about 10 times and had had deeply meaningful experiences in a number of different
categories: art, spirituality, relationships, music, nature, politics, even mathematics. I had been planning
a solo art and nature trip for about a week and had acquired a hit of sunshine from Acid Dave, a local
purveyor on campus. I had left the small pill on my dresser and had planned to take it on Friday
afternoon at about 2:00 pm after my last class. When I got back to my dorm room, the pill was gone.
I went down to find Acid Dave, bought another hit, and went out to find my roommate, who I
suspected might have either put the pill away
somewhere or taken it himself. I ran into my good friend Kip (alias “Gerbs”) who said he had just seen
Al. He said Al had a funny look in his eyes. I found Al about a half an hour later on the steps of the
Student Union Building (SUB). It takes about an hour for LSD to take hold and by that time, Al was
getting off. It was stronger acid than expected and after only 30 minutes, I was feeling the effects. It was
more intense than I would have preferred and I was slightly scared.
Standing in my room, the woven wires of my electric blanket began to undulate. I was listening to
Bob Dylan’s Visions of Johanna and when I realized how strongly I was tripping, I thought that it might
be better to go outside. On the back patio of the Student Union Building, the flagstones seemed to float
and intersect. The patterns formed were like peace signs. I got it into my head that world peace had been
realized. There were people walking hurriedly toward the dining hall and I followed them. To my
amazement, upon entering the dining hall, every table had a different country’s flag displayed and
everyone sitting at the individual tables was dressed in the native clothing of their respective country. I
sat down at the table with the American flag. There were ROTC members and their commanding
officers seated, eating spaghetti. After several moments of uneasiness, I inquired, “You’re not planning
any wars, are you?” My comment was supposed to be funny, but they didn’t laugh. I got up and walked
over to a stage where three musicians were playing the Beatles song “Yesterday.” I walked up on stage
and stood next to the string bass player, a tall black brother with an afro. When I started singing along
into the microphone he said, “Hey man, be cool!” I realized then and there that I had misread the
situation. My embarrassment forced me outside into the electrified air.
I didn’t know it, but a basketball game had just ended and the gymnasium was emptying out onto the
street. Cars were peeling away and people were running. I followed the crowd to my dorm and upon
entering the lobby, I noticed a small group of students sitting intently in front of the TV. A newscaster
was standing in Bermuda shorts and a Hawaiian shirt. The sun was shining and it was obviously warm
where he was, but there were people skiing behind him. In an excited voice he exclaimed, “It’s snowing
in Florida!”
I had missed the previous segment about experimental Teflon snow that was being tested for
recreational skiing in warm climates. So I took the newscaster’s statement quite literally. In a mild
panic, I hurried upstairs to see whether I could find Al. I needed to explain what was going on to
someone. Reality was slipping away.
Al was in our room listening to Dylan’s Nashville Skyline, whose soft country drawl was quite
mesmerizing. He too was tripping intensely, but didn’t seem to be having difficulty grasping the
situation like I was. We hung out for a while and he explained how he had come back from class and
had seen the hit of acid on the dresser. He knew it was mine and just made a snap decision to take it. Al
realized that I was slightly off the track and instead of becoming derailed himself, he went outside for
some fresh air. I followed him out into the cool evening darkness and seeing a light on in a basement
room that was often used for folk performances, I went in to check it out.
Inside the room were seven or eight people dressed in what seemed to be eighteenth century
European clothing. They were all talking in an odd dialect and one of them was holding a pipe of the
type that Sherlock Holmes smoked. I walked over to the stage where they all were sitting, pulled up a
chair, and lit a match for the pipe. They were quite startled by my actions and the one holding the pipe
said “Do you mind? We’re rehearsing for a play!” I saw the book on the table with the title Waiting For
Godot! I was flabbergasted. In the next hour, I began to descend from the acid and realized that I had
misread a whole string of circumstances. With increasing remorse, I returned to my dormitory room
where I crawled under the undulating covers and tried to sleep it off, but there was no sleeping. Instead,
my mind was projecting a continuously evolving surrealistic score onto the stereo screens of my eyelids.
So I guess I had a “bum trip.” I got over it in a week or so. I apologized to everyone, including the
ROTC people, and I cleaned up my act a bit. I can’t say that I stopped my experimentation, but I
certainly was more conservative with the doses.
There were so many images that I felt were philosophical or meaningful. I wanted to capture them
all. I continued to keep meticulous journals, but more of my time was spent socializing in the Student
Union. That’s where all the freaks hung out. I found that I could take an art tablet there and work for
hours on drawings. I could listen to the conversations and music and be part of the scene, but I could
also be productive. People would look over my shoulder and say “cool” or “weird.” These remarks
generally fortified my confidence and helped me finish some extended efforts. On occasion, someone
would make a negative remark that would interrupt my spontaneity and spoil a particular drawing for
me.
Tullio DeSantis was a frequent visitor to the SUB. Whether he wanted the role or not, he was the
unofficial patriarch of our little scene. He was very confident, original, talented, brilliant, musical and
intense, and he was definitely on the edge. His illustrations were incredibly organic and mystical to me.
Like all of my more effective mentors, he intimidated me into wanting to be more than what I was.
Tullio was working with Rapidograph technical pens that yielded exceptional detail. I had been
working with Flair pens for the most part, but quickly changed over to 000-sized Rapidographs. Tullio
introduced me to the ink drawings of Aubrey Beardsley, the engravings of Albrecht Dürer, the spiritual
drawings of Kahlil Gibran, and to the illuminated manuscripts of William Blake. I found tremendous
influence and inspiration with these artists. At first I simply went through the motions of mimicking
their technique, but gradually I would find my own style.
Another very creative person on campus was Jeannie O’Keefe. One day I found her in the SUB
creating some beautiful circular patterns in colored pencil that seemed meditative and Eastern. Thanks to
Kung-Fu’s David Carradine, George Harrison, Ravi Shankar, and Be Here Now’s Baba Ram Dass, I had
become a student of Eastern religion and I tried my hand at a few meditative “yantras.” These were
circular patterns or visual meditations, as opposed to “mantras” which were strictly auditory. The idea
was that one could stare at these images while meditating to find inner peace. Yeah, well.
My background in technical drafting and my fascination with symmetry lent itself well to the
development of these techniques. I experimented with three-, four-, five-, and eight-axis symmetry and
found that when I had no specific inspiration to draw from reality, I could use geometrics to develop my
finer motor skills and hand muscles. In addition, these circular patterns provided a framework within
which I could weave new textures and methods that would serve me well when more tangible ideas did
bubble up from my subconscious. Technical skill is, after all, merely a vehicle that can be used to
deliver ideas. By itself, technique is relatively anemic, but when human emotion or experience provides
a critical reason or theme, then the technique lies in waiting, ready to assist in bringing an idea or image
to fruition. Isn’t that what art is all about – bringing things to fruition – imitating God, if you will. The
endless hours that I spent drawing were also spent in thought. In trying to analyze the process and
purpose of art, the words intuition and synthesis kept cropping up. Intuition: the state of knowing
something without having to discover or perceive it. Synthesis: the process of combining different ideas,
influences and objects into a new unified whole.
And so I came to define my personal art as intuitive synthesis. I found myself crossing theoretical
thresholds until there was simply neither a reason nor a way to turn back.
Marty
With his unicycle and Robert Plant curls, Steve Kennedy was one of the Atlantian hippie icons on
campus. He and his girlfriend Sandy Bloom were two creative friends of mine and shortly into my
sophomore year, Sandy introduced me to her friend Marty Mayers. Marty was short and cute with
beautiful eyes, but she was also a fireball of feminism. We were instantly attracted to each other and
soon we were an inseparable couple on campus.
I was doing my best to get hip to the feminist movement. I wanted to be sensitive and struggled to
liberate myself from all of the sexist tendencies that I had gleaned from my fellow males. Marty
willfully and aggressively assisted me with this thankless process. I tried to absorb the messages from
Marty’s subscription of Ms. Magazine and read Erica Jong’s Fear of Flying. We watched John and
Yoko wrestle through their issues and we worked through ours. I was certainly non-violent and did my
best to suppress my inherent jealousy when it reared its ugly little head.
This was my first serious relationship; the first time I had let all my barriers down. While Marty and
I firmly resisted emotional dependency, we eventually succumbed to it. We had found a somewhat safe
haven in each other; a good thing actually, since the rest of the world seemed to be spinning totally out
of control.
Billboards Anonymous, Un-Inc.
Allen Ginsberg came to Gettysburg and after listening to several hours of his beat poetry
accompanied by the drone of his musical squeeze- box, a group of hippies sat and smoked some joints
with him behind the Student Union Building.
We talked about radical politics and activism. He had a copy of Abbie Hoffman’s Steal This Book. I
remember a brief and somewhat outrageous discussion that I had with him about the blight of billboards
that were infesting the highways. I joked for several weeks afterwards about starting a new non-profit
corporation called “Billboards Anonymous,” the purpose of which would be to rid the countryside of
these repulsive eyesores.
On a quiet Wednesday evening, my radical company “went public,” at least in a vivid but highly
secretive and covert dream sequence.
A religiously fundamental billboard bearing a message that I felt was bordering on the offensive
stood on the eastern outskirts of Gettysburg. It was not huge in size, but large enough to obstruct a
beautiful field of wheat and a backdrop of ash trees – a perfect test for “Billboards Anonymous.”
The road was well traveled in the daytime but deserted in my nocturnal fantasy. I rode out at the
stroke of midnight with a Christmas tree saw in my basket, ditched my bicycle in the bushes, and by the
soft light of the moon, I cut through all of the supporting 4 x 4s until the sign teetered and creaked, then
with a slow and graceful motion, it fell forward with a soft swoosh, and lay defeated in the grass. I
skulked sheepishly to my bike and pedaled back to town, where later that evening, my new company
quietly went bankrupt before the dawn arose.
Positive/Negative
Yin/yang, black/white, male/female, east/west, love/hate, yes/no; everywhere you look there are
dichotomies and paradoxes. Working in black and white, I was perplexed with these polarities on a daily
basis and I began to consider the drawing process as the integration of positive and negative, black and
white.
A common analogy depicts a sculptor, extracting a three-dimensional form or figure from solid rock by
removing all of the material that isn’t part of that form. Conversely, the same sculptor could choose to
build a form in an additive fashion. Interpolating this into my own framework, I often envision a
sculptor gluing tiny granules of sand together to create a form. Given my barely corrected vision, my
color blindness, my near sightedness, and hence my need to work very close, this is the approach to art
to which I gravitated out of necessity. It’s not the right way, but it is my way.
In the same sense that a drummer must integrate silence with sound by breaking a single beat into its
multiple counterparts or lowest common denominators, I became more than slightly concerned with the
merging of the positive with the negative. And I must say in all seriousness that the equal rights
movement caused me to attempt to blend the polarities of black and white with a certain priority for
equality.
In my integration of black and white, I often allowed forms to develop in a random fashion, and as
they started to grow and materialize, I would allow them to become what I felt they wanted to be.
So larger areas of black and white disintegrate into shades of grey, and purely geometric structures
loosen toward organicism, or so I had hoped. I aspired to be loose, free, organic, flowing, spontaneous,
animate, alive, but there is no question that I was traveling from a place of logic, mathematics,
symmetry, order, calculation, precision and tediousness. It is possible to accept the unique perspective
that each of us is given even if that position doesn’t represent the place we had hoped we would be. It is
also possible to evolve in conscious directions by pretending to be what we wish to become. But in the
process of pretending, I stumbled upon my ego.
This of course was tremendously disturbing, causing me to doubt myself and my motives. I knew
that I was driven by a need to be loved and accepted. I knew that I wanted to be respected and
remembered for who I was and what I could accomplish.
I was thinking too much. It was partially paranoia and partially insecurity. So when my pendulum of
confidence swung in the other direction, it didn’t feel very good. It certainly made it difficult to be
creative, but my friends liked me better this way, emotionally wounded and weak.
Eventually I realized that my goal would be to achieve a compromise of stability between the
polarities of excessive and deficient confidence. Art can hopefully be forgiven in advance for any of
these fluctuations and valued intrinsically as a positive process that can expel and convert the burdens of
the soul into useful and meaningful reflections of humanity.
Like most people in the sixties, and in particular artists, the concept of ego was difficult to
understand or accept. Ego was a bad word; ego tripping even worse. It suggested a self-centeredness and
an aversion for altruism.
Art by its nature is egocentric. The very process is incredibly self-absorbed and introspective. The drive
to create art can be distilled into a few simple motives: a desire for fame, immortality, acceptance, greed,
or power. Creativity is revered and encouraged, but the motivations that feed creativity are thought to be
self-serving. I wrestled with this daily, and when I wasn’t addressing it, Marty was addressing it for me.
I did my best to sublimate my ego, or at least mask it in the form of insincere humility. At one
extreme, I required confidence in order to proceed with my work, and when I felt confident, I felt good.
My friends, however, perceived this same confidence as arrogance.
The Icehouse
As I began my junior year at Gettysburg College in 1970, I had somehow managed to convince my
parents that it was a good idea for me to move into an apartment with two close friends. The rent was
nominal when divided three ways, especially when compared to the escalating college dormitory costs.
Kip and Luce had found a spot just south of campus in a building affectionately known as “The
Icehouse”. It was a dingy red brick building laid out in a long row along the railroad tracks. It contained
five apartments that were stuck onto the side of an old refrigeration plant. The apartments were
numbered A through E. We occupied apartment C, though it didn’t really matter. There were
cockroaches in all of them, and the layouts were all identically drab.
The front door entered in upon a small living room which connected to a kitchenette, a walk-in
closet, and a stairwell that wound its way up to the second floor. Upstairs, there were two bedrooms and
a small bathroom. One bedroom was slightly larger than the other, so we drew straws and I won. I chose
the small room with the single bed, thinking that I could lure coeds into the privacy of my rat trap. That
left Kip and Luce to bunk in the large room, which was also my thoroughfare, but the only bathroom
adjoined my room, so I had to put up with the two of them trampling through my room at all hours of
the night. It was a great arrangement.
There was a window in my room that went out onto the black asphalt roof of the refrigeration plant. I
quickly discovered that the roof, with its gradual slope, made a great sunbathing salon as well as a
substantial fair-weather extension of my bedroom. There was a cupola that grew upwards out of the roof
like a glassed-in gazebo. The windows were tiny and slightly ajar to provide ventilation for the huge
refrigeration units inside. It didn’t take me long to open one of the windows fully and peer into the
humming freon darkness down below.
After several weeks as an inhabitant of the icehouse, it had become apparent that the refrigeration
plant was one of the distribution points for Harbison’s Dairy. We had seen the ice cream trucks pull
around to the rear of the building to load up for their wholesale deliveries. We had also overheard vague
references of a standing tradition among icehouse residents, to go down through the roof in search of
some of the frozen flavors that so innocently invited our investigation. Perhaps I had been privileged to
too many episodes of Al Mundy in “It Takes A Thief.” The last bastions to my barely Presbyterian
conscience failed to dissuade my devious curiosity. I knotted a rope in even foot-long increments, tied it
around the rafters in the ceiling of the cupola, and in the dead of midnight, I slithered down the rope,
knot by knot, hand over hand, flashlight in mouth, into the frightful excitement of collegiate debauchery.
I was on top of the refrigerator room. My flashlight led me to the edge of an eight-foot drop down to
ground level where a U-shaped hallway wrapped its way around the refrigerator to a small office. There
was a straight ladder stored up there, which was awfully thoughtful of some unsuspecting dairy man. I
quickly lowered it into the hallway and climbed down. My heart was pounding.
There were several freezer doors to chose from around the perimeter. I opened one to find a large
corridor, badly in need of defrosting, with 12-pack cases of half gallons stacked neatly according to
flavor along one side wall. On the other side was a twenty foot glass-topped case packed to the brim
with Fudgesicles, Creamsicles, Popsicles, and Heath Bars, in an assortment of sizes and brands. I didn’t
wish to overstay my welcome, so I pilfered a case of Heath Bars and retraced my steps, back up the
ladder, replacing the ladder, up the rope, removing the rope, back through my window to my roommates
who were waiting in amazement and adulation. We made quick business of the Heath Bars. I believe the
crime is referred to as breaking and entering, but somehow it seemed more like going next door to
borrow a cup of milk. I developed and perfected my procedure to the extent that our refrigerator became
quickly filled, and so were the refrigerators of all of our friends within a five mile radius, and their
friends, and so on. There was no shortage of ice cream in Gettysburg. Abe Lincoln would have been
flabbergasted.
Remember that this phenomenon was happening during the early fall of 1970. We were boycotting
Coca-Cola for supporting the Vietnam war. Members of the SDS were sabotaging the military industrial
complex, and I, like Robin Hood, in my modest way, was helping to liberate small portions of the
material world for redistribution to the eager counter culture masses. I vowed to not liberate anything for
personal profit and I promptly stole “Steal This Book” by Abbie Hoffman to keep up with the trends of
the revolution.
I was really quite a benevolent criminal. I would start out on my bicycle at perhaps noon on
Saturday, my bike baskets filled with Popsicles. I would cycle disruptively into the center of a softball
game, tossing ice cream sandwiches like a paper boy doing his route.
“Popsicles for the people! Popsicles for the people!”
My bicycle was a particularly popular sight on hot days.
I received so much gratification and positive peer feedback from my escapade that I evolved into
newer and grander levels of larceny. I would often enlist the help of my more adventurous cohorts to
boost me over the wall into the lumber stalags for 2 x 4’s, or to drop me through the skylight into the
maintenance warehouse for pink spray paint. This color suited the windows of the ROTC building on
one particular evening. Of course I stayed up so late that night that by the time I awoke the next
morning, the windows had been scrubbed so thoroughly, that I wondered upon their close inspection
whether I had once again imagined the whole episode.
Geodesics
My brother Bill’s best friend at Liberty High School was a fellow basketball star named Barry Frey.
He had returned to Bethlehem to write for the town newspaper, The Globe Times. One afternoon when
my brother Bill was in town, Barry came by and found me hard at work in the back yard assembling a
small sixteen-foot-diameter geodesic dome. I had acquired a brightly colored parachute to serve as the
cover. He was fascinated and came back the next day to write a story.
Back at college, I arranged with my art teacher Norm Annis to do a special project on geodesic ratios
and architecture. This involved becoming familiar with the complex mathematical calculations that
Buckminster Fuller had devised in order to break down the simple twenty-sided icosahedron into an
assortment of “frequencies” that were more practical for actual structures. To verify my research, I built
tabletop models of the various geodesic patterns and compiled all of my geometry in a final booklet
entitled Whole Earth Structures.
During college breaks in Bethlehem, our basement workshop would invariably become my dome
fabrication shop. There I would test the technical validity of various hinge designs on an assortment of
nomadic dome tents and geodesic jungle gyms.
Kirkridge
Kirkridge is a beautiful spot atop the Appalachian Ridge about thirty miles due north of Bethlehem. I
had become aware of the retreat in my early teens. John “JB” Barrett, one of my favorite teachers at
Blair, had introduced me to Jon Oliver Nelson, who was the benefactor of the Kirkridge estate. J.O.N. as
most everyone addressed him, was an heir to the Gulf Western fortune. A portion of his inheritance
funded the purchase of several hundred pristine acres from the top of the stony Appalachian Ridge to the
bottom of the plush valley below. J.O.N. was a graduate of the Yale Divinity School. He was
surprisingly open-minded, intellectually brilliant,
lucid in his expressiveness, very charismatic and quite eccentric.
J.O.N. and his wife Jane had dedicated their lives to the mountain and to the Kirkridge Retreat,
which was often used for weekend spiritual outings, marriage counseling sessions, and an assortment of
other progressive seminars. Often J.O.N.’s philanthropy overflowed toward a seemingly endless parade
of desperate alcoholics and drug addicts who took advantage of his hospitality and generosity.
After Jane’s passing, the flow of street urchins seeking J.O.N.’s handouts increased in direct
proportion to his loneliness. In spite of these vulnerabilities, J.O.N. was a very special individual. I was
most honored to be his long-time friend and confidant. I looked to him for spiritual approval and
inspiration, and in exchange, he was always anxious to hear of my current creative energies and
adventures.
The small progressive School At Kirkridge was occupying the farmhouse in the valley below the
retreat. I was very familiar with the school since my brother John had enrolled. When J.O.N. found out
about my interest in geodesics, he asked me how much I might charge to construct a dome in the
meadow in front of the farmhouse. His idea was to donate a structure to the school that could be used as
a theater in the round and as a spiritual gathering place.
After a very inadequate analysis of the costs, I quoted three hundred dollars. This included the basic
framework. J.O.N. was going to have some workers sink some sections of telephone poles into the
ground at my exact specified locations to serve as a raised base for the structure so that the floor, if ever
constructed, would be raised above ground level. The Kirkridge students in turn were going to be
responsible for devising a covering.
I had a local metal fabricator create custom drilled and pre-bent angle irons from ¼” steel plate.
These were fastened to the ends of two by fours with heavy bolts to complete the struts. With a
borrowed pickup truck and a battalion of friends, we arrived at Kirkridge on a sunny Saturday to
assemble the dome.
As with the assembly of all domes, the process was fascinating and surprisingly quick, though it was
immediately apparent that the struts were awkwardly large and out of scale with respect to their
practicality. This was going to make it very difficult to fabricate a cover. J.O.N. realized this as well, but
he was so thrilled with the visual grace of the dome that I think he accepted it immediately as a
sculptural statement. Cover or no cover, there was an undeniable sense of being “inside,” and an added
bonus was that the students genuinely loved to climb on it.
I felt very close to Kirkridge and to J.O.N. In the months that followed, I spoke with him about my
desire to construct an art studio on top of the ridge. The view was striking up there. On a clear afternoon,
you could see the sun gleam off the World Trade Center towers in New York City.
There was an abandoned Conelrad Early Warning Radar Station and Tower at the highest knoll.
J.O.N. liked the idea of creating a camper’s oasis and spiritual haven for hikers that were traversing the
Appalachian Trail. I envisioned a multimedia art studio and residence. For some political reason, the
Presbyterian Synod needed to approve such a plan. I think that J.O.N.’s and Jane’s wills must have held
the property in trust for the church.
After much consideration, the Synod decided that I was lacking the proper spiritual fortitude to
manage a haven of this magnitude. They were so correct. Of course, I was heartbroken, but in hindsight,
I honestly don’t know what I was thinking. The whole idea was such a pipe dream. And in the event that
our plan had been approved, it was highly probable that I would have become one of J.O.N.’s urchins
that I so vehemently despised.
A Candid Survey Of American Life As Seen Through The Fading Eyes Of A Hitchhiker
Approaching Insanity
(Part Two)
The distance between Gettysburg and Bethlehem is about two and a half hours by car, and since I
had no car, it was necessary that I resort to hitchhiking. I had developed a certain sense of futility about
my ability to get quick rides, even though there were generally a fair number of vagabonds on the more
traveled roads steering dilapidated VW micro-busses that were inclined to retrieve long-haired lost souls
like myself from the perils of thumbing. On the back roads though, it was a different story. The locals
indigenous to Gettysburg fit the stereotype of back hills rednecks, perhaps not quite as extreme as the
southern variety, but nonetheless completely averse to picking up hitchers.
I had decided to try a new tactic. My brother Bill had been in the Marines and I had borrowed one of
his olive green fatigues. I tied my hair up, buried it inside the green cap and put the uniform on, thinking
that this specific attire would have greater appeal both visually and emotionally to the locals. It was a
fairly
common occurrence to see young soldiers getting rides along the highway from members of the
respectable upper middle class or from down-to-earth farmers. With this as my premise, I started early
one morning in my disguise from Gettysburg heading north on Route 15 toward Harrisburg.
Almost immediately, a pickup truck pulled over and a gruff-looking Pennsylvania Dutch farmer
leaned over and opened his passenger door for me. I hopped up into the cab whose back window was
equipped with a more than adequate collection of hunting rifles and shotguns. I had been caught a bit off
guard, since it now occurred to me that my uniform was going to solicit a particular conversation that I
had not anticipated or rehearsed. He initiated the usual hitchhiking questions:
“Where are you headed?”
“Near Allentown,” I fidgeted.
“Marine, eh?”
“Yep.”
“I was in the army during Korea. Where you stationed?”
“Quantico.” I lied with as much sincerity and macho as I could muster. Quantico is where my
brother had been stationed. Inadvertently, I had decided that the best way to proceed with my charade
was to answer these questions as my brother would.
He proceeded to engage me in a deep conversation about the technical differences between various
standard issue military handguns, a subject that I knew absolutely nothing about. I managed rather
poorly to bluff my way through however, allowing him to furnish the critical details, which he was most
anxious to do.
Thank God for that, for had he discovered that I was making it all up, I suspect he might have pulled
one of his shotguns down from the rack and sprayed a few rounds upon my backside. What better
amusement than to uncover a treasonous pinko sheep in patriotic wolf’s garb?
After twenty-five miles of anxiety and paranoia, I thanked him with a pained look, gathered my
belongings and exited the vehicle eagerly onto the busy onramp at I-83.
I barely had time to get my wits together and stick out my thumb, when presto, ride number two
screeched over to the shoulder. My strategy was working great and this one was a Cadillac to boot!
After the electric door lock snapped open, I got in and adjusted to the luxury. I thought to myself
how nice it would be if this ride were to go all the way to Allentown. As we sped away, he paid attention
to the heavy traffic for a few minutes until we were out of the turmoil. He was balding with glasses and
seemed to be about 55 years old. I supposed that he was an accountant or corporate executive. His
leather brief case separated us on the front seat. I was refreshed at the likely prospect that this bookworm
wasn’t going to quiz me about handgun specifications. After I explained my basic direction and
destination, he said:
“Got a girlfriend?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact that’s where I’m headed.”
“What do they pay in the Marines? Are you making good money?” His questions were served
calmly like hors d’oeuvres.
“They pay peanuts until you’re out of boot camp!” I was beginning to develop some confidence and
boldness in my newfound acting role. The precious miles zipped away beneath us. There were long
deliberate pauses in our conversation.
“You going to take your girl out to dinner tonight?” I couldn’t quite figure out where this line of
questioning was going, but I answered honestly. It was better than delving deeper into the details of my
self- imposed masquerade.
“No. Can’t really afford it,” I countered casually. “How would you like to take her out to a really
nice place?”
“I guess that would be nice.” I wondered if he managed a local restaurant.
“How would you like to earn a little extra cash for
that dinner?” He looked over at me with a sheepish grin. I still hadn’t figured it out. I was naive, and I
envisioned myself mowing the lawn at his estate – perhaps clipping the hedges, or painting the house
trim off-white. I didn’t answer. I just looked a bit confused, since I had no idea exactly what type of job
he had in mind. He apparently picked up on my uncertainty, paused to consider how he would proceed,
then he continued:
“Do you like to fuck your girlfriend?”
Whoa! This was certainly getting outside the boundaries of accepted hitchhiker/driver conversation.
I began to get nervous. I sat there like a frog, ready to jump at the first sign of provocation.
“I’ll pay you fifty dollars, if you let me touch you,” he paused. I was terrified. His words were
stinging like a Bengay massage.
“You could buy her quite a dinner for fifty dollars.” He didn’t realize that the conversation wasn’t
really stimulating my appetite. In fact, I was close to losing my lunch on his dashboard.
“You don’t have to do anything. Just sit there. It will feel just like when your girlfriend touches you.
You’ve never done this before, have you?”
“No.” I answered without returning his glance. I was shaking.
“I can pull over and all you have to do is undo your pants.”
“No, I could never do that.” I was losing it completely.
“What about seventy five dollars?” He bid higher, hoping that somehow my greed would displace
my revulsion. I squirmed in my seat. “What about one hundred dollars?” This was getting serious.
“Please let me out.” I don’t know why I didn’t think of this earlier.
“Don’t you want me to at least drive you to the next exit?” I envisioned a pistol in his briefcase, and
the electric door locks were down.
“I don’t think so. Right here would be fine, please.”
He slowed the car, pulled onto the shoulder and slowly came to a stop. I was trembling. I couldn’t
look at him. I thanked him for the ride in a monotone. He hit the door lock release and I started to get
out. With the door open, he peered out at me with a sad but frustrated look on his face.
“You know, it’s not your problem. It’s my problem.” I nodded and off he drove. This was my first
face-to-face confrontation with homosexuality. I didn’t handle it very well. I was certainly glad that he
didn’t handle it either! I walked for about a mile. The whole experience was too much for me. Slowly I
regained my composure enough to extend my thumb meekly out onto the highway.
Pow! The first car was a red Toyota whizzing by at lightning speed. The driver pulled over about
two hundred yards ahead of me. I ran as fast as I could run. The red Toyota reciprocated by backing up
erratically towards me. I got in, huffing. This driver was Oriental. He wore a smile that looked like it
would hurt his face.
“Thanks for the ride!” I said, desperate for a normal conversation. “Where are you headed? I’m
going all the way to Allentown. Actually Bethlehem. How ‘bout you?” I waited.
He looked at me with the same grimace, nodding repeatedly. That’s the way it went for seventy-five
miles. He didn’t speak a word of English and I didn’t speak Chinese, but we made great time. It
somehow seemed ironic to me that at a time when I needed to have a sincere conversation, I had been
served such an innocent silence. After much hand-motioning as we approached the Bethlehem exit, he
let me off near the top of the ramp. I was about six miles from my parents’ house. I climbed down from
the overpass and began walking, relieved that my journey was nearly complete. I was tempted to find a
phone and call home for a ride, but in the interim I decided to try the golden thumb one more time and
sure enough, an immediate four for four!
This driver was a milkman in a white uniform with a white hat driving a white truck delivering
bottles of white milk. I was struck by the absolute purity of such whiteness. My camouflage green was
like a patch of Asian jungle in an ocean devoid of color. He felt compelled to tell me that his son had
been killed in Vietnam and that was the reason he had picked me up. He drove me the remaining six
miles out of his way to my doorstep. Along the way I converted quarts of his pure suffering into gallons
of my own contaminated guilt. I think I helped him in some perverted way. I think helping me relieved
some of his pain. Naturally there was no way that I could have revealed my disguise to him.
When I got home, I went right to my room. I began writing in the late afternoon and I didn’t stop
until three in the morning. The words just spilled out onto the paper. In exactly fifty-eight handwritten
single-spaced pages I had captured nearly the exact spoken text of the day in play form, line by line,
entitled A Candid Survey Of American Life As Seen Through The Fading Eyes Of A Hitch Hiker
Approaching Insanity (Part One).
I learned some valuable lessons that day. I learned that if you try to pretend that you are something
other than what you are, the rest of the world will gladly participate in the deception. I learned that what
you least expect is most likely what you will always find. I learned that what you need the most is what
is nearly always denied. I learned that the world is a very sensitive place and that if you take something
out of its rightful place, a chain of events is often set into motion that becomes difficult if not impossible
to unravel. Each of the four rides created situations that were initiated by my own deception, but reality
backfired on me instead. I was proud of the play. I took it back to Gettysburg, and spent many more
hours typing it for my creative writing class. I was working late at night on the nearly completed text in
one of the Student Union typing cubicles. The manuscript and the original handwritten script were inside
the case of the portable typewriter that I was using. I needed a break and went down the hallway for a
soda. When I came back the typewriter was gone. The play was gone too. I was devastated.
The next day, I posted notices on all of the bulletin boards around campus offering a one hundred
dollar reward for the return of the play. I didn’t care about the Smith-Corona typewriter. I ran a
weeklong ad in the newspaper to no avail. It was gone for good. Finished. Caput!
From the ashes of my loss emerged a fantasy in poem form called Fred Filiment’s Stolen Novel.
Fred was a slightly purified version of myself. Porter T. Packrat was the unknown thief of the
manuscript who took on attributes of the redneck farmer and the homosexual businessman, as does the
publisher Wally Watts. Mona represents Marty with whom I was deeply involved at that time. The
butchers at the supermarket were the art and literary critics, and so on – a fully extended metaphor
designed to replace the stolen play with a self-redeeming tale that was several levels removed from
reality. To complicate the situation, I eventually produced a limited edition booklet of the same title
supposedly written by myself, but published by the unscrupulous Porter T. Packrat, notorious for
plagiarized and stolen manuscripts. Hence the intensely long-winded introduction to Packrat Press’s
own Fred Filiment’s Stolen Novel:
Fred Filiment’s Stolen Novel
Friendly Fred Filiment fed crumbs to the birds;
A small and a humble man gifted with words.
His dream was to write the best book of his time.
He just needed good luck to put him in line.
For five years he worked in the grocery store
Packing the bags and mopping the floor.
His novel, his job and his lack of a wife
Were all that Fred Filiment had in his life.
The masterpiece novel that he began
Took him practically three years to plan,
One year to polish, one year to name.
His book was his only side street to fame.
In fact, Fred was feeling a little grotesque
The day he stepped up to the publishers desk
To find Mr. Wally Watts forcing a smile
And gawking at Fred’s most unusual style.
The book was a smash though the pages were sloppy
So Watts sent him back to type the last copy.
Whistling and drooling, Fred walked out the door
And bee-lined for work at the grocery store.
Fred parked his convertible under a tree
Leaving his script but taking his key.
Beaming, boasting, and strutting with pride,
He pounced on the magic door..... and was inside.
The clerks were astonished and certainly glad,
Though fearful of losing the best friend they had,
For Fred in his fame might quit packing food
And progress to a new game a little less crude.
When the head butcher asked to take a quick look
At the great work of art to be known as Fred’s book,
Fred zoomed to his car to retrieve his text
But he returned empty-handed; shocked and perplexed.
It Was Gone.....
Earlier that day on the other side of town
Came a messenger named Packrat of little renown
Bearing a briefcase with the stock market file.
His fortune was gathered in greed and guile.
Packrat drove a tank in World War Two.
The Purple Heart was the best he could do.
“Kill or be killed” was the motto he learned.
“Ignite your best friends before you get burned.”
Porter T. Packrat got into his car
And drove to the drugstore to buy a cigar.
Fred Filiment’s convertible was under the tree.
Packrat was bargaining for anything free.....
Especially the package that sat on the seat.
A fresh written novel’s an unusual treat
And who knows the value of items like these,
So Packrat took the package..... and never said please.
It Was Gone.....
A thief or a prankster or a Packrat had come
And in curious greed..... he did what was done.
Two shifty eyes and an odious smirk
Had absconded with five years of Fred’s precious work.
The tragic affair would not have been bad
If it weren’t the only copy Fred Filiment had.
Attempts to remember just increased his rage.
He knew it would take years to remember a page.
With large overdoses of manic depression
Fred lost all need for creative expression.
Burnt out light bulbs don’t shine in the night
‘Cause you can’t fix the filiment.....
without breaking the light.
Porter T. Packrat; pull out your knife
And steal the success you get out of life
From a faceless Fred Filiment discouraged and poor
Consuming his time at the grocery store.
The Cage
I had been reading Franz Kafka in German class and was particularly taken by his story “Ein
Hungerkünstler” (A Hunger Artist). This is the story of a circus performer who earns his living by
starving himself inside a cage. This starvation constitutes his performance, and the public gives him
more money for each day he can extend his vigil.
In my environmental sculpture class, I envisioned a tribute of sorts to Franz Kafka and without the
knowledge of my professor, I proceeded with my plan to occupy a cage somewhere on campus. The
only problem was that I required the raw materials necessary to construct the cage in a fashion that
would be visually convincing. I had already acquired enough two by fours to construct a large frame.
What I really needed were the bars and ¾” electrical conduit seemed to suit the bill. These strong tubes
were perfect for domes as well, but I just didn’t have any money at the time.
So one night my friend Tucker and I went out on the caper. Tuck had a van capable of concealing
most forms of contraband. I had cased the scenario the night before and was well equipped with the
correct-sized wrenches and screwdrivers to accomplish the job. We pulled up to the electrical supply
house on the outskirts of town. Tuck parked the van and went through the motions of getting the jack out
to change the rear tire. This enabled him to remain by the side of the road for an extended period of time
without evoking suspicion. We worked out a system of hand signals. I ran through the tall grass to the
back of the building that was offset from the road by nearly 100 yards. There was a long erector set rack
system that housed various diameters of conduit – all in ten-foot lengths – stored vertically in packs of
ten. That translated to one hundred linear feet per pack. The packs were padlocked in position with a
waist-high lateral steel bar. I spent fifteen minutes with my assorted wrenches and screwdrivers
disassembling one end of the rack and removing several bundles. Each pack made a manageable haul
back through the tall grass toward the van. If lights from a car appeared, I would lay down in the grass
until the car passed, and then proceed. Tuck and I continued this process for nearly half an hour until
enough packs were accumulated in the van. There were more than enough tubes for my cage.
The next day I drilled evenly spaced ¾” holes in the wooden frame of the cage, so that the frame
could be transported in a pre-fabricated state. That way, setup could be accomplished in a matter of
minutes by simply sliding the bars into place. I painted the frame black and made a small placard to go
with it. The sign simply said: “Freedom – A Three Day Living Sculpture.” I spent a lot of time thinking
about dramatic methods I could use to accentuate the effect of my living sculpture. I planned to set the
cage up in the middle of the night so that I wouldn’t run into any bureaucratic hassles. Homecoming
weekend was coming up. That’s when all the preppy fraternity jocks would import their prissy high
school girlfriends. Coincidentally, it was also Parent’s Weekend and May Day weekend too. A huge
peace rally was planned in Washington, DC. Kafka was laughing in his grave.
Tuck helped me assemble the cage. We picked the most traveled spot on campus, which was directly
in front of the college dining hall across from the Student Union building. One of the campus security
guards came by and asked us what we were doing. I told him we were setting up an exhibit for Parent’s
Weekend. He wrinkled his chin and nodded as if in deep thought.
“Seems reasonable enough.” He shrugged.
I waited for my first victim. At 6:45 AM, I saw her walking toward the cage about two blocks down.
She was a classic example – a stack of books under each arm – her body straining to compensate. This
was a crack of dawn, fear of God, nose to the grindstone, straight-A student. In my three years at
college, I had never seen anything like her before. I suppose we kept different hours and traveled in
slightly different circles. As she came closer, I noticed that her rather thick-lensed glasses had drifted
down toward the end of her nose. Since neither of her hands was free, she was squinting and jerking her
head back to try to flip them up into place. She hadn’t noticed me yet. I snorted and swung my arms
from side to side, waiting for her reaction.
She was absolutely horrified and made a beeline for the dining hall entrance. She dropped a few
books in her haste. I growled and snorted some more. It was quite effective.
While she was inside, I assessed my performance and began to feel a sense of remorse about having
put this poor introverted bookworm into such a state of shock. I decided to apologize to her when she
came out, but she never did. She must have asked the cooks to let her out the side door. That clinched it.
I made up my mind to speak and behave like a human being. I put my jeans on and greeted passersby
cheerfully throughout the course of the day, as if the cage were a perfectly usual part of campus life.
The cage was a hit, except for a few isolated incidents. The Assistant Dean came by to find out
whether I had permission to do whatever it was that I was doing. I told him that it was part of my
sculpture course, which was clearly an embellishment of the truth. When he tried to verify my story later
on in the afternoon, my infuriated sculpture professor and primary collegiate inspiration came to the
cage “somewhat agitated.” Though he insisted that I (have someone) return his electric drill to the art
studio in fifteen minutes or else, he didn’t rescind my permission to occupy the cage. And so I was
allowed to remain. I think there was a renegade inside him that appreciated the conceptual aspect of
what I was doing.
My first full evening in the cage was fairly uneventful. Two drunken football players threatened me
and a car full of rowdy frat boys pummeled the cage with empty beer cans while their girlfriends giggled
with embarrassment.
On Friday, one of the local television stations came by to film a short human-interest segment for the
tail end of the news. The newspapers came too and did a great interview that is one of the only
remaining tangible souvenirs of that era. The headline exclaimed boldly: “Student Puts Self Behind
Bars.”
Oddly, these three days were among the most liberating days of my life.
There was plenty of conjecture about how I relieved myself during these three days. Like any redblooded American boy, I used an empty Skippy peanut butter jar, but this only took care of half the
problem. I must confess that I did leave the cage at three in the morning on the second evening for a tenminute excursion to the adjacent dorm to answer nature’s call.
The Cage didn’t survive the final night. The fraternity boys just couldn’t take it anymore. They
worked themselves into quite a frenzy, egged on with several gallons of beer. With their confidence
bolstered, they paid my little campus domicile a visit and lifted it several feet off the ground. With a
remarkable display of aggression, patriotism and testosterone, they tossed my sculptural statement
several furlongs, rendering it a heap of mangled lumber and conduit. Though my pride was bruised, I
amazingly remained unscathed.
After the cage, my life took on an inertia all its own. I had decided to leave college and my creative
energy was peaking. In the parking lot of the Icehouse apartments, I salvaged and straightened the
mangled conduit, cutting the poles to exact geodesic lengths. Using a hammer and anvil from the
maintenance shop, I flattened the ends of the struts and drilled alignment holes. We trucked the pieces
out to “The Final Frontier,” a farm/commune inhabited by Tullio and Linda DeSantis west of Gettysburg
between Biglerville and Orrtanna.
The Final Frontier
Tullio and Linda’s farm was actually not their farm at all. They were renting it for a fraction of its
value from a lawyer in town. It was a classic red brick Pennsylvania farmhouse on a small dirt road just
off Route 30. Directly across the road was a huge red bank barn in perfect condition and 50 acres of land
leased to neighboring farmers for corn and wheat.
The farm was a reasonable example of utopia. Linda really held up her end of the bargain. She had
created a hippie’s dream with hundreds of Mason jars filled with organically grown foods: lentils,
chamomile, slippery elm bark, tupelo honey, rose hips, alfalfa sprouts, barley, goldenseal, royal jelly... it
just went on and on, and the amazing thing was that Linda knew exactly what to do with all of it. Her
meals were exquisite feasts of homegrown splendor, bursting with nature and nutrition.
One day after I had helped Linda weed her garden, she prepared Okmok pizzas. These were crisp
whole wheat crackers topped with tahini, avocado, tomato, fresh mung sprouts, and slivered carrots. The
inspired concoction was then blanketed with shredded Havarti and heated under the broiler until the
cheese melted to a golden brown.
Tullio had a beautiful white husky named Sunny. Living on a farm, it was common to see a tick here
and there and one day while petting Sunny, Tullio discovered a sizeable one burrowed in near his collar.
That night, several of us burned the late lights in a long discussion about karma and reincarnation.
After much philosophical consternation, Tullio decided that since the tick had entered into a
symbiotic relationship with his dog, he would allow the innocent creature to remain in residence, at least
for a time.
Day by day, the tick expanded in size until after about eight days its skin was so tightly stretched that
it became transparent. Tullio took a sharp pocket knife and very carefully cut the tick’s body free from a
relatively oblivious Sunny and set it in the grass next to a fence post where it wouldn’t be stepped on or
bothered. I think it’s possible that on a very small scale, tick nirvana may have been attained that day.
A few days later, Linda was going through the mail and opened an overdue bill from the electric
company. They were threatening to turn the power off, which concerned us given that we had little in
the way of capital. Enlisting the assistance of my capable and devious friend Damon, we skulked around
to the electric meter at the side of the house. The meter was secured with a thin braided wire that bore
the electric company’s specially embossed lead seal. This seemed simple enough. We took a very fine
Exacto razor saw from my art supply box and sliced the lead seal right down the center. Loosening four
screws, the waterproof glass globe came off easily. Two small set screws disengaged the speedometerlike mechanism. Here was the crux of the problem. We tinkered with the gears behind the dial and came
to the quick realization that by spinning the mechanism, we could make the numbers go backwards. We
manipulated that meter for a good half hour until it seemed that we might have a few months of free
kilowatts. We put everything back together in sequence, carefully super-gluing the two halves of the
lead seal and burnishing the edges to hide any obvious evidence of tampering, seams or glue.
The next morning Linda called the power company to offer her innocent complaint. With slight
agitation she explained that there had perhaps been a slight error with last month’s meter reading. The
power company quickly dispatched a representative who wasted no time in clipping and discarding our
bogus seal. With great curiosity, we observed him through the living room window. After verifying that
the meter was spinning, he garnered his official tool and replaced our seal with a brand new embossing.
Then he came lumbering over to the screen door to talk to Linda.
“Pears yer right about yer meter readin’, ma’am. Guess you’ll have sum credit comin’. Maybe even
a refund.” Off he went scratching his head. Linda ripped up the bill and the lights burned brightly for the
rest of the summer!
The library on the farm included every underground and counter culture publication imaginable,
from Allen Ginsberg to Euell Gibbons. Linda had a part time job at the college library and she had
tremendous access to and knowledge of books.
One day she brought home a gigantic book that was the last volume from an 1851 European
encyclopedia. The library had discarded the set in order to clear space and apparently, they didn’t know
what they had. Linda did. The book was nearly four inches thick. It contained thousands of meticulous
and extraordinary lithographs and engravings, each cross-referenced to endless topics in the purely text
volumes. Illustrative reference books of this variety were necessary, given that the photograph was still
in its infancy. The book was an extremely rare treasure; in fact a reduced-size reprint that appeared years
later remains rare and valuable. I spent weeks with this book and was thoroughly inspired by the
inconceivable scope of such an effort, let alone the technical flawlessness of the engravings.
I also spent several weeks scouring the Whole Earth Catalog, especially the sections on architecture
and do-it-yourself structures. I was devoted to Buckminster Fuller and sent him a $15 royalty for my
most recent geodesic structure. I was also enamored with the visionary architecture of Paoli Soleri
whose ambitious City of the Future project was beginning to take shape in Cosanti, Arizona.
My friend Judley was a fairly constant companion at the farm. He was extremely gifted in a playful,
almost childlike way. It seemed to me that his ability to draw came to him naturally. He had a special
talent for making his characters seem animated in an almost Disney-like fashion. I envied this. We often
traded spontaneous drawings back and forth to see how they would evolve. I would add structure and
Judley would add liveliness. He was very fluid and expressive and I often compared his drawings and
assemblages to Marcel Duchamp and the artists of the Dada movement.
To add to Judley’s mystique, his fervent college friends had had a rubber stamp made that said “It’s
Judley” in large block letters. This enigmatic message was stamped in every men’s room and bulletin
board in a two-hundred mile radius around Gettysburg, which made Judley quite a legend, though no
one really knew who or what Judley was.
There were many other amazing characters that passed through the farm, but Marty and I didn’t want
to be a further burden on the already crazy scene that was developing at Tullio’s. It had been our
intention to find a secluded spot to build my geodesic dome. I finally acquired a huge canvas backdrop
from an old college theater performance, marked out the geometry, cut the triangles, punched evenly
spaced holes along the perimeter and laced a large semi-waterproof cover together.
We were ready.
Crown Of Creation
It was a gorgeous Saturday morning in early July. Sunlight streamed through the air, thick with
moisture from the previous day’s rain. We woke early and organized the hundreds of pieces of the
geodesic dome on the front lawn near the psychedelic mailbox. We tied the conduit struts in manageable
bundles, slumped the heavy canvas cover into a wheelbarrow, and set off along the fencerow that
separated the woods from the cornfield. After a half mile, the cornfield came to an abrupt end and we
crossed some tangles of barbed wire at the property line by the thick woods. Half-decomposed leaves
lined the forest floor. Mandrake was corkscrewing its way upward through the leaves and Jack-in-the
pulpits prayed with monkish mushrooms along swirling knurled roots. We broke through the underbrush
into a dark gray thicket where black buboes choked the diseased branches overhead. Below, thorns
scraped against our calves.
Then a brightness emerged in the center of the forest. A small circular clearing with tall green
grasses... this might be perfect for the dome. We laid down our heavy wares: Tullio, Linda, Judley,
Marty, Lee, Gary and John. They rested in the grass while I tape-measured the diameter of the clearing.
Forty feet was needed to accommodate the hemispheric base, but there was a medium-sized tree slightly
off center in the clearing. It limited the available space.
Not here. I sat down next to Marty and drank cold water from her thermos.
Now my eyes drifted back to the center of the clearing. It was an apple tree, roundly shaped but squat.
The branches were knurled but healthy. Late blossoms had begun to yield small red apples. The tree was
breathtaking.
Upon closer examination, I saw that wild roses had woven their way up the trunk into the strong
lower branches. The vines had wrapped themselves tightly around the bent branches of the tree, causing
deep ruts in the bark. Early roses bloomed along the glistening iridescent thorns. It was obvious that the
two plants had grown side by side from the onset, symbiotically.
Standing back and looking at the expression of the tree, it seemed that the branches were struggling
to reach upward within the cylindrical shaft-way of light created by the surrounding forest. But that
reaching upward had been contained, pulled back, counteracted by the sheer power of the rose vine. A
compromise had been struck somewhere in between. On many of the primary branches, young apples
and remnants of their blossoms shared equal space with the deep blood-red rose petals and sharpened
thorns. During its life, the tree had been changed. It was proudly sighing, aware of its beauty but pained
and tired of resisting.
I was awestruck with this image. I stared into the heart of the tree and let it imprint itself onto my
retinas. There was deep meaning here. Paradox, harmony, sacrifice, parable, marriage. The human
condition. I memorized it. Perhaps it would make more sense later.
We picked up the struts and journeyed further, still looking for a level clearing to erect the dome.
The word dome was ringing in my ears. Dh from Dharma: Dhome. DhOME. dHOME. dhOMe. We
came to a small gurgling stream. Linda had been reading Euell Gibbon’s “Stalking The Wild
Asparagus.” She severed some young watercress along the bank and we sampled its intense peppery
flavor. She dug up some tiny white flowers in a bed of moss and washed their roots clean. Small tubers
shared the root structure. They tasted like a cross between potatoes and peanuts. Then wild scallions,
wild baby carrots, unidentifiable wild lettuce. She gathered these into her backpack carefully for dinner
and we trekked suspiciously forward, knowing that the further we traveled, the further we would have to
retrace our steps.
Then we entered a second clearing, this one large enough for several domes. No soft grass here
though, no shaft of sunlight, no parable, but peaceful and quiet. We laid down the struts, tore out the
undergrowth and moved rocks away from a logical center. The process began.
First a pentagon, then the second level of five hexagons expanding and growing outward and
upward. Tullio’s portable tape player strained with weak batteries squawking Jefferson Airplane’s
“Weeeeeee... Are The Crown Of Creation.” The crown grew, a delicate eggshell... the third level,
heavier, more awkward. The center pole affixed, John and Gary lifted. Bolts with washers and nuts
locked the vertices in place, higher, higher, the fourth level. Lifting the center pole higher, pushing, the
fifth and last level. A three frequency 5/8 icosahedron, twenty- five feet high, forty feet wide, incredible.
Lee threw a rope over a high branch. Tullio tied it to the center of the sewn canvas cover, we all
hoisted. Draped upon the dome’s peak, it unfolded downward to the ground. We secured it to the bottom
triangles with twine and drove the anchors deeply in place. Done.
Marty and I lived happily in the dome for several weeks. People frequently visited us from the farm,
which was good thing. We felt a bit isolated and lonely out in the woods. We attempted to survive on the
few items that the immediate land provided, but we supplemented this with delicacies from Linda’s
garden and an occasional dinner back at Tullio’s. One evening when we returned to the dome, there was
police tape wrapped around the perimeter with a handwritten note scrawled on the side of a paper bag:
“You will have to vacate these premises or get permission from owners to stay.” It was signed
“Pennsylvania State Police.”
The next day, with a sense of defeat, we folded up the cover, disassembled the struts and lugged the
dome back to Tullio’s. I remember thinking that it had been like blowing up a balloon, holding it for a
few seconds, then letting it go.
The scene at the farm got progressively worse. Tullio wouldn’t come out and say it directly, but he was
unhappy having so many people latched onto his utopian dream. He wanted everyone to clear out, but
instead of saying it verbally, he emanated an intensely negative vibe. This was quite effective.
We started looking for other options and for ways to contribute financially to the communal aspect
of the farm, which happened to be right smack in the middle of orchard country. Tullio’s friend Carl was
trying to make a go at farming. He had put his life savings into about twenty acres of orchard, primarily
peaches. In early July, he became desperate for help, and being equally desperate for money, I was a
logical candidate. Off I went with a few other naive recruits, into the sweltering heat in the back of
Carl's pickup to prune peaches. It didn't sound so bad – two dollars an hour and a boss with longer hair
than mine.
Carl gave us a starter course in pruning. The peaches were about the size of golf balls, and they were
growing in clusters of three or four. Without pruning, none of them would reach maturity. By removing
all but one fruit from each cluster, the one remaining peach would get the nourishment it needed to grow
to full size. The trick was to get up into the heart of the tree on a stepladder and start tearing away. What
Carl had neglected to tell us was that these little golf balls were covered with a thick condensed layer of
ultra-fine peach fuzz. Of course, the fuzz comes off on your hands when you touch it. That in itself
would be tolerable, except that this pre- mature fuzz has the identical consistency of fiberglass
insulation. Combine this wonder of nature with 100 degree heat, and what do you have?
My body was dripping with sweat, so much so that I absolutely had to take my shirt off. The air was
thick with fuzz. My whole body became coated. I began to itch. It was far worse than being thrashed
with porcupine quills. It was worse than bee stings or cactus. It became unbearable. I tried to wash it off.
It wouldn't come off. I suffered through the rest of the day. I went home and took a cold shower. It didn't
help. I did my laundry. I found out that the fuzz gets imbedded permanently in clothing. I went to work
the next day still itching. I began to realize why Carl got such a great deal on the farm. I began to realize
why peaches cost so much!
In the middle of the second week, I realized that I would rather pay Carl two bucks an hour to not
pick peaches. So I packed it in. At the time, I thought that this was possibly the worst job anyone could
ever have, but of course, I would soon learn differently.
It was a good time to leave. We hadn’t planned to stay past the summer and we’d certainly outlived
our welcome. I went home to Bethlehem and Marty went home to central Jersey. The other parasites at
the farm scattered like so many cockroaches, leaving Tullio and Linda in relative but temporary peace.
Within only a few weeks, Marty’s friend Sandy had found a small apartment in Brattleboro,
Vermont and she had written Marty with an open invitation for us to come up and share the rent. I had
traveled north with my parents to spend a few weeks vacationing at Iron City in Canada. I was fortunate
to sell a number of drawings there.
My brother John, who was barely sixteen, had brought an ounce of pot with him and hidden it up on
a storage shelf in the rafters of the cabin. My father was poking around one day looking for an old crib
and he found the baggie. Of course he assumed it was mine. I couldn’t deny it without implicating my
little brother, so I accepted my fate and took the rap. I was docked for the remainder of my stay and was
almost turned over to the Mounties. John’s pot was flushed down the toilet. It was a bad summer and I
missed Marty terribly.
After a few days of impossible rationalization with my parents, I filled a backpack and duffel bag
with my absolute necessities: clothing, drawing supplies and my autoharp, and I left.
I hitchhiked to Buffalo, spent all of my art earnings on a flight to Hartford where a lucky string of
rides deposited me at the exit ramp in lovely downtown Brattleboro. As I lugged my heavy bags up the
hill, I remember feeling that the future was as blank as the white sheets of illustration board in my
backpack.
Art On A String
Marty and I were ecstatic to be together again, but Sandy’s boarding house was much too small for
any extended stay. By some stroke of karma, I had learned of an art teacher named Bob Watrous who
owned a cider mill about ten miles south of Brattleboro. We met with him at The Common Ground
health food restaurant one afternoon and we seemed to hit it off. Bob invited us to dinner a week later
and showed us the cider mill that he had renovated. He proposed that we stay and help him complete the
work on the lower level in exchange for nominal rent. It was a perfect situation.
So we moved into The Watrous Farmette on Route 5 in the nearly non-existent town of Bernardston,
Massachusetts. We bought a queen- sized mattress, plopped it on the bed of the old cider press and
quickly studded out a wall with heavy insulation in preparation for the brutal winter that was fast
approaching. We both needed jobs and there was a Howard Johnson’s just north of Brattleboro on I-91
that was hiring in anticipation of a great skiing season. I took the night chef position for which I was
marginally qualified. Marty and Sandy were hired as waitresses. We arranged to work nights so that we
could carpool with Sandy, who had lost her room in Brattleboro and was staying with us while she
looked for another place. Eventually, Marty and I found an old Dodge van that had some life left in it
and Sandy moved in with her close friends Chuck and Martha, a couple that lived in town. Sandy kept
her waitressing job at Howard Johnson’s though, so we saw her often.
Our boss was Mr. Marsh, a grimy little weasel with black-rimmed Poindexter glasses that matched
his greasy hair. I had adjusted fairly well to my shift
in spite of his constant torment. I would come in at four in the afternoon, just before the dinner rush. I
would struggle through the dinner deluge until the orders would begin to subside after eight o’clock. A
brief surge of young lovers would come in around ten just after the movies let out. It was an easy slide
from then until closing time at midnight. By eleven each night I would be nibbling away at cold shrimp
with cocktail sauce, breaking down the steam tables at a snail’s pace, and grilling an occasional
cheeseburger for a highway traveler.
To stay creative during the occasional absence of customers, I would go to extraordinary lengths
cutting three- dimensional overlays of American cheese that were designed to adorn the tops of
cheeseburgers for special late night impresarios. I had become proficient at a number of stock and
customized designs tailored to suit a variety of sociological phenomenon. For the African-American
brothers that came jiving in at 11:15, I served up "Malcolm X" burgers. These boasted a militant cheese
fist inside a ring of letters proclaiming “Power to the People.” For the stoners, I offered “Be Cool” and
“Don’t Get Uptight” burgers with seven-leafed cannabis centers that just blew them away. For the
feminists, there were “NOW” burgers, and for the Krishnas I served up meditative mandala burgers.
One night, Art Garfunkel came in with a knockout blonde on his arm. I spotted him from the
kitchen. I couldn’t believe it when the waitress brought me his order for a cheeseburger.
I immediately set to work with my sharpest paring knife. I cut the words “Art for Art's Sake” in Old
English script out of yellow cheese and appliquéd the letters in a circle around a scroll cut orange cheese
profile of Art himself, hairdo and all! I set my masterpiece down on top of an optimum medium-rare
burger and let the layers melt just a touch so that all of the edges were perfectly rounded, then I sent it
out.
They both got quite a kick out of this – so much so that when Mr. Marsh rang up their bill, they
mentioned it to him jokingly. After they departed, Mr. Marsh promptly put a quick end to my cheeseburger art.
Occasionally, someone would come in and order late night pancakes. There was great opportunity
for creativity in this. One night I got completely out of hand with a hippie couple’s order. I laid out
about forty cakes on the griddle from whoppers the size of record albums all the way down to dribbles
less than the diameter of a dime, with every incremental size in between.
These golden brown disks could be stacked concentrically in ever-decreasing sizes and reinforced
internally with toothpicks to form an impressive conically stepped pancake pyramid. Mr. Marsh was not
amused with this masterpiece either. As punishment, I was temporarily forced into the back recesses of
the kitchen where I secretly devoured several more pounds of shrimp cocktail.
A few weeks later on a Friday night, I arrived to work in the midst of blizzard – not an uncommon
occurrence in Vermont – but by nine o'clock it was getting pretty serious outside. The plows were out in
full force, but the snowdrifts were closing up behind them like a zipper. It was hopeless, and made
worse by the fact that endless swarms of northbound cars were headed up the Interstate for a weekend of
skiing. HoJo's was nearly empty though, except for a few bleary-eyed drivers in need of a break. It was
one hour before closing and nearly everything was put away. I was sponging the counters and planning a
strategy for more shrimp consumption.
That's when the state trooper came in to tell us that Interstate 91 was being closed. A tractor-trailer
had jack- knifed about a mile north of our exit and there wasn't much chance of clearing the highway
during the blizzard. So one by one the cars were flagged off at our exit, and they came down the ramp
single file into our parking lot. There was simply no other option.
Magnetically drawn by our friendly orange and blue sign, they entered in twos and fours with their
ski beanies and boots. It was a mob scene. Mr. Marsh was in seventh heaven. He was standing by the
front door, handing out dinner menus with a glazed grin on his face, and when the dinner menus were all
gone, he handed out breakfast menus and lunch menus until the banquet room was filled. People were
sitting on the floor and in the aisles.
There were two waitresses, one hostess, one busboy, Mr. Marsh, and yours truly – the night chef –
the only cook on duty. The procedure was supposed to work like this. There was a wire just above head
level with sliding plastic clothespins so that one could organize all of the orders in plain sight. After the
wire was full, I used the counter, then the grill. There were orders on the floor. There were even deepfried orders sizzling away with the onion rings. There were orders for scrambled eggs and hot dogs,
sirloin steaks and Welsh rarebit, fried clam strips and baby calves liver, California burgers and spaghetti.
It was a nightmare. At midnight, Mr. Marsh informed us that we would staying open past closing time.
The dollar signs lit up in his eyes. At one o'clock, the restaurant looked like Woodstock. At two, Mr.
Marsh decided to help me cook French toast. I was losing it. The customers were screaming at the
waitresses who were screaming at Mr. Marsh who was lecturing me about the percentage of milk that
one should add to the clam dip batter. I started to go over the edge. Mr. Marsh saw me standing half
comatose near the Hobart meat slicer. He screamed a scream that shattered my fragile state of mind,
pushing me over the precipice.
“Get to work, you idiot. We've got orders to get out!” He went scurrying back toward the freezer like
a shellfish to get another case of New England clam chowder. This was my chance. There was no one
looking; just the muffled roar of 350 disgruntled sales clerks, accountants and their cheesy wives from
Long Island and Hartford, whose winter weekends were being wrecked by this weird collision of nature
and destiny.
Quietly, I untied my stained white apron and set it on the metal counter next to the steam table. Then
I resigned, effective immediately, without any notice whatsoever, without a word! I was out the back
door. No one saw me leave.
I escaped through snowdrifts in the parking lot to my half-buried Dodge van. I entered through the
side door, opened up the sleeping bag that I always reserved for emergencies, and huddled into a fetal
position in the very back of the van between the spare tire and the jumper cables. They came looking for
me about fifteen minutes later. Mr. Marsh led the expedition of waitresses and busboys like Admiral
Byrd out to the van.
"Do you think he's in there?" I heard Mr. Marsh's fingernails claw briefly at the ice on the front
windshield.
"I don't see him,” said Tom, the gay busboy, and off they went to search for me behind the garbage
shed.
This was my first nervous breakdown. At least I think that’s what it was. I was never formally
diagnosed. I did lie there whimpering in a frozen puddle of self-pity and over- stimulation for what
seemed like hours, until the plows cleared the path back up to the freshly reopened Interstate.
Mr. Marsh mailed my paycheck.
A month later the place burned down. You must believe me when I say that this was not my doing,
but I certainly carried the guilt for it, wondering whether some bizarre supernatural uncontrollable fury
of mine had flown secretly and mysteriously through time and space to ignite the French fry pit. I must
say they did a marvelous job rebuilding the place, though since then I have only ever viewed it in a blur
from the Interstate.
Ironically, within a week I interviewed for and was offered a position as night security guard with
the Hannon Detective Agency, protecting the incredibly controversial anti-ecological Connecticut River
Hydroelectric Power Project from pinko SDS hippie saboteurs like myself. I accepted the job and was
issued my hat, black shirt and badge #233. Armed with my Rapidograph pens, I was scheduled to arrive
at my post just before midnight. For eight hours, I would sit in my tiny glass-windowed booth, space
heater on ten, drawing yantras and surreal pictures in the eerie silence while listening to third-rate
redneck trucker songs through the static of a radio with no knobs.
The trucks paid me no mind. They were supposed to pull up to my stand, identify themselves and
allow me to record their license plate numbers onto the designated space on my clipboard. Instead they
cruised through with impunity and confidence at 60-plus miles an hour. I’d run out waving my arms,
trying to at least catch the color or state of their license plate. It’s a good thing I kept the gate open or
there would have been some costly fence repairs. I suppose it’s a good thing that there were no pinko
SDS hippie saboteurs that knew I was guarding the place, because I certainly was too busy drawing
pictures to stop anyone! This was a wonderful job, but it only paid $2.10 an hour. After about eight
weeks, I turned in my badge and uniform to take a job at the laundry division of the Brattleboro Retreat
Mental Hospital & Old Folks Home. At $2.85 an hour, this I believed, was to be a major move in my
ever-advancing career.
I soon realized how wrong I was to have left the detective agency. When I reported for work that
Monday morning, a tiny little gray- haired lady led me to the intake area of the laundry building. There I
met Raoul. He was excited to show me the ropes. Raoul fitted me with the necessary attire for my new
position that required rubber hip boots, elbow-length rubber gloves, a vinyl apron, a white paper hat, and
a pair of flesh- colored swimmer’s nose plugs. Raoul led me to a tiled room near the loading platform.
My job involved unloading the canvas carts brought by maintenance trucks from the various hospital
buildings. I would wheel the carts into the tiled room, then shake the contents of the cart (primarily bed
sheets) toward an immense floor-to-ceiling waterfall with a trough at the bottom that resembled a urinal.
The purpose of this procedure was to remove any debris that may have been deposited onto the bed
sheets by the patients. The sad reality was that sheets didn't get changed unless there was cause to
warrant the effort, and there was nothing in the nurses’ contract that required them to do anything but
wrap the whole mess into a neat little bundle and pack it off to the laundry.
And so, I replaced Raoul as primary “shit shaker” (the unofficial job title), and he was promoted to
pre-wash loader. Fortunately, the turnover was reasonably fast. Within a month they brought in another
poor sucker, and with a great sense of satisfaction, I turned over my equipment, nose plugs and all, and
gave him an in-depth training session which left him in such a state of depression that I’m sure he
considered checking himself into the very same institution.
I moved on to the pre-washer, then to the main washers, then to the dryers, then to the sheet folding
machines where I offloaded the clean white finished product into canvas carts that were trucked back to
the hospital linen closets where they awaited some new bout of incontinence. It was there at the folding
machines that I daydreamed about traveling to California, and religiously I saved my meager paychecks
to fund the impending journey.
During this time I was relatively uninspired. It was a very cold winter and I think everyone up there
was getting a bit depressed, especially during the shortest and darkest days of the year. Cold weather
requires a great deal of effort: dressing in layers, chopping wood, keeping the stove going, shoveling
snow, struggling with transportation and vehicles.
Marty’s work schedule was often out of sync with mine, but we made the best of it with one vehicle.
One night I finished work at 10:00 PM and being the seasoned hitchhiker that I was, and in spite of the
extreme cold, I decided to test my luck. I flagged a quick but short ride to the junction of Route 5 and I91. There, I stood freezing for twenty-five minutes without the prospect of a single car.
At last a dilapidated Ford station wagon slipped to a stop and waited for me to scuttle to the
passenger door.
“Goin’ down toward Greenfield?” he croaked.
Actually, I was headed down Route 5 but at that late hour, it looked pretty futile. Since the Cider
Mill was only a quarter mile from the Interstate, I figured I’d take advantage of his kindness. I hopped
in.
“Freezin’ out there.”
“Yep.”
While he drove south on I-91, I considered my dilemma. If I were to get off
at the Bernardston exit, I’d have to cross the bridge over the creek that separated the Interstate from
Route 5, into the little town, turn right and walk three and a half miles north on Route 5 to the Cider
Mill.
We came over the crest of the hill and across the valley I saw the lights from the Watrous Farmette. I
pointed to the farmhouse.
“That’s where I live – right over there.” He pulled over to the side of the road.
“Isn’t there a creek down there?” he asked with a squint.
“Yep, but it’s a tiny one. There’s a spot where you can walk right across.”
“You sure?”
“I’ll be OK. Thanks for the lift.”
So out I went, into the brutal air. I picked a point toward the fence line and started through the snow.
It was a foot deep and frozen on the top just enough to make it crunchy and sharp against my ankles. In
spots it had drifted up above my knees. In a few moments I was at a gap in the snow fence, then
downhill to a thicket that concealed the creek like a frozen wound.
The wind was heavy and gusting. It was easily 15 degrees below with the chill factor. As I came
through the barren trees and brittle shrubs, the creek became more fierce and loud.
This was not the gentle creek that I remembered from the early autumn when Marty and I had
carefully stacked river rocks across a span of perhaps eight or ten feet. This was a river, 25 feet wide at
the narrowest part, with fast rapids thick with slabs of flowing ice. There was no sign of our makeshift
dam. How could there be?
I stood at the edge and looked down into the steel water. Three hundred yards away was the warm
stove fully stoked. Bob would be there with the cats, smoking his pipe. Marty would be embroidering. I
took a deep breath and stepped down, searching for stable footing in the rapids. Small steps. Small steps.
I almost slipped. The water was deeper. My heart was pounding.
Freezing. Pushing. Deeper. Up to my waist, my chest. I pushed toward the other side. Wading left.
Then right. A branch. Grabbing. Pulling. Up. Land. Liquid breath. Freezing. Shaking. I hobbled toward
the cornfield.
After twenty feet I could feel the water start to freeze. My pants and coat were starting to stiffen.
Halfway across the field, the wind had scraped the snow away, leaving the jagged broken cornstalks.
They cracked underneath me like rotting floorboards. My ears were blue and frostbitten. I held them
with my wet
gloves and huddled half-bent toward the shoveled walkway leading to the house – then the door. I
pounded.
Bob appeared in disbelief. He pulled me in. I was home. He and Marty wrapped me in blankets and
cut my jeans off with scissors by the stove. I had no
explanation, only a story.
In the weeks that followed, my soul thawed out. When I was not working at the laundry, I immersed
myself in word rings. These mandalas included a literary element wherein a circular poem (or perhaps a
run-on sentence) was composed to convey the particular theme or progression upon which I was
currently fixated.
Marty and I drove into Brattleboro one afternoon with Bob Watrous and another couple that
frequented the Cider Mill. We all went into an underground bookstore where we spent a half hour
looking at their great selection. I found a book by the artist M. C. Escher. I was already very familiar
with Escher’s work, but this book was terrific and I wanted it badly. I didn’t have enough money and
when no one was looking, I slipped it under my shirt. Eventually we left. In the car on the way home, I
unveiled it to the astonishment of Bob and the others. They were quite upset with me since they were
acquainted with the bookstore owners. Bob turned the car around and drove back to town. He let me out
in front of the store. I went in and apologized to the owners, who were hippies. I returned the book and
told her that I would return to buy it someday.
Until that incident, I had been suffering from adolescence to the extent that I genuinely felt the world
owed me something. The idealism that I had relished had been displaced. When my shoplifting was
confronted with such disapproval from people I respected, I quickly retreated into remorse and
introspection. I had been raised with reasonable morals and values, but somewhere along the line, I had
discarded them like some arrogant litterbug. So right then and there, I began to address the need to
resuscitate my conscience, a long and arduous task given my natural propensity for deviousness.
Bob Watrous didn’t ostracize me for very long. We did admire each other on several levels. Being
an art teacher, he was aware of a somewhat reclusive artist that lived down the road a few miles in the
town of Bernardston, which was nothing more than a gas station off the Interstate and a string of old
farm houses. The artist’s name was Steven Curtis and I made arrangements to meet him and see what his
work was about. I had heard he was making a living with his art and naturally I was very curious to see
whether some of his commercial capability might rub off on me.
He worked in pencil and his drawings were incredibly sharp, textured and detailed. He was well read
and he applied his literacy to his drawings in a mystical way that reminded me of Tullio. Steven had
dubbed his work “Academic Surrealism,” explaining that most of the surrealists simply juxtaposed
unrelated images in a random dreamlike mishmash. Steven, on the other hand, gave great consideration
to the odd imagery in his drawings. He was very careful in his fabrication of symbolism. There was
nothing random about it, although it took him several hours to verbally convey the deeper meanings that
would never be obvious to the common observer.
Nonetheless, his drawings were inspirational and his talent was unquestionable. He had somehow
managed to find a rather famous and wealthy art patron in Boston named John Merriam who had
arranged for the pre-purchase of all of Steven’s work. As I understood it, Mr. Merriam was the retired
corporate counsel for General Electric and he loved art. In his multi-storied townhouse along Boston’s
prestigious Storrow Drive embankment, he had amassed a remarkable and priceless collection.
Steven Curtis was kind enough to put me in touch with John Merriam. I packed up all of my
drawings into a makeshift portfolio, tuned up my autoharp, and drove down to Boston for my
prearranged special appointment.
Upon arriving, I was very nervous, but John put me at ease. He was genuinely interested in my work,
but he was also immensely proud of his collection. Prior to any discussion of my work, he insisted on
spending several hours showing me all five floors of his collection, and I must say that after that, I felt
completely insignificant.
His endless drawing files were packed to the gills with extraordinary works of art. His particular
interest was illustration. He showed me original drawings by Dürer, Van Gogh, Rembrandt, Cézanne,
engravings by Hogarth, and virtually a complete collection of Escher mezzotints and woodcuts. He
coveted thousands of drawings and explained to me how important it was to amass the complete work of
a given artist for a specific or extended period of their career. He referred to his stable of artists as being
“on a string.” At the time, he had a dozen or so artists, Steven Curtis being one of them, who were on his
payroll. They had all agreed to furnish every single work that they produced for the duration of their
agreement. It struck me like musicians with their record deals. I thought it very odd.
John looked at my drawings with great care. I was so overwhelmed by the art I had seen that I could
only apologize for my own work. He was curious about the autoharp. I sat on his Persian carpet and
played several songs for him. He told me I was very talented, but that I was young and in need of
experience. He urged me to keep working, to establish a specific style and to come back to see him with
new work in a year. I never went back.
Years later, John Merriam’s significance as a patron and collector would make itself known as his
death would cause ripples of greed and controversy throughout the art world. Perhaps it is inappropriate
for so many precious works of art to belong to one man.
As winter showed signs of receding, Marty and I made final preparations to depart for California.
Sandy and her friends Chuck and Martha had decided that they wanted to come along. We had grown
attached to our two cats as well. Felix was pure black and Justin was pure gray. I constructed a
makeshift plywood platform to create extra storage space in the back of the van and fitted our queen
mattress on top of it. All of our gear was stowed underneath, as was the kitty litter, the geodesic dome,
the Coleman stove, the sleeping bags, my autoharp, and with the last minute addition of Martha’s
brother Bob, the combined critical belongings of six vagrant individuals.
Vagabond Gypsies
We drove down the coast to South Carolina where Martha and Bob’s family lived. We stayed for a
day or two then headed for the Gulf. We camped at some beautiful spots along the Florida coast, and
then cut up along Interstate 10 toward Mobile. Our universal bearing failed in southwestern Alabama
where rednecks cut hippies into tiny pieces, chew them up and spit them out. We found a truck stop that
miraculously replaced the axle parts for next to nothing before anyone got the notion that there was a
band of longhairs in the parking lot.
We followed Interstate 10 through the draped moss of Louisiana, then on through the endless
monotony of Texas. There were dead armadillos everywhere. The word was that they were migrating
toward Colorado and were being picked off by speeding cars, one by one. I almost bought an armadillo
for $15 outside of San Antonio, but I just couldn’t figure out how to make it work with the cats.
We cruised into Phoenix from the south and saw a geodesic dome just off the ramp. There was a
camp ground at the same exit so we pulled in and set up our tent on the scrubby desert for the night. The
next morning I found a scorpion in my boot and there were lizards all over the tent. I walked over to the
dome that turned out to be the home of Bill Woods, president of Dyna Domes. I knew all about him,
since his geodesic designs had been featured in the Whole Earth Catalog. He showed me the interior of
his home that leaked a bit like all domes do, but it was still impressive.
When I returned to the van, Felix had escaped. We looked everywhere with no luck. Chuck, Martha,
Sandy and Bob liked the looks of Phoenix and discussed staying, so we kept our campsite for a few days
while they scouted out apartments and jobs.
They found a temporary apartment and it looked like Chuck would be able to land a decent a job at a
steel mill. We said our goodbyes in the stifling heat and headed north with only one cat toward
Arcosanti, Paoli Soleri’s utopian City of the Future. The town wasn’t well-marked, so it took a long time
to find. Soleri was offering an architectural work-study program. I loved his vision, at least it looked
great on the pages of his incredible book Archology: The City In The Image Of Man.
We were sad to see how unorganized and chaotic Arcosanti was, and it was without any significant
funding. We could have paid to stay, carve out a cubicle for ourselves in the hillside and devote
ourselves to his tenuous dream, but instead, we decided to head west to Los Angeles. On Interstate 40
near the God-forsaken town of Needles, California, I thought I recognized a flowering peyote cactus and
I screeched the van to a halt. Sure that I had found a psychedelic payload, I filled several garbage bags
with these prickly treasures.
Near the roadside, I found the beautiful tubular exoskeleton of a cholla cactus that I dubbed
“wormwood.” I tucked it away in the back and we aimed ourselves toward Hollywood, where we hoped
we would find the legendary Judley in good form. He was living with his brother Stephen, who was a
genuine certified conscientious objector serving his country as a medic at the local children’s hospital.
He had married his high school sweetheart, Susan Richardson, who had come to Los Angeles to pursue
her acting career. She got lucky and was cast in a Crest commercial, then she met a few of the right
people on a street corner. This led to a small part in the immensely popular movie American Graffiti.
Her career took off when she was written into the script as Susan on the long running television
series Eight Is Enough. So times were good in Hollywood. The palm trees cast serrated shadows as
Marty and I pulled up next to the modest house on Winona Boulevard. The first thing they wanted to
know was what in the hell all of the cactus was for. It wasn’t peyote at all. Any fool except me knew
that. It was some God-awful variety of prickly pear that when bumped, released billions of microscopic
spines. These little pinpricks were everywhere: in our sleeping bags, in our clothes, in our skin. So
before entering the house, we properly disposed of the cactus cache and begged permission to take a
shower.
In order to maintain her figure, Susan was living on a diet of Tab, yogurt and the occasional avocado
for skin tone. The rest of us were ravenous. A few days into our visit, we walked into town to a popular
restaurant called Sir Francis Drake’s. This was an all-you-could-eat establishment and we had properly
starved ourselves in order to maximize the value of our visit. We ate ourselves senseless, in fact I
became ill in the men’s room. It occurred to me that with a freshly emptied stomach I could start all over
again, but understandably I was without an appetite. That restaurant was closed a few weeks later for
purportedly putting appetite suppressants in the food. Too bad.
Being with Jud, Steve and Susan was inspirational. Judley was pumping out some outrageous
artwork and Stephen was a great guitarist. A bit of Judley’s Dadaism had rubbed off on Susan and she
was filling the living room with bizarre life-sized stuffed creatures that were so inventive that the
Sunday Supplement ran a feature story about them. Marty was sewing some quilt panels and I immersed
myself at the kitchen table with my piece of wormwood and my 000 Rapidograph pen.
The house was a creative paradise except for one small detail. There was a tenant living upstairs who
was a bit close to the edge. He was a young budding musician who owned an acoustic guitar and
happened to be obsessed with Neil Young. He would sit up there in his apartment practicing the same
couple of songs into the waning hours of the night, all rendered in an incredibly shrill Youngian howl.
“I wanna live, I wanna give, I’ve crossed the ocean for a heart of gold,” he warbled. A few days of
that and it was time to get on the road. We vacuumed the
remaining cactus spores from the van seats and headed up the coast on Highway 1. The van chugged
along pretty well until we hit the hills outside Big Sur. The stench of burning rubber and a whining
metallic screech – quite similar to the Neil Young clone we had just left behind – suggested that the
vehicle needed attention. We were fortunate to find a gas station about fifty miles down the road. It
didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that the brakes were shot.
It did take $115 to replace them. We had no choice. That left us with a whopping $85 to our name –
a nest egg with which we intended to reach the Oregon border and purchase a parcel of land. Reality
check!
Tullio and Linda had moved from Gettysburg to San Rafael in the heart of Marin County, which
boasted the greatest per capita income in the country. As their usual luck would have it, they had a pretty
good setup living up in the San Rafael hills. Their responsibility was to maintain the tiny forest of
Banzai trees that peppered a millionaire couple’s estate. For this they were paid quite well and given free
lodging in the small but luxurious gardener’s quarters. The last thing they needed was a pair of destitute
hippies showing up in a rattling van looking
for a temporary oasis. Accordingly, our stay there was quite abbreviated. They were, however, able to
point us in the right direction. Tullio suggested that given our financials, we might consider something
closer and more realistic than Oregon. He had heard of a place called Wheeler’s Ranch, a hippie
commune near Bodega Bay. The commune was off the main road and accessible through Star Mountain,
a farm owned by a San Francisco rock band. Bodega Bay was only 70 miles away, so off we went, up
Highway 101 toward Novato and Cotati, then west to the Pacific Ocean.
Star Mountain was hard to find. It was completely unmarked, but the local hippies, of which there
was no shortage, passed us along every few miles. We pulled through the wooden fence at dusk, parked
in the gravel, and walked a hundred yards across a field to a rustic old farmhouse. There were eight or
nine hippies sitting on the porch. The band blared a disjointed but psychedelic rock anthem from the
inside. Marijuana smoke wafted in the breeze.
“We’re trying to get to Wheeler’s Ranch.” I offered our destination to break the ice. A joint was
passed down to us.
“Where ya in from?” asked the passer.
“East Coast.” I answered.
“Well, it’s too dark to go into Wheeler’s tonight. Takes about three hours to go in.” He motioned
over his shoulder.
“Ya gotta go in through the canyon and it’s a rough hike down there. Best you do it in the morning.”
he explained in a way that made me realize that he had spoken these same words on many occasions.
We had a lot of stuff in the van and the notion of having to traverse a steep canyon in the dark was not a
viable option. “Can’t we drive in?” I asked.
“Used to be you could. There’s a road in from the other end of the canyon, but you gotta go right
through a sheep farmer’s property to get in. Some of the dogs at Wheeler’s chased his sheep. The sheep
stampeded down the canyon and a bunch of ‘em keeled over. So he got pissed off and put up a metal
gate. He doesn’t let anyone through and he’s got a shotgun.”
“Can we park here tonight?” My boldness seemed justified as I passed the joint back to him.
“Nope. Sorry. Ya can’t stay down there.” He motioned toward the inadequate lot where our van was
parked. “Cops get weird about a lotta people hangin’ around here. If ya wanna place to stay, go over to
Morningstar Ranch. That’s Lou Gottlieb’s commune. It’s about 15 miles from here. Come back in the
morning if you wanna go into Wheeler’s.”
A few more hits on the joint and it was time to go. He pointed us toward Occidental and helped me
sketch a little map to the north entrance of Morningstar. It was pitch black and we had no idea where we
were going, but we went nevertheless. The map I had scrawled ended fifty feet down a dirt road near a
well. When our headlights illuminated what seemed to be a stone well, I put the van in park, turned off
the ignition, hopped in the back and went to sleep.
Morningstar Ranch
We awoke to the chirping of birds, sunlight streaming in through our dusty windows, and the
repetitive incantations of Buddhist chanting. Marty and I peered out of the side of the van and saw a
strange man in white robes with silver hair, a long beard and large black-rimmed Buddy Holly glasses. I
got out of the car and went over to him. I waited for a break in his chorus of Krishnas, then asked:
“Is it OK for us to park here?”
“Ask the landlord.” he replied.
“Who’s the landlord?” I asked.
He pointed straight up toward the sky, gave a wry smile, then walked away chanting. Throughout the
course of this, our first day at Morningstar Ranch, we learned that our resident guru was Lou Gottlieb.
As the bass player and charismatic vocalist of the very popular fifties folk group The Limeliters, he had
made a lot of money and had bought some sizeable parcels of land in Sonoma County. One such parcel
was Morningstar – forty-plus acres of former apple orchard on a lovely hillside between the tiny towns
of Occidental and Graton. Harriet Beecher Stowe had once owned the property and then the Catholic
Church had purchased it for a retreat. It was difficult to imagine nuns walking around the property, but
close inspection revealed biblical passages inscribed around the masonry rim of the stone well. So the
land had some significant spiritual history. Lou took this quite seriously.
Around the time that George Harrison had dragged his fellow Beatles over to India to experience the
Maharishi, Lou had had a similar journey. He had come home with an enlightened perspective and a
wardrobe that would have made R. Crumb’s Mr. Natural envious.
The scene in Haight Asbury was in full blossom and Lou was a big part of it. Hippies from San
Francisco had an open invitation to come up to “The Land” and come up they did. They came to take
acid, they came to be naked, they came to play music, they came to feast, they came to party, and they
especially came on weekends.
Famous people came. Ken Kesey. Alan Ginsberg. The Grateful Dead. Van Morrison. It’s A
Beautiful Day. The place was happening.
Morningstar became quite notorious. A LIFE Magazine cover didn’t help the situation. The
neighbors were, for the most part, affluent – lawyers, doctors, judges and the like. Generally, they were
a liberal bunch, but even they had their limits. The invasion of several hundred hippies into the vicinity
every weekend had become bothersome.
A court injunction was filed against Lou. This didn’t faze him, as he was firmly committed to the
idea that land could not be owned, but only temporarily borrowed.
So Lou went over to the Sonoma County Courthouse with his good friend, radical ACLU lawyer
William Kunstler, and together they made out a simple bill of sale and deed of transfer. For the very fair
price of one dollar, Lou sold the Morningstar property to “God.”
And so God became the landlord. Lou recused himself of any ownership or responsibility and a
seven-year string of court cases, tax disputes and injunctions of habitation followed.
For several years, the County enforced the injunction against any new construction by hiring local
bulldozers to come to Morningstar to demolish the makeshift structures that the inhabitants had built.
This was fairly effective at first, but the people at Morningstar were quick in reconstructing new
dwellings. It also became increasingly difficult to find bulldozer drivers. It wasn’t the pay. The pay I’m
sure was quite good. It might have been the fact that naked females would stand directly in front of the
dozers, passing lit joints up to the horrified drivers. If that proved ineffective, then the women would
climb right up on board, into their laps, rendering them speechless. This was usually enough to make the
drivers reconsider the working orders.
A few months later, another driver would show up. This one would be from further away, say San
Francisco. The next one from Los Angeles, then Mexico City. It became futile after awhile. And after
all, it wasn’t much fun demolishing people’s domiciles for a living.
Of course, most of this happened before Marty and I had arrived in the middle of the night. We
brought with us energy and defiance, not to mention a particular zest for geodesic architecture. There
was a nice clearing in the apple orchard and the landlord obviously had no objection, so we got right
down to work
assembling the struts of the tube frame geodesic dome and cover that had survived from Gettysburg. It
went up very quietly in less than an hour to the amazement of nearly all forty-five residents of
Morningstar, Lou Gottlieb included, who thereafter referred to me as “Dome Dick.”
The dome served us well and the orchard developed into a thriving social section of the property.
There were many factions at Morningstar. There were musicians, pot smokers, acidheads, and dropouts.
There were Jesus freaks and Zen Buddhists, nudists and granola-crunching health food zealots. There
were a few drunks of course and a weird sado-masochistic couple. There was even an escaped convict. I
suppose we fell into several of these categories, but we were living off the fat of the land and loving
every moment of it.
Dave and Georgia arrived one afternoon and decided to park their truck just above us in the orchard.
Then Ike and Nancy came, and then Big Larry. Pretty soon we had ourselves a nice little community of
like-minded hippies. We shared meals, music, Top tobacco, coffee and the daily tasks that needed to be
accomplished. The mood fluctuated greatly. There was a great heaviness at times, but there was also
tremendous excitement in being part of something experimental and somewhat self-sufficient.
It took a fair amount of energy to live in the middle of a redwood forest without money. The heavy
fog would tumble over the ridge in the middle of the night and persist until the sun burned it off at
around ten or eleven in the morning. Moisture got into everything and I found it difficult to keep my
drawing supplies dry. The loose communal and political aspects of Morningstar created plenty of
distraction from my artwork. I decided to hitchhike down to Hollywood for a few weeks to work more
intently on drawings with Judley.
I chose a beautiful day and was very lucky on the road. A string of great rides delivered me to the
off- ramp west of Hollywood by nightfall. The next day I started drawing and didn’t stop for several
weeks. To escape any guilt about freeloading, I overcompensated in making sure I was a useful member
of the household. I washed dishes, did errands, baked bread, organized the house and entertained on the
autoharp.
In spite of some marital discord between Jud’s brother Steve and his actress wife Susan, Hollywood
was a very conducive environment for creativity. I was averaging a drawing a day and Judley was
energetic and supportive. I was very stuck in my geometric mandalas. Over the course of several weeks,
my yantras started to break out of their symmetrical patterns into freer flowing forms. Even so, my
tightly controlled ink drawings were in stark contrast to Judley’s playful Disney-esque organicism that I
greatly admired. So I moved quickly along that line until I felt that it was time to go. At 6:00 AM on a
breezy Friday morning, I was on the freeway with my thumb held high. Bad luck. No rides. The cars just
whizzed by. Finally I sat down with my notebook and scrawled a sign that simply said “OZ.” This
destination proved more successful, but the rides were short and took me off the Interstate over to the
Pacific Coast Highway. I didn’t get to Santa Barbara until mid-afternoon and it was starting to cloud
over.
Five more disjointed rides and I was exhausted, hungry and caught in a light drizzle outside of San
Luis Obispo. I walked to the edge of town where I spent my only cash – $1.10 – on a pair of bad tortillas
at Taco Bell. I rested on the curb for a bit, then started walking. My legs were rubbery and it was nearly
dark. There was little hope that I would get back to Morningstar that night. It was still five or six hours
away.
The drizzle had thickened and I was starting to consider the possibility of sleeping at an underpass,
but I trudged on.
There weren’t many cars on the road that twisted its way into the craggy hills toward Santa
Margarita. The cars that did pass were traveling fast in the rain and several nearly ran me off the narrow
shoulder. In my mind I had given up. I couldn’t walk another step. If the next car didn’t stop, I decided I
would curl up under the tree in the farmer’s field just off the road. I held up my “OZ” sign for one lastditch effort, a desperate and pleading look on my drenched face.
Headlights came around the curve. The car hesitated, then screeched and veered onto the shoulder a
hundred feet ahead of me. I ran, lugging my pack. When I reached the car, the passenger door fell open.
The driver, a well-dressed man in his late forties I guessed, was slouched over and very inebriated. He
strained to look up at me as I waited to get in.
“Can you drive?” he blurted.
“You bet!” I fired back, my full adrenaline pumping. I threw my pack in the back with his golf clubs
and helped him slide over into the passenger seat, then I went around to the driver’s side, buckled up,
checked the controls, put it into drive and took off. It was a brand new Mercury Montego, souped up and
filled with gas.
The car’s owner was in very bad shape. He was on the verge of passing out. I was concerned that he
might get sick. His speech was slurry and in spite of his seatbelt, he was wavering.
“Where’re ya headed?” I offered this in full realization that hitchhikers are usually on the other end
of such a question.
“...to Bakersfield.” he moaned. His words came painfully.
“I’ll get you there.” I assured him. I had no idea where Bakersfield was and I didn’t have a map, so I
just stepped on it. In the meantime, his condition worsened.
“Where you goin’?” He swung his head unsteadily in my direction as his brow furrowed upward in a
feeble attempt to hoist his eyelids.
I hesitated. He wouldn’t know anything about Morningstar Ranch. I figured I’d give him a landmark
he’d surely know.
“Up to Santa Rosa.” I pointed, curious as to his response.
It took him several minutes to answer. The electrons were having real difficulty traversing through his
synapses.
”I gotta girlfriend up in Petaluma,” he boasted. “Do ya know where Petaluma is?”
“Sure do. That’s right near where I live. I can get you there!” I answered with great hope that this
particular girlfriend might mean enough to him to get me the hell up to Petaluma.
“You can get me therrrrrrrr?” and that was it. He was down for the count, his head against the
passenger window, his mouth open, his eyes shut. Had I heard him correctly? Did he say something
about getting him to Petaluma? And what about Bakersfield?
My question was quickly answered as I passed a road sign that said: “Bakersfield, Route 58 East,
Next Right.” I looked over at him. Out cold. I looked at the car clock. 9:00 PM. The light at the
intersection of Route 58 was green and I blew right through it going 70. Petaluma, here I come!
Highway 101 opened up and so did the throttle. Paso Robles. He was still passed out. King City. Not
a blink. Salinas. Stone cold, then the lights of San Jose. He grumbled and fidgeted. His eyes opened
briefly.
“Doin’ OK, kid?” he whispered in a blur.
“Yup. Makin’ good time.” Before I knew it, he was out cold again. Must have been some party I
thought, as our little Montego tore northward toward Petaluma.
As we cruised past San Francisco airport, I started to feel some guilt. We were a long way from
Bakersfield and I doubted that he would remember much of our conversation about his girlfriend in
Petaluma. There was another small problem. We were almost out of gas and I didn’t have one red cent
to my name.
He was stirring more now, especially since I had followed Route 101 right into San Francisco,
determined to stay right on course for the Golden Gate Bridge and Petaluma. As the front tires went over
the gas station hose, the “ding, ding” sound was what it took to revive him. His eyes opened. He was
groggy, confused, and in serious need of Tylenol.
“Where are we?” he weakly demanded.
“San Francisco. We’re just about outta gas.” I replied as if I were his regular chauffeur.
“Oh shit,” he gurgled. I’m sure he was agitated, but he just didn’t have the energy to express it. He
reached into his pocket and pulled out his wallet. In the bright lights of the gas station, his eyes squinted.
He looked very familiar to me for some reason.
He handed me his Mobil credit card and said: “Gas it up, kid. I gotta use the john.” We both got out
of the car. He stumbled over to the attendant and got the rest room key. I pumped the gas. It was nearly
two in the morning. I looked at the credit card in my hand. It read: “Jackie Cooper.” I knew that name.
The actor. Wasn’t he on Our Gang? Wasn’t he the director of MASH? I handed the card to the attendant,
a bit taken aback.
He came out of the men’s room and hung the key back up on its hook. He got in the driver’s seat and
motioned for me to get in. After the doors were closed, he said:
“Mind tellin’ me what we’re doing in San Francisco?”
I responded nervously, “You said you had a girlfriend in Petaluma and I...” Before I got a chance to
finish, he interrupted.
“I’ll get a hotel room for the night. I’ll drop you at the Golden Gate Bridge.” We rode there in
silence. It was very uneasy. We both knew I had done a bad thing, but the sight of that bridge sure was a
relief. He pulled over and I opened the door.
“Sorry.” I said sheepishly.
“Aw, that’s OK, kid. You probably saved my life.” He offered me a skeptical smile and drove off. I
walked across the bridge. It took forever and I was delirious. On the other side, I set my pack down, got
my trusty “OZ” sign out and miraculously, it succeeded in flagging me the first car that approached.
It was a beat up old clunker but it was moving. I hopped in. His name was Jerry. He was a speed
freak. He wanted to know if I had any pot. He was anxious to trade some for a few Black Beauties. I told
him I didn’t have any, but if he could just drive me back to Morningstar, I could probably find him
some. He talked my head off. His sentences were all very short. He got me all the way to the outskirts
of Sebastopol, but he wasn’t going to go any further out of his way without a more promising reason. I
got out, thanked him and started walking as the lightning cracked and the rain let loose.
Instinctively, I sought shelter. I’d been in this situation before – carports, all night laundromats,
baggage cars, abandoned barns, freeway overpasses, enclosed bus stops, gazebos in graveyards – these
were all good prospects, but no such luck here. Depressed and hopeless, I trudged bleary-eyed up Route
116 through the deserted town of Sebastopol, when there upon the horizon came the warm mercurial
glow of the lights at the K & S Supermarket. I ran on ahead lugging my soggy pack and my rusting
autoharp, finding temporary shelter under the short sloping roof near the electric doors, but the wind and
rain were relentless, pummeling my face with a piercing sting. Squinting, my vision slowly scoured the
vast parking lot for an alternative. There was an empty garbage dumpster at the side of the building, but
even vagabonds must retain some dignity. Then my eyes lit upon the yellow Salvation Army deposit box
perched at the far end of the lot. I had heard rumors about these tiny oases, so I walked over cautiously,
making sure that no passing vehicles were scrutinizing my actions.
The deposit flaps of these goodwill stations are very large in order to accommodate big bundles and
overflowing cartons of upper-class mercy – large enough in fact to deposit one’s own body into, so I
prepared to donate myself to charity for the night, believing that piles of freshly laundered overcoats,
blue jeans, and silk stockings (with small runners) might indeed be a luxurious and free motel, let alone
an ideal escape from the torrential rains, but I was immediately startled by bright candlelight and
alarmed voices. As my eyes quickly readjusted, I saw the faces of two young women sitting comfortably
inside the Salvation Army box upon mountains of forgotten clothing. The taller of the two, apparently at
ease that I was not a policeman, said, “Come on in, but make it snappy.” She cupped her hand around
the candle to prevent any rain from extinguishing it or any stray light from betraying their presence. I
slithered through the metallic hatch rather clumsily, allowing its weight to close upon my back with a
similar lack of finesse. Plopping down into the corner, I nestled among some corduroy jackets and
rubber flip-flops.
I withheld my curiosity about their presence long enough to introduce myself and give them a brief
account of events that had delivered me to that odd location in the middle of the night. They seemed
mildly amused, though I was concerned that they might consider my intrusion an annoyance.
My mind was eased as they relayed their incredible tale. Frannie was the petite one with dark hair,
glistening dark eyes to match, olive skin, and an unrepressed smile. Laura was dirty blonde, with high
cheekbones and wire-rim glasses that didn’t detract from her simple beauty. They had dubbed their little
endeavor “The Midnight Quiltery.” I suppose it should have been more obvious to me, for they each had
scissors and a substantial amount of sewing equipment, needles, thread, assorted paper patterns, and
other items of necessity to the trade. They were engrossed cutting up the more colorful garments into
tiny squares and diamonds, then according to some complicated hemming scheme, they would handfabricate a multitude of patterns and appliqués that would eventually emerge as quilted craft items:
mostly dresses, pocket books or an occasional ambitious but funky bed spread. After being stuffed with
old neckties and cotton trimmings, these creations would receive corduroy, denim or muslin backing –
the completed wares ready for distribution among a random network of counter culture bohemians on a
barter basis or sold through one of several head shops in Petaluma or Cotati for a less than selfish profit.
Frannie explained that they both loved to sew as a hobby and that they were always looking for new
supplies of discarded garments to fuel their passion, so the rationale for their illegal enterprise came first
out of necessity, for they were certainly in dire financial straits, and second out of contempt for the price
that the Salvation Army tried to charge them for a bag of these discarded garments at their outlet store.
Laura’s position was that if the Army wouldn’t come to them, then they would come to the Army. It
seemed reasonable enough to me, especially in my soaked delirium and I felt like a hitchhiker who had
just hopped into a VW microbus (in this case less the wheels) but with all the trimmings, thankful for the
sheer absurdity of the situation.
We had a wonderful and spirited conversation that night, at the expense of some unsuspecting and
misdirected tax deduction. The acoustics were perfect for an impromptu autoharp concert. The rain
pounded percussively upon the metal shell of the box and the quilters sewed away in perfect cadence at
a remarkable stitch. I sang and strummed and blew my harmonica with particular abandon. Before too
long, the alarm clock signaled the dawn’s arrival, the designated checkout time for this establishment. I
exchanged my wet shirt for a tasteless Italian knit turtleneck. Frannie and Laura stuffed their knapsacks
with the evening’s industry, and readied themselves for reentry into the real world.
These deviously liberated seamstresses had achieved a legendary position in my mind, and on rainy
nights I often lay awake in my leaky communal abode imagining them hard at work, unnoticed beneath
the slightly cracked lid of the Salvation Army box. I was naturally saddened when one of my friends
brought me the second page from the Sonoma Gazette. The small headline read: “Local Women
Charged.”
The Sonoma County Police had apprehended them the previous morning after receiving a complaint
from one of the Salvation Army “soldiers” in Sebastopol. They were apparently caught red-handed, or
should I say red uniformed, as they exited the deposit box. An excited Mr. Miller had made the odd
discovery during his routine weekly truck pickup. Frannie and Laura were charged with trespassing and
breaking and entering with intent to steal private property.
Bail was set at $100 each – an amount that neither could produce. They remained in custody for
several days waiting for the local judge to schedule a hearing.
I visited them during the final hours of their incarceration. They seemed in good spirits and in good
company. They had befriended an eccentric jailbird named Mrs. Moniot who was in the habit of being
picked up with remarkable regularity on drunk and disorderly charges. She was a genuine veteran of
detention and the courts. After her grumbling son paid her bail, Mrs. Moniot posted for Frannie and
Laura. It was a cause for celebration and we were all invited back to her comfortable ranch house in
Santa Rosa for some fresh vodka, a hearty meal, warm showers and soft beds. Mrs. Moniot enjoyed the
benefits of her deceased husband’s insurance policy. She was alcoholic beyond retrieval and accordingly
very generous to those sympathetic or forgiving of her addiction. She supported Frannie and Laura
through the court hearings and she paid their respective fines for which they were quite grateful.
Understandably, the bills emerged from a brightly colored quilted wallet with a denim lining.
To my knowledge, this marked the end of Frannie and Laura’s criminal careers. They vanished
seamlessly from my life as I settled back into my strange circumstance at Morningstar Ranch. Every
time I see a Salvation Army box however, I cannot help but wonder whether there might be a candle
glowing inside. More likely there is total darkness, except when the rusty lid opens to accept the excess
of the affluent. With it come the soiled and worn traces of residual guilt that separate poverty from
possession.
Gorilla Architecture
In the months that followed, I engrossed myself in the architecture of Morningstar Ranch. There was
an abundance of eucalyptus growing around the property. The young shoots grew like weeds in straight
dowel-like poles that were perfectly suited for geodesic domes. I cut a batch of carefully measured struts
for Larry Hope, who lived on the edge of the orchard. Larry had some money and to reciprocate for my
effort, he financed the purchase of enough eyehook connectors and wire to complete several domes.
Sandy had left Phoenix and in her odyssey, she hooked up with her old boyfriend’s brother “Weed”
in Gettysburg. They were coming out to California and Marty had invited them to stay with us at
Morningstar. When they arrived, it became apparent that our orchard dome wouldn’t house four people.
On top of that, Sandy had a baby on the way.
Our orchard neighbors Ike and Nancy had a four-year-old named Matt. They had been living out of
their van, but as fall approached, it was beginning to get much cooler at night. Like Weed and I, Ike
wanted to build a more permanent and substantial shelter. We decided to pool our resources and skills in
the construction of two Morningstar cabins.
Ike had a daytime job at the Santa Rosa Post Office and was one of the few people we knew who
actually used money. Ike had seen an interesting ad in the classifieds and one afternoon, we went off in
his van to investigate.
Down Route 101 below Cotati, there was a large poultry farm that had a few dozen old chicken
coops that were soon to be replaced. The farmer was selling the coops for $15 a piece on the condition
that the buyers remove the entire structures. These chicken coops were fifty feet long each and loaded
with 2’ x 4’s, 2’ x 6’s, and 2’ x 8’s in a wide assortment of lengths. Ike paid the farmer $60 and we spent
the next week with our claw hammers pulling nails, sorting and loading lumber, and hauling chicken
wire off to the dump. There was enough lumber for several houses and gradually we organized and
stacked it at the edge of the orchard.
A local lumberyard was always in the market to sell their overly abundant redwood cuts-offs. These
long and irregular pieces were flat on one surface and contained only a small sliver of wood. The rest
was bark, but for $10 a truckload it made great lapped siding. Ike took out his wallet again and bought
several vanloads.
There were several good-sized fallen trees along the edge of the property. We borrowed Larry’s
chainsaw, cut six of the trunks to their maximum equal length, then set three in a row into position at
Ike’s site, saving the other three for ours. Upon this foundation, we laid 2’ x 6’s vertically, then 2’ x 8’s
were laid flat as flooring. The sound of hammers resonated and echoed through the hillside. This was
surely very distressing for the neighbors and before long they formed a small group of vigilantes who
pulled up in a pickup truck on July 4th and set fire to the dry grass along the road just below the orchard.
It was a windy day and the fire spread quickly up the hillside toward our construction. We were terrified.
I’m not sure how, but with the help of everyone on the land we managed to stomp it out, then dowse the
leading edge with the few jugs of water we had. We were much more fearful after that, keeping dozens
of filled water jugs at every site as a precaution.
Water in general was a big problem. There was plenty of fog, but it didn’t rain much. We were all in
constant need of a bath. We devised ingenious solar showers by hoisting water jugs up into the trees, but
the jugs were arduous to carry and too quickly emptied. There was a tiny stream that ran through the
property, but it was just a trickle. There was plenty of water at the bottom of the hill, but it was simply
too far away. We had visions of lush vegetable gardens, but not without some form of irrigation.
I had a brilliant idea. I decided to dig for water. I didn’t have any experience in this area, but I did
have a shovel and a lot of energy. I was confident that there was a water table below me. I just didn’t
know how deep it was.
I picked a nice spot on the waning edge of the orchard and broke ground. I dug all day and only got
about six feet deep. There was no sign of any moisture. The next day I dug some more. Ten feet and still
not a drop. There was a mountain of dirt around the hole as tall as the hole was deep. The third day I was
twelve feet down in my hole, struggling to get the dirt out, when Lou Gottlieb came over to see what all
the commotion was.
“What’re you doing down there?“ he queried.
“Digging for water,” I replied with stoicism.
“You know how far you’ll have to dig?” he asked.
“I hope not too much deeper.” I was getting worried about the direction this conversation was taking.
“As far as I can tell, you’re going to have to dig about two or three hundred feet deeper.” He
informed me of this with no malice or sarcasm, just the simple facts.
I stopped digging. I must say that he spoiled my little project. I suppose he saved me a few hundred
feet of digging and a lot of blisters. In any case, we had a giant hole in the middle of the orchard with no
apparent purpose.
Another brilliant idea. I decided that the hole would make a rather deluxe and long lasting outhouse.
I built a simple grid of 2’ x 4’s across the expanse and covered that with plywood flooring. With
eucalyptus poles and eyehooks left over from Larry’s dome, I constructed a small yet proportionate
geodesic bubble and sheathed it with canvas sides. Larry bought some clear Mylar in town that made a
perfect pentagonal skylight. We didn’t have any means of flushing so for the time being, I put two
pieces of plywood down to make a Japanese style toilet. My orchard oasis was open for business.
This arrangement was so much more pleasant than the alternatives around the property that everyone
at Morningstar, including Lou, started using it. After three or four months with forty-five people, we
were still not even close to approaching the capacity of my crater. We had, however, significantly begun
the filling process.
One afternoon, I was working with Ike on his cabin when all of a sudden we heard a horrific scream
come from the direction of the small dome. We looked at each other, hesitated for a second, then darted
over at lightning speed to see what had transpired. The screams were coming from the outhouse, all
right. Someone had left the boards apart and Ike’s four-year-old son Matt had fallen in. I held onto Ike
as he lowered himself down inside. He grabbed Matt’s arms and we hoisted his unhappy little body out
of there but quick. He wasn’t hurt, but what do you do in this situation? He looked like a little mud
wrestler, partially mummified with toilet paper.
We took him down the hill to the creek and washed him for several hours. That helped somewhat.
The key word is somewhat. So we washed him for another hour until we came to the sad realization that
this poor kid would no doubt carry the aroma into his teens. From then on, I refrained from entertaining
any projects related to irrigation or plumbing.
The Legend Of Egor
With the help of Weed and Sandy, Marty and I had made significant progress on our luxurious
contraband cabin for four, complete with a trap door in the floor, on the southwestern corner of the
property.
We were always busy accumulating any useful items. Somehow, we had managed to find two
Coleman stoves in working order, and we decided to barter one of them with a couple from Wheeler’s
Ranch, who oddly enough had two Coleman lanterns. Wheeler’s was about fifteen miles west toward
Bodega Bay and I had been assigned the task of making the simultaneous delivery and pickup early one
Monday morning.
I awoke at about seven and mixed my usual 50% coffee, 50% cocoa concoction. I got dressed and
made my way down toward Dave and Georgia’s tree house where our Dodge van was parked. This very
same van had delivered us miraculously from Brattleboro, Vermont down through the Carolinas to New
Orleans, San Antonio, Phoenix, and Los Angeles to our humble dwelling, and though the vehicle was on
its last legs, it was our only tangible asset and form of transportation.
As I started the engine, I heard the familiar squeal of Egor, a pathetic excuse for a dog who, like us,
had chosen Morningstar as his haven. Egor was probably going on three or four years. He was small yet
quite plump, off-white in color, perhaps the shade and texture of curdled milk. His fur provided an
excellent canvas upon which a vast array of mud, automobile grease, bacon fat and worse could
accumulate. Egor had earned himself the unfortunate distinction of being the most destitute, despicable,
and despised creature on the grounds. This was not an easy task, given the many mangy animals and
tenuous human beings on the property, but Egor, no doubt the product of an endless parade of human
neglect, had somehow descended to the challenge.
Egor had no scruples, no couth. He could, however, ferret out our very few valuables with his wet
sniveling nostrils. He could successfully straddle an available thigh with relentless energy and he always
mistook scolding for encouragement. These were Egor’s strong points.
In search of hydration, Egor would lick tree trunks where other dogs had just relieved themselves,
and to satisfy his insatiable hunger, he would feast upon such delicacies as could be found at the bottom
of the orchard outhouse. Or he would eagerly drag the carcass of a local road kill into the midst of an
otherwise enjoyable community meal. Of course, Egor endured tremendous abuse, well deserved I might
add, but I felt an ounce of pity for him on that sunny morning as he waddled sideways toward the van,
slobbering and quivering with his clumsy sway.
It occurred to me that Egor might respond favorably to affectionate treatment. Behavior
modification, positive feedback, I’m OK – You’re OK; all of the contemporary psychological trends
seemed to bear some validity, in human circles anyway. And so I patted him on the head and opened the
passenger door, thinking that it just might be a real treat for Egor to accompany me on a morning ride
through the countryside, breathing some fresh air and taking in a change of scenery. Egor seemed to like
the idea, for he hopped up onto my lap with great confidence. Smelling like a fermented garbage heap,
he blurted a little fart of joy, flung a tiny missile of drool onto my blue jeans and assumed his designated
shotgun position. Away we went, Egor and I, down the twisting dirt road toward Occidental. Egor got a
little seasick from the bumpy ride and chose to retire to the back of the van. Although I couldn’t get a
good look at him from behind the wheel, I was privileged to hear his convulsive coughing and smell the
fetid aroma of his regurgitation. The gas station in Occidental provided me with the setting to survey the
damage and sure enough, there were two little piles; one from the front end and one from the rear, but
both of similar color and texture. On the verge of gagging, I completed cleaning Egor’s mess with an
excessive allocation of heavy-duty blue windshield towels donated by a skeptical but sympathetic
attendant. With a perplexing look at Egor, and vice versa, we resumed our journey.
Egor seemed in better spirits, for he was frolicking around in the back of the van chewing on an old
boot and ripping tiny pieces of vinyl from the seats. I knew from experience that this was an indication
of his genuine and thorough contentment.
The road from Occidental to Bodega Bay gets progressively more treacherous as you approach the
jagged hills of the coast, so I decided to pay more attention to my driving and less to Egor. I think he
picked up on this immediately though, for he tried to distract me by crouching down on the back seat,
then springing up with swift ungraceful lunges upon my neck, followed by his trademark straddle and
hump. By that time, I had ceased to be amused with Egor’s antics, as my earlier strategy of positive
reinforcement didn’t seem to be effective. I gave him a good block with my arm on about his tenth jump
to keep him off my shoulder, and he retired to the back of the van with a seemingly apologetic whimper.
As I cornered a poorly banked curve, I was weighing the merits of strict canine discipline against the
mild pangs of pity I was feeling, when all of a sudden from the very back of the van I heard Egor begin a
galloping charge that brought him airborne directly on top of my head, the van swerved out of control
and SMASH... right into a giant redwood tree.
Egor snickered. The right headlight was completely demolished and the frame had buckled into the
tree. The sound of hissing air broke the silence as the van sunk defeatedly forward and to the right. I got
out to take a look. Egor followed, eagerly wagging his hips while his tail remained stationary.
Scraping bark off the front grill, I mumbled curses under my breath. Egor was scurrying up the side
of a wooded knoll where I’m sure he was plotting new terrorist acts. I take that back. Egor was
incapable of thinking in any remote sense of the word. All of his actions were, by some drastic oversight
of God, instinctive.
I got the jack out and propped up the front end to remove the flat tire, but the axle was bent and the
mangled sheet metal prevented the flat tire from being removed anyway. In anger, I kicked the rim, hurt
my toe, cursed for ten minutes more, then glanced over at a field of cows. Egor, thinking that he had
found some better companions, waddled bravely toward them.
Just then a farmer pulled up in a heavy pickup truck. He got out, took his hat off, scratched his head
and evaluated my situation. “Got a little problem here.” he understated, as I relayed a synopsis of the
whole sordid story from start to tragic finish pointing over at Egor and the cows, who at this juncture
were becoming increasingly annoyed with his nipping.
The farmer had a chain hitch on the bed of his truck and he suggested that we back it up to the frame
of the van and give it a healthy yank to free up the tire and straighten out the axle. We rigged it all up,
allowing several yards of slack in the chain. The farmer got into his truck and started the engine while I
supervised the operation with hand signals. Egor, having caused a near stampede, had been given a
resentful kick by a cow that didn’t appreciate having his hooves gnawed upon. He tore across the
meadow up a slight embankment and onto the road where he waddled over and nonchalantly positioned
himself directly over the chain that linked the two vehicles, front paws on one side, rear paws on the
other. In spite of my frantic arm waving, it was too late. The truck had surged forward, the chain
tightened and snapped, and Egor went somersaulting upward in what appeared to be a fifteen-foot
vertical lift. He landed miraculously on all fours, and with a steady yelp, he tore off like lightning up the
hill.
I didn’t think I would ever see Egor again, and in a sadistic sense I was relieved at the prospect.
The chain was as effective on the van as it had been on Egor. I changed the tire, hammered some
torn metal out of the way, thanked the farmer, bid him on his way, and prepared to depart myself,
picking up several scattered tools and loading them into the back of the van. I was just about finished
when Egor came tearing down the hill and jumped into the open side door of the van. Apart from a faint
paranoid evasiveness in Egor’s eyes, he appeared to have conveniently forgotten the gist of the
morning’s activities.
Off again we went, against all better judgment, Egor nursing his front paw and I attempting to
contain my inner rage. We arrived at Wheeler’s Ranch two hours late, but the lantern people had been
patient. We made our brief exchange and with a mild bark from Egor, we headed back for Morningstar
via an alternate, more level route.
My conscience would not rest well if I were not to mention the fact that on several prior occasions,
usually late in the evening, Egor’s name had come up in casual conversation among the many
inhabitants of Morningstar. These talks invariably hinged upon open conspiracies and ingenious plots all
designed with one single thought in mind – to put Egor out of his misery, assuming that misery was
indeed the best word to describe the perpetual disaster that followed in his path. These conversations
provided a humorous release for our cumulative Egor-inspired angst. No one really took the idea of
euthanasia seriously, although such thoughts certainly did occur to everyone upon sight of Egor in his
frenzied and obnoxious intrusions to otherwise peaceful days. To be entirely truthful, it did occur to me
briefly at the beginning of our journey together that Egor might stray away from the van long enough to
become attached to the people over at Wheeler’s, or some such incident, thereby relieving us of his
presence. That thought, however, only occurred to me. It certainly was not my conscious intention while
cruising en route to Freestone Junction at 45 miles an hour, that Egor would once again take an
unsuspecting leap from the back seat, ricochet off my left shoulder blade, and plummet out of my open
driver’s window onto the macadam. Perhaps it was cruel that after recovering my direction and
composure, I didn’t slow down or turn around. It may, however, be of some interest that in my rearview
mirror, I witnessed that plump little bundle of beige bristle bounce like a water balloon into the tall
grass, flip over once or twice, shake himself off and trot apparently unharmed, impervious and ready for
new adventures across California’s smooth hillsides.
I couldn’t get Egor out of my mind for weeks, in spite of the damage to my van that thereafter
limped worse than Egor ever did. Soon it gasped and sputtered to a halt, its engine rusted and corroded,
its body dented and deformed, its brakes worn down to bare hot steel, its battery completely devoid of
spark. Not so with Egor. He was a survivor.
And survive he did, though it took him nearly a full month to sniff and waddle his way back to
Graton Road and our tiny dirt path. There I met his gaze in complete disbelief. He maintained a safe
distance, as did I, for with both fear and respect we knew not to test destiny any further.
Reconnecting
Even though my dropping out had created considerable tension, I had never stopped caring about
my family. I tried to call them every two or three weeks. Occasionally I would send a post card. One day
when I called, my mother put my father on and we had a nice talk. He was going to be traveling on
business in San Francisco and asked if it would be all right if he came to see me. I couldn’t exactly
figure out how this would work, but I agreed and gave him careful directions to the edge of the property.
He in turn suggested an exact rendezvous time. Weed, Sandy, Marty and I straightened up as best as we
could and kept an eye on Graton Road. Sure enough, he pulled his rental car off the road at the bottom
of the hill just below the orchard. In his suit and tie, he made his way up the hill in our general direction.
I met him half way and shook his hand. We were not huggers, but we both knew how unusual and great
it was for him to be there. I had been gone for almost a year and was fairly oblivious about the impact
my decision to explore an alternative lifestyle had had upon my family. It was particularly hard for my
mother, given that she could not reach me by phone or mail.
I gave my father a brief tour of our living conditions. I’ll never know exactly what he thought, but he
was clearly out of his element. He invited us into town to get cleaned up and have a nice dinner. He had
rented a room in Guerneville. It sounded pretty good to us.
On the way, he stopped and bought us a fresh change of clothes, then we each took a long shower in
his motel room. We didn’t look right in our new clothes, but we were headed for a nice steak house
where I’m sure our upgraded attire was appreciated. We ate like horses and answered my father’s
questions about our lives. After dinner, he took us to Safeway and gave us some money for food. We
filled several shopping bags with provisions we had not seen in a long time. Then he took us back to
Morningstar and dropped us off at the bottom of the hill. I hugged him this time and thanked him, then
we said our goodbyes. Years later I would find out that my father’s excursion to California had nothing
to do with business.
Disintegration
Our house was complete and thanks to Egor, our van was barely operational, so we had no other
choice than to focus on our communal life style. Ike finished his house too. It was shaped like a big cash
register, with a loft in the top where the dollar signs would normally pop up.
We had all been passing around a book entitled “Zen Flesh, Zen Bones” that was filled with short
parables called “koans.” Ike and Nancy had found the book so meaningful that they signed up for a
zazen seminar at Big Sur. At the last minute, their vehicle blew a gasket and they were forced to borrow
our van instead.
Upon their return, we all enjoyed hearing the stories about their intensive week-long seminar. At
dawn on their first full day, they arose to a breakfast that consisted of tea and oatmeal, then they
meditated for three hours seated on stiff round black cushions. The Zen master walked around to insure
that everyone was keeping good meditative posture. If someone started to drift, they’d get a good whack
on the back with a split bamboo stick. The crack of the bamboo was more alarming than it was painful.
Rice and water were served for lunch, followed by another four hours of meditation and bamboo
whacking. At five o’clock, there would be an hour of free time, then a dinner of rice with some
vegetables and tea. The Zen master would offer his insights about the evolutionary thought process that
everyone was enduring, then there would be a few more hours of meditation before retiring onto a
bamboo mat. This routine was repeated verbatim for a week, after which the participants hopefully had
shed all earthly desires and attained a level of enlightenment roughly equivalent to the $130 that it cost
to undergo the incredible week-long deprivation.
Ike and Nancy had made it up the mountain in the van just fine and had endured the week without
losing too much weight or sanity. The problems occurred coming down off the steep incline. The brakes
hadn’t really been changed for several decades and were riding on bare metal. Any sense of nirvana or
peace was quickly replaced with sheer terror. Miraculously, they managed to get back in one piece. The
van did not.
With hitchhiking now my sole mobility, I spent more time on the land drawing and cutting
eucalyptus poles for a large geodesic dome that I envisioned to be a library, day care and community
center. The dome was fifty-six feet in diameter and thirty-four feet tall – my most ambitious effort to
date. It was a beautiful sight to see it crystallize like an eggshell on a sunny afternoon with the help of a
few dozen stoned gawkers. I didn’t have the money to put a covering on it, so the Morningstar
Community Center and Library pretty much just sat there without much of a community and not a single
book. Surprisingly, the uncovered shell did have a distinct inside and outside, and people did stand
inside with confused looks on their faces.
The small vigilante group that had set fire to “the toes” of Morningstar had now grown into a group
of eighty-three irate and unhappy neighbors. With their increased numbers, they had more clout and
lobbying power at the county courthouse in Santa Rosa. They were successful in reactivating the
injunction against God, and a few brave policemen were dispatched to investigate the purported new
construction. When the police car pulled into the orchard, I was alone, drawing at the kitchen table.
Quickly, I lifted the trap door and climbed down into a crawl space under the foundation. Moments later,
I was looking up through the thin cracks in the floor at the black boots of two officers, who snooped
around our very modest domicile for at least twenty five minutes, looking for contraband or any clue as
to the identity of the residents. They found an envelope with my name on it and clomped away, unaware
that I was only inches away from them through the entire duration of their visit. After I listened to their
engine turn over and their wheels spin in the dirt, I lifted the trap door lid and re-emerged, covered in
sweat and bursting with adrenaline.
The next few weeks moved quickly. Warrants were issued for Ike and me. The officers had carefully
conferred and decided that as the obvious ringleaders of this subversive tribe, we would be taken to task
for our misguided crimes: building without a permit and violating the local standards for proper
plumbing and garbage disposal.
God was not faring very well in court either. Over the course of nearly seven years, the case had
been tried and appealed up through the legal system, from the local Magistrate to the County Court, then
up to the Appellate and Superior Courts and finally to the Supreme Court of California. The gig was up
and Lou knew it. He made a valiant effort though, dressing up in a blue suit that reeked of mothballs and
was several sizes too small. He didn’t actually represent God. No person could do that, but he did speak
eloquently and at some length about his firm conviction that land was too precious to divvy up among
the masses. We all cheered him from the gallery, which of course was not only inappropriate but also
damaging to an already tenuous case.
The judge deliberated for several seconds, then handed down his decision. He found God to be
incompetent, inadequate and irresponsible as a landowner. He invalidated God’s deed to Morningstar
and restored the property, complete with nearly a decade of back taxes, to an unhappy but well dressed
Lou Gottlieb. He ordered the residents of the land, excluding Lou and his immediate family, to vacate
the property immediately or face arrest.
The following day a small fleet of police cars arrived, trailed by a yellow school bus that struggled
clumsily up our bumpy dirt road. They parked near Teepee John’s and proceeded to arrest anyone who
was brave or foolish enough to show themselves.
Marty and I hid under the trapdoor until the police finished rounding up all of inhabitants they could
find. About eleven people were captured, mostly because they wanted to make a political statement. The
yellow bus jerked its way down the hill, off to the Sonoma County courthouse.
Sandy was about to have her baby and didn’t want to get caught up in any further legal turmoil. She
and Weed quickly found a small tourist cabin in Monte Rio. During the rainy season, the place rented
for next to nothing. Once Sandy and Weed were settled, Marty followed. I stayed at Morningstar and
continued to work. I hated to see yet another of our utopian experiments disintegrate and wished to stay,
as long as there was any hope for rejuvenation.
There was a quiet and unusual hermit named Josh that lived in a small yurt-like hut on the edge of
the orchard that overlooked Graton Road. Though he didn’t speak very much, he loved to play the conga
drums. It was logical that he should be our sentry. Whenever the police would make the sharp turn and
head slowly up the rutted road to make their daily rounds, his drums would start and everyone would
hide. This was effective for about a week, but there were only a handful of people left on the land. The
social interaction at Morningstar had dissipated. After a few days, Teepee John, Josh and I were the only
ones left, aside from Lou, Rita and their young son Vishnu who had the legal right to remain.
The next day, Teepee John headed off for the Hopi reservation in Taos, New Mexico where his wife
Ruby and their children awaited him. Josh had vanished too, so I was alone. I had been cutting
eucalyptus poles for the orchard sauna, but it seemed progressively more futile. To top it off, I had been
bitten several times by tiny fiddler spiders in the woods and the bites didn’t seem to be healing.
Ike came by to check on me and offered to take me and our remaining possessions over to Monte
Rio. I accepted. Like everyone else from Morningstar, Ike had been searching for a place to live and it
looked like he had found a nice house down in Oakland.
We stayed for a few weeks at the rental cabin near the famous Bohemian Grove in Monte Rio, but
the owner had sold the property to a developer and the tiny cabins were scheduled to be demolished.
Fate was chasing us.
We picked up and moved to another small grouping of summer rental cabins in Guerneville.
DeSmits (we called it “DeShits!”) was right on the water under the bridge. At $20 per month, this would
have suited us fine, except that upon our arrival it started to rain and didn’t stop. The river rose a few
inches every day and before long we were partially submerged. This was not going to work.
Fortunately, word reached us that Ike and Nancy’s oasis in Oakland had come to fruition. Ike had
landed a great job at the Oakland Post Office and we were all invited to come down to “Morningstar
South.” It was a large house on the east side of Telegraph Avenue just south of Berkeley. It had a huge
living room with an old upright piano and several big bedrooms. The largest room upstairs was the
common room where anyone could lay out a sleeping bag. Ike, Nancy and Matt had a bedroom to
themselves. The other remnants of Morningstar: Patty, Dave, Georgia, Larry, Sandy, Weed, Duane,
Marty and myself (plus a stream of assorted transients) were scattered either in the common room or on
couches in the living room.
My spider bites still weren’t healing. To compound the problem, the infection had spread to my
scalp, arms and hands. Finally I went over to the free clinic in Berkeley. There I was quickly diagnosed
with staph infection. It had internalized and I was in pretty serious condition.
I called home and found that my grandmother had passed away. After hearing about my staph
infection, my father offered to fly me home to recover and to attend the funeral. Without hesitation, I
picked up my ticket for United #128 at the airport and wrote delusional poetry during the return flight.
It was good to be home. I saw our family doctor immediately and the antibiotics he prescribed cured
me within the week. My grandmother’s funeral was a dichotomy of emotion. She had gone downhill and
had been a tremendous burden on my mother, so there was a sense of relief on top of the grief. In the
days that followed the funeral, my mother and her brothers decided what to do with the rather large
house and all of its contents.
Since I longed to return to California, I offered to deliver all of the furniture and boxed items to my
uncles, brothers and cousins in exchange for plane fare back to San Francisco. I loaded up the Ryder
rental truck and headed from Bethlehem up to Boston, then to the suburbs of Washington, D.C., then out
to Pittsburgh, on to Cleveland, and finally to Chicago where I delivered my final load and turned the
truck in.
Nearly a month had transpired and I missed all of my friends, especially Marty. Sandy had had her
baby and had left for a commune similar to Morningstar called God’s Land in Kettle Creek, Kentucky.
I had notified Marty that I was returning. She met me at the airport with Duane who had driven her.
By the time we arrived back in Oakland, it was evident that Marty and Duane had become involved.
Things were going to be very different. I did my best to be liberated, to suppress my jealousy and hurt,
but inside I really wasn’t handling it well.
Down the street from our Oakland house, there was a religious group called the Universal Life
Church that had befriended us. They sold flowers on the street corner to raise money for their
headquarters. During my emotional turmoil, they had invited me to a dinner and lecture with Richard
Alpert (Timothy Leary’s friend) who now used the name Baba Ram Dass. I was a fan of his popular
book on eastern spirituality, “Be Here Now,” so I willingly attended.
After the lecture, I received an invitation to attend a three-day seminar at The City Of The Future.
There was considerable pressure to do this and though I initially declined, Friday came around and my
utopian curiosity got the best of me. A full bus of people departed from Oakland in the morning heading
north. We arrived two and a half hours later at a property that was just west of the small town of Philo.
To call this a city was a big stretch. In fact it was a small grouping of pre-fab trailers with surrounding
open fields. There were at least a hundred young people there and everyone was way too happy for my
taste, though I tried to stay open-minded. I participated for the duration of Friday evening into the midafternoon on Saturday.
I had befriended a fellow skeptic and together, we were trying to decipher what the whole “City Of
The Future” thing was really about. By Saturday afternoon we had our answer. These were the followers
of Reverend Sun Myung Moon and their clear intent was to brainwash us into committing ourselves to
the Universal Life Church. In the process, we would be asked to sign cards giving up all of our earthly
and personal possessions in support of their cause. When I asked whether it was all right to leave, I was
taken to a special group that expressed great concern for me and tried to make me feel “loved.” I needed
to get out of there.
After dinner, it was getting dark and I saw my chance. I placed my sleeping bag and backpack in the
bushes while no one was watching, then in the middle of a great spiritual sing along, I slipped out and
fled across the small access bridge to the tiny road that connected Philo with Albion. My friend had told
me not to head toward Philo because “they” would come after me in that direction. Instead, I scurried
west on Navarro Ridge Road into the heart of Georgia Pacific’s redwood forest toward the ocean. My
good friend Dennis from Blair had an older brother named Philip who, like me, had pursued the counter
culture dream in California. I knew Philip and was aware that he lived in Albion with his wife Annie. I
headed in their direction.
I really was quite scared that a car full of Moonie disciples would be sent to retrieve me. When I saw
headlights approach, I would quickly hide in the trees or drop in the tall roadside grass. But this was a
logging road and there were virtually no cars. I trudged on toward Navarro until I saw several lights in
the distance. It was Navarro all right, but there was no town – only a deserted restaurant set back into the
trees. A pay phone glowed with fluorescent splendor in the corner of the parking lot. It was three-thirty
in the morning.
I called information to get Philip’s number. I had no change, so I was forced to call collect. Annie
answered, obviously in a deep sleep. She reluctantly accepted the charges. I felt so guilty calling them in
the middle of the night that instead of asking them to pick me up, I told them I would try to be there in
the early morning. Graciously, she gave me basic directions. I resumed walking. It was nine more miles
to Albion.
I was delirious. It was so thoroughly pitch black in the forest that I couldn’t see my own body. The
only way I was able to navigate was to feel the macadam under my feet. At four-thirty, it started to pour.
I kept going. I arrived at Philip and Annie’s at eight-thirty, totally drenched and exhausted. They fixed
me herbal tea and gave me a spot to crash. I stayed for a day and a half, helped chop some firewood,
then hitchhiked back to Oakland. I’d pretty much had it.
There was way too much emotional tension at the Oakland household, so after several weeks of
cleaning Holiday Inn carpets from midnight to dawn, I collected my meager pay and headed south to
warmer and friendlier territory. For $15, I boarded the People’s Express shuttle at the San Francisco
airport and streamed off to Hollywood where my friends Judley, Steve and Susan awaited.
Observations From The Window Of Flight #128
San Francisco To Chicago
(Flying The Turbulent Skies Of United)
From the heavens, it’s obvious
that erosive patterns have formed.
Water runs from the slopes.
The rivers resemble veins of a leaf.
or arterial pathways.
Mountains with snow and buried pine trees
reflect like wrinkled aluminum foil.
Clouds are stuffed into valleys
like ointment in open wounds.
Flying from west to east
nature is defied
by the acceleration of time.
Departing in the darkness
of early morning,
the sunrise chases us
from the rear horizon.
Black, yellow, orange,
light blue, deep blue...
ahead we chase the day toward dusk,
deep blue to hazy gray,
then black again.
The sky is confused and so am I.
Birth And Death Are The Same Door
Somewhere deep within a dreamless sleep
Your birth is hidden.
So protected that the truth of the future
Is forbidden.
Restful eons in the arms of the void
Then one day the door is opened.
All your instinctual fears are deployed
When your umbilical ties are broken.
Screaming for air when you find
That your former life is finished.
Eyes wide open as the pain of transition
Is diminished.
All memory is washed away.
A new life is filled with empty pages.
Senses separate the night from the day
As your perception adjusts to the ages.
Destiny leads you through the
Magical maze of your direction.
The pattern has taught you
Not to place your faith in resurrection.
From the moment of your very first breath
Life seemed like an endless tunnel
But when you witness an old man
surrender to death
It seems more like a closed funnel.
You wish to remain here
Attached to the props of your existence.
I really can’t blame you
For approaching unknowns with resistance.
Time leaves its mark
in the lines of your face
Though you can never really detect it.
Peace of mind lies at the end of the race
If we can ever learn to accept it.
Commemorating the birth of Magic Bloom Kennedy, and the death of Hazel Crawford.
Decompression
Judley, Steve, and Susan were glad to see me. I shared my perils with them and they nurtured me
back to normalcy. Judley was exploring watercolor fantasies. Steven was writing and playing his guitar
and Susan had lots of lucrative television work. In her free time, she was sewing her unusual life-sized
dolls that were inspired at least in part by Judley’s animated artwork.
It felt perfectly natural to join right into the creativity. I began drawing with a heightened energy
and commitment. Initially, I was harboring some compacted anger that needed to be expressed and I
tried to draw visual representations of repression and jealousy. One of these was the image of a snake
with two birds. I supposed in hindsight that it was a symbolic representation of Marty, Duane and me. I
did believe that strong negative emotions like anger and jealousy could be contained and stored in their
raw form, then slowly released with more positive results. There was some validity and truth to this, but
it became obvious that the internalization of feelings was taking its toll on my emotional health and
confidence.
And so I decompressed in the unpressured atmosphere that East Hollywood offered. I had bought a
thin long-sleeve Italian knit shirt for a dollar at a nearby thrift store and when I came back to the house,
Susan remarked that I looked “gay” wearing it. My sexuality was already damaged and her comment
really had an impact upon me. I suppose I was scared that I might be moving subconsciously in that
direction. I decided that I would practice celibacy, at least until I felt right again. I focused my full
attention on drawing.
Accordingly, I beg your indulgence over the course of the next several pages. My pure focus and
obsession with art during this period was so intense that it deserves some discussion. Those disinterested
in the technical and conceptual aspects of ink and paper might wish to jump ahead to the next section
entitled “Re-entry.”
I had a Grumbacher artist’s sketchpad that was sized for 8 1/2” x 11” and I decided to adhere to that
format, especially since I had a binder with protective plastic sleeves that matched perfectly. Every
morning, I attempted to initiate a fresh drawing. If the drawing succeeded, it would find a place in the
book. If not, I would cut out the better parts and tape them into my journals.
My housemates offered great encouragement. I often consulted with them about potential names for
my collection of Hollywood drawings. I had come up with “Conceptual Survival,” but Susan didn’t
think that this described the work very well. Because of the high level of detail and time expended on
each piece, she thought that the drawings looked inconceivable or impossible. I took this as flattery as it
was intended, but the truth was that at the start of each drawing I had a fairly clear image in my mind.
Unfortunately, the end result was usually a relatively flawed approximation of the original premise.
Recognizing this dilemma, we coined the clever but heady term “Approximations of Impossibilities.” It
quickly lent itself as the working title for my growing portfolio.
Pablo Picasso had died while I was in Hollywood and ironically there was a Picasso retrospective at
the new modern art museum nearby. I was very moved with the sheer quantity and depth of his work
and initiated a tribute that blended some of the figures from his paintings with my own ideas. In the
process, I realized how critical freeform contour drawing had been to Picasso’s style. In fact, the gallery
presented a short experimental movie that he and Salvador Dali had made, filmed totally in the dark with
a penlight as his paintbrush. The fluidity of the lines was fresh, alive and uniquely three-dimensional,
just like his paintings.
Inspired by these ideas, I started to experiment with blindfolded drawings and was surprised at how
expressive the lines could be. These drawings were executed quickly in pencil with eyes closed, then
inked with open eyes and considerably greater deliberation. Involuntary Vision was the first of these
drawings, a pleasant diversion from my increasingly tedious pen technique.
Anyone who has lived in the Los Angeles area is pretty much obligated to take out-of-town visitors
to Disneyland and I had never been there. Jud, Steve and Susan had been many times and loved going.
Being in “show-biz,” Susan had some discount passes, so we all drove down to Anaheim.
In the vast parking lot and with a wry grin, Steven unveiled a joint. We smoked it and giggled our
way to the ticket gate. The lines were long and there was an extremely obnoxious announcement coming
over the tinny loudspeakers that instructed visitors about entry procedures into the park. We endured this
message through the gates and had a spectacular day. Jud returned with a renewed appreciation for
Disney animation and worked on many lively watercolors of dancing elephants and other animal
personifications. I, in turn, was further inspired by Judley’s unbridled enthusiasm and attempted to take
my own work in a more organic direction.
Though I was technically ready for any subject matter, I had much more difficulty than Judley in
conceiving good themes for my drawings. One beautiful Saturday morning, Steven offered to drive us
all to the beach at Santa Monica for the day. Jud and I scrambled to get our drawing pads and pencils
together. At the last minute I noticed that Susan had some interesting Hummel porcelain figurines of
children with ducks. I asked permission to carefully wrap them up in towels so that I could draw them
and she agreed. When we got to the pier, I set them carefully in the sand and sketched them in pencil
against the beach and ocean backdrop. Upon returning that evening, I began inking the drawing and was
very pleased with the evolution. I titled it simply Children On The Beach. Jud and Steve thought the
figures resembled Marlon Brando and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis in their respective childhoods.
I stayed on this theme for a few days, trying to complete a contiguous second panel of the beach
scene; this time depicting an old man with a cane, a bucket and a goose. Everything was going well until
a few misplaced dots spoiled the expression on the old man’s face. India ink by its nature is so definite
and permanent. In frustration, I took scissors, cut the drawing into five or six pieces and pasted it into
my journal as a drawing that had failed.
I was careful to try not to let anyone see or interfere with my drawing process while immersed, since
a derogatory or even passing remark could taint my enthusiasm for a particular drawing.
A few days later, I arranged Susan’s dolls in the living room and tried to capture their playful
innocence. They all had names: Whodunit the Turtle, Bird, Clancy, Clock, Aphid, Berry Berry and
Annie. I suppose the reason I appreciated these dolls so much was that they fit neatly into a parallel
universe or sorts – a world created entirely by Susan. Jud’s work did the same thing. In a less obvious
way, I suppose mine did, too.
One day, we hiked the barren canyons adjacent to Hollywood, and then drove out into the rugged
San Gabriel Mountains northeast of Los Angeles. On the way, we followed Vermont Avenue leading
uphill toward the short tunnel near the Griffith Park Observatory. The avenue was lined with trees that
had unusual snakelike roots. I was fascinated with these and spent a day sketching them. Once I had
captured the framework needed to execute the image, I began to play with the literal scene. Two of the
swirling roots converged back upon themselves and I connected them with an Escher-esque twist.
Just up Winona Boulevard, there was an exotic garden. Actually, the plants were quite common for
Los Angeles, but I was fascinated at how remarkably different the flora was from that of the east coast.
There was an oriental look about them. I envisioned that the vegetation in California was a perfect
compromise between oriental and Appalachian botany and spent a day experimenting with different
ways to capture these plants in ink. Winona Landscape Fantasy emerged and in suggesting the lines of
the grass, I borrowed the swirling root structure from the Griffith Park trees.
Bored with rectangular formats, I retrieved an oval serving plate in Susan’s cupboard and traced it
onto a blank page from my drawing pad. The oval lent itself nicely to single axis or mirror image
symmetry. I sketched in a pair of reflected birds in flight that had evolved from my Snake Bird Violence
drawing and incorporated other common images from my various Universal Models. The only
suggestion of mankind was the impression of an eye, but this could also be readily interpreted as a sun.
Clearly, I was avoiding human figures in my drawings. To be honest, I wasn’t very adept or confident
with human forms, but I also chose to exclude humanity because of the tremendously detrimental impact
man was having upon the environment and upon nature.
Religions of the world typically adhere to the premise that mankind is far superior in intelligence to
the animal kingdom. Most religions believe that only humans have souls. Animals are relegated to a
purely instinctive existence without consciousness or self-awareness.
In my observations of animals, I perceived very definite souls with uncanny intelligence. It takes
tremendous effort for humans to survive. Animals perform these same tasks with great integrity and
simplicity. They do so without any assistance, props or technology. They utilize local materials to create
organic architectures that are every bit as beautiful and functional as Frank Lloyd Wright structures. As
part of the food chain, animals will resort to aggressiveness and violence, but they possess a remarkable
dignity in their ongoing struggle to survive. Without question, they are deserving of our highest esteem,
especially given that they do not violate their environments.
Trees and vegetation do an even greater job of living in symbiosis with other living forms. Granted,
an argument can be made that plants are devoid of soul, feeling or consciousness. Their beauty and
benefit is, however, intrinsic and deserving of respect and protection. Mankind fails miserably in this
regard, continuing with arrogance on a progressively destructive track that threatens the existence of
vegetation, animal life, clean air, and ironically of mankind itself.
So during this time, I adopted an “anti-man” philosophy in my illustrations. Perhaps it would be
more accurately stated that I refused to illustrate the existence or impact of man, opting instead to show
self-sustaining environments of vegetation and occasional animal habitats, uncontrived, harmonious and
devoid of human degradation.
Oval Butterfly was completed as an introductory panel for the front end of my illustrative journal.
The white panel in the center was intentionally and carefully cut away, then mounted in its protective
vinyl sleeve to reveal what lay beyond.
While I was addressing specific parts of a book, it seemed logical that I should create end papers of
the type found in older manuscripts. These are often processed with a swirled resist or imprinted with a
nondescript pattern. Spiral Frontispiece was drawn for this specific purpose.
As the seasons change, the cycles of life become evident. I was sitting on the curb and was
enthralled to notice the entire regenerative cycle of the dandelion occurring right in front of me: the seed
delicately perched at the end of its silken airborne javelin, then awkwardly sprouting upward and
downward simultaneously in the soil, emerging with its pale jagged leaves, the maturing plant with
closed pastel buds revealing tips of brilliant gold, the yellow flower poised upon its tubular and bitter
stalk, the soft almost geodesic translucent globe of the discarded flower gone to seed – then with one
swift gust, the seeds disperse to repeat the Procreative Dandelion once again. The idea of containing a
complete life cycle within the larger macrocosm of the plant itself appealed to me. I tried this same
strategy later with a milkweed with less successful results.
There is no question that M. C. Escher had a tremendous influence on my technique and approach,
but I was genuinely offended when people would make what was no doubt an obvious comparison
between us. I was struggling to find my own identity as an illustrator and as a writer, but was often
caught in the influential traps of those who had inspired me. Instead of trying to avoid the
acknowledgement of my influences, I gradually began to execute tributes to honor them. This turned out
to be a much healthier arrangement and it provided occasional fresh subject matter or diversion from
illustrative tedium.
Like a million other hippies, I had scoured The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran and was captivated by one
of his mystical pencil drawings. I adapted and rendered it in my pen and ink style with some satisfaction.
I did the same with Escher’s woodcut of trees reflected on the surface of a pond. The clear benefit of this
exercise was that I quickly grasped the technical trickery and magical realism of ripples and reflections.
After learning to acknowledge and be proud my influences, I encountered another emotional issue
related to my artwork. I was completely incapable of accepting compliments. Granted, some people just
didn’t relate to my drawings, but more often I would receive praise for my work or upon close
inspection, onlookers would tell me that they liked a particular aspect of a drawing that I was working
on. For some odd reason, I felt compelled to counter-balance any praise I received with instant selfcriticism and deprecation. Usually I would express this by pointing out areas of detail within a drawing
that were unintended or flawed. In any event, such reactions were inappropriate and insincere.
It wasn’t until an encouraging friend and patron named Mary Kinnear grabbed me by the shirt
collar in frustration, shook me, and exclaimed: “You just don’t know how good you are!” that I finally
realized how valuable it was to simply respond by saying thank you when someone offers a compliment.
My drawings continued to focus on the simplicity of nature with exercises like Sun Through Trees,
that inadequately attempted to demonstrate the ironic visual phenomenon that background sunlight can
overpower the foreground of an image. There I go again degrading my work, thank you!
I had religiously saved the exoskeleton of cholla cactus from my journey west through the desert. I
took it out of its protective box, lit it with a desk lamp and sketched it, letting it take its own shape. It
started to resemble a woman’s head, then it began to appear meditative. An almost Hindu Wormwood
Vision emerged, interesting but also slightly disturbing. I don’t recall why I felt compelled to add a
Saturnal ring. Perhaps I had spilled a drop of ink in that area.
In any event, the texture of the cactus was much more interesting than this woman, so I struggled to
identify a vehicle or framework that would serve to accentuate that texture. The triple helix appealed to
me when I landed upon it by accident. There had been a lot of talk about the unraveling of DNA in the
news. The notion of three strands seemed to nest well with the simple philosophical trilogy of “mind,
body, environment” that I had retained from my Gettysburg Life Sculpture #1. In order to visualize the
complicated geometry, I twisted some pipe cleaners into the basic form, sketched the skeleton of the
triple helix, then rendered it carefully in pencil with the wormwood texture. I was very pleased with the
resulting DNA Spiral and ran off Xerox copies at the local library.
The oval plate in Susie’s cupboard was once again retrieved for Illuminated Candle, an attempt to
capture the psychedelic structural brilliance of a candle’s flame, and for Hollywood Palm, a portrait of
the impressive towering palm tree that grew directly in front of our Winona Boulevard house (and for
that matter just about everyone else’s house in Southern California).
Someone had warned me that if I were to remain in California for more than two years, I would
probably never return to the east coast. Because of this comment, I remained cognizant of the duration
of time that I spent out west. I was curious and slightly frightened that there might be some truth to the
statement.
There were many things I loved about California. The avocados had a heavenly texture that I had
grown quite attached to and I could buy them for a dime apiece. I loved the progressive feeling in the air
and I loved the gnarled coastal trees and exotic vegetation. There was never any snow, but I sure did
appreciate the sunshine. I did miss the familiarity of Pennsylvania and I suspected that there might be
better opportunities for me on the east coast where people seemed to take life a bit more seriously.
I also felt that I had failed. I had been trying to find a framework within which my personal culture
could thrive and take root, yet a string of idealistic and utopian experiments stretching from Gettysburg
to Vermont to California had slapped me repeatedly back to square one, discouraged and penniless.
Furthermore, the counter culture to which I felt so connected seemed to be losing some ground. The
Beatles had broken up. Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison and Janis Joplin were dead. In John Lennon’s own
words, the dream was over.
Spectrums
all forces are in constant opposition
neither good nor bad, optimistic nor pessimistic
spectrums form like bridges
male to female
simple to complex
stable to tenuous
technical to thematic
gradual and subtle
every space occupied
the atom to infinity
heat to cold
light to dark
white to black
with color stretched between
contrast emerges
life to death
pleasure and pain
these polarities that exist
are not meant to suggest duality
or schizophrenia
but what might be called multiphrenia
in the same way that a spider weaves a web
between two branches
and catches the fly
in coordinates therein
the life giving ecological source
locates itself somewhere in this rainbow
peace to violence
as natural climates change
sun to cloud
cloud to rain
rain to lightning
lightning to thunder
thunder to hurricane
hurricane to tornado
tornado to earthquake
holocaust insanity disaster war
and back again to a gentle wind
all of this occurs inside and outside
the mind of humanity
living
breathing
growing
progressing
procreating
sustaining
maturing
ailing
reviving
dying
the total weight of the universe
remains the same
a fixed number of particles
forming permanent structures
that defy permanence
time is motion
requiring height width depth energy
combustion
consumption
the atom and the universe
both possess the same structure
out of context they lose their size
vast expanses of space separate miniscule masses
even asymmetry is a form of symmetry
dynamics tension integrity
too abstract too real
more spectrums
abstraction is fantasy
the subconscious makes it real
expression is art
release is positive – intrinsic
beautiful awkward
gathered disintegrated
brilliant ignorant
appreciated ignored
organic artificial
pure tainted
spectrums – not poles
abstract expressionists splatter paint
toward twenty foot canvases
the result is physical emotional
they call it art
cubists chop their forms
into blocks of color and space
the result is practical suggestive
they call it art
impressionists diffuse hard lines into soft shades
the result is sensitive spiritual
they call it art
only three prerequisites for creation
a desire
a design
a means of execution
the architect and the engineer
are even better
when they work together
when they are
the same person
Rides For Riders
My time in Hollywood had been extremely prolific and rejuvenating, but after several months, I was
running the risk once again of outstaying my welcome. I made the decision to return east and started to
casually explore strategies for getting back.
There were so many hippies in their early twenties who were traversing the country that there was a
definite need for a cross-continental carpooling service. Accordingly, a nationwide organization, and I
use the word “organization” very loosely, was formed. The company was called Rides For Riders. There
were offices in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Denver, Chicago, Houston, Miami, New York and Boston.
It cost roughly $25 to join. This nominal fee entitled a member to submit his or her name, address,
phone number, destination, and preferred departure date at the closest office. Travelers that owned
vehicles could also join and submit their travel plans. Rides For Riders would then match people with
similar destinations with drivers who wished to defer their cross-country expenses.
I joined this group in mid-April of 1973 in the hope that I might eventually return to the east coast
without spending much, if any, of the funds that I didn’t have. I had hitchhiked my way to kingdom
come and wasn’t particularly interested in trying that again. I wasn’t in any particular hurry to leave
Hollywood either, so I simply told them: New York any time in June. I received a call in late May that
an airport limousine seating twelve passengers, driver included, would be departing from Los Angeles
on June 10th. This was just what I was looking for and I reserved my spot over the phone. If each of the
eleven passengers were to chip in just $30, that would more than cover the $300 that was needed for
gasoline and oil.
We all met at Rides For Riders headquarters on the prescribed date and time. Our tawny brown twotone airport limousine was twenty-five years old and had been driven hard, but it had an engine that ran
and four bald tires. That was good enough for us.
Our first miscalculation was luggage. There were in fact seats for eleven people, but realistically it
would have taken two cars to carry all the suitcases, sleeping bags and backpacks that everyone had.
Two people volunteered out, the fee increased to $50 each, and we managed somehow to cram
everything in so that any notion of comfort was out of the question.
Loaded to the gills with our gas tank overflowing, we inched our way down Wilshire Boulevard
toward Interstate 40 heading east. Our tires strained under the pressure. Halfway to the Arizona border,
we had gathered enough inertia to get us all the way to Flagstaff. We were rolling.
Then, all of a sudden: Pop! We blew a tire in the 110º sweltering heat outside of Needles, California.
In order to access the jack, we had to completely unload all of the crap that had taken us two hours to
pack. Everyone chipped in $5 to replace the tire and the rim. After many hours of deliberation and
repacking, our slightly skeptical group was back on the road barreling toward Gallup, New Mexico
where sure enough... fire two! We popped another tire.
Same routine. This time no spare. We hobbled our vehicle for a mile and a half to a truck stop where
we spent the night waiting for a mechanic to arrive for duty. Another $5 per passenger was extracted. I
was down to my last $35 and with that I had hoped to feed myself at least one meal a day along the way.
By noon we were back in business, but we lost one dejected rider who cut his losses and bailed in favor
of hitching. Our first mutiny.
In Albuquerque, we watched in amazement as a part fell off the car and bounced behind us off the
roadside. Apparently it was one of those parts that look important but simply serve no useful purpose.
As we approached Oklahoma City we were regaining our confidence. Heading north on I-44 toward
Tulsa, the brakes started to squeal metal on metal. We drove with our gears, but our luck didn’t hold out.
As we approached St. Louis, our temperature gauge was pushing the upper limits. We stopped to fill
the radiator with water to find that there were a few dozen pinhole leaks spewing a greenish bile all over
the wretched steaming engine. One of the hoses was shot and we needed a new radiator. A half a day at
the junkyard and I was down to my last $10. A couple from Cleveland defected. It didn’t look good. We
christened our vehicle Ship Of Fools after the Grateful Dead tune that was blaring from our jury-rigged
coat-hanger-antennaed radio.
Miraculously, we traversed the expanse from St. Louis to Indianapolis along Interstate 70. Halfway
to Columbus there was an unusual grinding noise coming from the under-carriage. Then a worrisome
wobble, then a sudden snap.
The vehicle limped to the shoulder. We all got out to take a look. The back tires looked funny. Our
driver stuck his head under the rear axle, then came up wiping a spot of grease from his right ear. The
axle had snapped in two near the universal joint. This car was dead.
We stuck with the driver for a half an hour, just long enough to assuage any guilt we might have felt
by deserting, which we all did shortly thereafter.
One by one we peeled off the center meridian across the macadam to the eastbound shoulder. I
paired up with a fellow rider named Dave who was headed to my general area. In fifteen minutes we got
a ride to Columbus. Along the way to our great delight we passed several of our pleading cronies
suffering with thumbs held high, then as we hitched around the Columbus beltway, several of those
same smirking faces zoomed by us. Eventually Dave and I got another ride, then another, then another
into the utter delirium of the night.
At two in the morning, we cruised into an all-night gas station in the mountainous forests of
northwestern Pennsylvania. I had saved several dimes for the pay phone. I awakened my father with a
collect call. He was groggy but glad I was headed home. He instructed me to call him when I was closer
to Stroudsburg.
At five o’clock, I made that call and as the sun squinted over the New Jersey horizon, my father
sighted Dave and I on the shoulder and pulled over. Thirty minutes later we pulled into our driveway
and staggered into the kitchen through the back door.
Dave stayed the night and we both slept well into the next afternoon. I borrowed the car and drove
him down to his friend’s farm in Quakertown, then returned to savor the simple comforts of home.
Re-entry
For a few days, I wallowed in my appreciation of home. Just having a mattress with sheets was a
considerably luxury, not to mention a selection of food in the refrigerator. And so I settled into our
suburban utopia.
Our parents loved sports and they loved to travel. It wasn’t unusual for them to go away for a week
or two with their friends the Bishops, especially for the summer or winter Olympics. During these
occasional excursions, the responsible Boak boys would be entrusted with the management of the
household. Within hours of their departure, word would spread through the neighborhood and around
town. Before long, strange cars would overflow the driveway and line the street.
On one such occasion, we were anticipating a rather large crowd and thought it would be intelligent
to roll up the living room rug so that drinks or cigarette butts wouldn’t do any permanent damage. We
were right in doing so. The party was a classic example of ‘70s raucousness. There were people packed
into every nook and cranny of the house. Kegs were flowing in the basement and couples were making
out in the coat closets.
Prior to our parent’s return, we did an immaculate job cleaning every square inch of the house. We
recycled the empties, mopped and waxed the floors, opened the windows and aired out the muskiness,
replaced the furnishings, dusted the windowsills and polished the silver. It was really quite impressive.
Mother would have relished our thoroughness.
Several weeks later, long after our parents had settled back into their household routine, my mother
was over in the corner of the living room and a confused look came over her face. There was a very
distinctive cigarette burn in her carpet. She wasn’t upset about it because she was the one who had
caused the burn several years ago. The problem was that this particular burn had occurred at the
diagonally opposite end of the living room where the rug had miraculously healed itself. Before
repositioning a ton and a half of furniture, the rug had obviously been unrolled and set back into place
backwards.
My mother was a very intelligent woman – a graduate of Wellesley, in fact – but I honestly don’t
believe that the reality of the situation registered in her mind. She was so trusting that I believe she
convinced herself that her own recollections were flawed. She could never acknowledge the possibility
that the entire contents of her living room had somehow been levitated. So she went on with her routine,
fully blocking the notion that her angelic sons might have been up to no good.
New Perspectives
Many artists have executed a single work that is acknowledged by critics to have attained the status
of “masterpiece.” This idea intrigued me and I spent some time trying to define the exact ingredients of
a masterpiece.
A masterpiece certainly needs to be the primary work of an artist, and all prior works of an artist are,
in hindsight, preparatory. Most masterpieces have a very significant theme or sense of relevance.
Technical execution must be inspired and flawless. The style must define and exemplify the unique
vantage point of the artist.
Picasso’s Guernica is a great example of a painting widely considered to be a “masterpiece.” I
certainly recognized the incredible flawlessness in Michelangelo's Pieta, and given that a madman had
broken through museum security and taken a hammer to the timeless sculpture, I was both disturbed and
inspired. Salvador Dali had executed several major efforts that fell into this category. I had attempted to
pay tribute to Dali’s work with a circular swirl of surrealistic imagery, but now it seemed time to focus
in on my own themes and concepts.
In Hollywood, Jud’s brother Steve had introduced me to chess. There was a moment during one of
my first games when the symbolic power of each piece came to life for me – when I realized that the
game could be played with compassion or ruthlessness depending upon the whims or personalities of the
opponents. I also realized that some degree of sacrifice is necessary to insure the survival of the most
number of pieces.
During my journey east, I gave much thought to chess and began to construct a drawing in my mind.
It seemed to me that this particular theme had the potential to be a masterpiece. There was plenty of
room for detail; in fact each piece was a drawing in and of itself. Given the relationship of power and
vulnerability between the pieces, the game lent itself to a complexity of meaning.
Technically, I was already very immersed in the study of perspective. I had a good working
knowledge of the rules, but the complicated point of view for my chess drawing idea was requiring a
deeper understanding, especially since the relative size of every chess piece is somewhat indicative of
the piece’s power on the board.
Prior to tackling such an extended project, I decided to accept my family’s invitation to join them in
Iron City once again. While I was there, I played a great deal of chess and the conceptualization for my
drawing continued to develop. As a preliminary study for the chess board’s spatial grid, I did a simple
drawing of a framework that highlighted a fawn modeled from a small wooden carving that I found in
the cabin. The resulting Metaphysical Trellis was trite but useful.
Upon my return to Bethlehem, I was confident and ready to proceed. I purchased a 30” x 40” sheet
of illustration board and started to lay out the squares of the chess board. I had decided that it would be
necessary to play several games against myself, so I set up stools on either side of the board and
alternated chess moves. I knew that visually I wanted to end up with an intriguing, balanced, and
puzzling conclusion with many of the primary game pieces still in action. On my seventh round, the
dynamics of the game started to look enticing. There had been a rapid exchange of pawns and without
really noticing the predicament, the black side had placed itself in unusual jeopardy. One less than
obvious move by the white queen yielded a clever checkmate.
I transferred the locations of each piece to the drawing and began to vertically project their relative
heights. In sketching the individual pieces, I attempted to have each one enact its own advantage or
predicament on the chess board. After the basic pencil drawing was close to completion, I started inking
with the hope that there would still be some room for improvisation or spontaneity. I spent nearly a
month enhancing what the pencil lines suggested to me and I grew increasingly more excited with the
results. After the drawing felt complete, I tried to capture a verbal description of the game:
Checkmate
(A brief explanation of reality)
There is a chess game being played inside a great open-air theater. The perspective in the room
emanates from the rays of the sunset. The players are people, acting out their individual situations.
The white queen carrying the torch of liberty is placing the black king in check with her lance. His
face shows horror as he raises his right hand in a defensive plea for mercy. The tiny dagger is a futile
weapon, for there are no potential victims within his short reach. He is obliged to move out of check, but
the white queen’s attack prevents any forward motion, and since the white corner square is covered by
the white bishop holding the flag "VICI" (I conquer) and the Bible opened to the Book of Job (the story
of imposed suffering), it seems that the black king has indeed been cornered into Checkmate.
The black bishop facing the “VICI” bishop wears the crown of thorns and holds the white flag of
surrender upon which he has managed to faithfully retrieve the skeleton key that unlocks the ball and
chain that shackles his queen’s ankle. She gestures with her hand and cries for help, but it is too late. She
is on the wrong square to be of any aid in capturing the attacking queen. The damsel in the black castle
weeps in full awareness of her queen’s doom. The white damsel rejoices and waves her handkerchief to
suitors.
The first black pawn (kneeling) clasps his hands and pleads for mercy. The second pawn scratches
his head in confusion and doubt. The third pawn, unaware of his doom, motions for counterattack while
reaching for his dagger in a last spark of hope. The fourth pawn is blindfolded and holds the scales of
justice, while the pawn to his left plunges a suicidal dagger into his heart. The garments worn by the
black team have been torn during the charge of battle.
The second white bishop is the only player on the board that knows the real irony of the game’s
situation. He is the one that survived to draw the picture you are viewing, which insinuates that his ploy
of offering sugar cubes to the black horse as appeasement is in reality an act of distraction; distraction
indeed, from the fact that the board has been set up incorrectly from the beginning of the game (the
white square to the right rule), but it seems that none of the endangered are aware of this disqualifying
factor, as all are prepared to accept their tragic destinies.
The sun watches patiently, aware that the game will be resigned before the black power of night has
had a chance to alter the eminent outcome, which is in spite of any reconciliation..... CHECKMATE !
Billy
Billy was my brother John’s good friend. He was 16 years old and he lived about a mile away,
though he spent enough time at our house that we all considered him a member of our family. He had
grown his hair quite long and he had a serious girlfriend, but he was a responsible kid. He loved music.
He had worked very hard mowing lawns that summer to earn enough money to purchase a nice stereo
system.
Like millions of other teenagers growing up in the early seventies, Billy and his rather conservative
parents had become alienated. They were elders in the Presbyterian church and were having trouble
seeing past Billy’s long hair and idealism to realize that they had a fairly well-adjusted son on their
hands.
One Friday night Billy borrowed his father’s car for a date. He was supposed to be home by
midnight, but for some reason he was late. The next morning he slept in, having forgotten that he had
agreed to mow the lawn. Late in the morning, he was still in bed listening to his stereo through the
headphones when his mother suddenly entered the bedroom. He didn’t notice her standing there.
Apparently, she told him to turn the music down several times, but with the headphone volume up, he
didn’t hear her. In frustration, she reached her arm over to the turntable to turn the music off but instead
her quick motion knocked the turntable off the dresser. It smashed on the floor.
Billy was horrified. He took his headphones off, got off the bed and ordered his mother out of his
room. She refused, they argued, and in their brief argument, she stumbled in the hallway, lost her
balance and fell backwards toward the stairwell.
Hearing the commotion upstairs, Billy’s father arrived at the bottom of the stairs just in time to see
his wife fall. She landed shaken up but without any serious injury. Billy’s father, assuming that Billy had
pushed his mother, was incensed. A fight ensued and Billy apparently took the worst of it. When the
police arrived, emotions were still boiling over. Charges were pressed and Billy was taken to the
hospital, after which he was in effect disenfranchised from his family.
Our family was very saddened by these occurrences. We visited Billy first at the hospital, then at a
city halfway house where he was being partially detained. After a great deal of compassion and
discussion, my father decided to offer our home to him in the interim. Billy accepted, Social Services
approved, and Billy’s parents accepted his exile as a reasonable option under the strained circumstances.
And so Billy became the fifth son in our family, at least until he was able to finish high school and
heal his wounded family relationship enough to pursue college. He did fine and eventually asked Kim to
marry him. Their wedding was intensely emotional. Billy and Kim had asked me whether I would play
autoharp at their wedding. I did them one better by writing and performing a very personal song for
them that has served to capture that moment accurately. It was a hard song to sing. My voice broke apart
in the final verses.
Wedding Song
Since I first met this bride and groom so many years have past.
Our memories stretch back endlessly. The time moves by so fast.
Out on the curb of Langhorne Drive we shared the chessmen’s pawns.
The seeds of friendship sowed themselves while mowing summer lawns.
At Pondelek’s and Gregory's, with brother John and Sue,
Rick and Sandy, Roy and Jim, and every one of you.
We grew from children into men and women... every one.
We all experienced growing pains before those years were done.
With motorcycles, loud guitars, and long unruly hair
I’m sure our parents wondered why we didn’t seem to care.
But what parents often overlook when offspring seek themselves
is that all their love and influence must age upon the shelves...
like a wine that starts with bitter grapes,
the flavor won’t mature
until the years have given birth
to something sweet and pure.
Here your friends have gathered to witness from the start
the blessing of this union and the blending of your hearts.
The road that lies ahead of you will now and then seem tough
but a fraction of the love I’ve seen will surely be enough
to nourish and sustain you
through every dream and goal.
Your home is now the house you’ve found
within each other’s soul.
William Scott Cooper
Kimberly Anne Purcell
We pray for your true happiness.
We proudly wish you well.
This union that you’ve started
is shared within our hearts.
The sum is always greater
than all the single parts.
For Billy & Kim, Bethlehem, PA
February 28, 1981
The ABCs of Printing
I had Xeroxed a number of my drawings and had even published a few small amateur editions, but
upon the completion of Checkmate I pursued a more professional print shop. Under Printing Companies
in the Yellow Pages at the very top of the alphabetical listing was ABC Printing Company. I called and
made an appointment.
The owner was Russ Borman, a wiry and energetic local who had printer's ink in his blood. He took
great pride in his craft and spent most of his waking hours at work. His business had a cramped waiting
room that funneled into a twisting hallway that led to the old presses and the smell of solvent. There was
paper stacked everywhere, including the stairwell that led to the second floor where he harbored an
antique typesetter and a single-color Heidelberg press. There were rumors around town that he had
gotten in trouble for counterfeiting. This was unlikely, though it could have helped to explain his street
smarts and rough exterior. Out of sheer curiosity, I always kept my eyes open for stacks of freshly
printed twenty dollar bills around his shop.
Russ was down-to-earth and appreciative of art. He was impressed with my drawings and realized
that he could be of service to me. He took it as a personal challenge to capture the unusual level of detail
and I think he also saw some small opportunity for himself. The drawings really did lend themselves
very well to the offset printing process.
Russ liked the reflective trees in Sunrise/Sunset and quickly published a small edition. At his
suggestion, I hand-colored the background sun on each print and gave them edition numbers. Beyond
that, he encouraged me to focus on themes that might be locally marketable. In particular, there were
several local artists that were doing scenes of Bethlehem’s historic Moravian buildings. These were
selling well to local affluent ladies in need of living room art. After researching and completing two
drawings with Moravian themes, Russ agreed to publish prints and note cards for me at no charge in
exchange for his right to market them at the Moravian Book Shop. This was certainly a suitable
arrangement for me.
Russ’s press was too small to accommodate my larger Checkmate drawing, but he was kind enough
to refer me to Lehigh Litho, a competitor that specialized in larger commercial runs. It was difficult for
me to contain my excitement when they called to inform me that the prints were ready. I immediately
sped over and loaded up. The prints came out great. I was in business.
With Russ Borman’s help, I supplemented Checkmate with the publication of several smaller sized
editions. Faithfully, I would number and sign these, though I must confess that this became rather
tedious. Sometimes I would get through fifty or sixty prints and would tire of the routine. Weeks later I
would attempt to start up again without remembering exactly where I had left off.
Sometimes, individuals would ask for a specific number – perhaps the last two digits of their birth
year or something to that effect. I always tried to accommodate these requests briskly, though I do
believe there may be several of my patrons that unknowingly possess duplicate first prints or artist
proofs of the editions. I simply did not take this aspect of the art business very seriously.
In spite of such blatant unprofessionalism, I had some success selling my prints. I was insistent upon
setting the price at five dollars. I felt it more important that the work be accessible and affordable,
especially given that my particular fan base didn’t have much money to expend. If anyone were to ask, I
was quite willing to give the prints away for free. In fact, I often gave (and still give) full sets of prints as
tokens of appreciation. Some would say that this devalues the art and I suspect that is true. I would
rather have devalued art hanging on walls than valuable art sitting in a collector’s flat file.
Nevertheless, I did my best to learn the business of art. I discovered extruded brushed aluminum
frames at the local hobby shop. These were very fashionable at the time. I stocked several contrasting
shades of matt board and bought a beveled matt cutter. As I took more orders for my prints, I did more
and more framing, though I never enjoyed it enough to approach any level of perfectionism. Gradually, I
framed enough of my originals to entertain the idea of having an actual exhibition of my work.
Around this time I met John Cali, a talented silversmith with an entrepreneurial flair. He had a
thriving jewelry business in Allentown called Sorcerer’s Apprentice. He had married the older sister of
my friend Dale Patterson. Soon, I was busy learning the jewelry trade, laying out his wholesale catalog
and trying my hand at carving original designs out of jeweler’s wax. One of the first projects John gave
me was sculpting a belt buckle for the local Jaguar Owners Club. Advance orders were taken and the
buckles were then cast in pewter, silver and even one in gold.
So John and I became creative comrades. He shared my passion for chess and took great joy in
clearing my chessmen from the board.
Blair (Full Circle)
One afternoon, I drove up to Blairstown with a portfolio of my prints. I wanted to show them to
Robert Atkinson, my former art and drafting teacher at Blair Academy. More specifically, I wanted to
let him know how much I appreciated the education he had imparted to me. Few teachers had had as
much impact.
I visited Mr. Atkinson during one of his afternoon art classes and found him in a state of
bewilderment and frustration. He was from the old school. He ruled his classes with sternness and
discipline. For several decades, he had demanded and extracted excellence from his reluctant students.
Now, a third of the way through the seventies, he was feeling old and tired. He wasn’t relating to the
long-haired bell-bottomed crop of peace-niks and they weren’t relating to him. Instead they were
making irreverent cartoons behind his back and fashioning contraband hash pipes and hookahs in the
ceramics and wood shops.
The students responded immediately and intensely to my drawings. They asked a lot of questions
about my travels and experiences. I think they knew that I was one of them.
Mr. Atkinson noticed this phenomena and was intrigued by it. After class, we talked about art and
teaching. He asked me what I was doing. I explained that I was temporarily living at home trying to
make a go at being an artist.
He asked whether I might consider helping him teach art at Blair. I was very flattered at the prospect
that perhaps there was some viable way for me to blend back into the edge of society, and in doing so,
actually extract a meager living. I told him I certainly would consider it.
Shortly thereafter, I received a call from the headmaster’s office at Blair asking me whether I was
available that afternoon to come up for an interview. I made a last-ditch effort to clean up my act. This
consisted of showering, shaving, and dressing in a marginally presentable beige leisure suit a size and a
half too small.
I met with the deeply cerebral and mysterious headmaster, James Howard. He had known me as a
student and I’m sure his recollections bore some slight suspicions. My appearance did little to rectify
this. We did share a few common interests. He had enjoyed my creative writing projects when I was a
student. More recently, he had spoken in some depth with Robert Atkinson about my potential for an
assistant art teaching position.
Several weeks later, I received an ambiguous letter from Mr. Howard. It appeared that there would
not be a position for me at Blair in September. I was discouraged, but I immersed myself in illustration,
lost wax casting, and geodesic dome building. I was working on a drawing of a family of elephants to
commemorate my friend Lou Vida’s first child, and my friendship with silversmith John Cali started to
pay off. I executed a number of reasonably successful necklace designs for him in exchange for his
indulgence of my personal casting projects.
As suggested, I did stay in touch with Robert Atkinson and in mid-November, I received a second
invitation from the headmaster. Twenty minutes into our meeting, I was offered a full time position, $25
a week salary, full room and board, plus unlimited use of the various art studios. The school year was
well under way. In fact, autumn had nearly conceded to winter, but a faculty residence had suddenly
become available. Blair’s progressive chaplain Peter Amerman was getting married to my long time Iron
City Fishing Club friend Cindy Scott. They were to move into Millbrook Cottage. The plan was that I
would reside in Peter’s small bachelor’s apartment adjacent to the dining hall garbage corral. It worked
for me. I accepted the position and made arrangements to begin after the Christmas holidays.
I moved into my small two room apartment. It was more than I could have ever hoped for. I
organized my drawing area and began working out the course load with Mr. Atkinson.... Bob as I was
now allowed to address him. This protocol was quite difficult for me, given our longstanding and highly
disciplined teacher/student relationship.
Blair had been a boy’s school when I attended, but now it was very coed. Given that I was single and
twenty four, I found the presence of attractive young females on campus to be somewhat refreshing, if
not distracting. Ironically, I was in the middle of drawing the Garden Of Eden, complete with Eve and a
fresh bowl of forbidden fruit.
Within twenty-four hours of my arrival, a raucous pack of giggling students streaked past my
apartment window stark naked in the snow and the bitter cold darkness. Openly wild behavior of this
variety had become more and more commonplace. The students had somehow managed to diffuse any
sense of authority that might have existed. The dress code was breaking down. Blair’s long standing
traditions seemed to be in jeopardy. Fueled with a high level of misplaced intelligence, money,
marijuana, mischief, and the expected rebelliousness of teenagers, this flock of seagulls was difficult to
suppress.
My task was to impart my knowledge of pen and ink drawing, woodworking, ceramics, design, and
drafting to the student body. And when that was done, I was to fill in as the assistant soccer coach. The
students were busy too, though they took every opportunity to test my resolve as a teacher.
One bizarre student named Arthur had the potential for brilliance, but his humor generally spilled
over into obnoxiousness. One quick look at him and it was obvious that he liked to party. His hair shot
out radially from his head as if he had stuck his finger into an electrical socket.
Arthur signed up for my woodworking class thinking that it would be an easy ride. He probably was
correct, except that he made the mistake of showing up to class one day tripping on acid.
Unaware of his drug-induced condition, I did notice the upheaval he was causing in the class. Just as
I was helping another student cut some panels on the table saw, Arthur decided to bump in and demand
my assistance. I lost patience with him and asked him to leave the class. When he refused, I felt
compelled to escort him out physically and he fought me kicking and screaming all the way. I gave him
a good push toward the door and he reeled back quicker than I had expected. His back hit the wall like a
bursting water balloon and knocked the wind right out of him. When his knees buckled and he sank to
the floor, I bent down in panic, resuscitated him as best as I could, and took him directly to the
infirmary. He was fine, but I wasn’t. Embarrassed that I had lost control, I questioned whether I was
really qualified or cut out to be a teacher, but Bob Atkinson backed me and suggested that I should try to
chalk it up to experience.
There was an A. B. Dick mimeograph machine in the faculty lounge that was used mostly for
duplicating tests and homework assignments. Making a plate was as simple as typing or drawing directly
onto a two part master, tearing it off and applying the carbon side face up onto the drum of the press.
About one hundred impressions could be made with vigorous hand cranking before the plate would start
to fade.
Given my access to this press, I decided to publish a daily underground newsletter for the students
with the intent of challenging their creativity. I called it Conceptual Survival and distributed it by means
of a handful of selected students who pledged their discretion.
Conceptual Survival became a hit with the students and a handful of liberal faculty members. Topics
ranged from simple loom construction to origami. Occasionally I would find unique stories worth
reprinting, or perhaps a political or philosophical issue on campus that needed airing out. In total, I
published nearly a hundred editions and in doing so, I solidified a solid creative bond with the majority
of the students.
Belvedere
After a long day of classes at Blair, I had made plans to meet my brother John and his friend Andy at
a rock and roll haven called The First Edition about 10 miles west of Blairstown. I arrived early, passed
the time with some chili and Sambuca, and watched a terrible singer attempt to impersonate Jim
Morrison.
John and Andy rolled in at eleven in separate cars. They had a few drinks, tolerated the music for a
short while, then John suggested that we examine his freshly refurbished Alfa Romeo sedan. He was an
ace Alfa mechanic and had disassembled and soaked every single part of that car clean in solvent.
Sitting in the car, listening to the Grateful Dead at full volume while trying to put a feeble half-hearted
hustle on three pretty but evasive females, we smoked a bowl of John’s Colombian pot. From the back
seat, Andy pleaded with John for a test drive, and with an abrupt squeal, John peeled out onto Highway
94, top down, stereo speakers blaring, open beers in hand, a dank cloud of marijuana still hovering,
Playmate cooler packed to the brim with Molson in the back, all with the intention of rekindling Andy’s
fond memories of Alfa ownership. Off we flew, at 75 miles per hour and climbing, toward the foggy
village of Blairstown. Andy and I were hanging on for our lives as John rambunctiously accelerated
through the center of Blairstown’s notorious business district, where two or three police cars would
invariably linger in the sallow shadows of the local supermarket. A few minutes later and several miles
outside of town, we heard the sirens and reared our guilty necks around to the red and blue strobes
flashing paranoia up our spines. While John clumsily emptied his film canister out his open window,
Andy attempted to stuff two half-consumed Molson bottles under the seat. So we sat back,
unsuccessfully trying to regain our composure as two flashlights approached us from behind.
“License and registration,” the loud low voice reprimanded John. “You know we clocked you at
eighty for the last two miles.”
John, bleary eyed and cocky, reached for the glove compartment, which simultaneously plopped
open as the other officer aimed his flashlight through the passenger window. There to our utter disbelief
lay John’s baggie full of weed, not to mention a cleverly crafted soapstone pipe, ZigZag rolling papers,
and Bic lighter. In the dead silence of this tense moment, a slight but clearly audible clink resounded
from under the back seat as the two foaming bottles peeked out from underneath the vinyl flap.
“OK, out of the car!” In seconds, the three of us were quite deservedly spread-eagled against the car,
being frisked for concealed weapons and additional contraband. Then came the handcuffs.
“Whose pot is it?” Andy and I skulked in our silent innocence. My brother John had managed,
however, to maintain the same boisterousness that had gotten us into the predicament in the first place,
exclaiming with unnecessary rudeness “I have rights you know! I have the right to remain silent!”
“You know, if you’re the one that owns the car, and the beer, and the pot, we don’t have to arrest all
three of you.” One of the officers was attempting to be civil.
“I have the right to remain silent!” John regurgitated.
“Yea, I know. Shut up and get in the patrol car.” The policeman obviously was not amused by
John’s thorough knowledge of the law.
They read us our real rights, then we were off in a flash, side by side in the back seat with the CB
squawking. The wheels of justice roared down the road, every slight bump and frost heave engaging the
self-tightening clasps around our already numb wrists.
We arrived at the Blairstown Police Station at 1:30 AM where we were once again informed of our
rights. An apologetic phone call was made to the local prosecutor to discuss our situation. Much of this
conversation was aimed at our eavesdropping ears and intended to instill a deep fear in us so that we
would break down and violate John’s inalienable right to remain silent. Andy and I kept nudging John
and whispering “Just take the rap John and we’ll bail you out,” but self incrimination was not part of
John’s agenda for the evening.
Finally one of the officers, frustrated by his failure to invoke a confession, got tough: “OK, you
don’t want to talk. Let’s try a jail cell on for size.”
We were herded into the back of the police car and whisked off to Belvedere, which was about
twelve miles west of Blairstown. Upon our arrival, we were led to a rear door labeled “JAIL” and
“WARDEN.” Things weren’t going well.
Paperwork had to be filled out, more questions were asked, and of course photos and fingerprints.
An old codger named “Whitey” issued us our jailhouse attire, eating utensils, and bedding. As a clerk
began emptying our pockets, counting our money, stripping us to our skivvies, and cataloging our
belongings, brother John suddenly calculated that this was the correct moment to confess his guilt,
thereby freeing Andy and I.
“Cahhhchunk!” The extremely heavy spring loaded iron door closed with a very dramatic sound. It
briefly occurred to me that that’s why they call it the slammer. John kept trying to blurt out his
confession. “Too late for that.” chuckled the old geezer as we swished up a musty and dark flight of
stairs toward the cellblock.
Upstairs the jail was divided into two long sections with a narrow corridor dividing them. There
were several smaller private cubicles around the corner. Within each of the larger sections, there were
eight individual lockable cells that served as two-person suites, or for solitary confinement as needed.
These cells were about six by ten feet in size with iron fold-down wall-mounted bunk beds, a sulfur
stained sink, and a crude lidless toilet covered with wet newspapers.
Andy and John, mistaken as the two brothers, were isolated in one of the private cubicles and I,
thought to be the older ringleader, was put in the community cell that was overflowing with a generous
herd of unruly Friday night offenders.
Around the corner, I could here John rattling his tin cup across the bars yelling to the guards “I have
the right to make a phone call.” This got tiresome after a while, especially since one of the “felons” in
my cell threatened to stick his tin cup “where the sun don’t shine!“ John, realizing the sincerity of the
threat,” quickly subsided like a beer losing its head.
In the mean time, several prisoners were still awake in my cell. Two of them were hand-rolling
canned Bugler tobacco and watching a Jerry Lewis cop comedy on a small Sony TV placed in the
corridor just outside of arms reach. This made it impossible to change the channel or adjust the volume,
so Jerry Lewis it was. The movie was so absurdly appropriate though, I suspected the Belvedere Blue
may have inserted a video to somehow subconsciously rehabilitate us. I stayed up for several hours
trying to glean the most out of the experience, and after a few hassles with sleeping bottom-bunkers, I
found an empty upper berth with no mattress.
One of the guards was kind enough to bring a new mattress. A man in the next cubicle was
masturbating intensely with no apparent inhibition. I found out later that he had been in for three
months. I suppose that’s long enough to cause some social anomalies.
At 6:30 that morning, I was jostled by “Whitey” the guard who poured a dark liquid that resembled
coffee through the bars and dished out bowls of Sugar Pops and milk on a tiny tray that fit through a
rectangular opening in the door. When we ran out of hot coffee, my bunkmate summoned the guard and
blackmailed him into bringing some more. Lord knows what sordid details he possessed or how he had
obtained them.
For an hour, we rapped about cops and jails and crimes and how long everyone would be in. Four
under-educated brothers with very bad complexions were in for attempted bank robbery and
transportation of guns. They had been nabbed by a suspicious cop named Cattiani, just out of the Police
Academy. They were conspiring to “knock him off.” A fun group!
Another prisoner had rolled his International Scout three times and had refused to take the balloon
test, hence a mandatory sentence. The masturbator was arrested for trying to switch a tray of valuable
rings in a jewelry store. Cattiani got him too, though I couldn’t figure how.
An old man with no leg was incarcerated for trespassing in his own apartment. He hadn’t paid his
rent and the landlord had lost patience with him.
Joe, my newfound friend in the lower bunk, was doing time on welfare fraud charges that his wife
had brought against him. He had a girlfriend that he didn’t really trust and she had promised to bring
him some fresh Winstons that afternoon during visitor’s hours. Once, she smuggled in some grass inside
a pair of smelly old boots but Joe got caught smoking it and the judge tacked on an extra 30 days. None
of the inmates could afford counsel ($750 down) and bail bonds were even more expensive.
They finally let Andy make his phone call, thinking he was me. John and I never did get a chance to
make our phone calls, and it was probably best that we didn’t, since we might have had to call Dad. He
certainly would have risen to the challenge, as he had on countless other occasions, but not without a
major price for us to pay.
At 11:00 AM, they let us all out on our own recognizance. The two arresting officers were there in
their street clothes, geeky police shoes excepted, and they drove us down to the impound so that John
could reclaim his Alfa. John was rather ecstatic to have his keys back and he did drive at a snail’s pace
until the cops were out of sight. We headed promptly for the First Edition, where Andy and I retrieved
our vehicles and quite willingly went our separate ways. It was a night that we would not soon forget,
and one that personally I would never trade.
John did pay a price though. We reunited in court a few months later. John rose to the occasion and
pleaded guilty to speeding, possession of a controlled substance, and to what was then a small matter of
open beer in the car. It cost him $850 to have his records sealed. Andy and I were naturally happy to
chip in to the cause. I’m sure John thought that having the records sealed meant that the case was
“closed,” as well it should have been, except that his older brother had an incessant need to write
everything down, not to mention the foolish guts to publish it.
Such is the price of justice.
Dirge For Father
Steelman retiring after 39 years.
A million girders and a billion gears
have flown from his fingertips
along with the fears
of being proven unworthy and poor.
Success comes easy when the pace is set
on a handful of aces and a healthy bet.
The odds are unbeatable
but see what you get ?
A son that’s unworthy and poor.
One of his children is writing a song.
The words are confusing and the impact is wrong.
If you find it depressing
then don't sing along
unless you're unworthy and poor.
Ingredients Of A Good Luck Charm
Find the prescribed ingredients and follow these instructions with careful concentration:
The claw of a small bird that died a natural death. Wait years if necessary.
A child's tooth.
A white dove from the heart of a sand dollar.
A small pouch of soft leather made from the remnants of an old pair of shoes no longer worn.
Place the child's tooth in the grasp of the birds claw. Tie the claw into a tight clench using fish line
or dental floss. Place the claw and the sand dollar dove in the leather pouch and carry it with you until
you see a birds nest. No matter how high the nest is in the tree, find a way to place the pouch in the nest.
From this day on you will have good luck.
The Blair Academy Dome
With struts cut from 3/4” conduit, I constructed a 40’ diameter 5/8” geodesic sphere dome on the lip
of Blair’s natural bowl in the center of the campus. A group of about twenty students and faculty helped
with the assembly, which took about two hours. We covered the well-anchored dome with a surplus
army parachute, tying the loose cords tightly around the perimeter of the base. The dome was a
happening spot for the students, especially at night. There were lots of great stories about how it was
used, as one can imagine, but I envisioned it as a spiritual spot, a place where great conversation could
occur.
Several weeks after the dome was constructed, there was a drenching rainstorm that lasted several
days. The dome’s anchors consisted of 3’ struts that were sunken several feet below each hub, but the
rain had softened the ground and weakened their hold.
This small problem was further compounded by a day of exceptionally gusty winds. The parachute
was filled with air and was billowing like a ship’s sail. Right in the middle of Scott Landa’s afternoon
Spanish class, a huge gust lifted the dome up out of its anchors like a floating jellyfish or a hovering
alien spacecraft. As all of the student's jaws dropped in amazement, the dome rose and drifted airborne
up the hill toward the Language Arts Building. Then it made a slow meandering left turn, hesitated,
sighed to the right, rose again slightly, tipped and rolled, landing smack in the middle of the fenced-in
cesspool on the downhill exit to Millbrook Cottage.
The demise of the Blair Academy dome was featured prominently in the local newspaper. This was
simply another reminder that any weak hearted efforts toward durability or permanence will be quickly
rebuked by Mother Nature.
Short Poems:
Woodwind Cantata
outside the air is so frozen
that the trees creek
like a thousand old oak doors on rusted iron hinges
the wind seems
to lift the latch.
Strange Dream
A strange dream
can be like a huge piece of glass.
Today I woke up startled
searching for the broken slivers on the rug.
Cigarette Conscience
When I woke up this morning
I lit a cigarette immediately.
This is my guilty conscience showing through
telling me to punish my body
for the crimes my dreams committed.
South Vietnamese Baby Lift Tragedy
passing her silently in the hallway
her neckline dove down and crashed
like a mid-air jet collision
into an uncharted valley
of sweat beads and melting snowdrifts
the co-pilots were fortunate
bailing out in silken parachutes
side by side
down into a pool
where lost in the distraction of my eyes
they drown
The Paradox Of Need
The more you need
the less you get.
The syndrome isn’t over yet.
The less you get
the more you feed
on filling superficial need.
Striving
By pretending to be
what you wish to become
You will arrive
at what you are.
Dumpster Diving (Part One)
If you draw a line from Bethlehem to Blair Academy, it takes you right through the town of
Nazareth. The Martin Guitar Company had a billboard on Route 22 advertising their daily factory tours
and one day I stopped in on my way back to Blairstown. As someone interested in woodworking and
music, I was amazed by the tour and remember thinking that the factory was a woodworker’s dream.
After the tour, I asked the receptionist whether there were any dumpsters with scrap wood. She said
there were and directed me around to the side of the building. On that particular day, both dumpsters
were overflowing with sizeable blocks of mahogany and thinner cutoffs of rosewood, ebony and spruce.
I couldn’t believe my eyes. I pulled my car around to the side and filled the back seat and the trunk with
wood.
The off-fall was perfect for my woodworking course at Blair. I had never worked with rosewood or
mahogany and it was certainly a luxury. I returned to the dumpster every few weeks and gradually
figured out that the garbage trucks came on Tuesdays and Fridays, so Monday and Thursday afternoons
were optimum days for dumpstering.
I amassed quite a stack of exotic wood, so much so that I began to be selective in taking only larger
or more attractively grained pieces. There was enough mahogany veneer to experiment with some
simple musical instruments. I built a few mountain dulcimers and bazookie-esque mando-guitars. I
stocked the woodshop at Blair and when that was full, I stocked my father’s workshop in Bethlehem to
the gills. Naturally whenever I returned home, I always visited Martin to replenish my teaching supplies.
Pointing North
Laird Carlson was one of the more inspired teachers at Blair during my student days. While I was in
California, he had defected to The Stowe School, a small private school at the base of Mount Mansfield.
He stopped by Blair on his way from Philadelphia to Vermont and we had a chance to compare notes.
Laird and I shared many common interests and after talking for an hour, we realized that we also
shared some common friends at Stowe. I had met Tom and Eugenia Haney many years earlier through
my good friend John Saylor. Tom was teaching the sciences and Eugenia was doing modern dance.
There had been some turmoil at the school. Claudia, the head of the Art Department, was leaving due to
the untimely disintegration of her marriage. Laird suggested that if I were interested, this possible
opening might be a great opportunity for me.
In the days that ensued, I spoke to my friend John Saylor who in turn spoke to Tom and Eugenia,
who spoke to Laird. Before I knew it, I was headed north during the Easter break for an interview with
the headmaster of the school, Jack Handy. We made an immediate connection, though it became
apparent that I was going to get caught in a tiny political struggle at the school. Jack was leaving the
headmaster post. Miles Bryant was to become the assistant headmaster under Tino O’Brien, the former
head of Outward Bound at Hurricane Island. And Sarah, Mile’s significant but slightly unstable other,
had thrown her hat in the ring for the art position.
Nevertheless, the discussions evolved and it appeared that there might be a position for me in Stowe.
The job appealed to me for several reasons.
Blair was very traditional and there was no question that I was a square peg. The Stowe School, on
the other hand, seemed very utopian and progressive. The curriculum was heavily centered around
Outward Bound survival training. The faculty members were young and creative. And of course there
was the issue of remuneration. My salary at Stowe couldn’t possibly be any lower than what Blair was
paying me.
To tip the scales further, my role at Blair was growing more and more tenuous. The students
definitely had my number. I would return from my classes to find neatly rolled joints under my door. I
suppose this was a test of my character, or lack thereof. There was no one to blame but myself and I
wasn’t in a frame of mind to complicate my situation by relinquishing these clandestine gifts to the
school authorities. So I bided my time, focusing my energy toward the summer, the future and my
inevitable move northward.
Sensing that my short tenure at Blair might be coming to an end, I was swiftly approached by Myron
K. Barrett in the Administration Offices, who asked me whether I would illustrate a special certificate to
honor past Board Of Trustee members. I enjoyed the challenge but felt that the completed document
somehow exemplified the conservatism that I was attempting to escape.
With a feeling that I had gotten through by the skin of my teeth, I bid an emotional farewell to the
graduating students and to my fellow faculty members. I sequestered myself for several weeks within
the vacated studios at Blair to focus in on illustration and lathe turning, and to organize my meager
belongings for my trip northward.
I rented a small U-Haul-It and jury-rigged it to the chassis of my reluctant yellow Mustang. I filled
the trailer with a surprising cache of Martin veneers, woodworking tools, duffle bags, boxes of records,
art books, journals, prints and original illustrations. With both excitement and trepidation, I was off to
Vermont to begin the next chapter. I had no idea where the book was going.
Surviving Stowe
I was humbled by Mt. Mansfield – its legendary slopes looming over the tiny town of Stowe. The
school was perched on a hillside at the knees of the mountain, somewhat isolated from the
commercialism of the community. The Trapp Family Lodge was nearby, as were a hundred cozy
restaurants, resorts and A-frames that awaited the annual deluge of skiers who would arrive with the first
snowfall and remain until the spring thaw.
The school was Jack Handy’s vision. He had founded it as an alternative to more conventional
private schools, believing that character could be built more effectively in a setting that focused on
outdoor experiences such as hiking, camping and communing with nature. Students and faculty would
gather in the mountains of northeastern New York for the pre-school summer trek in late August. After
two weeks of navigating the mountainous terrain and canoeing Lake Champlain, dozens of weak and
insecure greenhorns were miraculously transformed into confident tough mountaineers. Ten-day treks
were repeated in the fall, winter and spring. The winter trek, typically to the nearby White Mountains of
New Hampshire, was the most intense and treacherous.
My apartment was on the middle floor of the main school building toward the end of a long corridor
that was lined with student rooms. There were more student rooms above me. Downstairs was the
community room, the kitchen, the dining commons and a few small administrative offices.
The school accommodated about a hundred high school aged students. They were much different
from the students at Blair. Given that there was less emphasis on discipline or traditional curriculum, the
students were considerably more unruly during their out-of-class time. Skiing, snowshoeing, and winter
camping were encouraged. There were a few dozen makeshift shelters scattered across the hillside
behind the school and after dinner, a third of the students would bundle up with their sleeping bags and
backpacks and tough it up to their snow caves and huts. It was a genuine surprise to see these same
students appear in the dining commons fully refreshed at the crack of dawn for hot coffee and oatmeal.
I immersed myself in teaching. There was an active ceramics program. I did my best to learn as
much common sense alchemy as possible, but clearly, some of my students knew more than I did about
wheel throwing and kiln firing. I caught up quickly out of necessity.
I was able to organize a nice woodworking area using the existing maintenance shop. This was a
new course offering for the school and I had a sizeable group of interested students who joined in my
experimentation with lathe turnings, inlaid boxes, and primitive musical instruments.
A local writer, David Budbill, was holding a writer’s workshop and I signed up. In twelve short
weeks, I produced an impressively prolific pile of immature dribble, but I did get exposed to some
extraordinary contemporary writers who expanded my horizons. About ten percent of what I wrote had
some redeeming value, which I suppose is par for the course.
Tom Haney was as enthralled with geodesic domes as much as I was. Prior to my arrival, he had
completed the basic shell of a plywood dome. I helped him with the finishing touches that involved
painting and leak-proofing the seams with a rubber-based roofing cement.
Our math instructor, Bob Paine, had initiated an independent student radio station. WMTF 91.5 FM
broadcast at a meager ten watts in the valley leading down to the town of Stowe, but on clear nights the
signal could reach as far as Montpelier. Our challenge was keeping the students from jeopardizing their
radio broadcasting license by playing The Fish Cheer or other four letter clips buried on select rock n’
roll albums. I had my own show and even though the audience was miniscule, I loved the unbridled
creativity that was possible with two turntables, a microphone, a tape machine, and a barrage of beat
poetry. I would always sign on with Jeff Beck’s Diamond Dust infused with the instrumental
bombardment of Jimi Hendrix’s Third Stone From The Sun, and I would sign off with Goodnight,
Ringo’s sleepy track from The White Album. Beyond this, my radio career did not flourish.
One Saturday morning, I arose at the crack of dawn to keep an early appointment with The Stowe
Pottery. The owner had offered to share some of his glazing formulas with me and given my
shortcoming in this area, I couldn’t pass up such a generous offer. Overnight, a half a foot of snow had
fallen. In Vermont, you don’t measure snow in inches and you certainly don’t let it slow you down. I
bundled up and went out to the school parking lot to get my Mustang warmed up. Instead of shoveling, I
decided to back up and make a run for the road. By gaining enough acceleration, it was possible to break
through the plowed snow that separated the lot from the road. This was standard Vermont procedure.
The only problem was that my back tires were spinning in a rut. It was much too early to wake
anyone for a push, so I opened the driver’s door, put the car in reverse and standing with half my body
outside the car, I started to rock the chassis and forth with my left leg. After a few tries, this turned out
to be a bit too effective. The car lifted up and out of the ruts and took off backwards with me in tow,
holding onto the car door for dear life. Since I was unable to get back in the driver’s seat to apply the
needed brakes, my car plowed right into the back bumpers of not one but two cars: an MG owned by
Jack Handy, and a Corvette owned by Miles Bryant. Two little sports cars with one simple blow! It took
particular courage to awaken them to explain the damage that had been inflicted upon their cherished
automobiles.
My car was already so mutilated with fender-benders that my vehicle may have actually improved,
but my bank account and insurance premium suffered. This occurrence was one of the early indications
that I would never win any awards for my driving skills.
The Mountain
My friend and fellow faculty member, Wolf Fulton, offered to team up with me for the annual
Winter Trek. I deferred to Wolf’s better judgment as to our choice of destination, since he had been on
many winter treks and I had been on none. He chose Mt. Lincoln and Mt. Garfield in the Presidential
Range. This was considered easier than Tuckerman’s Ravine but still quite challenging, especially the
gusty and barren section of Jefferson Pass connecting the two summits.
About nine students signed up for our trek. We had a fairly strong group with some prior experience.
There were a few hiking blisters to contend with and our packet of Polaroid film had frozen, but
otherwise the first half of our journey went without a hitch. As we gradually increased in elevation, the
temperature dropped, the weather worsened and the winds picked up. We reached the summit of Mt.
Garfield in the midst of a blizzard on our sixth day. It must have been 30º below zero up there. We
found a low stone wall in which we were able to huddle for several minutes, but it was smarter to keep
moving. The cold had us somewhat disoriented. In spite of the fact that all of the trail markers were
buried beneath the snow, Wolf managed to thread us onto the icy windblown Jefferson Pass that arched
its way over to Mt. Lincoln. The wind was so strong that it actually pushed us unwillingly on the ice in
our snowshoes. When we made it to Lincoln, we were exhausted and frozen. It was too cold to stay up
there and the daylight was beginning to wane. Wolf couldn’t find the exact location of the trail, but
using his compass and topographic map, he determined the optimum direction. When we arrived at the
edge of a 45º precipice, we decided it best that I proceed first, then the students, then Wolf sweeping up
the rear. I took one step and was immediately startled that there was nothing beneath me. It was an
immense snowdrift. I sank quickly, hit ground, then tumbled out of the drift falling and tumbling, falling
and tumbling for two hundred feet, after which I landed in a ten-foot drift, upside down with my
snowshoes overhead. My heavy pack kept me inverted and unable to move. In the fall, I had lost one of
my ski poles and the inner and outer gloves on my right hand. I could feel the blood in my veins begin to
freeze.
Fabien was next in line behind me. After he watched what had happened, he took a slower and safer
route down to where I was. It took him several minutes to reach me. He helped remove my pack, then he
removed his glove and helped me slip it onto my right hand. In the shuffle, he handed me his Accutron
watch and asked me to hold it for him while he worked to set me upright. Fifteen minutes later, the
whole crew was standing near us, I was upright and mobile, and we headed down the mountain as
quickly as possible.
The snow and the angle of the slope made an ideal condition for snowshoeing. You could take one
step and glide on the heel for twenty yards. In no time at all, we dropped a few thousand feet in
elevation.
I caught up to Fabien to thank him. He replied that it was no problem, then asked for his watch. I
reached in my pocket and it wasn’t there. He was very upset; so much so that he wanted to go back up
the mountain to look for it in the snow. This was clearly impossible, so we hiked to our shelter and set
up camp and tried to put the incident out of our minds.
The rest of our descent was without incident and in a few days we were back at the school. There
Fabien informed me that the watch had been a special gift from his father, the head of a Swiss bank. It
was a specially made prototype that was worth more than $1,000. I was remorseful about what had
happened and wrote him a check for the full amount. This was nearly a quarter year’s salary for me. I
came away financially wounded if not slightly bitter, though of course, I was glad to be alive.
Packrat Press
After failing so miserably in the winter wilderness, I decided to focus on indoor activities for awhile.
I had been given the responsibility of operating and maintaining the school printing press. This was a bit
more elaborate than the mimeograph I had operated at Blair; in fact, it was a genuine one-color offset
press complete with aluminum printing plates, rubber blankets and printer’s ink. My basic training with
Russ Borman was invaluable. After mastering the essentials and stocking up on paper, plates and
solvent, I undertook to self-publish my first literary effort since Metamorphosis and Tears: Fred
Filiment’s Stolen Novel.
This publication was amateur in every sense of the word, but invaluable to my ultimate education
about printing and authorship. I produced a limited edition of 500 numbered and signed copies and
proceeded to market them for the whopping price of $5.00 each. In hindsight, I suspect that the amount
might have been slightly less than half of my cost per book. Through this experimentation, the Packrat
Press quietly emerged without having to bear the typical encumbrances of profit or efficiency.
After tackling such a large project, I decided to offer a simple course that combined illustration and
offset printing. A group of eight students joined me in this endeavor and we published a surprisingly
fresh book of illustrations entitled Dreaming. Clearly the best drawing in the book was by André
George, who executed the flawless perspective view of the school (see page 105).
Buckminster Fuller
Tom Haney and Bob Paine decided to invite Buckminster Fuller to speak at our miniscule
commencement exercises in June. I thought this was a long shot since “Bucky,” the inventor of the
geodesic dome, was world renowned. Our tiny school was not even a blip on the radar screen of
significance. Tom and Bob wrote a very passionate letter though, including a slightly exaggerated
section about our mission. We were all amazed when we received his letter of acceptance.
Weeks later, I was one of the privileged few to ride in the slightly dilapidated school station wagon
that retrieved our precious cargo from the Montpelier airport. Bucky sat shotgun. We drove right to the
modest but natural site of the graduation. There was a podium with a loudspeaker fed by half a mile of
extension cord. Dozens of draped tables had been catered with healthy homespun food, and two hundred
and fifty folding chairs were set up in the middle of a vast flat meadow of wildflowers.
We certainly got our money’s worth. Speaking in his highly evolved and compressed language,
Buckminster Fuller detailed the unabridged history of the universe in space and time, including the past,
present and future of mankind. He spoke for nearly two and a half hours, breaking only to take an
occasional sip of water. Faithfully, we hung upon every word.
So much had been said that afterward it seemed silly to attempt conversation. So we broke bread in
relative silence, then drove Mr. Fuller back to the airport. The school emptied quickly, leaving a hollow
shell of unusual peace and quiet. For weeks, I worked in the studios, then in need of stimulation, I
arranged to meet my parents in Canada.
Georgian Bay To Las Vegas
I had been friends with the Macfarlanes for as long as I could remember. Like all of the families in
camp, they had been coming to Iron City nearly every summer for their entire lives. Liz Macfarlane was
my age. She was smart and attractive and I had always been captivated by her personality. We had
become pretty good friends over the years and occasionally our friendship would cross a line and try to
be something more. Invariably though, for one reason or another, we would return to our friendship
which was generally solid and comfortable.
At the time, Liz lived in Burlington, Vermont, which wasn’t that far from Stowe. We visited each
other from time to time, but she was generally involved in a relationship when I was available and vice
versa, so our intersections were quite often platonic. She was nevertheless a soul mate.
Liz was at Iron City when I arrived. She had planned a trip out west for several months and I was
entertaining the idea of going with her part way. I had sold quite a few prints, plus a number of original
drawings of the local surroundings, so my finances were in better shape. After nearly two weeks in Iron
City, we left together in Liz’s car heading north along the top edge of Georgian Bay toward Sudbury.
We racked up as many miles as possible by day and camped by night, edging our way along the North
Bay to Sault Saint Marie, then up and over the endless expanse of Lake Superior. We planned to reenter
the United States just below Thunder Bay.
As we approached the border, we were greeted by a rather large, overly-buxom Customs agent in a
sour mood. Her grey uniform perfectly matched the color of her hair, skin and eyes.
The interior of our car was a mishmash of disheveled sleeping bags, tent stakes, food wrappers,
wrinkled clothes, sketchbooks and roadmaps. She instructed me to open the door and get out of the car,
which I promptly did, after which she knelt down for a close inspection of the rug on the passenger side
of the car. Miraculously, she emerged instantaneously with a tiny seed pinched between her thumb and
forefinger.
“This looks like a marijuana seed to me!” she boldly blurted. Liz was ushered out of the car. We
were informed that our vehicle would be impounded and that a group of Customs officials would be
searching the contents thoroughly. I was assigned to a male agent who led me to a toiletless bathroom
stall where I was prompted to remove my garments one by one and hand them out to the agent for his
scrutiny: pants, shirt, socks, shoes. When I got down to my skivvies, I figured it might be time to come
clean with the agent. I did in fact have a very small quantity of pot in a film canister and a tiny pipe,
both tucked away in the front flap of my Fruit Of The Looms.
Busted! “Ya got anything else?” he threatened. If I did have anything else, it seemed it might be a
good idea to let him know right then and there, but the fortunate fact was, I didn’t.
Liz made it through a similarly invasive inspection with our unpleasant female agent. Eventually, the
team that was tearing the car apart came inside holding a small prescription bottle of unidentified pills
from deep within Liz’s suitcase. She explained that they were just Tylenols, Benedryls, lozenges and
aspirins, and that was the truth. Our credibility, however, had been tainted.
After three hours of suspicion, interrogation and processing, a fee of three hundred and ten U.S.
dollars was extracted as payment in full for my indiscretion. Our impounded automobile was eventually
released and our conviction documents were permanently sealed. Off we sputtered, proud citizens,
heading south toward Duluth.
There was a beautiful campground near Silver Bay along the tall western cliffs of Lake Superior.
There we restablished our emotional bearings, drank a bottle of wine, went swimming, and treated
ourselves to a good meal.
The next morning we headed west to the small strip mining town of Hibbing, Minnesota, the home
of Robert Zimmerman (aka Bob Dylan). I wanted to pay tribute to Dylan and see if I could discover any
local clues that might unlock some of the mystery. We stopped at a drugstore on Main Street and asked
whether anyone knew where the legendary folksinger had grown up.
“Sure, Zimmerman’s place.” and they pointed us over a few blocks to an address in a small
residential area. The house was typical and nondescript, painted lime green with a side door that entered
a screened in porch. I sat on the curbstone next to a fire hydrant with Liz and played Love Minus Zero
No Limit and It’s All Over Now Baby Blue with my autoharp and harmonica. That was sufficient.
We headed northwest to Fargo, then to Bismarck and Billings before veering south into the grandeur
of Yellowstone, the Grand Tetons and Jackson Hole. With our sights set on Denver, we drove south to
Steamboat Springs where for some odd reason, I bought myself a Stetson hat that fit perfectly, but didn’t
really suit me.
My cousin Carol lived in Denver with her family. Carol knew Liz very well from Canada. She
provided a calm and relaxing oasis for us, then she drove us up to the gorge of the Green River where
we rafted in the sun and the furious rapids. Several days later, we stood atop the lateral arch of the
Hoover Dam with the neon lights of Las Vegas beckoning. There, I gambled for the first time in my life,
losing $14 in the slots next to an endless row of pathetic overweight women depositing their hard-earned
sustenance into the bottomless one-armed bandits. We said our goodbyes at the Las Vegas airport. Liz
continued driving west to California and I boarded a plane to Detroit. There, sporting my new Stetson
like a rhinestone cowboy, I boarded a bus for Ann Arbor where my cousin JC was firmly located. After
leaving the MC5, he had done a successful stint as one of the top DJs for WKNR in Detroit, but his real
passion was the music. His house had become the communal headquarters of his latest endeavor, The
Mojo Boogie Band. There were amps, drums, guitars and stage equipment everywhere and a healthy
hoard of band-related partiers. I stayed for two days – long enough to hear JC’s band perform their hardedged Detroit blues at a local club, have my precious short-lived Stetson stolen from the hat rack, and
temporarily bond with my charismatic cousin. I hitchhiked back to Detroit where I boarded a plane for
Bethlehem. There I picked up my dented Mustang and rushed back to Stowe in time for the pre-school
summer trek.
Song For One Who Wishes To Remain Anonymous
the first time i stood before you i was no more than a boy
my destiny evaded you i was sensitive and coy
in fear of my mortality in fear i fled the womb
and i hung my pride in effigy inside your lover’s room
yes i wanted to possess you
among the other things that i planned
but you were far beyond my ragged reach with a mirror
in your hand
the coincidence of confidence that placed me in your way
is crystallized and clarified and magnetized each day
your eyes reflect so honestly the images you see
disguised in all of my modesty i seek your mystery
impressed with all of your fantasies i tried to understand
as you sat right there in front of me with a prism
in your hand
impressed with your intensity i sacrificed my shield
impressed with my creativity you invited me to yield
our skin is what contains us and keeps us from being one
though slowly all the clothes of our desires came undone
infinity is what sets us free as resistance takes the stand
weren’t you lying there so innocently with my trials
in your hand
(chorus)
and i’ve witnessed the mountains of granite and gold
wash down to the beaches of sand
you’ve watched the cold winds and the winter ice melt
as the sun lends it’s warmth unto the land
now shouldn’t we also exist this way *
isn’t it instinctually planned
* now shouldn’t we also resist this way (after 2nd verse)
* now shouldn’t we also persist in this way (after 3rd verse)
Three Observations
1.
After you leave
I have to pull all your long gold strands
of gnarled hair
from my brush, one by one.
This reminds me of the time
you left three copper pennies
stuck to bubble gum
in my ashtray.
Do you leave this much gold everywhere you go ?
When you left
I walked into my bathroom
picked up my hair brush of black polyethylene
and smiled.
It’s nice of you to leave such delicate parts of your body
above my sink.
I know you won’t be angry
if I throw them into my garbage
with the peach pits
and banana peels.
Before you arrive
I will retrieve seven long gold strands of your hair.
I will tie one around my injured finger like a ring
so it will heal quicker,
then I will take the remaining six
and string them patiently on my broken guitar
and sing you this poem.
2.
Remember
when you stooped at the edge of my bed
with the clicking toenail clippers
and you shot them off in all directions
like ricocheting moon-shaped missiles.
Three days after you left
I watched a gigantic ant
cart away the tiny sliver from your little toe.
It was a burden for him
pulling it through the crack in the baseboards.
I watched him like a missionary
hovering in a self-righteous helicopter
over a tribe of restless African natives
dancing.
I’m sure the ant
laid his offering before his queen
like a huge ivory elephant tusk
or an aborigine boomerang
or a sword blade of white steel.
Think once
of how much
you have to give.
3.
tediously
I scraped the traces of lipstick
that you left on my coffee cup
and the fleshy filters of thirty five menthol cigarette butts
that lay like innocent cadavers in various ashtray coffins
and waste basket mausoleums
and using a few strands of hair
that you left in my comb
I made a tiny paint brush
and painted your face in red lipstick pigment
on my left thumbnail.
As I buried the image under a thick coat of fingernail polish
that you left behind
I titled it: “Lipstick Insomnia (part one)”
and woke up.
Stowe (Part II)
My second year of teaching came with much greater freedom to fashion courses to my liking. I had
always been interested in architecture and wanted to offer a tangible course in the effective use of space.
Each of my students was asked to design a ten foot cubicle living space. Every element of the space was
to have multiple purposes. After their draftings were complete, we took all the ideas and combined them
into a final composite of the best ideas, then a model was initiated to work out any lingering technical
problems. Upon completion of the model, we had hoped to construct the full scale design up on the
hillside with two-by-fours and plywood, but the cash ran out.
I had been studying animation and had always wanted to try it myself, so I offered a course. We
went to Burlington as a class, bought a decent movie camera with single frame capability, fabricated a
vertical floor-to-ceiling camera mount, and laid out a simple animation table that enabled continuous
backgrounds. We worked primarily with colored paper and produced a fifteen minute 35mm animated
film complete with a somewhat synchronized sound track. The final result had plenty of obvious
technical errors, but it was an enlightening and unforgettable experience for all of us.
Eugenia Haney taught modern dance with a fervor and commitment that I had not seen in many
other instructors. We were good friends. I was writing and performing a lot of songs informally on the
autoharp during my time at Stowe and Eugenia invited me to compose a piece that she in turn would
choreograph. I took this very seriously and wrote The Dancer, a song that attempted to describe the
dance and the dancer in literal and emotional terms. Eugenia liked the lyrics enough to include my
performance on stage as a integral part of the dance. It was a special experience for me.
I was never much of a skier. This was unfortunate given that I was living in one of the ski capitals of
the world. When school opened, one of the slopes was offering free season lift passes to the Stowe
faculty and I willingly snatched one up. I didn’t have my own skis, but there were many extra pairs at
the school. One afternoon after classes had concluded, I decided to head over to the mountain and try my
luck. I had a great run, which bolstered my confidence enough to return again to the mountain several
days later. My classes finished later than expected that day and I knew I’d have to hurry to get there
before the lifts closed. I threw on a lightweight parka, grabbed a pair of skis and sped over to the slope. I
was the last person onto the chair lift before they closed it down for the night.
As I approached the top, I saw three ski instructors zigzag underneath me as they began their final
sweep of the mountain. This was slightly disconcerting, as it was getting dark and cold. Apparently, they
didn’t know I was behind them.
When I reached the very top, the lift jerked to a stop before I had a good opportunity to jump off. It
was only about a five foot drop, so I simply edged my way off the lift, landing gently in the snow. It was
nearly dark at this point and getting colder by the minute, but I trusted that the exertion from skiing
would warm me up quickly. I started down a gradual slope, but by mistake I turned left where I was
supposed to turn right, ending up on the most difficult and treacherous incline of all, the notorious Nose
Dive.
I was moving too fast. I lost my balance and fell, sliding to a stop, but one of my borrowed skis had
come loose and the safety strap was not attached. I watched in horror as that single ski slipped and
darted like lightning toward the bottom.
I was stuck a mile up the mountain in the dark freezing cold with inadequate clothing and one
useless ski. I had no choice but to hike down on foot. I picked a route that was as tightly packed and
direct as possible. Forty minutes later, I made it to the parking lot where my lone car awaited. The heater
helped to thaw me back to some semblance of safety and comfort, though I suffered some nominal
frostbite. This experience eradicated any lingering desire to ski. The next day I relinquished my season
pass to an appreciative student.
As Thanksgiving approached, I worked hard on a one man show at the tiny Moscow Art Gallery just
west of town. Surprisingly, this little multimedia happening drew more than two hundred people on
opening night and the local newspaper gave me a kind review.
For fear of repeating my previous year’s winter trek catastrophe, I planned a much gentler hike on
Vermont’s picturesque Green Mountain Trail northeast of Rutland. This was still physically challenging,
but the students who signed up appreciated the fact that they wouldn’t be risking their necks to save my
life this time around.
Kentucky
The school was experimenting with trimesters instead of semesters and the faculty was asked to plan
hands-on Non-Resident Terms away from the confines of the school. Weed and Sandy, Marty and
Duane, Ike and Nancy, their cumulative offspring, plus several other friends from Morningstar Ranch,
had moved to “God’s Land” in southern Kentucky. This area was rural enough that there was no risk of
neighbor uprisings as had occurred in California. I was very curious about this last ditch effort at
communal living and planned a course around my desire to visit. Seven of the more bohemian students
signed up, but I became increasingly worried that they were expecting me to join them in a month of
unruly partying. After all of our gear was fully tied atop the luggage rack of the school station wagon, I
sat them all down for a very serious pre-departure lecture about the rules. I explained to them that I
didn’t really care what they did as long as they didn’t do it in front of me. I asked for their cooperation
in not jeopardizing my necessary and important role as instructor and authoritarian. They seemed to
understand the seriousness of my little pep talk. We all hopped in the car and headed out of town.
Less than five miles into our journey, I heard giggles coming from the back seat, then came the
pungent billowing of pot smoke. One of them had popped the tab on a can of Bud. I stopped the car.
John Nielsen, who I must admit was often genuinely funny, explained that they were going to party
no matter what I did or said. I could relax and accept it or drive them all down to the police station. They
didn’t care.
Regardless, they swore that they would maintain full confidentiality and never implicate me as
encouraging or allowing them to indulge. They suggested that I get on with the driving.
I told them I wouldn’t drive an inch if there was any pot smoking in the car. For several moments
there was an uneasy Mexican standoff. Then by some stroke of luck, they bought into my reasoning and
struck a compromise.
With slight trepidation about what the next several weeks might bring, we headed down the
Interstate toward Kentucky. To get to the remote property in the tiny town of Kettle Creek, we had to
cross the Cumberland River Ferry.
When we arrived at the land, things seemed calmer and more workable. Noel and Anne, who had
owned the property prior to deeding it to God, had just had their first child. They were living in town for
the sake of the baby and had agreed to let us use their freshly-built cabin for the month in exchange for
some cash and some general improvements. This included completing some rough log construction, the
fabrication of some interior furnishings, and the stockpiling of several cords of firewood.
We all kept extensive journals and had intense discussions about life and school in the candlelit
evenings by the potbelly stove. I was moderately successful in limiting their natural urges toward
escapism. The biggest challenge was controlling the amount and quality of the food we were eating. Left
to their own devices, this group would have returned to the school in a state of thorough obesity,
fattened by a constant onslaught of hot dogs, potato chips and beef jerky. They nearly mutinied during
my crusade to feed them granola bars, lentils and collard greens.
We survived tornado warnings, unseasonable cold weather and torrential rains. The downpour was
so inundating that for several days we were forced to leave our car by the road and ford the creek to get
to our cabin. The floods turned that gurgling trickle into a horrifying chest-high cascade that nearly
swept a pair of resident mothers away – let alone their babies, hoisted head high.
Our adventures in Kentucky soon came to an end. To the horror of my brother Bill and his wife
Jody, we descended upon their home in Indianapolis completely waterlogged, filthy and possibly wormridden. There we decompressed, showered, shaved and enjoyed a luxurious overnight before tackling the
long drive back to Stowe. As we departed, Jody donned the disinfectant in a concerned yet futile effort
to sterilize her beautiful home.
The Breaking Point
Back in Stowe, I started to slip into a pre-winter depression. I had very little privacy in my dormitory
apartment. Living in the same space with a hundred students could be emotionally and physically
draining. My weekends were not being used for rest. I had little to no time to explore my own artwork.
My courses were extremely demanding. In proportion to the amount of energy I was expending, I felt
under-appreciated and under-paid.
One of my cronies was in the process of breaking up with his girlfriend, who was also my good
friend. While attempting to see her through her difficult transition, I became emotionally entangled. My
interference backfired and put a serious strain on the triangularity of our relationship. As autumn
surrendered to the impending winter, my loneliness seemed to deepen with each successive layer of
snow that blanketed the valley, but I was energized and outgoing, not only with my fellow faculty
members, but also with many of the more motivated students. Between them, I suppose they helped me
to fill the void.
Jodi was certainly one of the most engaging students at the school. She was smart, creative, mature,
musical and full of joy. Though we teased each other openly, we managed, at least for the first half of
the school year, to keep a respectable physical distance. But as the winter grew colder and darker, we
began to acknowledge our mutual affection. Soon we fell into a deeper relationship – a good relationship
– one that we succeeded, at least for a time, in keeping secret.
Truth that is imprisoned typically finds a way to escape, especially within the walls of such a tight
community. I wasn’t that scared about losing my job. I did however fear the guilt and shame that would
accompany the eventuality of being discovered. The bigger paradox was that the school as a whole had
been focused on honesty. And what about Jodi’s well being? Something had to give. Eventually, I came
away knowing what had to be done.
One morning I went to the school offices to talk with Tino, the headmaster, with the intent of telling
him the truth. Instead I found him in need of assistance. His dog Layla had gotten into a tussle outside
with a porcupine and Layla had gotten the worst of it. The dog’s face and nose were pierced with more
than a dozen quills.
Tino asked me to hold the dog steady while he tried to remove the quills with a pair of pliers. We
struggled with Layla for the better part of twenty-five minutes, but we were completely unsuccessful.
Tino and I looked at each other with futility and frustration. He made an intelligent choice to relinquish
Layla to the more humane care of the local veterinarian, where the quills could be removed under
anesthesia.
For some reason, I found this experience with Tino and Layla to be symbolic of my personal
dilemma. I saw Layla as the school and myself as the quills, and I realized that a similar extraction
might be necessary and painful. The easiest anesthesia from my vantage point was honesty.
The next day was March 15th – the Ides of March. In a moment of confidence and resolve, I
explained my situation in a short but emotional emergency faculty meeting. I offered my resignation. It
was accepted with a sense of sadness and failure on both sides. I packed my essentials and moved to
Dan and Mary Batcheldor’s log cabin in Moscow, not far from the parcel of land where Buckminster
Fuller had spoken. I needed a place to decompress and figure out how to recover and get back on track.
The Cumberland River Ferry
the water strider,
unaware of the liquid force beneath him,
resists the current when he wishes to remain
and rests...
when he wants to go.
Observations From A Dark Window
Lee is raking leaves below the window.
If he looked up he would see black glass.
He doesn’t know anyone is watching.
Every now and then he finds a piece of useful trash
discarded from above like the leaves,
and carrying it over to the step,
he brushes it off carefully,
scrapes away tiny chunks of encrusted dirt with his thumbnail,
wipes it off on his shirt tail,
then sets it in a pile on top of his coat.
He just found a white plastic cylinder.
It obviously does not belong in a pile of leaves.
His face says he does not know what it could be used for.
There is probably a small drawer in his basement
overflowing with items like these.
Refrigerator Vision 3:00 AM
Wonders Of Modern Science: Part I (delirium)
My refrigerator has a tiny thermostatic mind of its own
implanted surgically on some assembly line in Minneapolis
by a Maytag man in a khaki uniform.
Yesterday I set the coolness control to number six.
This means that whenever the temperature varies
even half a degree
a tiny Sears transistor has to wake up,
defrost its code number,
jump over to the motor switch,
click it on,
yawn,
and return to its sealed circuit
while some neon green ammonia solution
flows tirelessly through a thousand invisible tubes
grabbing up little particles of flagrant heat
and spewing them carelessly on my carpet.
How thoughtless.
And after five minutes or so
when the temperature returns to normal
the whole process has to repeat itself in reverse.
The poor transistor never rests
and the motor makes a noise
like a broken dental drill.
At night
when I dream
my cavities rebel by escaping through my parted lips
at the peak of a snore
to short circuit the refrigerator plug
with smuggled saliva.
All this for an open pack of Green Giant Frozen Giblet Corn,
two leaky polyethylene ice trays,
and a moldy grapefruit.
Thorns Of Christ
treading in my pagan boots
on whitewashed rocks and gnarled roots
I can hear red cardinals sing like flutes
confessing to the stream
water rushes like a preacher
it magnifies each liquid feature
nourishing each plant and creature
thriving from the stream
I scaled the ivy coated wall
baptized by the waterfall
rock to rock that satin sermon
calls me to the stream
the path was dark and thinly iced
as razor steeples neatly sliced
my skin with poisoned thorns of christ
betraying near the stream
the mantis prayed as my hands bled
the broken thorns oozed scars of red
and crouching down in pain I fed
my blood into the stream
so when you hear the serpent hiss
disguised as natures subtle kiss
some lesson could be learned from this
find it at the stream
Letter To A Friend Potentially Lost
You, my friend, jealous martyred moping lover . . .
I wish I could at least help you to uncover
the onioned layers of this unsubtle childish reality
that you have managed, in your blind hypocrisy,
to hide; and your motivations with this girl
seem like an oyster, a piece of sand, and a pearl.
Enclosed, spat out, abandoned, and reclaimed . . .
as if desires and weaknesses could all be renamed.
It is selfish and cruel “to call an ax, a spade”
when all you want is to have your body laid
between two white sheets - playing hide and seek,
then immediately you fall asleep.
Sullen and slick like some bird of prey
you spit your cherry seeds away.
Turn to me and tell me you enjoy this taste,
that all your empty spaces have been replaced,
and I will tell you that I love her too . . .
unselfishly, in spite of you.
And if this poem would mark the end of that love
I would not remove my memories like a glove.
I will save my thoughts like precious shriveled seeds
and plant them as the satisfaction of my needs
as if to nourish and observe, to prune and care
for the fragrant remnants of this affair.
I suppose, I will look you directly in the eyes.
Your avoidance will betray any personal lies,
and perhaps in a year these scars will heal
as you dive into some new ordeal.
Until then let this stand as my message from within:
to incorporate, change, and grow from what you have been,
that this irrationality and lack of reason might end
leaving you with what you had at first . . . . .
a friend.
Fingernails ("He leaves behind opinions on his fingernails.....")
if...
you find
a dirty moon-shaped
fingernail
lying blatantly
on the formica surface
of the average
one-dimensional
boomerang-universe-type
howard johnson's
quality restaurant table
then please don't be alarmed
or perplexed or disgusted
it was not placed there
by the snickering waitress
or the demented busboy
or the cheezy cashier
perhaps it was overlooked
by everyone as
everyone else sat
on itching rear ends
throbbing fat businessmen
skinny nervous secretaries
squirming bug-eyed tourists
screaming kiddie parades
five minute fuel stops
turn into one hour catastrophies
and gritting teeth
chew digital symmetry
into the dirty
moon-shaped
fingernail
you find
if...
Exile In Moscow
Dan and Mary had built themselves a cabin. It was rustic but substantial. There were a lot of
finishing touches needed and I was offered lodging in exchange for chopping firewood, constructing
shelves and bookcases, and occasional babysitting for their young son Jed.
Jodi came to visit me there intermittently, but this was an uneasy arrangement for Dan and Mary,
Jodi, and the school. So I immersed myself in carpentry, odd jobs, daily entries in my journal, maple
sugaring at the farm down the road, and introspective conversations with Dan and Mary. I felt
appreciated and accepted, but I was also conscious of my potential imposition.
The valley was beautiful and saturated with color. White snow across the long meadow receded into
pale stands of tall grass and dried cornstalks. The only visible dwelling was Nathan Adam’s old cabin
and sugaring lodge with its weather-beaten exterior. It was mostly concealed by a thick stand of dark
evergreens. A wisp of smoke rose and merged with the cloudy haze of the mountains rising to the high
horizon. Patches of crimson, pastel green, birch and ivory fell down in angular patterns, tucking their
hues into the crevices of sun and shade.
The crisp air had a healing effect upon that part of me that was damaged. It was difficult to leave, but
Jeff, a friend of Dan’s with a good-sized pickup truck, was driving to Pennsylvania. He offered to drop a
full load of my belongings off in Pennsylvania. It was too convenient an offer. I followed him in my car
and I paid for his gasoline.
Homeward Bound
During the turmoil, I had called my parents to let them know that I was leaving the Stowe School. I
didn’t furnish any details except to say that I was looking forward to being able to focus on my artwork.
I felt as if I had walked too far out onto a tree branch and it had snapped. My parents knew that
something had gone wrong, but they were kind enough to not dig beneath the surface.
There was an active counterculture scene going on in the south side of Bethlehem. An underground
book and record shop had sprouted on the same street as an alternative health food restaurant. Dave Fry
and Cindy Dinsmore had started Godfrey Daniels, a coffeehouse and stage that featured a surprising
array of folk talent, among them David Bromberg, Rosalee Sorrells, John Sebastian, Eric Frandsen,
Norman Blake, Utah Phillips and Steve Goodman. On Sunday nights they held open microphone,
encouraging budding talent to get the feel of the stage. Accompanied by my electric autoharp and
harmonica, I became a regular open mike performer and occasional host of these amateur nights.
My brother’s old friend Barry Frey had left his position as a staff writer for the Globe Times and had
opened a popular south side eatery called The Wine Cellar. I had dinner there one night and he asked
what I had been up to. I told him about my illustrations and brought some prints in from the car to show
him. There was a flurry of interest around our table and within moments I had sold all of the prints I had
with me. Barry promptly ordered a full assortment of my illustrations for the restaurant walls. With so
prominent a display, I soon had my hands full with orders for framed prints.
Next to the restaurant, there was a very small storefront that Barry owned. He was using the space
for storage. I asked whether he would rent it to me as a small studio and gallery. He agreed.
I promptly moved my drawings, musical instruments, jewelry boxes, ceramics and lathe turnings
into the space, committing myself to a regular daytime schedule. My meager sales barely covered the
cost of rent, but I did produce a significant amount of new work and established some important
contacts.
Oil & Water
I was busy drawing in my cozy south side Gallery when in through the door came a police officer.
My natural reaction was to wonder what crime I had committed. I was relieved to find that creativity
was not against the law. He ended up buying a few prints, thanked me and left.
The next day he was back with the Chief of Police who explained that the department was tired of
the antiquated city seal that had been used on the police vehicles for decades. The younger officer
showed his chief my drawings and suggested that I would be a good candidate to design a new city seal.
I was of course very receptive.
I started laying out the basic grid for the drawing. A few days passed and I received a call from the
chief’s office asking me to come in for a meeting with the newly elected mayor. We discussed the seal
and the mayor liked the idea of a fresh new change for the city.
I proceeded with the commission, adhering to what I perceived were the basic categories covered on
the original seal: labor and industry, religion, culture (art and music), education, and sports. In choosing
the symbology for these categories, I’m afraid I took some small liberties, but felt that the finished
product was strong.
When I completed the seal, I was excited. I called the chief and took it down to the department to
show him. He was excited. He took it over to the mayor’s office. He was excited. The mayor took it to
the city council meeting. They were not as excited.
The city council thought that the culture committee should have handled this. The culture committee
decided that the arts council should have been involved. When the arts council was notified, they were
infuriated that no one had consulted with them.
The arts council was largely comprised of middle-aged women. One objected to my inclusion of the
Star of David. Another didn’t understand what the Yin-Yang symbol meant. Still another didn’t think
that popular sports like golf, baseball and football should be represented. I think the whole bunch of
them suspected that the leaves at the top and bottom were marijuana. After several weeks of meetings,
they decided it would be much fairer to hold a contest in the school system where art students would be
invited to submit city seal designs to a jury of arts council members. Word came back to me through the
layers of the city bureaucracy that I would be allowed to submit my design together with the students. I
waited, but they never held the contest.
Given that I never received remuneration, I remain in official possession of the Unofficial Seal of the
City of Bethlehem.
Dumpster Diving (Part Two)
Back in Bethlehem, my passion for woodworking was peaking. My wooden creations were selling
and I was getting some nice commissions for larger pieces like end tables, coffee tables and specialty
shelves. Of course, I always managed to under price these creations so that the customer would have no
grounds for ever being disappointed.
My fascination with wood turning led to the purchase of a good quality lathe. I had found an obscure
architectural lumber company on the outside of town that had spectacular planks of Ponderosa and
sugar pine in thicknesses up to 4”. In exchange for one of my turned bowls, they saved appropriately
sized cutoffs for me that were perfect for goblets and canisters.
Regular visits to the Martin dumpster were yielding materials that were ideal for jewelry boxes and
stack laminated turnings. The workers near the dumpster door started to recognize me. I was startled one
day when one of the workers came outside while I was picking through the rosewood scraps. His name
was Harvey Samuels. He was the assistant foreman of the machine room where all the raw wood was
cut into parts. He spoke in a very heavy Pennsylvania Dutch accent.
“I saved some stuff for ya,” said Harvey, and he handed out a sizeable stack of bookmatched spruce
soundboards that had been rejected for small knots and imperfections. I graciously accepted and thanked
him.
“What ah ya doo with dis stuff anyhow?”
I had a couple of odd instruments in the car. I reached in and grabbed a mando-guitar with a
rosewood top and a strange drone banjo with a doorknob tuning machine on the headstock for lead runs.
Harvey took these inside and paraded them around to the workers. Mr. Martin, who must have been
eighty at the time, was walking around the plant and Harvey showed him the “Boak-struments.”
“That fellow ought to apply for a job,” said C.F.
After several minutes had passed, Harvey brought my instruments back to the dumpster platform and
handed them down.
“The old man says you should apply for a job.” He pronounced job with a “ch” in front, like “chob.”
I was definitely not dressed for job hunting. In fact, my blue jeans were torn and covered with
sawdust from the dumpster. My hair was long and somewhat unruly. My flannel shirt was faded and I
needed a shave, but Harvey’s encouraging words prompted me to check job availability with the
receptionist. I drove around to the front of the building, brushed myself off, and walked in.
”Are there any job openings?” I smiled.
The receptionist was not amused. In a slightly aloof tone she replied: “We have one opening but it’s
very specific. I doubt that you would be qualified.”
“What’s the position?” I tried to cancel her snootiness with a firm and confident reply.
“Well, it’s a design drafting position. We were actually looking for a college student with some
engineering or drafting background.” She expected that this would end the conversation.
“I’ve been teaching drafting for three years. In fact, I have some examples of my ink on mylar work
in the car. That’s a specialty of mine.” Disappointment was showing on her face. She rose to the next
level of her defensiveness.
“Well, we’re actually looking for someone with some substantial woodworking background.” She
picked up her emery board and smoothed out a rough edge on her thumbnail.
“Actually, I’ve been an avid woodworker since I was a boy. I’ve been teaching woodworking, too,
and I’ve got some jewelry boxes and lathe turnings in the car. Should I bring them in?”
She was livid. She gave it one last shot. “You know, it really will be necessary for any applicant to
have a working knowledge of musical instrument making, and a familiarity with the materials we use.”
Ah-hah! She was playing right into my hands. “I’ve been making musical instruments and teaching
instrument making for several years. I have a few instruments in the car that I made from your scraps.
Harvey at the back door told me that Mr. Martin suggested that I apply for a ‘chob.’” I was pushing my
luck, but it was worth my strongest push.
“All right. Bring your things in. I’ll see whether Personnel can send someone up front to see you.
Several moments later, I was seated at a table with Ken Murdock, the Assistant Personnel Manager.
With pride and excitement, I showed him my draftings, some inlaid jewelry boxes, a few goblets, and
three instruments. He was quite impressed.
“Can you start tomorrow? He was convinced.
“No. I‘m going to see Bob Dylan tomorrow in Philadelphia, but I can come in on Wednesday.” His
eyes rolled, but he swallowed his better judgment and handed me the necessary employment forms. I
filled them out, packed my wares and headed toward the door. As I passed the receptionist, she strained
a fake smile.
“I’ll see you on Wednesday!” I waved.
Her jaw dropped in disbelief. She really did turn out to be nicer than she had seemed. Her name was
Rita. She greeted me upon my arrival two days later. She was pleased to see that I had better clothes and
was capable of bathing. We soon became friends.
The New Kid In Town
On my first day, I was shown to a small room in the front offices close to sales. There, a large
drafting table was set up with a desk and chair. Ken Murdock introduced me to a few of the engineers
and plant foremen. I started in the machine room with a somewhat reluctant foreman named Carl
Miksch. He gave me a box of dovetail blocks from the tiniest soprano ukulele to the full-sized 12-fret
Dreadnought. I would carefully measure these parts and catalog the dimensions in both inches and
millimeters on carefully inked mylar draftings. When I finished with dovetail blocks, I would go back to
Carl for other parts: braces, ribbons, soundboards, bridge plates, backs, marquetry strips, necks,
heelcaps, fingerboards, headplates, bindings, bridges and pickguards, until gradually all of the
components were archived.
The Martin business had been in the family ever since its founder, Christian Frederick Martin, had
emigrated from Markneukirchen, Germany to New York City in 1833. C. F. Martin III, the fourth
generation of Martins to run the business, had seen the company through two world wars and a
depression. Though he was in his eighties, he maintained his position as Chairman of the Board. He
came to work every day. The workers had tremendous respect for him and rightly so.
Mr. Martin’s son Frank was a different story. Frank had apparently been pretty spoiled as a child. He
had expensive tastes, especially in cars, and he was used to getting his way.
Frank had developed some bad habits as well. He had a hot temper and he discarded his women with
the same tenacity that he sought them out. Frank did have some redeeming qualities. He certainly was
loyal to his friends, but his good points were generally masked by his predisposition for alcohol.
To satiate Frank’s fixation with sports, the company sponsored a local racing team and a minor
league professional basketball franchise. These extravagances provided a reasonable outlet for Frank’s
temper, but they were very costly and eventually abandoned.
Mr. Martin wanted Frank to succeed. At the same time, he was weak when it came to standing up to
Frank’s aggressiveness and occasional belligerence. When Frank demanded a more prominent role in
the company, C.F. eventually succumbed and made him the President.
It was fortunate that Frank’s tenure as President coincided with an unprecedented boom in the
demand for Martin guitars. Under Frank’s direction, the company built a new modern factory at
Sycamore Street, abandoning the old facility at North Street. In many ways, the new factory was Frank’s
crowning achievement.
Such was the situation when I arrived on the scene. I was the “new kid in town,” at least that was the
Eagles song that the secretaries sang to me in jest. Soon, I became acquainted with Mr. Martin and
Frank, and the other key figures in the company.
Within a month of my hiring, a company Christmas party was held at the Hotel Bethlehem. Frank
found out that I was a musician. On the day of the party, he came into my office slightly inebriated and
asked me to make sure to bring my autoharp with me. I did.
It was a raucous night. Frank had enlisted a fifties rock and roll band made up of several employees.
Everyone was doing the twist. An hour and a half into the dancing and drinking, the band took a break.
Frank went to the microphone and summoned me up to the stage. With shy reluctance, I took the stool in
front of two hundred Martin employees and their spouses and started to play.
The planets must have been aligned correctly because I was “on” that night. They were eating right
out of the palm of my hand. When I finished, they wanted more and that’s how I left it. It was a great
way to introduce myself to all of the people at Martin. The following Monday morning, I felt like a
celebrity.
A few weeks passed. I was hard at work in the early afternoon when the switchboard rang my
extension. “It’s Frank Martin for you.” said Rita abruptly, and she transferred the call over to me.
“Frank?” I greeted him with mild arrhythmia.
“Dick. You won’t believe it. I’m over at the Moorestown Bar with some of the big wheels at
Columbia Records. I told them all about you. They want to sign a record deal with you!” I couldn’t
believe my ears. Had my time really come?
“Ya gotta bring that thing you play out here right away,” he urged.
“Frank. My autoharp is at my apartment. Is it OK to leave?”
He interrupted. “Go right now. Get your instrument and meet me out here as soon as you can!”
Click. He hung up. I rushed out to the switchboard and told Rita that I had to go meet with Frank Martin
right away. She looked skeptical, but she didn’t stop me.
I rushed home and retrieved my autoharp. I took the harmonica as well, and its holder just in case.
I sped all the way back to Moorestown and took a deep breath before rushing in.
Frank was at the bar sure enough. He raised his hand and motioned for me to come over. He had his
arm around a somewhat seedy-looking blonde in a tight red dress. Frank was tanked. So was the blonde.
“I’d like you to meet Angie,” he slurred. “Angie. This is the fellow that I was telling you about.” I
acknowledged the introduction with a weak smile.
“So, you’re with Columbia Records?” I tried to initiate my inevitable record deal.
“Well, actually, I have a brother that used to work over at Columbia in the industrial park. They
press the records over there, I think.”
As she volunteered this information, my dreams crashed and shattered just like the long ash from her
lipstick-stained cigarette that was perched awkwardly in the V of her fingers. As she brushed the ashes
off her thigh, Frank saw a tinge of disappointment start to form around the corners of my mouth. He
jumped right in, hoping to divert the conversation away from my recording hopes.
“Play us a few songs. How about that Do Re Me song you played at the party?” I was starting to get
it. I was to be the featured entertainment for Frank’s seduction of the lady in red. I weighed my options
quickly. Since I had come all that distance and since he was after all the boss, I unpacked the autoharp,
propped myself up on a barstool, and started to play. After a half hour or so, I slipped out the side door
and returned to work.
Rita greeted me. “How’d it go?” She very well knew the answer. I just rolled my eyes.
In the weeks that followed, I received other urgent phone calls from Frank, generally in the early to
mid-afternoon. There was always a great sense of urgency in his voice. I learned to quickly assure him
that I was on my way immediately. Of course, I didn’t go anywhere. He never remembered making the
calls, or perhaps reached someone else naive enough to take the bait.
Trial & Error
Back in my drafting area, there were so many models and variations that my task seemed daunting,
but I was hungry to learn what made these great guitars tick. As my daily knowledge of guitar
dynamics expanded, I began to experiment in my shop at home. I certainly had plenty of scraps to play
with.
As I settled into the security of a full time job, I arranged to move out from underneath my parents’
gracious but limiting wing. There was a large house for rent on the south side of Bethlehem. The owner
was separating from his wife Amy, who I had met at Godfrey Daniels. Amy’s brother, Jay Black, was
very interested in guitars. When he found that I had a connection with Martin and that I was actively
immersed in guitarmaking, he approached me about the possibility of an apprenticeship. We hit it off
immediately and started to work evenings and weekends on an assortment of odd tonal experiments.
Jay had a particular interest in sprayed finishes. I was thrilled about this since I knew very little
about lacquer, which was such a critical aspect of the process. He purchased a compressor and set it up
on the third floor of the house where we proceeded to coat the entire floor with the fine powdery
overspray.
The results of our experiments were tenuous at best. Our bracing was too thin, our shapes were
unintentionally asymmetric, our necks were pitched at irregular angles, our bridges were too high or too
low, and our fretting was deplorable. Even our finishes had pockmarks. We did however learn a great
deal. Soon Jay landed a job with a well-known guitar repair shop where he really shined. In due course,
he ended up in New York City working with my friend Roger Sadowsky, one of the most respected
luthiers in the country. Having become an expert at electric guitar work, Jay was eventually lured to the
Fender Custom Shop in Southern California, where he earned a great reputation and respect in the
industry, making me proud that I had had a small part in his beginnings.
During the days, I was doing my best to keep up with the drafting demands at Martin. I probably
could have taken my time and stretched the completion of these drawings out for several years. Instead,
I became obsessed with every step of the process. In nine short months, all of the guitar drawings were
inked, flat-filed, part-numbered and cross-referenced.
Watch Out For That Ax, Eugene
In the meantime, the company had hired an engineer who had recently lost his position with a wellknown cosmetics manufacturer. His name was Eugene. The rumor was that he had engineered both parts
of a popular lipstick container with left-handed threads, making them unusable.
Eugene was hired to supervise me and develop new and efficient guitarmaking methods. One slight
problem was that he had absolutely no concept of what guitars were all about or how they were made. A
special office out in production was erected and I moved my drafting table into one corner. In the
opposite corner, both literally and symbolically, Eugene marked his territory. Within the confines of that
tiny space, he took complete control of my entire world. In the process, my job quickly turned from
inspirational to nightmarish.
With all of the guitar drawings completed, I had begun to draft the wooden and metal components
for Martin’s Vega banjo models. These instruments were equally fascinating. Martin did all of the
woodworking, but the metal parts were outsourced to a local fabricator, then sent out for plating. One of
the primary banjo rings was called the notched tension hoop. It was made of 1/4” solid brass stock,
rolled into a circle and brazed. After plating, the unsightly seam was hidden carefully under the banjo’s
tailpiece. Directly opposite the tailpiece, a notch the width of the fingerboard was cut to allow the strings
to clear the tension hoop. Then around the circular perimeter, the banjo head was secured with several
dozen tension hooks, each individually tightened with a banjo key. It was a very elegant system, that is
until Eugene asked to review one of my drawings and added his two cents. He called me over with his
usual gruffness and inquisitioned:
“Why’d you put the braze joint at this end?”
“It needs to be there.” I explained. “That’s where it has traditionally been. It gets hidden under the
tailpiece.”
“No. No. No. Hogwash! Move it over to this end.” He pointed to the notched area by the
fingerboard.
“But it’ll break if you do that,” I pleaded. “The ring is under a lot of tension and it’s very thin up
there. It won’t hold up.” My voice was beginning to quiver.
“Make the change. That’s an order.”
I looked at him in disbelief. For the first time, I noticed that he had absolutely no neck whatsoever. It
was as if his spinal cord was missing several vertebrae. His head was resting directly upon his rib cage.
His chin seemed to attach itself to his collar bones. There was no Adam’s apple. All of a sudden I began
to feel tremendous pity for Eugene. He was obviously missing a major portion of his brain stem. This
was creating unprecedented incompetency and causing him to make absolutely absurd decisions.
I went back to my drafting table, took my electric eraser to the mylar, and as ordered, I removed the
brazing seam and altered the instructions to conform to “No-Neck’s” wishes. As I made the changes, he
came over to my desk and dropped a completed purchase order in front of me.
“When that drawing’s done, attach a blueprint to this P.O. and give it to purchasing.” He spun
around and exited like a military general. I looked carefully at the purchase order. It referenced my
revised drawing and called for 500 tension hoops to be fabricated and platinex-plated at a cost of $32.00
per hoop. I did the quick math. That was more than fifteen grand. Every one of them would break.
Overnight, I tossed and turned. It was driving me crazy that this guy was going to ruin one of our
products. This wasn’t the first time. He had already chopped up the aluminum neck masters from a
gunstock carving machine that had the potential to carve guitar neck blanks very efficiently. Our
talented machinist, Mitch Perez, had spent a lot of time making those masters. This banjo hoop
alteration was an even more obvious blunder. I couldn’t contain my frustration.
The next morning, I spoke candidly with Ken Murdock about my frustration. He was upset with
what I told him and called in his boss. I relayed the entire story, voicing my concern that the company
stood to lose more than $15,000 plus lost production time as a result of this change. The Personnel
Manager smiled reassuringly and listened with great interest. What I did not know was that he and
Eugene had been neighbors and great fishing buddies for years.
Later that afternoon, old No-Neck strolled nonchalantly into our shared office with an empty box.
He plopped it down in front of me.
“Pack your things. You’re fired.”
“What?” I turned as white as a sheet.
“You went over my head. You don’t do that.” He shut the door behind him as tears welled up in my
eyes. I packed my pens and french curves. Box in hand, I quietly slipped away in order to avoid further
humiliation.
Strike
I was devastated. Finally I had found an occupation that was challenging, and then kaboom! I was
finished. I just couldn’t accept it.
In my apartment, I had already begun working on a large drawing of the legendary Martin D-28
model. The idea evolved from a front view drafting of the full guitar. I rendered the textures of the top in
my pointillist style, then embellished the space around the guitar with symmetrical eagles, ocean waves,
abalone shells, and sunsets. The edges were bordered with Martin herringbone. I was pleased with the
final result and without question proceeded to publish an edition of prints.
While I was waiting for Russ Borman to complete the job, I received an unexpected call from Frank
Martin. Over the course of the previous six months, the Cement, Lime & Gypsum Workers Of America
had successfully organized a union at Martin. Now they had voted to immediately go out on strike.
Frank was livid. He was also very worried that trucks attempting to make deliveries would honor the
picket lines unless he took some action. Frank seemed genuinely sorry that I had been fired. He had just
found out about it and I think he was throwing me a bone. He asked me to make four large banners that
could be hung on the outside of our building in several locations. The signs were to say: “We Are Not
On Strike!” I finished these signs in a matter of a few days and delivered them personally to Frank. He
was pleased.
Before I could get out the door, he asked whether I could make a cement guitar. I thought about it for
a moment, then I politely asked him why. He wanted to put it on display in the factory with a sign that
said: “Who Wants A Cement Guitar?” This was intended to be a morale booster for the salaried
foremen, managers and office workers who were keeping the plant running.
I went home and started to figure out how to make the casting forms. It wasn’t going to be easy. I
picked up three bags of cement, some wire mesh and a few reinforcement rods. Using some rejected
guitar sides as an exterior mold, I poured the slurry of cement. It took days to dry completely. Finally it
was ready to stand upright. It weighed a ton and was quite ugly. The neck had cracked right where it
joined the body but the rebar kept it from falling apart. I wheel-barreled it to my car and drove it out to
Martin with my makeshift sign. “Who wants a cement guitar with a broken neck?” it read, the message
slightly modified due to circumstance. Frank loved it and we put it on display in the cafeteria. He vowed
to bury it under the lawn at the front of the factory the minute that the strike was over. While I was in the
plant, Eugene saw me and was visually disturbed by my presence. I feared he was going to make
trouble.
The following week the prints of my guitar drawing were done. I matted and framed one for Mr.
Martin. After numbering it as the first print and signing it at the bottom, I wrote an inscription: “Please
consider this my reapplication for employment.” When I arrived, I asked to see Mr. Martin. While I was
waiting, my friend John Arndt, the head of quality control, was leaving. He asked me where I’d been for
the past several weeks. I think he thought I had been on vacation.
I explained to John that I had been fired. He was shocked. Personnel and my former boss had kept
my dismissal very secret. John promised to try to get me back just as Mr. Martin arrived in the reception
area. John addressed him: “Mr. Martin. Did you know that Eugene fired this fellow?”
“I had no idea.” said C.F.
“Well, we should try to get him back in, don’t you think? I sure could use him in the final assembly
area.” John was doing his best to keep fifteen guitars a day moving through the plant. Office workers
were sanding bodies and scraping bindings. There was such a skeleton crew during the strike that
anyone capable of doing any of the key jobs was worth their weight in gold.
“I agree,” Mr. Martin said. “Let’s get him back.”
I shook Mr. Martin’s hand and showed him the framed drawing. “This is for your office.”
“Why, thank you. I’ll have Gregor hang it right away. Thank you very much.”
Scabbing
The next day, I received a call from John Arndt. He had discussed my situation with Frank and C. F.
and they wanted me to come back and work in production. I was elated and back in the factory within
the hour. John took me to the bridge gluing area where Blaine Rodgers had worked for decades prior to
the strike. Blaine could do fifty bridges a day. There was no one better, but like many others, Blaine was
on strike against his will. He wasn’t present on the picket line.
John showed me the bridge gluing procedure with great care. I tried a few bridges while he watched.
I was slow, but I’d get better. John was working the final neck fitting bench next to mine in the event
that I needed to be rescued. I quickly got up to speed and soon John put me on other jobs in the area:
regulating saddles, installing tuning machines, stringing and tuning.
I was happy to be back, but the repetitiveness of production was tedious. I longed for any diversion
and one day it arrived. Frank Martin wanted to introduce a line of electric guitars. With my drafting and
guitarmaking experience, he thought I could come up with some ideas that he could show to the Board
of Directors.
I was very excited to do it, but I made it clear that I didn’t want to be in the same area as Eugene,
who was avoiding me like the plague. I was given my own room plus Carl Miksch’s help in the machine
room. First, I drafted dozens of separate headstock, body, and neck designs. Some of these were
outrageous. Others were quite traditional. Frank liked one particular headstock that looked remotely like
the Martin/Stauffer shape that Leo Fender had incorporated for his headstocks. I started a short scale
prototype with a maple fingerboard and headplate. I dubbed it The Swan for its purity, color, and
graceful inlay that seemed to nest well in the otherwise awkward top area of the headstock.
The Directors liked it too, but wanted to see some more traditional body shapes in a long scale
format. The second batch of four prototype bodies were laminated from rejected rosewood bridge blank
stock and guitar side scraps. When combined with white maple wings, the bodies were unusually
striking. My idea was to laminate the center section of the body, perform all of the machining operations
to that section, then apply the wings of the body and the neck. It was a sensible and efficient plan and
the Board liked the new body design. I had consulted with Roger Sadowsky about what he considered to
be the optimum hardware for electric guitars. We chose the best of everything for the prototypes. It was
a challenging project, even though production needed me to assist John Arndt with bridge gluing for
several hours a day.
I started a third batch of twelve prototypes that were all identical in configuration. I had efficiently
completed the machining and body lamination when I saw Eugene holding one of twelve bodies. He was
taking to Carl Miksch near the spindle-shaping machine. After they finished, I asked Carl what was up.
Eugene had had an idea for a shaping fixture to cut out the electric bodies. Carl was very skeptical and
so was I, but No-Neck was awfully bullheaded. He returned with a poorly-crafted half-inch slab of
heavy steel, cut to the rough contour of our electric guitar shape. There was a plastic handle sticking
straight up out of the fixture.
Carl was so appalled and protective of his equipment that he flatly refused to do the operation.
Eugene stubbornly decided to do it himself. He mounted my best body blank onto his contraption,
tightened the plastic handle and pushed it hard into the cutter. There was a loud crack. It happened so
quickly. Carl and I watched from a distance in amazement. The whole fixture, all fifty-five pounds of it
with the body attached, went flying through the air at jet propulsion speed and embedded itself in a
sheetrock wall thirty feet away. Had anyone been in its path, they would have surely been laid to a quick
rest. Carl walked over to Eugene and physically removed him from the department.
The next day, I found the test body in the garbage. The shaper blade had taken a nice chunk out of it,
but with a little creativity and inlay, it was salvageable. I retrieved it and took it home. It became a
lovely fretless bass that for obvious reasons, I called “The Maverick.”
It was obvious that Eugene and I were going to come to blows. I ran into Helen Hontz from Sales in
the hallway and told her of my frustration. She had always been my advocate. She suggested that I get
myself completely out of No-Neck’s domain. She had some ideas about how to accomplish this.
The next day, Frank called me in. He’d been talking with Helen. There was a small area next to the
museum in the front of the plant that was ideal for a small factory gift shop. A mail order flyer with
Martin T-shirts, belt buckles and key chains had been fairly successful in bringing in some orders. Frank
suggested that if I were interested in starting The 1833 Shop, it might provide a convenient way to get
out of Eugene’s way. If he was as bad as I knew he was, he would seal his own fate in due time. I didn’t
want to abandon my prototyping project, but it seemed a good solution. I took the job.
The long strike finally came to an abrupt end. Half of the strikers broke ranks, resigned from the
union and returned to work. The rest followed soon after. With shovel in hand, I buried the cement
guitar five feet deep in the front lawn as Frank and a group of his cronies looked on ceremoniously. I
can only imagine some archeologist digging up that abomination in a thousand years and wondering
what in the hell someone was thinking.
The 1833 Shop began to thrive quickly. The electric guitars didn’t fare as well. Eugene had stripped
away virtually all of the attributes that I had tried to design into the instrument. I kept my distance,
though.
It wasn’t long before the order of notched tension hoops for the banjoes arrived. One by one, their
weak braze joints failed. There were several boxes of rejected or broken hoops just outside of Eugene’s
office. Eventually, John Arndt alerted the higher-ups that my prophecy had come true. Soon someone
brought an empty box into No-Neck’s office and told him to pack his things. The Personnel Manager
vanished shortly thereafter and slowly things at Martin started to look brighter.
Scabbing
The next day, I received a call from John Arndt. He had discussed my situation with Frank and C. F.
and they wanted me to come back and work in production. I was elated and back in the factory within
the hour. John took me to the bridge gluing area where Blaine Rodgers had worked for decades prior to
the strike. Blaine could do fifty bridges a day. There was no one better, but like many others, Blaine was
on strike against his will. He wasn’t present on the picket line.
John showed me the bridge gluing procedure with great care. I tried a few bridges while he watched.
I was slow, but I’d get better. John was working the final neck fitting bench next to mine in the event
that I needed to be rescued. I quickly got up to speed and soon John put me on other jobs in the area:
regulating saddles, installing tuning machines, stringing and tuning.
I was happy to be back, but the repetitiveness of production was tedious. I longed for any diversion
and one day it arrived. Frank Martin wanted to introduce a line of electric guitars. With my drafting and
guitarmaking experience, he thought I could come up with some ideas that he could show to the Board
of Directors.
I was very excited to do it, but I made it clear that I didn’t want to be in the same area as Eugene,
who was avoiding me like the plague. I was given my own room plus Carl Miksch’s help in the machine
room. First, I drafted dozens of separate headstock, body, and neck designs. Some of these were
outrageous. Others were quite traditional. Frank liked one particular headstock that looked remotely like
the Martin/Stauffer shape that Leo Fender had incorporated for his headstocks. I started a short scale
prototype with a maple fingerboard and headplate. I dubbed it The Swan for its purity, color, and
graceful inlay that seemed to nest well in the otherwise awkward top area of the headstock.
The Directors liked it too, but wanted to see some more traditional body shapes in a long scale
format. The second batch of four prototype bodies were laminated from rejected rosewood bridge blank
stock and guitar side scraps. When combined with white maple wings, the bodies were unusually
striking. My idea was to laminate the center section of the body, perform all of the machining operations
to that section, then apply the wings of the body and the neck. It was a sensible and efficient plan and
the Board liked the new body design. I had consulted with Roger Sadowsky about what he considered to
be the optimum hardware for electric guitars. We chose the best of everything for the prototypes. It was
a challenging project, even though production needed me to assist John Arndt with bridge gluing for
several hours a day.
I started a third batch of twelve prototypes that were all identical in configuration. I had efficiently
completed the machining and body lamination when I saw Eugene holding one of twelve bodies. He was
taking to Carl Miksch near the spindle-shaping machine. After they finished, I asked Carl what was up.
Eugene had had an idea for a shaping fixture to cut out the electric bodies. Carl was very skeptical and
so was I, but No-Neck was awfully bullheaded. He returned with a poorly-crafted half-inch slab of
heavy steel, cut to the rough contour of our electric guitar shape. There was a plastic handle sticking
straight up out of the fixture.
Carl was so appalled and protective of his equipment that he flatly refused to do the operation.
Eugene stubbornly decided to do it himself. He mounted my best body blank onto his contraption,
tightened the plastic handle and pushed it hard into the cutter. There was a loud crack. It happened so
quickly. Carl and I watched from a distance in amazement. The whole fixture, all fifty-five pounds of it
with the body attached, went flying through the air at jet propulsion speed and embedded itself in a
sheetrock wall thirty feet away. Had anyone been in its path, they would have surely been laid to a quick
rest. Carl walked over to Eugene and physically removed him from the department.
The next day, I found the test body in the garbage. The shaper blade had taken a nice chunk out of it,
but with a little creativity and inlay, it was salvageable. I retrieved it and took it home. It became a
lovely fretless bass that for obvious reasons, I called “The Maverick.”
It was obvious that Eugene and I were going to come to blows. I ran into Helen Hontz from Sales in
the hallway and told her of my frustration. She had always been my advocate. She suggested that I get
myself completely out of No-Neck’s domain. She had some ideas about how to accomplish this.
The next day, Frank called me in. He’d been talking with Helen. There was a small area next to the
museum in the front of the plant that was ideal for a small factory gift shop. A mail order flyer with
Martin T-shirts, belt buckles and key chains had been fairly successful in bringing in some orders. Frank
suggested that if I were interested in starting The 1833 Shop, it might provide a convenient way to get
out of Eugene’s way. If he was as bad as I knew he was, he would seal his own fate in due time. I didn’t
want to abandon my prototyping project, but it seemed a good solution. I took the job.
The long strike finally came to an abrupt end. Half of the strikers broke ranks, resigned from the
union and returned to work. The rest followed soon after. With shovel in hand, I buried the cement
guitar five feet deep in the front lawn as Frank and a group of his cronies looked on ceremoniously. I
can only imagine some archeologist digging up that abomination in a thousand years and wondering
what in the hell someone was thinking.
The 1833 Shop began to thrive quickly. The electric guitars didn’t fare as well. Eugene had stripped
away virtually all of the attributes that I had tried to design into the instrument. I kept my distance,
though.
It wasn’t long before the order of notched tension hoops for the banjoes arrived. One by one, their
weak braze joints failed. There were several boxes of rejected or broken hoops just outside of Eugene’s
office. Eventually, John Arndt alerted the higher-ups that my prophecy had come true. Soon someone
brought an empty box into No-Neck’s office and told him to pack his things. The Personnel Manager
vanished shortly thereafter and slowly things at Martin started to look brighter.
The 1833 Shop
There was a small room just inside the front door of Martin’s Sycamore Street factory. It had been
emptied in anticipation of my moving in. On the first day, we brought in a desk and chair with a small
cash register. Quickly, the array of Martin trademarked products were organized – racks of
T-shirts
separated by size, the Martin history book, key chains, bumper stickers, coffee mugs, Sterling silver
guitar shaped earrings, belt buckles, and a smattering of guitar strings, straps, and polish. The offering
was very limited at first, but gradually each category grew. Gregor Unger in the Maintenance
Department built a beautiful cubby-hole display that held the many different guitar string identities. I
was able to expand the line of publications to include guitar instructional books, books about the
evolution of the guitar as an instrument, books for guitar collectors, and books about guitar repair and
construction. The line of Martin memorabilia expanded to include beach towels, hats, license plates,
umbrellas, jacket patches, playing cards, and baby bibs, just to name a few. The more than occasional
seconds generated in the Sigma guitar line were stripped of their logos and given a stick-on “Avalon”
brand that I was allowed to sell to recover cost.
Access to the dumpster was a bit different from an inside perspective. The Sales Department was
paranoid that releasing guitar parts into the marketplace would cannibalize Martin guitar sales, but Frank
Martin jumped in to back me up. He liked the idea of generating cash from garbage and soon I had
amassed enough parts to offer an assortment of do-it-yourself guitar kits.
By the end of the first year, 1833 Shop sales hit $60,000 and then, bolstered by a huge increase in kit
sales, my numbers began to double and triple. I needed more space and once again Frank came through
by clearing an adjacent office and instructing Gregor to knock out the common wall. Now visiting guitar
aficionados had a place to shop after taking the factory tour, and budding luthiers from around the world
were flocking to Nazareth to try their hand at the instrument maker’s craft.
Woodworker’s Dream
The Old Martin Factory at 10 West North Street in Nazareth had been the magical place where
Martin guitars had been made from 1859 to 1964. With its creaky wooden floors, it was special place,
but it had gradually become little more than a storage facility. In the years that followed the strike,
money was tight. There was a gasoline crunch, a recession, and people just weren’t spending their
money on leisure time products like acoustic guitars.
Martin had built a substantial sawmill to cut rosewood and mahogany logs. Within a year of The
Sawmill’s completion, India suspended export of rosewood and Brazil stopped trading in mahogany
logs. In an attempt to keep the mill running, Martin entered the specialty wholesale lumber business,
importing logs and lumber in many exotic species from around the world. Woods like cocobolo, padauk,
wenge, purpleheart, zebrawood, ebony, shedua, prima vera, lignum vitae, blackwood, koa, bubinga,
morado and kingwood were just a few of the unusual and rare species that Martin was importing. Sales
were primarily made to custom furniture makers, jewelry box makers and wood turners. The wholesale
business was dog-eat-dog and The Sawmill was struggling. I had always felt that there was an untapped
retail market for exotic wood and I voiced that opinion to my immediate supervisor, Bill Minnich.
The 1833 Shop was bursting at the seams with a smattering of these timbers, seconds in Martin’s
Sigma guitar line, guitar parts and kits salvaged from the best of Martin’s rejected materials, books
about guitars and guitarmaking, related strings and accessories, and a wide array of Martin memorabilia.
It was costing a lot of money to heat North Street and management wanted to explore alternate uses
for the old building that would help justify the expenditure. My proposal was to split the very successful
1833 Shop in two. Items that had strong appeal to the people touring the factory such as Martin
memorabilia, accessories, books and posters would remain at the new factory under The 1833 Shop
mantle.
The new store would occupy the first floor of the North Street plant. It would be called A
Woodworker’s Dream. The focus of the store would be to develop a market for retail exotic wood sales,
guitar kits and parts, and second quality Sigma guitars. Everyone seemed to like the idea. I left The 1833
Shop in the hands of my assistant Doug French and took the helm at Woodworker’s Dream. After
renovating the downstairs, installing some heavy duty woodworking equipment, and fabricating sturdy
display racks for the exotic sawn veneers, we held a grand opening. Guitarmaker, musician and inlay
artist Grit Laskin came down from Toronto to perform. The Board of Directors and the mayor of
Nazareth attended and a sizeable quantity of wine was consumed. All in all, it was a fitting and
appropriate christening.
Driving Mr. Martin
C. F. Martin III had taken a liking to me and one day, he called me into his office.
“You wanted to see me, Mr. Martin?” I stammered.
“You don’t have to be so formal.” He motioned for me to sit down. He exuded respect. I couldn’t
imagine calling him Fred or Fritz. No one else did.
“I’d like to invite you to join the Nazareth Lions Club. I’m a charter member. It’s a nice group of
men, and I’ll sponsor you. What do you think?” His voice crackled like John Beresford Tipton on the
60s TV show The Millionaire.
I hesitated for an instant, then realizing that it was my turn to talk, I caught up. “I’d be very honored,
Mr. Martin.” There I went again with the Mr. Martin thing. I figured it might be a good idea to accept
this offer.
“The next meeting is Tuesday. Would you be so kind as to pick me up? The doctors don’t think it’s
such a good idea for me to drive.”
“I’d be delighted.” We made the necessary arrangements. I made sure to wash and vacuum my car
prior to retrieving such precious cargo. I rang his doorbell, helped him with his cane, and held his arm to
steady him to the curbside.
“This cane is nothing but trouble,” he complained. “It’s too short and it has no weight to it.”
“I’d be glad to make you one on the lathe,” I offered. “How much longer should it be?”
In the week that followed, I turned a shaft of East Indian rosewood and with a scrap of rosewood
burl, I mounted a top section to the cane with epoxy and a concealed threaded rod. I had watched him
hold his cane. He liked to drape his index finger pointing downward toward the shaft, so when I handshaped the handle with my rasp, I made a special trough to accommodate his hand positioning. As a
finishing touch, I inlayed an abalone maltese cross guitar inlay and installed a heavy duty non-slip
rubber tip. My reward was the expression on his face when he first saw the cane, and of course seeing
him actually benefit from its use.
We had wonderful discussions about his vivid experiences throughout the course of the century. I
felt very privileged to have had this special time with him, driving back and forth between our
bimonthly Lions Club gatherings.
Joining The IRS
The location of Lions Club meetings had moved repeatedly since I had been invited to join. A new
restaurant called Sabatini’s had added a banquet room to the side of their building and had quoted the
club a price that the decision makers could not refuse. I was enjoying the new location. The food was
fair and the atmosphere was brighter than the previous dungeon.
The restaurant advertised happy hour on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 5:00 to 6:00 pm. They had
one of those portable flashing signs outside. During this short window, drinks were offered two for the
price of one. One particular Tuesday, Mr. Martin and I arrived at 5:45 pm for our 6:00 meeting. I went
to the bar, sat next to some happy hour participants and ordered a glass of white wine.
The bartender, Mr. Sabatini, was also the owner. He had run out of wine glasses and quickly washed
an assortment of different sized glasses so that he could pour my wine. He filled a very small cocktail
glass three-fifths full, set it on the bar and said: “That will be $4.75.”
I was slightly shocked at the price. I had watched the fellow next to me, a non-Lion member, order
red wine, pay $3.00 and be served two glasses. To top it off, his glasses were larger in size and each
filled nearly seven-eighth’s full. Details, details.
I’m not cheap and I don’t think I was nitpicking, but out of politeness, I gave him a five dollar bill.
He assumed I was going to tip him the remaining quarter and didn’t bring me change. When I went to
take a sip of my wine, the glass was so wet on the outside that it slipped through my fingers and
smashed on the bar. I suppose it was my fault, but it wouldn’t have happened had the glass been wiped
dry. I was embarrassed.
Mr. Sabatini came over, sneered at my apparent clumsiness, threw the broken glass away, wiped the
counter clean and asked whether I wanted another glass of wine. I did.
When he brought me the new glass, it was as wet as the first. I wiped it dry and looked up. He was
waiting in front of me. “That’ll be $4.75,” he barked.
“You son of a bitch!” I thought it. I didn’t say it. I couldn’t believe his arrogance. I should have
made a scene. Instead, I swallowed my pride, paid my bill and sat there approaching the boiling point
with each sip. In the meetings that followed, I noticed that Mr. Sabatini was charging the Lions Club
members a completely different set of prices for drinks than he was the other customers. He was also
working out of an open cash register, not ringing any of the transactions onto the tape. One week, I
asked whether there was a price list for drinks. There was not. He just kept it in his head and charged
erratically depending on his particular whim.
As I observed these blatant injustices at each successive meeting, my anger grew to the extent
that I decided to do something about it. I pondered what action I should take, finally deciding to write an
anonymous letter. I spent several days drafting it, making revisions, then redrafting it until I was
satisfied:
To the owner(s) of Sabatini’s Restaurant,
As an accountant and auditor for the Internal Revenue Service, I travel a great deal in Pennsylvania
and New Jersey. Accordingly, at the end of my business day, I like to relax and unwind. Toward that
end, I have stopped into your establishment on several occasions over the course of the past year and a
half. While you operate a relatively pleasant restaurant, I have quickly become aware of several
incongruities with respect to the honest and fair operation of your business.
First, you have no published or available prices at your bar. During the course of my visits, I have
observed great disparity in the prices that you charge to me as well as to other patrons. There is also
considerable disparity in the erratic portions that you serve.
Second, I have noticed that the required Pennsylvania tax stamps were missing from virtually all of
the liquor bottles that you dispense. I can accurately assume that you have purchased your stock from
out of state to avoid paying Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board taxes.
Third, and perhaps most disturbing, I note that you are neither ringing in your cash register
transactions, nor issuing receipts to your customers. I can assume that this is a convenient way to avoid
the declaration of cash income.
As a result of witnessing these incongruities, I have decided to write to you as a customer first to
give you an opportunity to rectify your practices.
So it is my hope that this letter will serve as a mild warning to you. Given that your future business
practices show a marked improvement, I am more than willing to dismiss everything I have seen. If
however, on a subsequent visit, I see further evidence of tax infractions or even a perception of
unfairness to your customers, I will feel obligated to file a formal report at my offices in Philadelphia
which will result in a full auditing of your records.
I’m sure you agree that this would be a most unfortunate occurrence for your business.
With hope that this letter will serve its intended purpose, I sincerely remain,
An Anonymous Customer
I actually didn’t intend for the letter to be as effective as it seemed to be. Within weeks, there was a
remarkable change. The cash register was ringing with every transaction, prices were published and
prominently displayed. Even the liquor bottles had the appropriate tax stamps. The owner did however,
appear to be under considerable stress.
I was especially surprised and slightly guilty when I drove by Sabatino’s several months later to see
the windows boarded up and a realtor’s For Sale sign pounded into the front turf. The Lions would have
to search for another restaurant to ruin.
Burn And Learn
Cousin JC's Mojo Boogie band mate Bill Lynn had developed a nice business providing stage sound
and lighting for the local concert scene, but in time he sold his equipment and moved to Fort Lauderdale.
With the Ann Arbor commune breaking up, JC headed off to California, then swung down to Florida to
visit his friend. Bill had resuscitated his stage sound and lighting enterprise there and JC decided to stay
and join the business.
While visiting a girlfriend in Jamaica, JC got into an interesting conversation with a couple from the
States who were sailing in the Caribbean and had moored at the Montego Bay Yacht Club. By sheer
coincidence, the husband, Bart Whitehead, was the brother of one of JC’s close college classmates. They
cordially exchanged cards and JC returned to Florida.
About a week later, JC received a call from Captain Bart who explained that his wife was too sick to
continue sailing. She was taking a plane home and Bart needed help commandeering the boat back to the
USA.
The money offered was good and JC accepted the offer, flying down to the Bahamas to assume his
temporary position as ship’s mate. Within days of setting sail in Bahamian waters, the craft was stopped
by the US Coast Guard and ordered to “Heave to!”
The officers came aboard and requested permission to inspect the vessel. A reluctant Captain Bart
agreed and after an hour of intensive searching, the officers again requested permission, this time to drill
holes in the interior hull. To JC’s horror, the officers came back with a handful of a green leafy
substance that they believed to be marijuana.
“Bart, are ‘we’ smuggling something?” JC recoiled.
The boat was put under tow with Bart and JC under arrest. There turned out to be 300 pounds of pot
packed in vacuum-sealed plastic. The contraband had been completely fiberglassed over inside the hull.
This was a well-planned and calculated endeavor and obviously Captain Bart was at the heart of the
matter.
Back in Fort Lauderdale, Captain Bart and JC were taken into custody and arraigned. JC posted
$5,000 bail with a bail bondsman and set out to defend his innocence. At first, Captain Bart was little
help, but with a little leverage, he eventually testified on JC’s behalf. Nonetheless, the jury simply didn’t
buy the story. They were both found guilty.
Between conviction and sentencing, JC assessed his situation and would have been quite all right
with serving time had he actually committed a crime, but the notion of significant jail time for
something that he didn’t do just wasn’t going to sit well. One afternoon, he told Bill he was going out
for a walk and he didn’t come back.
Vanished.
In fact, JC had done his research and purchased plane fare back to Jamaica – one of the few
countries that had no extradition treaty with the US. He knew the lay of the land there and thought it was
worth a shot.
Fishing For Blues
C. F. Martin IV (Chris) was born the first and only son of Frank Herbert Martin and Joan Simms
Martin. The marriage, Frank’s first of four, had little chance of survival. Joan remarried a doctor and
Chris’s last name was changed to Greth. During his childhood, he knew little of the Martin family’s
guitarmaking heritage.
In his early teens, Chris visited Nazareth and became enamored with his grandfather, C. F. Martin
III. Through their conversations, Chris learned about the family’s incredible legacy and the significance
of his original last name.
For several summers, Chris worked at the factory at an assortment of odd jobs. Then while attending
school in Southern California, he worked in a music store, assembling his own guitar from a kit.
Gradually, the notion of who he was emerged and he made the decision to change his name back to C.
F. Martin IV.
It was during this tumultuous time that I first met Chris. At the time, we were both die-hard
bohemians and we became friends quickly. Chris had finished college and was working in the Martin
Sales Department. He had a natural propensity for mischief that occasionally centered around his
fascination with cannabis. He was cultivating a thriving pair of plants named Homer & Jethro in the
office. Helen, who had worked in sales for many years, thought the plants were very attractive. No one
seemed to be aware of what marijuana plants looked like. It was really quite hilarious until his secret
was revealed. Then, of course, there was a flurry of scandal and controversy.
Chris found himself in a similar predicament when he brought a plate full of special brownies to
work. Realizing what they were, I tried one. They packed a wallop, but several people tried them
without being prepared and once again, Chris was the bad boy. At the time, that was a part of his natural
charm.
Steve Geigas roomed with Chris in college and they had remained great friends. Steve loved to go
night fishing and he invited Chris and me to troll for bluefish out along the central Jersey coast. Chris’s
half brother Doug and cousin Albert joined us. Late on a Friday after work, we drove down to the
outskirts of Philadelphia, picked Steve up, and raced to Barnegat Bay to board our boat before its
scheduled departure. We made it just in time.
The boat was a big metal clunker. Two by two, several dozen burly-bearded ruffians in yellow
raingear lugged huge coolers packed to the gills with Budweiser onto the deck. The testosterone was
running rampant.
I’m not a beer drinker. I’m not much of a fisherman either. Timidly, I boarded with my Jordache
suitcase. I had packed it hastily with my olive green V-neck sweater, an extra pair of khakis, my penny
loafers, a chilled bottle of Chardonnay, a twist of fresh mozzarella and a baguette of French bread. By
the looks of things, I sensed that I was in deep trouble.
The captain was a huge tobacco-chewing unshaven thug with hairy arms, two missing teeth and
black boots up to his knees. He steered us out of the harbor into the heaving waves. I took Dramamine
number one as the others chugged their first six packs. Not wanting to miss a second of fishing, all on
board were preparing their rods, tying their hooks, fitting their sinkers and baiting up with chum (a
pleasant term for rotten stinking pieces of dismembered fish guts).
I wasn’t anxious to dive right into the fishing routine so I uncorked my bottle of Chardonnay in one
of the inside cabins and sliced up some mozzarella. The constant pitching and slamming of the ship in
the waves was making it difficult for my unsettled stomach to enjoy the wine and cheese so instead, I
took Dramamine number two and decided to join Chris, Steve and the boys out on deck.
The captain was doing his rounds, making sure that everyone was pulling in the fish. Every few
minutes someone’s rod would flex under the tension. The reels would whirl and monster bluefish would
clear the railing and slam down onto the metal deck. The captain had seen me at my table inside and I’m
sure he thought I was a bit light in the loafers. He took pity on me though and pulled an extra rod down
off of the wall for me.
“Here. This’ll do,” he grunted.
He reached deep in his pocket and came up with a pair of filthy pliers and a sinker the size of a
chickpea. He slapped the sinker on my line a few yards from the hook and crimped it tight. Grabbing my
arm like a toothpick, he dragged me over to the starboard side rail and flung my line out with a nice fluid
cast into the blackness.
“Thank you, Captain.” I tried my best to convey as much base masculinity as I could muster up.
It didn’t take long for my line to become entangled with four or five of my adjacent fishermen. They
weren’t amused. The captain saw what had happened and wasted no time. He yanked the rod away from
me like a misbehaved child, took out a gigantic serrated pocketknife, and cut my line loose.
“Sorry, fellas.” He apologized to the starboard anglers who were gradually getting back to business.
A few of them took the opportunity to chug another six-pack before reaching back into their buckets of
chum.
I was humiliated.
I stood there unsure of exactly what to do, then retired to my back quarters for some refreshments.
The Dramamine was kicking in big time. I dozed off for about an hour and a half, and then shuffled back
out to check the progress. It was amazing. There were bluefish everywhere, a pair of small sharks, a few
stripers and a tuna. Everyone was hockerin’ and chewing tobacco, smokin’ stogies or burros, chuggin’
the brew and cussin’, throwin’ chum like it was goin’ outta style, pissin’ over the side, havin’ a hell of a
time.
The captain caught a glimpse of me and wandered over.
“You’re gonna catch a fish tonight or else!”
He gave me his own rod this time and with pliers in his teeth, he opened his tackle box and retrieved
a sinker the size of a golf ball.
“This’ll keep yer line from tanglin’ up.“
He was right about that. He led me over to the stern of the boat where he dropped my line straight
down over the back rail, 90º to the water. The sinker was so heavy it was actually a chore to keep it
away from the propeller. I stood there obediently, however, holding the rod steady awaiting further
instruction.
Half an hour went by. The captain came over to check my line. He reeled it up with an impatient
sigh.
“Yer outta chum. Bait ‘er up.”
Reluctantly, I reached into the disgusting bucket and reloaded my hook, carefully edging it back
down into the sea. Ten more minutes passed. The captain returned.
“Here. Gimme that!” He pulled the rod out of my hands, reeled it up, slapped some fresh chum onto
the hook, cast it out, tugged the line to the left, tugged the line to the right, let it out, reeled it back in,
then yanked it tight.
“There. You got one. Reel her in.”
He handed me the rod with a cocky sneer. I took it and mimicking my fellow fisherman, I pulled and
reeled, pulled and reeled. All eyes were on me. The fish was coming up fighting all the way. I gave a
hefty pull and that sucker came flying up over the rail, up over my head against the cabin wall, missing
the captain’s face by an inch. He spit out his tobacco wad and turned to me.
“Yer done.” He was so mad I think he was ready to take out his serrated knife and chop me up for
chum. I thought it best to sit out the remainder of the excursion in the cabin sipping my wine and
polishing off the mozzarella. Chris, Steve and the rest were trying to pretend they didn’t know me. It
was better that way.
When we got back to the dock, I had had a nice Dramamine-induced snooze. Everyone else was
either shit-faced or exhausted. I offered to drive. It was my last ditch chance to make myself somewhat
useful.
I was making great time cruising down Route 72, a two lane highway that slices a straight line from
Barnegat to Buddtown. Everyone else was asleep except for Chris, who was riding shotgun and keeping
one drowsy eye on my driving.
“Slow down,” Chris mumbled in a low monotone. I didn’t really hear what he said. I was so focused
on the road. Then I saw it. Eighty miles an hour and I was coming right into one of those famous New
Jersey traffic circles. Chris reached over and grabbed the wheel. He pulled it hard to the right and the
van screeched up on two tires. The tires hit the curb and I pulled the wheel back the other direction, then
Chris yanked it back again, then we swerved back onto the highway. We were through it. It was a
wonder we didn’t flip.
I pulled over to the shoulder. Without a word, Chris and I got out of the van and switched positions.
He drove back to Philly where we dropped Steve off, then back to Nazareth where we divvied up
more bluefish filets than any of us could possibly have consumed. The remains were conveniently
bequeathed to Martin’s North Street dumpster just up the street from Chris’s house. This final act was
committed to the great surprise and ultimate dismay of Ron Flick, the North Street building manager,
who discovered the dumpster full of anonymously deposited rotting chum on Monday morning after the
contents had fermented in the hot 90º sun for 48 hours.
Two decades later, that dumpster still reeks out a steady testament to my full indoctrination into the
alien world of blue fishing.
How Not To Prepare Bluefish While Dinner Guests Are Watching
1. Attempt to filet the bluefish without any prior experience at filleting and without a proper filleting
knife. Miscalculate the timing of the meal so that dinner guests arrive during this step.
2. Try not to appear flustered when the filets completely disintegrate into a mishmash of tiny bones and
fish slivers.
3. Retrieve the blender with an air of confidence as if this had somehow been part of the plan from the
start.
4. Separate any salvageable chunks of bone-free fish. Deposit the remaining 90% into the blender.
Ingredients:
1
Unusual looking bowl of blender pulverized bluefish
1
Small plate of boneless bluefish chunks
1
Stick of salted butter
1
Bowl of mashed potatoes
1
Brick of Cracker Barrel cheddar cheese, fully grated
1
Container of bread crumbs
1/4
Cup of sesame seeds
1/4
Cup of fresh parsley
1/4
Teaspoon of paprika
Salt & Pepper to taste
In a casserole dish, spread a half inch deep layer of mashed potatoes. Arrange the boneless bluefish
chunks on top of the mashed potatoes, pressing them firmly into position. Cut and arrange several small
pads of butter, then sprinkle grated cheese, bread crumbs, parsley and sesame seeds to complete first
layer.
Add second thinner layer of mashed potatoes topped with 1/4” thick layer of bluefish “puree.”
Repeat layering of butter, cheese, bread crumbs, parsley and sesame seeds.
Repeat layers until casserole is full or ingredients are depleted, saving enough cheese to completely
cover the top. Garnish with remaining parsley and paprika. Cover with foil.
Bake:
30 minutes at 275º F.
Broil: Approx. 5 minutes until cheese turns golden brown.
Serve: To the amazement of your horrified guests.
Amish Ice Adventure
Steve Geigas was in the pallet business. It was inevitable that our common interest in sawmills
would eventually collide. There was an Amish pallet mill northwest of Harrisburg that upon Steve’s
request was setting aside special planks of highly figured birdseye maple and quartersawn white oak.
Chris and I thought the wood might make some special guitars. We secured the beat-up company Dodge
station wagon and headed west on I-78 in the frostbitten January cold.
We met up with Steve at the mill. The saws were slicing up pallet stock like there was no tomorrow.
Everyone’s breath was hovering in white puffs. Things were moving so quickly, there was barely
enough time to stop and separate a special plank here and there. With the reluctant assistance of the
Amish mill foreman, we suffered over a few hundred planks, picked out some unusual looking boards,
loaded them up, said our goodbyes to Steve, and headed out before dusk.
Heading east on the Interstate, the wind picked up and thick snow pummeled us in waves at a 45º
angle. Cognizant of my prior vehicular shortcomings, Chris opted to drive. We were slicing through the
blizzard at 70 miles an hour when an immense tractor trailer passed us doing 80. When the truck was
about a football field ahead of us we were both horrified to see a gigantic inch-thick sheet of solid ice lift
off the top of the trailer like a 4’ x 8’ sheet of plywood. It hovered and rotated effortlessly in the wind,
flying through the cold black air and crashed head-on into our windshield!
The glass in front of us shattered and fractured in a spider web of a million broken fragments. With
no visibility, Chris slowed long enough to expose a small flap in the safety glass. Peering through the
tiny opening, we sped up and chased the truck for five miles, finally catching up long enough to jot the
license number down on a napkin, then we pulled over to assess our situation.
The damage was extreme and we were frozen to the bone, but we decided to forge ahead, the heater
pumping hot air with minimal results. For ninety miles we crept. I supported the weakened windshield
with both hands to keep it from collapsing. We arrived home petrified and in shock. It was a bit difficult
explaining the damage to Francis, the traffic manager. I’m not sure he believed us. Who would have?
The planks made it home intact and a pair of spectacular white oak prototypes emerged, setting the
stage for future Martin guitars made with sustainable Pennsylvania hardwoods. Steve owns one of those
prototypes and it has a cold dry icy sound that seems to whistle through the long pores and radial
striations of the acrid white oak. It’s an unusual sound that conjures up strange memories.
Life Sentence
One of the attributes that Chris inherited from his father was an affinity for fast automobiles. One
balmy evening, he was testing the capacity of his new Porsche within the boundaries of the notorious
hamlet of Hellertown. All of a sudden the flashing red lights were upon him. The resulting speeding
ticket was severe and placed his driving privileges in jeopardy.
Chris’s strategy had always been to contest such offenses with a not-guilty plea. He arrived at the
district justice's office for the hearing, well equipped with an easel and illustration board which neatly
depicted the site of his violation. An older distinguished looking gentleman sat at a desk in the corner of
the room. Chris assumed this was the judge. There was also an attractive brunette in the room, who it
seemed was most likely the court secretary. Chris flirted with her until a clerk called all parties into the
hearing room. The brunette turned out to be the honorable Diane Repyneck, District Magistrate. She
donned her robes and listened to his testimony.
With tiny matchbox replicas of the police vehicle and his stone metallic grey Porsche, a selfrepresented Chris re-enacted the incident for the magistrate. The gist of his case was that the speed limit
signs were inadequately posted. Though she was somewhat impressed with his unorthodox presentation,
she was skeptical about the validity of his claims. She drove out and measured the distance between
signs.
Without any real evidence to justify an acquittal, she pronounced him guilty and levied the
appropriate fine. She did, however, withhold giving him any points and Chris sped away with a sense of
exhilaration.
Several days later, Diane received a phone call from Chris asking her whether she would consider
having dinner with a convicted felon. She accepted. It wasn’t long before they were married. Chris says
she gave him a life sentence. He’s serving it out, albeit under great scrutiny of his daily accelerations.
The Crux Of Art
Artists become cognizant that their tension, emptiness, anger, and distress can provide an effective
fuel for the unleashing of creative energy. I don’t mean to suggest that one should seek out these
anxieties for inspiration, rather that the individual be aware of and ready to redirect emotional turbulence
or overflow toward technically pre-developed intuitive outlets, thereby nurturing, strengthening, and
accelerating one’s sense of purpose while creating a positive and aesthetic visual object that records the
tangible history of that individual and of that time.
Containers
(Key of G. Sing with feeling!)
Since you're sitting there and you're asking
let me tell you how I feel.
My heart thrives on starvation
but my stomach needs a meal.
No I'm not the one in question.
I just do the things I must;
erecting all of my fantasies
out of relics in the dust.
Your tools are what are important.
Don't let them go to rust.....
I considered keeping my mouth shut
until I reached that age
when I found that all of my freedom
still stayed with me in the cage.
And so my voice is getting louder now
but my song remains unsung,
and though I'm weary from this journey
I've really only just begun.
I'm tired of all this walking.
I think I'll start to run.....
Running around in circles
doesn't get you anywhere,
because you can't stay under the water
without coming up for air.
The past has not been easy
but it's carried you this far,
and you can't remain on a mountain-top
without searching for a star.
I wonder how long it might be my friend
'til we see just who we are.....
So don't speak to me of incompetence;
your voice is what you bring.
Blend it in with some harmony
and let your instinct sing.
There is plenty I could tell you now
but the words just can't begin
to describe to you what I'm feeling now
or what's happening within.
These words are just the containers
that I put my feelings in.....
Bay Of Tears
We paddled to the bay of tears
And in the back she calmly steers
Us past the shoals, the unseen fears
She tilts her head as if she hears
The silent bay of tears.
The toads observing from their stools
A million years of shallow pools
The tears of lovers, pawns, and fools
As hearts abandon human rules
Into the bay of tears.
The fish like sorrows deep and slow
Absorb the nutrients below
I wonder if they really know
How graciously they seem to flow
Beneath the bay of tears.
The mist arises from the lake
Condensing clouds about to break
Above the cracks of lightning shake
But even thunder won't awake
The sleeping bay of tears.
Candy
I’d just completed the melody and lyrics for a song called “Containers.” It was about words being
the containers for feelings. I was excited to perform the song in front of a live audience and I headed
down to Godfrey Daniels Coffeehouse in Bethlehem for their weekly Sunday night open mike. There
wasn’t much of a crowd that night. Half way through the song, I noticed an interesting woman sitting
alone at a table close to the stage. For the remainder of the song, I focused my lyrics on her and after my
set she introduced herself. Her name was Candy. She liked my lyrics. She was engaging and serene. I
was more uncontained and rough around the edges, but Candy didn’t seem to have any “edges.”
Our conversations revealed a certain degree of turmoil in Candy’s life. She was going through a
difficult divorce and that was taking a toll. She spent her weekdays teaching underprivileged elementary
school children in Allentown – a job that was both challenging and draining for her. I showed her
empathy and cautiously, she allowed me into her guarded world. I was falling into an abyss as she was
reaching upward and climbing out.
Her apartment was immaculate. She took great pride in having everything in its proper place. My
world was India ink, sawdust and autoharp strings. Clearly we were very different, but she was drawn to
the artist in me and I was captivated with her tenderness. It was a creative time for me. I used my
illustration, woodworking, poetry and music to record our relationship. It seemed to me a kind of giving,
though in hindsight I think I was trying to capture and preserve something for myself. She had a
porcelain Lladro figurine on a glass shelf. Her husband had given it to her. One day I accidentally
bumped it and it smashed into a dozen pieces. Such a symbol – nothing could replace it.
I always had the feeling that Candy longed to be elsewhere and one day, I watched her pack her car.
She had sought a new career in upstate New York with an educational book publisher. It was a brand
new life for her, like a freshly wrapped figurine. I knew she was making a good choice, but I was too
weakened to arrive at the decision on my own. I followed her for a distance on the turnpike the day that
she left. She never looked back.
Practicing Piano
she plays piano
her back is firm
there is a rip in her jeans
right down the back
a patch of red panties with white dots
shows through the tear
she is embarrassed when the old woman
sees her carrying the laundry downstairs
in her torn pants.
she is playing a slow song
it rambles and falls
it is as if she were combing her hair
it starts out rough
the comb tugs
her hands jerk
but she plays and plays
and the snarls come out
the sound becomes smooth and refined
and so does she
The Seconds Of Your Love (A Song)
My heart has open caverns but they're all caving in
And the walls of my distinction are wearing pretty thin.
This dizziness is terrible;
It's set me in a spin.
Was it worth it for a second of your love?
It wouldn't be so painful but I know that you're alive.
Telepathy screams out to you in hopes you might revive
The memories of our depths together;
Listen to them thrive.
Reaching for the seconds of your love.
I knew that I was vulnerable but I didn't seem to care.
Intangibly I felt as if we made a decent pair.
Our laughter and our passion
Still lingers in the air.
Savoring the seconds of your love.
I rarely write my thoughts out when they surface in my mind
But it's late and I am restless. I'm trying to unwind
The coils of my loneliness
In the words you left behind.
Questioning the seconds of your love?
It's funny how this paradox works something like a key.
The only way to conquer is to set the cages free;
To open up those locked doors
For all eternity.
It was worth it for a second of your love.
Sixty seconds in a minute, sixty minutes in an hour.
Time consumes my deepest wounds left open to devour.
The days stack up so graciously
Reaching like a tower
Constructed with the seconds of your love.
Autumn
the leaves have all turned
and most have fallen
black branches emerge
like pitch forks with bent prongs
snow fences are stretched like tourniquets
tightening upon the swelling cornfield
to prevent the amber essence
from bleeding out onto the highway
Candy’s Giant Potato
Candy bought a giant potato
No doubt she discovered it
at the supermarket
bulging out
from within the cellophane bag.
She brought it home
and put it on her shelf
between the teabags
and the milk bones.
Then she invited me to dinner.
For dinner,
Candy cooked the giant potato
and served it to me on a plate
with rare roast beef cold cuts,
bite sized carrots,
and strawberries dowsed in whipped cream.
There were chunks of cold yellow butter
on the potato.
Candy brought salt and pepper.
I think she was excited
that she had found such a giant potato.
I think she was proud.
We ate our dinner.
The potato was delicious.
Candy was pleased.
The Church Of Art
I was so tired of pouring $300 of monthly rent down a black hole that I started looking at properties.
Old barns were interesting to me, but they were all parceled up with farm houses that were way out of
my meager price range. So I started looking at cheaper houses that needed fixing up. That was
depressing. Just as the futility of my search began to sink in, Chris Martin stopped me in the hallway and
asked me whether I had looked at the abandoned Mennonite Church building that was for sale right on
South Broad Street in the center of town.
I had passed this property every day on the way to work; in fact I had had an unfortunate fender
bender there with the high school French teacher. There was no question that the accident was my fault,
but fuming in her beehive hairdo, the teacher demanded my immediate incarceration. She was so overly
boisterous that the police became quickly annoyed with her and began to take my side. This infuriated
her even more. They ended up carting her away. So that particular corner held some interesting karma
for me, but somehow I had never taken notice of the tiny red brick church with Jesus Saves in neon
above the front window, or the For Sale sign wired to the rusted wrought iron hand railing.
I called the realtor and made an appointment. One step inside the door and I knew that I had found
what I was looking for. There was one large room with 20 foot ceilings on the main floor. The oak pews
were still fastened to the floor. A balcony overlooked the “congregational” area. The whole place was
wainscoted. There was a full basement for my shop. The price: a whopping $25,000. I put down my
deposit and proceeded toward settlement.
The day that the documents were signed, I took my sleeping bag and slept between the pews. There
was no kitchen. The only running water was a sink in the tiny bathroom in the rear of the basement. I
had a lot of work to do.
Reverend Dick
The whole idea of living in a church was unusual and novel. From the start I felt that the place
deserved a name. One evening I took a roll of masking tape and applied it to the inside of the window
that faced Broad Street, spelling out The Church Of Intuitive Art & Music in bold letters. The interior
lights made the silhouetted lettering stand out prominently for the cars passing by. The name seemed to
cover the general theme of what I had in mind.
Somehow, the town’s people didn’t get it. I don’t think that the people of Nazareth knew exactly
what the word intuitive meant. Even if they did, its juxtaposition with art and music was just a bit too
much. I think they thought that a hippie religious cult had moved in, something on the order of Charles
Manson or the Symbionese Liberation Army.
Word reached me from a number of different avenues that the title I had chosen just wasn’t cutting
it. I buckled to the pressure. After much deliberation, I axed the offensive word, shortening the name to
simply The Church Of Art. For the most part, this placated the community. There were always going to
be those who thought that anyone choosing to live in a church must be considered either sacrilegious or
dangerous.
All of my friends joked with me about my new church affiliation. I must admit that I found
tremendous humor in this and played right into their hands. Soon I was widely and irreverently dubbed
Reverend Dick.
There was considerable confusion about my official tax status as well. Most everyone assumed that
since I lived in a church, I would automatically be exempt from paying taxes. No one wished this to be
the case more than myself. The fact was, I didn’t really know how the tax laws worked. So I inquired.
It seems that in order for the state or the federal government to recognize a church, there needs to be
a church charter. Ideally, there is an affiliation with a larger officially recognized religious entity. Then
there is the matter of a congregation and regular services. Attendance records and schedules must be
kept in order to qualify. There seemed to be an awful lot involved.
During this mild spirituality crisis, I found myself sitting on my couch reading, of all things, The
Mother Earth News. There in the classified section was the answer to my dilemma:
Become An Officially Ordained Minister Of
The Mother Earth Church.
For complete details, church charter information,
ordination documents, marriage licenses, and more,
send $15 to:
The Mother Earth Church, Inc.
469 Pacific Street, Monterey, California 93940
Of course, I promptly sent in my $15 and soon received my Certificate of Ordination. This was
clearly a joke, but an enjoyable one at that. The odd thing is that the very concept of Art as Religion is
one that I am quite capable of grasping. I genuinely agree with the idea that creativity is the imitation of
God. With all this tongue-in-cheek humor about the Church of Art and Reverend Dick, there was a real
spirit about the place, and I made a concerted effort to encourage and promote creativity and multimedia
art as a way of life.
My father had retired from the Sales Department of Bethlehem Steel. He was extremely thrilled that
I was finally settling into a place of my own. Seeing the daunting task in front of me, he offered to help.
He was a great house painter and he loved working with his hands. I think there was a part of him that
longed for a simpler grassroots kind of life, where hands-on craftsmanship held more importance than
stressful business negotiation.
While I was busy during the day at Martin, my father was hard at work in the church. He repaired
the cracks in the ceiling and gave all of the plaster a fresh coat of eggshell paint. He sanded and
refinished the floors, then he stained and varnished all the yellow pine wainscoting.
When he was done on the inside, he started scraping the window trim on the outside. The best thing
about my father’s help was the bond that was created between us. We didn’t really need to talk about it,
but we both felt it. He was proud of what I was becoming.
I think he was vicariously experiencing an aspect of life that had evaded him during his career. I was
certainly appreciative of his unlimited willingness to share in the sweat of my project. He left large
pieces of his soul and pride on the many surfaces of that building.
And there he remains.
Deacon Dale
After the room was restored to its modest grandeur, the need for a bathroom, kitchen and storage
closet became increasingly evident. To top it off, the rainspouts were clogged and water was seeping
down the sides of the building into the basement. Several inches had accumulated and the toilet wasn’t
functioning. The place needed a small miracle.
In the trusty Yellow Pages, I found Unger & Sons Plumbing & Heating. Early the next morning,
they dispatched a truck that came out to Martin to pick up the key to my front door. I met briefly with
the fellow and gave him directions and instructions.
After work, I returned to the Church to find the plumber standing on the altar, plugged into my
amplifier and wailing on one of my electric guitars. It was a little weird. He was slightly embarrassed.
We talked for a while. He explained that he had always wanted to learn how to build guitars. He
proposed that I teach him guitarmaking and in exchange, he would help me with some of the plumbing
work. I wasn’t really looking for another apprentice, but he was persistent. We made a deal.
His name was Dale Unger. It didn’t take long before we were best friends. We worked every
available hour on outfitting the Church of Art and building an assortment of acoustic and electric guitars
together.
I often frequented Godfrey Daniels, a thriving coffee house and folk music stage in south
Bethlehem. There I had become good friends with Jay Thomas who was part of local band called Little
Known Diseases. I temporarily added my own autoharp and vocal “malady” to their instrument mix. Jay
was running sound for several local bands and with his help, I purchased a BiAmp 12-channel powered
mixing board for the Church. After completing an oak console to hold the board (see photo at left), Dale,
Jay and I ran a snake down along the ceiling of the basement and up to the altar/stage and hard-wired a
substantial patch bay for microphones and direct boxes.
The general operating principle at the Church of Art was that every possible feature and fixture
should be handcrafted wherever possible out of wood. The speakers for the sound system were no
exception. With Jay’s help and expertise, I designed two pairs of speaker enclosures, then spent several
weeks crafting the cabinets out of several beautiful wide planks of 3/4” African padauk, a reddishorange wood that like ziricote, yields a sawdust that adheres to anything and everything it contacts. It
also turns clothing an indelible shade of orange, but I was thoroughly accustomed to dealing with
sawdust. It fit nicely with my deluded philosophy that ingesting airborne particulates through the nostrils
was somehow soulful and nutritious. The speakers were a great success though and they were more than
adequate for the concerts that would follow.
Marquis Quotes From The Church of Art
“Never make the same mistake once.”
Mike Longworth
“A dollar saved is a quarter earned.”
John Ciardi
“I don’t believe in an afterlife, but I’m
taking a change of underwear just in case.”
Woody Allen
“Everything should be made as simple as possible,
but not simpler.”
Albert Einstein
“I don’t want to achieve mortality through my work.
I want to achieve it through not dying.”
Woody Allen
“A man is what he does.
A woman is what she is.”
Doris Dörrie
“It’s not that I‘m afraid to die.
I just don’t want to be there when it happens.”
Woody Allen
“Christ died for our sins. Dare we make
his martyrdom meaningless by not committing them?”
James Feiffer
“There’s no underestimating the intelligence
of the American public.”
H. L. Mencken
“Without art, the crudeness of reality
would make the world unbearable.”
George Bernard Shaw
“No one tests the depths of a river with both feet.”
Anonymous
“Originality is the art of concealing your source.”
Franklin P. Jones
“Consistency requires you to be as ignorant today
as you were a year ago.”
Bernard Berenson
“If Christ were here now there is one thing
he would not be – a Christian.”
Mark Twain
“It often shows a fine command of language to say nothing.”
Unknown
“You can give without loving,
but you can’t love without giving.”
Amy Carmichael
“Education means developing the mind,
not stuffing the memory.”
Anonymous
“A man snores to protect his woman from wild animals.”
Unknown
“Our souls were clean, but the grass didn’t grow.”
Van Morrison
Deacon Dale
After the room was restored to its modest grandeur, the need for a bathroom, kitchen and storage
closet became increasingly evident. To top it off, the rainspouts were clogged and water was seeping
down the sides of the building into the basement. Several inches had accumulated and the toilet wasn’t
functioning. The place needed a small miracle.
In the trusty Yellow Pages, I found Unger & Sons Plumbing & Heating. Early the next morning,
they dispatched a truck that came out to Martin to pick up the key to my front door. I met briefly with
the fellow and gave him directions and instructions.
After work, I returned to the Church to find the plumber standing on the altar, plugged into my
amplifier and wailing on one of my electric guitars. It was a little weird. He was slightly embarrassed.
We talked for a while. He explained that he had always wanted to learn how to build guitars. He
proposed that I teach him guitarmaking and in exchange, he would help me with some of the plumbing
work. I wasn’t really looking for another apprentice, but he was persistent. We made a deal.
His name was Dale Unger. It didn’t take long before we were best friends. We worked every
available hour on outfitting the Church of Art and building an assortment of acoustic and electric guitars
together.
I often frequented Godfrey Daniels, a thriving coffee house and folk music stage in south
Bethlehem. There I had become good friends with Jay Thomas who was part of local band called Little
Known Diseases. I temporarily added my own autoharp and vocal “malady” to their instrument mix. Jay
was running sound for several local bands and with his help, I purchased a BiAmp 12-channel powered
mixing board for the Church. After completing an oak console to hold the board (see photo at left), Dale,
Jay and I ran a snake down along the ceiling of the basement and up to the altar/stage and hard-wired a
substantial patch bay for microphones and direct boxes.
The general operating principle at the Church of Art was that every possible feature and fixture
should be handcrafted wherever possible out of wood. The speakers for the sound system were no
exception. With Jay’s help and expertise, I designed two pairs of speaker enclosures, then spent several
weeks crafting the cabinets out of several beautiful wide planks of 3/4” African padauk, a reddishorange wood that like ziricote, yields a sawdust that adheres to anything and everything it contacts. It
also turns clothing an indelible shade of orange, but I was thoroughly accustomed to dealing with
sawdust. It fit nicely with my deluded philosophy that ingesting airborne particulates through the nostrils
was somehow soulful and nutritious. The speakers were a great success though and they were more than
adequate for the concerts that would follow.
Outfitting The Sanctuary
From the onset, the concept of the Church of Art was to provide a vehicle within which art could
flourish. More specifically, I wanted to fabricate a culture, or at least gather it together with the help of
my friends.
So each need that was encountered became an artistic challenge. I had enlisted the help of Ken
Dieterly, a master cabinetmaker, to build the kitchen cabinets according to my basic design. It took a
while but he did a fantastic job. The facade of the cabinets was solid maple and all of the doors were
trimmed with black walnut. My friend Mike Mode had really become an expert at lathe turning and he
produced the drawer pulls and cabinet knobs from walnut, boxwood, ebony and pearl. Ken Dieterly had
acquired maple butcher block counter tops from Bally Block, but I still needed a kitchen sink. The
notion of having everything, wherever possible, fashioned out of wood really appealed to me. I ripped
2” wide strips of marine plywood and using waterproof glue, I laminated the side and bottom panels and
trimmed the top surface with a cap of mahogany. After multiple coats of urethane, I crossed my fingers
about the effectiveness of wood and its ability to coexist in constant contact with water.
I encountered a much greater challenge with the bathtub. I had had a brainstorm while shopping
around at a flea market. One of the vendors had a large cedar chest that seemed about shower size and I
bartered a pair of church pews for it – a good deal given that I had about thirty pews to spare. With the
top of the chest removed, I cut four tall triangular posts from 4” x 4” yellow pine, affixed them to the
inside corners of the chest, and mounted the top lid of the chest on top of the posts to create a ceiling.
Three large panes of 1/4” tempered plate glass served as the sides and a notch cut in the front side of the
chest made it easy to step in and out. The last step was to seal all the seams and cut a light panel into the
ceiling. The kitchen sink had been in service for more than six months and it was becoming evident that
urethane was an ineffective waterproof finish. With some leftover fiberglass from Martin’s defunct
Fibes Drum Company, I mixed catalyst and poured the resin into the interior. It was a nightmare. The
gloppy mixture was hot to the touch for several days and when it finally cured, the resin shrank and
cracked like a parched riverbed. I shrugged and for the time being, gave up.
The very next week, Shogo Terada, the son of one of Martin’s Sigma guitar vendors in Japan,
arrived for a month of internship at the factory. He had arranged to lodge close by and it became my
responsibility to entertain him in the evenings – a difficult task since he spoke virtually no English.
Shogo (soon to be dubbed Sho-gun) was adept at the Japanese art of sharpening and in a few days he
had put razor sharp edges on all of my chisels. With a blank look in his eyes, he came to me looking for
more projects. I showed him the bathtub catastrophe, held up a chisel, and miracle of miracles, he began
chipping away with an incredible burst of Asian energy. The sound of the hardened resin breaking away
made a brittle sound. Dale and I were working on guitars in the basement and we found Shogo’s
diligence quite amusing.
Shogo finished the tub in record time. I had found a hopeful waterproofing product named Gluevit at
the marine store and proceeded to coat the tub with this milky mixture that had the consistency and odor
of vomit. It was a bad choice, especially since it seemed to be incompatible with fiberglass residue. Shogo to the rescue! Armed with flexible scrapers, he patiently purged all of the Gluevit from the tub
interior, just in time for me to pour, to Sho-go’s horror, my next concoction of clear two-part marine
epoxy, and at considerable expense, I might add.
It would seem that marine epoxy isn’t quite compatible with Gluevit residue. The epoxy didn’t dry.
It remained the consistency of molasses. A demoralized but loyal-to-the-death Shogo donned his trusty
scrapers and with rubber gloves, he tackled the tub one last time before his departure back to Japan. I
can’t imagine what he told his friends when they asked him how he had spent the bulk of his free time in
America.
Dale’s brother-in-law Billy is a tile contractor. With the cleanly scraped tub in its final position, he
poured a half a ton of “mud” (compatible with just about anything) into the bottom of the tub and laid a
lovely pattern of tile – a fitting finale to the Sho-gun Memorial Cedar Shower.
During the months that followed, I immersed myself in sawdust downstairs on the wood lathe
turning dozens of plates, bowls, goblets and urns. I met the director of Moravian College’s Student
Center at Godfrey Daniels and he arranged for me to have a perhaps premature “retrospective” exhibit
during a week-long artist-in-residency program. I lugged my lathe down to the college, together with all
of my framed drawings, odd Boakstruments, and white Plexiglas backlit light boxes constructed to
display framed negatives of my illustrations. After a great opening night extravaganza, I demonstrated a
week of lathe turning for the curious student body. This was particularly effective in depositing a fine
layer of ziricote-wood sawdust on every horizontal and vertical surface in the entire Student Union
building. Where was Shogo when I needed him!
July 4th came soon thereafter. I threw a rather large party wherein all of the participants consumed
what in today’s standards would be considered a criminal amount of alcohol and in the process became
rather boisterous, myself included. I had been give a set of miniature flare gun cuff links that were really
quite remarkable. They fired caps unless you wished to add the flare muzzle. What better time than July
4th to try them out. From the balcony window I aimed the amazing piece of Swiss craftsmanship onto
Broad Street and pulled the tiny trigger. The flare shot out in a streaming red rocket trail – up, up, up –
then down, down, down, right toward the gasoline pumps at Terry’s Mobil across the street. Everyone
gasped as it landed, inches from the finger hole in the brass plate that housed the fuel tanks. Slowly the
flare died out and a massive sigh of relief followed.
An hour later the torrential rains began and a group of die-hards watched in drenched disbelief as I
shouted at the top of my lungs: “If there’s a God up there, strike me now!”
Musical Chord Wheels
Having never learned music theory as a child, transposing (changing keys) of songs was a major
challenge for me. When I discovered that a simple wheel could be utilized to transpose chords, I made
several versions. With each adaptation, I attempted to incorporate more useful information for the
guitarist or musician. In the process, I began to understand the underlying mathematical structure of
various chord forms.
My first and last chord wheels are shown in their unassembled form below and on the following
page. After cutting out the circles and removing the various internal windows with an Exacto knife, the
wheels can be stacked and assembled using a simple brass fastener. The most basic dickie’s Chord
Wheel has two basic uses: to transpose the key of a song and to determine the specific notes in a given
chord.
As I immersed myself in guitar construction and playing, I learned more about noting, open tuning,
chording, major and minor keys, and harmonics. Over the course of several years, I worked through
seven evolutions and finally arrived at a final version that I felt was possibly marketable to the broader
guitar playing public.
I had seen circular slide rules that were lamented in stiff plastic with a much more sophisticated
center hub. These were manufactured by a small company in New Jersey. I visited them with a
prototype of my latest variation. They gave me price quotes that were pretty sobering so instead, I
published the dick boak’s Musical Chord Wheel For The Guitarist in poster form – some assembly
required.
Because assembly is a bit daunting, the wheel never really achieved any commercial success, though I
suppose several hundred were sold. For those dedicated, dexterous or naive enough to have actually put
the contraption together, I hope that some fascination and usefulness was reaped. I shouldn’t be making
apologies though. In hindsight, the idea is actually quite clever.
If you wish to try this out, place the page on a photocopier, enlarging the wheels to a greater
diameter if possible, since the circles on this page have been reduced to approximately half their actual
size. The two large wheels at the bottom can be carefully aligned and spray-adhesived back to back. The
two smaller windowed wheels can then be positioned accordingly and assembled.
This is most likely the last of my chord wheel efforts. They served their purpose for me. During the
tedious process of inking and illustrating the wheels, I learned my guitar chords and fabricated my rather
twisted premise as to how music works. Piano instructors shriek at the gross simplification of what they
cherish as true, but the whole system remains quite workable for the odd association of musicallychallenged guitarists of which I am a charter member.
I certainly was proud of myself for coming up with the ingenious Guit-arts™ trademark, though
as of yet it has never been lent to any other project. Occasionally, I meet young inventors that have made
their own compulsive stabs at unraveling the musical DNA. In fact, many of them actually seek me out
as a sage or advisor. I always try to explain that their passion for the analysis of musical structures may
never reap the big payoff. They all seem so surprised at this, but the sad reality is that guitar music can
survive and prosper quite well without the use or need of any of these contraptions.
Nonetheless, there are long lines at the patent office. You won’t find me there. I’ll be too busy on the
floor with my scissors, glue and razor blades trying to put this damn thing together!
Ken Dieterly
Martin’s Purchasing Manager Bill Minnich had previously worked in the furniture industry. When
Martin sought a woodworking shop to outsource the lamination and machining of E-18 electric guitar
bodies and necks, Bill remembered his old friend Ken Dieterly of Milford Furniture Company. Ken was
the perfect choice. He was an old school woodworker with a particular expertise in jury-rigged
efficiency. He loved the challenge of a difficult project and tackled everything with a “can do”
enthusiasm.
I developed a great respect for Ken and we became friends. His machining and finishing capabilities
enabled us to collaborate and complete several personal guitar projects that were intended to extend the
designs that Martin had settled upon. Our mutual obsession with lamination combined with his
abundance of native hardwood cutoffs yielded the two neck-thru-body prototypes shown on this page.
He also produced a popular line of Martin-branded butcher block cutting boards made with similar
contrasting wood patterns.
Ken knew many great woodworkers. Through him, I became friends with a local wood turner named
Mike Mode whose passion for lathe turning inspired me. Mike went on to become one of America’s
most respected turners.
When the Church of Art started to take shape, I enlisted Ken’s talents to fabricate the beautiful
maple and walnut kitchen cabinets in the church and Mike made special ebony and boxwood drawer
pulls. This was all in keeping with my desire to construct my entire reality out of wood.
The Apple And The Rose
During my last month in Gettysburg, I had discovered a wild apple tree in a remote corner of the
woods. The gnarled tree was entwined with a rose vine around its trunk (See page 33) and the resulting
expression in the branches was one of beautiful suffering. I couldn’t relinquish the image from my mind.
The symbolism was too pertinent.
One afternoon, I found myself driving near Chambersburg with no pressing commitments and
decided to take the longer route past Orrtanna, camera in hand, to seek out the tree. Retracing my
blurred recollection of the path we had taken that day, years before, I wandered through the thickets,
crisscrossing back and forth between the barbed wire perimeters, but the large property wasn’t a regular
rectangle. It wasn’t even a comprehensible shape. I gave up at dusk, emerging in a daze through the
thick entangled trees over a wall of loose fieldstones into the parking lot of an abandoned dairy bar. The
cars whizzed by on Route 30.
I began to wonder whether my recollection was perhaps induced, or a sheer figment of an overactive
imagination. It didn’t really matter. I had already staked my emotional claim to the image. It bore simply
bore too much meaning to ignore.
So, I quartered a sheet of illustration board and attempted to draft the symbiotic tree and vine, first in
pencil, then in ink. My mind, however, had allowed the setting to evolve toward an ideal that was simply
too vivid to capture. Blind to the futility, I worked for three years on the drawing and in doing so
achieved a higher degree of tediousness than I ever thought possible. I had hoped that such a time
commitment might somehow enable a deeper meaning to be revealed, but instead the drawing was
overworked, static and devoid of emotion – doomed from the start perhaps, by the simple constraints of
India ink and paper.
Even though the analogies didn’t emerge clearly for onlookers, the drawing still serves to clarify and
commemorate my own memory of the apple and the rose. I published prints and used them as the
starting point for telling the greater story. I suppose this was useful, but the real dilemma was that there
was an ever increasing disparity between the images in my mind and the images that I could render. I
had reached a technical wall with no further desire to pursue detail for detail’s sake. This would not be
my last drawing, but it certainly would signify the end of my extended efforts.
Instead, my Macintosh was beckoning with its intriguing collection of resident font families, as if to
insinuate that the hand would eventually surrender to the screen, mouse, and printed circuit. I wanted to
publish books. To do so with any integrity, I would need to learn every aspect of the process: writing,
design, scanning, image manipulation, page layout, pre-press, editing and proofing. I soaked my pens in
ammonia and set them on my shelf.
The Apple And The Rose
The roses wrap their vines around
the gnarled apple root
and spiral up the trunk
into the branches bearing fruit.
With symbiotic dignity
upward from two seeds
they grew together gracefully
as if they share the need.....
To flourish, then to blossom,
to bud, and then to flower;
the roses poised in passion,
the apples poised in power.
But as they grew, the apple tree
shot upward toward the light.
The rose vine counteracted
and pulled the branches tight.
Resulting in a compromise
of harmony and pain
brought on by spring’s emerging sun
and fueled with summer rain.
When August saw its final days
the apples turned to red.
The roses too had blossomed.
Like wounds their colors bled.....
.....into a scene more beautiful
than any tree could be
or any bud that bears its flower
before humanity.
Some will pick the roses.
Some will weave the crown.
Some will shift their ladders
to pull the apples down.
But I will stand in awe
and wonder where the knowledge goes
The hidden beauty locked within
the apple and the rose.
Concerts In The Park
The summer nights in the church were unbearably hot. I had noticed that there was a thriving
classical concert series at Jacobsburg State Park and I approached the park director with a proposal to
hold some Church of Art events at the park’s lovely outdoor amphitheater.
The first event was Paxton In The Park, featuring folk singer-songwriter Tom Paxton. Although we
barely broke even, it was a fun and comfortable evening and I immediately made plans for a second
night with The Lovin’ Spoonful’s John Sebastian. Mike Krisukas and Mark Golin opened for John on
electric guitar and special effects violin. I promoted the event heavily with newspaper coverage and
hand drawn posters, and in spite of my blatant misspelling of “Sebastion’s” name, the show drew a nice
turnout. We collected our five dollar admission at a small card table along the mulched pathway leading
to the stage.
The rain held back long enough for the music to hang suspended in the humid air. Afterwards, I
joked with Dale Prinkey, the park director, about my poster misspelling and the overall success of the
evening, alluding to the possibility of expanding the scope of future shows.
“Thanks for letting me do this,” I offered.
Dale responded, “It’s sure great that your church is sponsoring these events. It wouldn’t work
without your non-profit status.”
“Ahhh,” I stuttered. “It’s not exactly a nonprofit.”
“What?” shrieked Dale. “You can’t charge for events in a State Park unless you’re a nonprofit. I
thought you were a minister at a church!”
“Well, it’s the Church of Art, and it’s in a church building, but it’s where I live and I‘m not exactly
a minister.”
So that was the end of that. We jointly agreed to keep the impropriety to ourselves, for the park’s
sake and for my own. I began looking for better venues, but the summer was nearly spent. I had become
accustomed to attending the Philadelphia Folk Festival every year with the Martin van packed to the
gills with guitars, strings, and literature. I invited Dale Unger to help me manage the stand, and just so
we had plenty of time to enjoy the music, we decided to take our sleeping bags and camp out.
Anti-Man
I continued to perceive my laborious technical obsession as being in direct conflict with my
reverence for the graceful and overwhelming perfection of nature – not to mention the ongoing human
obliviousness and disregard for its ecology and preservation. Rebelling against my own internal notions,
control was abandoned in favor of physical expression. Tedium deferred to brevity. Industriousness
succumbed to economy.
A year later, Sting would sing of a little black spot on the sun, but my sun had already been rendered
fully dark, in protest of the human blight. As punishment, mankind would rarely be allowed to
participate in my parallel world.
The Bugman Cometh
At the Peters Valley Art Community in northwestern New Jersey, I met an artist named Bob Natalini
who was supplementing his sculpture and jewelry making by mounting and framing exotic beetles from
around the world. I became enamored with the colorfast splendor of his insect array and commissioned
him to enroll me in what came to be known (in our household) as The Bug Of The Month Club. At some
point, my thoughtful and realistic wife Susan put a stop to the beetle invasion, rescuing me from a path
that would surely have rendered our home uninhabitable, but not before I had amassed several dozen of
Bob’s most disturbing specimens. As a final gesture, I urged him to “compose” a new species from his
collection of replacement beetle body parts, but this was not in his repertoire. Bob did however, mark
the back of each mounted beetle with the species and country of origin, insuring that each of those
locations would never ever appear on the Ellis/Boak list of potential vacation destinations.
Organicism
Well, I guess I’ve had it wrong all these years. I looked up “organicism” in the dictionary and it said:
“the theory that the total organization of an organism is the determinant of life processes, rather than the
functioning of individual organs.” That’s very holistic, but not what I had intended at all.
When I say “organicism,” I mean “organic” (derived from something living) or “natural“
(determined by nature) as opposed to inanimate, technical, mechanical or lifeless. Lines drawn
organically cannot be generated with rulers and compasses, rather they grow in the same way that their
counterparts do in nature. They are free and loose and alive – they go where they wish to go, in search of
light and nourishment.
Guitar Immersion
I quickly noticed on the Martin bulletin board that employees were allowed to buy one guitar per
year at employee prices. I didn’t waste any time getting over to the sales department to see how this
worked. I ended up buying a T-28 tiple on the spot. It was a beautiful little instrument – one of Mr.
Martin’s favorites – inspired by the folk instruments of Central and South America.
I loved that little tiple and quickly learned to play it in open tuning, but the intonation was off and
soon the extreme tension on the thin bridge caused it to separate. I designed an alternate pin-style bridge
with an angled saddle based upon a five-concourse twelve-string arrangement without the pair of bass E
strings. That seemed to solve both problems.
During work time, I became so tremendously immersed in drafting guitar parts that in the evenings,
in my own shop, I would put what I had learned to the test by delving into what I considered
experimental instrument making. It wasn’t long before a local guitar enthusiast named Jay Black joined
me in my basement as an apprentice of sorts. We put together a batch of guitars, some with extra strings
(at right) and some with unique or odd tonewood combinations. Jay became very proficient with
lacquering, no thanks to me, and soon his career took him off to the highly esteemed repair shop of
Roger Sadowsky in New York City.
So I was left to my own devices. Fascinated by the tonal effect of variable sizes, shapes, and
materials, and given my unprecedented access to nearly fifty exotic wood species at the Martin Sawmill,
I began to test the viability of a wide assortment of beautiful tonewoods, in particular the harder species
that were appropriate for the reflective surfaces of the back and sides. These experiments were often met
with less than successful results, since the alternating humidity and dryness in my string of shops was
always out of my control, plus the woods that appealed to me were often the unstable ones.
In particular, I was enamored with the tonal possibilities of ebony and had bought a then rare
bookmatch, wide enough to make a 00 12-fret sized instrument. David Nichols agreed to help me with a
“Church Of Art” inspired inlay plus a three-stranded infinity logo that bore particular meaning for me.
The guitar was spectacular in spite of my tendency to overset the neck angle and I included it at a local
exhibit with my drawings. I learned the hard way that internally lit display cases can cook guitars dry to
the bone. That poor instrument imploded.
Nonetheless, I forged on to complete a surprising array of handcrafted instruments. Generally I
wasn’t concerned with selling my guitars, because I would invariably grow quite attached to each one. I
did enjoy playing them, limited though I was in musicianship. Furthermore, I certainly didn’t want to
jeopardize my position at Martin by giving the impression that I was interested in competing in the
company’s broader marketplace. My collection of personal instruments began to grow and so did my
comprehension of exactly what makes a guitar tick.
I spread my efforts equally between acoustic and electric instruments, going off on tangents
wherever possible. In keeping with the idea that all individualized components should be optimized and
coherent in design, I rarely would allow the use of plastic or metal where there was the potential for a
purer fabrication in wood.
As a result, the instruments were often more sculptural than practical, but valuable to me
nonetheless. Experiencing the challenges and frustrations of building increased my respect for Martin’s
underlying ability to garner an assembly line of hand craftsmanship. Rarely a year went by that I didn’t
take advantage of my employee guitar purchase privilege and in 1979, after a year of arguably
obnoxious prodding, Martin agreed to build me what in hindsight was a rather plain customization. It
was a D-41 with a D-45 neck upgraded from utilitarian Grover tuners to the more prestigious gold
Schallers with vintage-toned top lacquer and a Barcus Berry under-the-saddle pickup. The most
significant aspect of the guitar was its serial number. It was Martin’s first official Custom guitar – a
detail for which I am most proud.
Many more guitars followed through the Martin Custom Shop. Each was an attempt to stretch the
boundaries of what a guitar could or should be. The process of conceptualizing instruments on paper and
commissioning the experts to do the work set the stage for what would become my real value and
contribution to Martin.
Black In The Saddle Again
While Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder were singing Ebony and Ivory, I was immersed in the
basement of the Church of Art with a pile of noxious sawdust and the smell of freshly-sawn water
buffalo horn. Somehow I had managed to find a set of African black ebony large enough to make a full
size instrument. There wasn’t much precedent for such an item given that ebony is unstable and subject
to cracking, but I had tapped it around enough to hear its tonal attributes and I forged haphazardly ahead.
The theme didn’t start out to be entirely black, but it ended up there. Every time it rained, water
seeped down the walls and lay in puddles around the edges of the shop. And as usual, the excess
humidity caused my stockade of precious wood to swell. When everything dried out, that’s when the
problems would occur. The top seam of the ebony guitar was another casualty, but I persevered, glued it
back together and sanded the ridges flush. Black lacquer then became a necessity and to complement the
overwhelming darkness, I sought out a piece of black water buffalo horn to use for the nut.
Designed for open tuning, two extra strings were added to the bass notes to accentuate the rhythm. A
pregnant bridge with more of David Nichols’ elegant inlays accommodated the extra strings. When it
was all done, John Sebastian happened to be visiting. After me, he was the first person to play this guitar
and he liked it well enough that while watching me struggle to record a new answering machine
message, he offered his experience and assistance:
“Hi, this is John Sebastian. Dick Boak isn’t here right now, but if you leave your name and number
he might let you play his really beautiful new ebony 8-string guitar.”
That it were so easy. After the first season, the seams started to creak and the pores expelled their
incompatible resins up through the surface of the lacquer. The following November when the
temperature dropped, the clear topcoat of lacquer had already begun to yellow and the back began to
shrink, pulling the neck into an angle that rendered it tenuous at best.
That’s the risk you take when you experiment. The guitar has recovered somewhat, but not enough
to justify my lack of judgment. Let it be.
Honduras Coverup
We were cutting several hundred Honduras rosewood logs in The Sawmill for The Musser
Company, a division of Ludwig Drums that manufactures high-end marimbas. The logs were only about
a foot in diameter, which is typical for the species, but one of the logs was uncharacteristically large. I
decided to resaw a large billet into a bookmatched flitch for instrument sets. The wood had a beautiful
salmon color and since it made great xylophone bars, I figured it would be tonally ideal for guitars.
I started the guitar during the filming of the ABC television special (See pages 171-172). It didn’t
take long for a calamity of errors to intercede in my project. The humidity was way out of balance in my
basement shop and a small crack started to creep up along the bottom of the back. I masked it by wet
sanding it with superglue and proceeded to glue up the rim. I had planned to trim the guitar with red
African padauk, but the thin strips had wild grain that split while I was applying them to the tight
curvature of the waist.
While all of this was transpiring, my friend David Nichols of Custom Pearl Inlay was hard at work
creating the extraordinary inlay for my special guitar. His parts arrived like medicine and everything
seemed to go smoothly until I had completed the lacquering. To my horror, a long crack began to open
up below the bridge. In a panic, I laid in a thin splint of spruce and relacquered the top, but the repair
showed like a scar on the face of a young woman.
There were other problems too innumerable to outline here. Each of these provided an opportunity to
add ornamentation to hide the errors, in fact I came to believe that the decor of guitars was originally
conceived to hide poorly crafted seams.
In spite of these calamities, the guitar bellowed like an inebriated Pavarotti. In due time, I engaged
Tim Teel to relacquer the body and neck with a padauk-tinted lacquer to try to hide the more obvious
incongruities, but I know they’re there and now so do you. Most instruments have flaws that add or
detract, and in the process they take on character just like people do. And just like people, the
incongruities are masked beneath the layers and hidden behind the seams. Oh, but how they sing!
Fifteen Minutes Of Fame
For many years, my friend Jay Griffith managed the export division for Martin, traveling around the
world nurturing all of the overseas distributors. In addition to his impeccable attire, he was a warm and
charismatic character, and he knew how to enjoy himself. On one of his trips to Europe, Jay went skiing
with one of his clients and injured his knee badly in the process. He gradually healed with the help of a
local physical therapist named Vince Smolczynski.
Vince was very interested in guitars and arranged with Jay to meet me at Martin for a special tour.
Vince and I hit it off immediately. We shared a love of bohemia, music and woodworking and soon I
agreed to help Vince through the process of making his own acoustic guitar.
It took a few weeks to gather materials. By the time we started, Vince’s friend Steve Scarpa had
caught wind of the apprenticeship and wanted to get in on the action. Steve played electric bass in a
Philadelphia band. He wanted to build the optimum bass guitar, but he didn’t exactly have a handle on
what that might be. Nevertheless, Steve was very excited about building an instrument with us, and
since his he was a publicist, he immediately pursued ways of attracting media attention for our guitarmaking project.
One of Steve’s media contacts was Bev Aaron. He was one of the producers for WPVI Channel 6,
the ABC affiliate in Philadelphia, and was managing a popular TV show called Primetime. Steve
showed up one evening very excited that Bev was considering doing a Primetime feature about the
Church of Art, Martin Guitars, and our three-way guitar building collaboration.
We scheduled the shoot. Bev arrived with his cameraman and sound technician. Vince and I were
busy gluing up our tops and backs and by a stroke of sheer coincidence, Tom Paxton had come to Martin
that same day looking for me. When he heard I had taken the afternoon off, he came over to the Church
to find the cameras rolling. As we sat down to talk guitars and converse over coffee, Tom tried several
of the special instruments I had on display at the Church of Art. He especially liked the little 1/4 size
guitar I had made. Somehow we got onto the subject of how reckless the airlines can be with
instruments and the resulting frustration that musicians suffer at the hands of baggage handlers.
Tom had had a bad experience with Republic Airlines. They had broken the neck on one of his
valuable Martin guitars. When they wouldn’t reimburse him for the value of the instrument, he
threatened to write a song about them, and he did! The song was called Thank You Republic Airlines,
and he sang it for us and the cameras. The whole afternoon went so well that Bev expressed interest in
lengthening the segment.
In the weeks that followed, ABC returned to Nazareth twice: first to film a tour of the Martin
factory, then back to the Church of Art to chronicle the fitting of Vince’s neck to body dovetail and to
capture the slow progress that Steve was making on his brightly-colored padauk bass. Just prior to these
visits, Jim O’Brien, the charismatic weatherman and host of the Primetime show, died tragically in a
freak parachuting accident. Jim’s devastated friend, sportscaster Gary Papa, reluctantly took his place
narrating the show.
Bev Aaron wished to return one last time to film our three completed instruments in concert. To
accommodate this request, I booked an exceptional jazz guitarist named Chuck Anderson for a Saturday
evening concert. A very select group was invited to the show. The ABC crew arrived early to set their
microphones and tripods. After an inspired performance from Chuck, Vince and I played our finished
guitars. Unfortunately, Steve’s bass was not quite complete, but he appeared on stage with us anyway,
the electronic guts of his guitar dangling from the routed cavity like a wounded salmon.
True to Andy Warhol’s prediction, this was one of our shining moments. It felt pretty good. Though
I knew I would never be a Dylan or a McCartney, I would have many more opportunities to ham it up in
front of the TV cameras, ultimately receiving far more than my allotted fifteen minutes of notoriety and
local fame.
Crossing Over
When Guild Guitars was put up for sale in the late ‘80s, Martin sent a crew to Rhode Island to look
at the facility and consider the viability of purchasing the company. In spite of their many problems,
Guild had one model called The Songbird that caught my eye. It was clearly designed for a crossover
market that bridged the gap between the acoustic and electric worlds. Electric players were intimidated
with acoustic guitars and vice versa, so the successful Songbird was their attempt to split the difference
with a thin-bodied acoustic electric that would appeal to both factions.
With this at the forefront of my mind. I returned to Nazareth and started construction of a thin and
lightweight instrument with two symmetrical cutaways that gave the basic front-on appearance of an
electric guitar, but without the usual humbucking pickups. Instead, I installed an active version of
Fishman’s Thinline acoustic bridge pickup that one might expect would produce a more acoustic sound.
In my experimentation with electric guitars and basses, I had become convinced that one-piece
through-the-body necks with pre-angled neck sets were more cohesive and elegant than glued or bolted
necks. This was a key feature of my flamed maple-topped acoustic electric, but upon completion it
seemed that a top with a traditional soundhole and rosette might yield a more appropriate acoustic
appearance, especially if it were ever to be a Martin product. So I made another prototype, this one with
a single cutaway, an ebony soundhole and the face-view appearance of an acoustic guitar. The result was
quite attractive, comfortable to hold and Martin-esque in its styling, though the amplified tone seemed to
lack resonance and warmth. Regardless, the guitar was stunning and any tonal shortcomings could be
remedied with slight modifications to the electronics.
The sad reality was that having failed in the electric guitar department so many times, Martin wasn’t
going to be in any mood to jump in for another round. And though my second prototype was innovative
and looked like an acoustic guitar, it was merely a sheep in wolf’s clothing destined, I’m afraid, like so
many of my other projects, to occupy a dark cold space under the eave of my attic.
Spruce Geese
There has long been a direct relationship between the select cuts of spruce used for the strong but
lightweight wooden ribs of (now vintage) aircraft versus the similarly vertical-grained bookmatches of
spruce prized for guitar soundboards. For decades, spruce for musical instruments could best be found in
special stacks designated as aircraft grade.
It’s likely that Howard Hughes had a profound impact upon the spruce trade in the Pacific Northwest
during his day. Many of his planes specified spruce ribbing, including the gigantic, notorious and
ultimately doomed Spruce Goose that neared completion as World War Two came to an end.
While managing Woodworker’s Dream, I occasionally received calls from archtop guitar and
dulcimer makers that respectively required thicker and longer cuts of quartersawn spruce. Accordingly, I
ordered a thousand board feet of “aircraft quality” Sitka spruce from a vendor in Washington State and
while unloading the truckload, there were several planks that were particularly special. I saved them.
In my second year of teaching the acoustic guitarmaking course at Peter’s Valley in northwestern
New Jersey, I had arranged for enough assistance that it was possible for me to personally construct an
instrument in the midst of the chaos. The first “Spruce Goose” guitar emerged with Sitka spruce top,
back and sides and a mahogany neck. The guitar was understandably extremely light in weight, akin to a
potato chip, and the resulting tone was very vibrant, breathy, crisp and clear.
The odd byproduct was that the tone could be muted by holding the back of the guitar tight to the
chest. People at Martin were intrigued enough to allow me to initiate two additional prototypes. These
were made with spruce necks and headplates as well as bodies and braces, but the real appeal of doing
an edition involved using the catchy “Spruce Goose” name. This was expected to be quite a legal hurdle.
Nearly fifteen years later, a third round of prototypes confirmed all that I had discovered in the first
two, but like Howard who was no doubt rolling over in his grave, it seemed unlikely that my spruce
geese would ever fly in any significant way.
Covering The Basses
On the electric bass front, I delved into the fabrication of a fretless instrument. Without frets, there
are virtually no critical dimensions and there is a great sense of purity, ease and satisfaction in bringing
them to fruition. For strength, design and sustain, I gravitated toward multiple laminates, first in the
laying up of bodies, then finally inclusive of the necks. Hidden glued-in mortise neck joints gradually
evolved to more contiguous through-the-body designs.
My favorite aspect of working with multiple laminates is the sheer topographic thrill of creating
contours on the rounded sculptural edges of the body and neck. I sold my favorite bass (shown at left
and right) to my good friends Russ & Becky Jeffers of Smokey Mountain Sunshine in Nashville, but like
any of my creations, I regretted letting it slip away.
Chris Martin’s best friend Matt McFadden was a proficient bass player and his opinions were
certainly influential within the company. We had tried our hand with electric basses, but Matt had
always encouraged Chris to have Martin make an acoustic bass.
Being a latent bass player at heart, I had built an odd bass-like instrument with a short guitar-sized
neck and a mariachi-sized mahogany body. It was abominable, but it whet my whistle to do it again
correctly. When Chris mentioned that he wanted to initiate an acoustic bass with a jumbo body and a
34” scale, I was thrilled. Unfortunately, our production manager at the time was not. He viewed such a
project as a diversion and fumed that it would cost $60,000 and take six months to execute. Infuriated
that the project was being stonewalled, I marched in to Chris and offered to prototype an instrument in
two weeks at a cost of less than $200.
In the Woodworker’s Dream shop at North Street, I trimmed one of the EB-28 through-the-body
electric neck billets and glued a heel extension into place. Borrowing a standard mahogany jumbo rim, I
braced a partially scalloped top with slightly modified tone bars and quickly completed a body. With the
cooperation of the lacquering department, the components were ready for neck fit and glueup within a
week. I fashioned a proportionately-sized belly bridge and turned four end pins down to a suitable
diameter with sandpaper in the drill press chuck. The bass was strung up and complete with four days to
spare. The instrument sounded terrific, unlike many of the so-called acoustic basses on the market that
had nominal acoustic sound.
This small success was a large embarrassment to the production manager who was soon to vacate his
position. For this, I felt some responsibility, though tensions had been mounting for some time. Perhaps
some justice was served. In any case, we were into the acoustic bass market much quicker as a result and
the instruments received positive reaction from bass players, especially in the bluegrass community.
Oddly, one of the first acoustic bass endorsees was punk rocker Brian Ritchie of the Violent Femmes
who created quite a craze for the Martin instrument with his raucous playing.
While rummaging through the exotic planks over at Woodworker’s Dream, I decided to build a
display showing all of the wood species that Martin offered. Many boards were carefully selected and
resawn to produce sanded index card samples. With the leftover trimmings, I saw a great opportunity to
create a special laminated guitar and after much deliberation, I enlisted an unfortunate bystander to help
with the tedious laminating process. After a gallon of glue and considerable mess, the pieces were
clamped and set aside to dry. The resulting slabs were so striking that I immersed myself in the project
for the next eight months. The finished solid body electric bass is comprised of at least 127 separate
pieces of wood representing 25 different species. I was extremely proud to have my photographs
selected for inclusion in Fine Woodworking Magazine’s prestigious Design Book Four.
A Smaller Reverence
While running the Martin Wood Products Division, I decided to hold a contest to figure out what to
do with an attic full of old ukulele necks and oddball leftover parts, including many small square
wooden boxes that Chris Martin and I had brought back after the Levin guitar factory in Sweden had
closed. In order to get things started, I made a few entries of my own, including a tiny cigar box ukulele
with a fretless fingerboard. I recused myself from the contest, of course, but a Martin retiree named
Adam Strohl picked up on the idea and made a batch of these little ukes in his basement that soon
became a popular consignment item at Woodworker’s Dream.
And speaking of small, in many finer craft fields, a tradition has existed among guilds where upon
completion of study, the apprentice would make a miniature working scale model or “apprentice piece”
of the full sized object. These precious samples were easy to transport and served to demonstrate the
mastery level of each craftsman’s skill and attention to fine detail. Apprentice pieces were common both
in the furniture as well as the violin-making fields.
Given my fascination with minute illustrative detail, I quickly became captivated with smaller
musical instruments. I loved my little ten-string tenor ukulele-sized tiple and soon attempted to replicate
that specific size as a miniature 1/4 size six-string guitar. That little instrument became my apprentice
piece.
To further explore my obsession, I sought out the old patterns from the small Size 5 parlor model.
Martin had made thousands of these prior to the depression – mostly for ladies – but the fad had
gradually subsided.
I dusted off the old body forms and initiated a custom order. Upon completion, the little guitar was so
spectacular, especially when equipped with Nashville-style high-octave strings, that it deserved and
received considerably greater attention. The popular Mini-Martin Special Edition followed with a
customer base made up of many extraordinary musicians including Eric Clapton, Neil Young, Bruce
Springsteen, John Mayer and Sting. In fact, Sting recorded the beautiful song Dead Man’s Rope from
his Sacred Love CD with his Mini Martin – spurring the inevitable Sting: Mini rainforest friendly
edition of 100 little guitars – and proving once and for all that size does matter... or is it that size doesn’t
matter at all?
Pushing The Limits
Fascinated with the mathematical relationship between the harmonic locations of the strings, the
fractional subdivisions of the scale length and the actual positioning of the frets, I decided to attempt to
create an inlay pattern that bore some connection to these mystical relationships. I started with a piece of
illustration board and demarcated Martin’s standard long scale string length of 25.44”, this being the
compensated distance from the nut to the saddle. I divided this distance in half and made a small mark
with my ink pen. Then I divided the string length in thirds, fourths, fifths, sixths, sevenths, eights,
ninths, and so on, ad infinitum, each time making appropriate marks along the line of the string. Clusters
of marks emerged near the primary harmonic locations at the 5th, 7th, 12th and 20th frets. Secondary
clusters accumulated close to the 4th, 9th and 16th frets. Smaller patterns and clusters emerged in other
areas, not seeming to bear much harmonic significance, but nevertheless closing the gaps. Projected
lines from the primary clusters laterally helped to locate areas of the vine intersections, while the
remaining projections became the terminations of branches weighted by my assessment of their
significance. I came to call the inlay pattern that resulted the Vine of Harmonics.
Having become close friends with inlay artist David Nichols, I was very aware of the difficulties in
hand cutting pearl patterns. It seemed to me that bookmatched patterns might be cut from two slabs of
shell glued together. The slabs could then be immersed in water to separate and unfold into the
symmetrical design – twice the pattern for half the work!
I suspected that such a pattern might be useful to slide guitar players, since the harmonic locations
seem to lend themselves so well to traditional open-tuned slide techniques. Anxious to try the idea on a
real guitar, I submitted specifications for a 12-string OMC Cutaway to the Martin Custom Shop and
enlisted David Nichols to inlay a special fingerboard crowned with an ivory wishbone. It took nearly
two decades, but gradually the pattern began to command attention, though no doubt not for the intended
reasons.
Another of my favorite projects was the Baby Dreadnought. My comrade John Arndt and I had
reduced all of the full size Dreadnought dimensions, including the inlays, to 7/8 size. As a first
prototype, I commissioned a fancy 7-42 Sunburst with an inlaid pickguard and my signature in pearl at
the last fret. That guitar was my pride and joy, but after several years and much prodding, I agreed to
sell the guitar to a collector. I regretted this and soon was horrified to learn that he had resold the guitar
for a substantial profit. Fortunately, karma guided the little jewel into the instrument collection of the
legendary Scott Chinery. When I visited him at his New Jersey estate, I was so honored to have my
Signature Baby D in the company of such significant guitars.
While making up a right-handed M-sized cutaway kit one day at Woodworker’s Dream, I discovered
that the non-cutaway side was cracked, rendering the cutaway side mismatched and useless. I set it aside
on the shelf. Several months later, I was working on a left-handed cutaway kit and the same crack
occurred on the non-cutaway side. This coincidence left me with two opposing cutaway sides. As I stood
holding those sides, it struck me. What a bold and elegant idea a double cutaway guitar would be! I
trimmed a dovetail block and glued the sides into an odd body shape. “M” for the prefix or size, “C” for
the cutaway... no, make that two cutaways C2 –MC2– Einsteinian and brilliant!
Completing the body in an M mold, I rushed over to the main plant to show the idea around, but no
one really appreciated the elegance of the idea the way I did. A few weeks later, the sales staff called me
into a high level pow-wow and I was put on the spot to explain and justify my double cutaway.
Mustering my unbridled passion, I managed to convince the skeptical group to proceed with plans for a
limited edition model. Without me to cheer the project on, the reluctant prototype was shipped off to the
trade show where a meager 22 orders were taken. Like the awkward Edsel, my MC2 was deemed a
failure. Nonetheless, I cling to the contention that these odd ducks are exceptionally cool. Try to locate
one of those 22 guitars, you’ll have a hard time prying them away from similarly afflicted guitar
enthusiasts. That’s the paradox of success and failure. Succeed, make many and the market will rescind
in saturation. Fail, make very few and you’ve got yourself a winner – a rare beast – one worth fighting
for!
While archiving Martin’s drawer full of old bracing patterns, I discovered an obsolete design for a
000-12-fret model that was stamped “Merle Haggard Model.” I didn’t know much about these old
guitars at the time, but with my curiosity piqued, I sought out and played several vintage examples. I
was soon convinced that these 000 12-fret models possessed optimal tone. I had saved some unique
Brazilian rosewood for a special project and attempted to place an order for a historically accurate 00042 replica through the Custom Shop. The patterns had changed, however, and my order was declined.
Fortunately for me, Eric Schoenberg was collaborating with Martin at the time. He agreed to orchestrate
a Martin/Schoenberg Custom order for me with several handmade components. The finished guitar,
complete with bar frets, is as good as any instrument can ever be.
GAL/ASIA
As the purveyor and retailer of unique woods, the reputation of Woodworker’s Dream and the
Martin Sawmill spread quickly. Budding instrument makers from all around the USA and Canada
quickly became my loyal customers. I was learning a great deal about the properties of these various
woods and in time, was solicited to write occasional articles for Taunton Press’s Fine Woodworking
Magazine. Locally, The Rodale Press had acquired American Woodworker Magazine. Soon I was
writing a monthly feature page called Woods Of The World.
On the guitarmaking front, there was an organization of instrument makers based in Tacoma,
Washington called The Guild Of American Luthiers. I was a regular and active participant at the annual
Guild instrument- making conventions and was eventually asked to serve on their Board.
It’s a long story and one I wish I could tell, but due to extenuating circumstances, I can’t. That’s a
different book.
I can say that eventually a group of instrument makers decided to form a new organization. About
twenty of us got together and wrote a mission statement. In trying to name the group we decided that we
preferred the label “artisan” to the more obscure term of “luthier.” We also decided that our focus would
be on “stringed instruments.” The notion of being a Guild seemed odd given the persecution that
Christian Frederick Martin Sr. had endured at the hands of the Violin Makers Guild in Markneukirchen,
so we opted instead to form an “association.” So it was that the Association of Stringed Instrument
Artisans (with the ironic acronym A.S.I.A.) was born.
In a short period of time, our meager ranks grew to one hundred, at which point I was enlisted to
produce a newsletter. Two pages grew to four, then eight, then sixteen. The membership continued to
grow, spurred on in great measure by the bi-annual musical instrument-making conventions held on the
campus of Lafayette College where Susan worked. During the zenith of each convention, I was enlisted
to host what evolved into a hilarious and lucrative series of benefit auctions, fueled with a generous pile
of donated white elephant instruments and assorted guitar making supplies. The information sharing and
spirit of the association was impressive and special. The membership soared to more than two thousand.
I proposed that the name of our newsletter be amended to Guitarmaker Magazine. The new title was
slightly controversial, since it seemed to exclude mandolin, banjo, lute, violin and dulcimer makers, but
the change was very well received. A color cover really made the publication look professional and the
format expanded to more than sixty pages.
With my full-time position at Martin and my extra-curricular work as Executive Director of A.S.I.A.
and editor/publisher of Guitarmaker Magazine, I was completely buried in work, but the interaction with
virtually all of the instrument makers worldwide gave me a tremendous vantage point within the
marketplace. In addition, my technical knowledge in the area of Macintosh computers, desktop
publishing, offset printing, layout, writing, information gathering, event coordination and the day to day
management of a non-profit organization gave me an entirely new set of skills that would gradually
impact my position at Martin. In due time it became clear that I could be of service in the area of
advertising, especially since a string of advertising coordinators had come and gone, leaving a relatively
disjointed campaign. I seized the opportunity with great passion, wasting little time in bringing the full
department back in-house from the protective clutches of an outside advertising agency. The controversy
was eased with significant cost savings, but the best part was that the relatively thick wall between work
and art was beginning to crumble.
Houdini Underwear
Several weeks had passed since I had asked Susan to marry me. She was from a large family. I was
anxious to meet all of her varied relatives, so we planned a trip down to Columbia, Maryland to meet her
half-brother Jay and his wife Jody. Jay was a computer programmer and analyst for NASA and Jody ran
a very successful rehabilitation consultation business.
I seemed to hit it off right away with Jay and Jody, so much so that I suppose I wasn’t feeling very
inhibited. A glass or two of wine contributed to my spontaneous abandon.
Somehow, our after-dinner conversation about Jay’s vector calculation research led us into a
discussion about topography that reminded me of Harry Houdini. I was a big fan of Houdini. I’d read a
book about him and remembered how fascinated he was with topographical trickery. Specifically, I had
read about one trick that he used to do that involved removing his dress shirt without removing his
dinner jacket.
I was in a wacky mood and I wasn’t wearing a dinner jacket. I was, however, wearing underwear
and it soon occurred to me that perhaps I could perform an inspired variation of Houdini’s shirt trick.
“I can take my underwear off without removing my pants,” I boasted. Jay and Jody looked at each
other with a slight sense of trepidation, but decided instead to humor me.
“OK? We’d like to see that!” they lied.
I might begin by saying that a prerequisite to Houdini’s trick is loose-fitting clothing. I hadn’t quite
remembered this key element. I was wearing fairly tight-fitting black jeans and my underwear was not
the optimum boxer short variety. Unfortunately, these small deterrents didn’t impede my performance.
The first step in accomplishing this trick is to navigate one underwear leg downward past the knee
toward the ankle, then with the spare arm, the contortionist must reach up into the pant leg, grab the
garment in question and slip it around the foot. This procedure is not unlike a woman’s trick of
removing a brassiere without unfastening the hook or unbuttoning the blouse. I proceeded with great
confidence.
For some reason I struggled greatly with step one. I just couldn’t seem to get it. I was rolling around
on the rug performing strange bodily contortions. These undulations were followed with what was
clearly a slight ripping sound. Oops.
I had come this far. I couldn’t just give up in defeat. Rolling to the left, then to the right with both
arms inserted into different ends of the pants, I was breaking out in a sweat of embarrassment, defeat,
and exhaustion. Finally, a major ripping sound broke the tension.
Everyone gasped.
Jay and Jody looked at each other in confusion, horror and amazement. This was the guy that was
going to marry “Susie.” What in the world had she gotten herself into?
Dermatologist’s Delight
Sue and I had planned to take a camping trip to Vermont. I hadn’t been back to Stowe since my
teaching career had crumbled a decade and a half earlier. I still romanticized about the rugged hikes I
had made along the Green Mountain Trail and looked forward to retracing some of the more memorable
steps with Sue.
About three weeks prior to our scheduled departure, I broke out in a rather excruciating rash that
itched like the dickens. I wasted no time in getting across the street to Dr. Snyder’s office. He took a
quick look and nonchalantly determined that I had contracted a case of “scabies.” He explained that this
was a rather contagious form of parasitic mite, the notion of which created great anxiety for me as well
as my confused wife. The question of exactly how I had contracted such an affliction was especially
disconcerting.
With tremendous reticence and embarrassment, I handed my prescription to our neighborhood
pharmacist, who shaded his temple in confusion but promptly filled a small green jar full of Quell, a
slightly toxic lather designed to discourage the little critters from making themselves comfortable in my
proximity.
With great anxiety, I followed the shampooing directions and precautions, but there was no relief.
The rash worsened and the itch became unbearable. I returned in defeat to the doctor’s office for an
updated diagnosis.
This time Doc Snyder took a more discerning look and after great consideration pronounced to my
extreme delight that it wasn’t scabies after all, but rather a chronic case of poison ivy. This time, he
scribbled out a prescription for high-intensity cortisone cream supplemented with alternating swabs of
calamine lotion. In between treatments, I took hot and cold showers to try to ease the itch, but it was
little use. I was clearly on a beeline path to stark raving madness.
The redness had now spread from my trunk to my neck and thighs, but in spite of this I put my faith
and hope in medical science and packed the car for our northward trip. Equipped with every conceivable
brand of anti-itching liquid from rubbing alcohol to aloe vera gel, we departed and I actually found some
solace in a constant and agitated rotation of assorted ointments. We arrived in Vermont and eventually
set our tent in the field outside Liz Macfarlane’s mountain cabin. The fact that Liz had been a previous
girlfriend lent little consolation to Susan’s increasing disillusionment over our supposed vacation.
Nonetheless, the three-way conversation that night acknowledged the great humor of my unsolvable
predicament. It was decided that Liz’s country doctor should be consulted in the morning. He inspected
me with great empathy, and then examined a skin scraping under his microscope, informing me that I
had neither poison ivy nor scabies. He suggested that it might be some form of virus and that Benadryl
might give me some temporary comfort until our return home, at which point he strongly recommended
making an appointment with a dermatologist. I stocked up on Benadryl and eked out a few more tenuous
days until torrential rains found us immersed in our tent at 3:00 am. So concluded our enchanting
Vermont excursion.
I followed the doctor’s advice and promptly set up an appointment with a popular dermatologist in
my locality. I had never visited such a specialist and enthusiastically took my place in the overcrowded
waiting room, filling out my medical history with unswerving accuracy.
The office procedure was curious. Nurses would guide each patient into a hallway full of closetsized cubicles, after which the solitary doctor would scurry from room to room, spending little more
than 30 seconds with each patient. There was a waiting line with the cashier who was processing
insurance claims and payments at an unprecedented rate. After filling out my payment forms, I used my
borrowed pencil to calculate the hourly intake. I figured a conservative $3,000 an hour – an eight-hour
shift clearing an easy $25,000. Leaving plenty of time for golf weekends and several flights to the Grand
Caymans, two hundred working days a year totaled a clean five million. What a racket!
My turn eventually came. I was nestled in my little room where I was instructed to remove my
garments and don a skimpy blue gown that tied loosely in the back. Finally the doctor came in, directing
me to drop the gown and lift my arms above my head like a bank teller in a holdup. In two seconds, he
blurted the prognosis “pityriasis rosea.” Positioning me onto my side, he wasted no time in swinging a
large blue-bulbed lamp in proximity to my torso, then he flicked the switch.
“Stay still,” he said as he scurried away to the next cubicles. In five minutes, he returned, flipped me
over onto my other side, repositioned the blue light, and vanished. The light was warm and ultraviolet.
Upon his return, he beckoned the nurse. “He’s done. Pityriasis rosea,” he rifled. “P107 Cream, 8 ounce
tube.” And off he went.
As I put my clothes back on, I glanced at the dozen or so inspection rooms, all of which were
occupied, emanating their eerie luminous blue glow. As the nurse led me to the cashier, I asked her
about the blue light. Hastily she explained that it’s rarely effective and urged me to use the cream.
Confused, I asked her to write the name of my affliction on a sheet of paper. She handed me an immense
tube of P107 and my handwritten diagnosis on a scrap of paper as the cashier’s window opened.
“That will be $180.00 for the office visit and $60.00 for the ointment.” Amazed, I wrote the check.
That evening, I still itched as I imparted my incredible experience to Susan. That night, we headed
out to the library to return the hiking trail guides that we had signed out and I found myself straying over
toward the reference books. There on the shelf was the Complete Medical Glossary & Reference – a 70pound tome of technical dribble. I slid it off the shelf and with the tiny slip of paper in hand I flipped
through the Ps.
There it was: “Pityriasis Rosea – The Dermatologist’s Delight: Thought to be one of the most
misdiagnosed skin disorders in dermatology, pityriasis rosea, a bright pink rash typically originating in
(but not limited to) the upper extremities, is generally misdiagnosed a minimum of three times prior to
being correctly, if ever, identified. The virus, which arises typically in the spring and fall, is
accompanied with extreme itching that renders the patient willing to relinquish excessive remuneration
for any comfort or cure, but ironically at present there is no cure. The virus does, however, run its course
in due time, generally coinciding with the eventually correct diagnosis, hence The Dermatologist’s
Delight.”
Sure enough, in about a week my Pityriasis rosea did run its course and I was left with $55 worth of
P107 Cream that sat wastefully on the shelf until reaching its disconcerting expiration date. In hindsight,
I got off cheap, though – this story emerging from my itchless relief at the bargain rate of a mere twenty
cents per word.
Tuesdays With Mario
During my time as director of the Association of Stringed Instrument Artisans, I had the very distinct
honor of becoming good friends with Mario Maccaferri. For those unfamiliar with Mario, he is famous
in guitarmaking circles as the originator of the unique Selmer guitars that became synonymous with the
legendary Hot Club jazz guitarist of the thirties and forties, Djanjo Reinhardt.
Throughout Mario’s long and colorful life, he wore an assortment of remarkable hats. He had been
an acclaimed master of the classical guitar and an expert designer and maker of musical instruments of
all shapes and sizes, including guitars, cellos and violins. He was one of the primary manufacturers of
reeds for wind instruments, a pioneer in plastic die injection mold manufacturing and technology, a
significant inventor and holder of patents, a designer and manufacturer of household items like the
clothes pin and the 8-track cassette, but most of all he was an incurable tinkerer.
My initial contact with Mario had been through my guitarmaking friend John Monteleone. I wasted
no time in extending an invitation to Mario to address one of our guitarmaking Symposiums.
John offered to drive Mario to the event since Mario’s age made the trip from his home in Rye, New
York difficult. Mario loved rubbing shoulders with fellow instrument makers and music enthusiasts, and
he introduced himself to most of the participating artisans and vendors. He particularly enjoyed
reminiscing with C. F. Martin III and Manual Velazquez in the green room before their respective talks.
They had experienced so much of the century from similar perspectives.
After the Symposium, Mario and I spoke often on the phone. At the time, I was managing the Martin
Sawmill and Mario became dependent on me for an occasional slab of ebony or rosewood. He also
wanted help liquidating his excess inventory of plastic guitars. My curiosity finally led me to his factory,
warehouse and shop in the heart of the Bronx, after which I visited him often.
I was so lucky to have that time with Mario. He was always excited to share his latest projects and
when lunchtime would roll around, he would boast of his wild escapades in Paris before the war. After a
big plate of pasta, it was impossible to wrestle the check away from him. After lunch, he would unlock
his closet of old guitars and struggle through the chord progressions with his aging hands, eventually
handing the instrument over to me with a shrugging but emphatic command: “Dickie, never get old!”
Changing Of The Guard
Integrity is a special attribute. You’re not born with it, but if you collect your experiences carefully,
it starts to etch itself in the lines of your face. C. F. Martin III had integrity. He earned it by caring about
people and by surviving nearly a century of mixed successes and hardships.
He walked through the shop every day. His real purpose in doing this was to stay connected to the
workers and to himself. They appreciated it.
He took special pride in his knowledge of the instruments. He knew them well. One day he was
walking around the shop and there was a conversation going on about the 7/8 size Dreadnought model.
The prototype was at the inspection bench and it was producing an odd overtone.
“Where’s the bracing pattern?” Mr. Martin chimed right in.
“I’ll get it.” I rushed over to the metal drawers where the patterns were kept and retrieved the one in
question. Mr. Martin inspected it carefully.
“What you need here is to angle these tone bars a bit more, then you’ll need to add a small brace
here and here. You should never have a space three inches square or larger, unsupported by a brace.”
So we went and did what he suggested and wouldn’t you know it, the wolf tones disappeared.
I had the distinct honor of inviting Mr. Martin to join fellow industry legends – Mario Maccaferri
and Manuel Velasquez as well as his own grandson Chris – to be keynote speakers at the guitarmaking
Symposium in Easton, PA. I had organized the event and was hosting the evening. After Chris’s talk, I
introduced Mr. Martin, who stepped slowly up to the podium, assisted with his cane. “I can walk
upright, you know.” He had a sense of humor.
“Perhaps some of you have been or are now teachers, and maybe sometime you had the experience
of having your pupil do better than you do, and that’s the way I feel right now. Chris has done very well
and I congratulate him.”
“I brought this cane along because in the first place I need it. I fell and hurt my back last year, and
Dick Boak recognized my need and he made me this cane. It is made of Indian rosewood with the
Martin fingerboard position mark inlaid. That’s my great helper, and I’m very thankful to Dick for it.
I’ll lay it down—very respectfully.”
His words went directly to my heart. That’s the kind of man he was. He wasn’t afraid to be kind, in
fact it brought him great pleasure. He liked to be liked. He had given so much to the world, to the
community and to the family business. And at that particular time, things were not going particularly
well. His son Frank had been an embarrassment. Frank had been extricated from the business and that
was particularly painful for C. F. A debilitating strike and downturn in the economy had seriously
jeopardized the company. In spite of these many setbacks, C. F. remained positive and committed to his
family‘s heritage, drawing only a nominal salary and coming to work every day.
As he concluded his talk, tears welled up in his eyes. “The Martin business is not over. Chris is right.
The future is his.”
C. F. Martin III is buried with the rest of the Martin family in the Moravian cemetery overlooking
Nazareth. I visit him there from time to time to pay my respects.
A Wedding In The Woods
I have met hundreds, no thousands of people, and extrovert that I am, I consider them all pretty good
friends. This is my shallow side. Susan is a bit more quiet and reserved. You might say mature.
I envisioned a wedding like Woodstock – perhaps Paul Simon or the Rolling Stones would perform.
Susan envisioned something much more realistic and personal – immediate family with a few close
friends. Reluctantly, I compromised. One thing we agreed upon completely was the location. There is a
beautiful state park north of Nazareth called Jacobsburg and it is a special place for us. A rustic
amphitheater is built into a hillside with a small stage. We convinced our friend Peter Amerman, the
open-minded chaplain at Blair Academy, to perform a somewhat Unitarian if not bohemian ceremony.
An informal reception would follow at the Church of Art.
I illustrated a small card with interchangeable text. One version contained the invitation that was
posted to our select group. The other was a wedding announcement for a much broader audience. We
had prepared the announcement envelopes well in advance and I was overly anxious to mail them.
Knowing better, Susan managed to restrain my urge, but on the Friday just one day prior to our
wedding, I couldn’t hold back any longer. I dropped the sack of envelopes into the mailbox in the center
square of Nazareth. The postman wasted no time retrieving, sorting, and dispersing them early the next
morning and miraculously, dozens of casual friends who weren’t actually invited to the wedding
received the announcement. A surprising percentage of these recipients mistook the notification for an
invitation and rushed out to Jacobsburg in their Bermuda shorts to take in the events of the day.
I had arrived early in my tuxedo that special morning, and having consumed half a dozen cups of
decaffeinated coffee at breakfast, found myself in the predicament of having to badly urinate without
benefit of a proper facility. Being resourceful, I carefully traversed the mud-trodden path down toward
the creek and located a bush that seemed sheltered enough from the people who were there helping with
the preparations. Halfway through my peeing process, I heard my named called out from a vantage point
directly across the stream. There stood the joyous group of uninvited couples waving to me – wondering
how to traverse the stream. I zipped my zipper with an sheepish glance and gestured toward the bridge.
Shortly thereafter, the soothing instrumental meanderings of Dire Straits’ Love Over Gold merged
into the humid air as the bride’s maids hobbled along the mulch path in their high heels. Susan followed
gracefully – a vision in pastel toward the steps of the makeshift altar – looking like a swan in spite of her
last minute hyperventilation. Mark Knopfler’s eerie guitar drifted into receding vibraphones, then into
Susan’s brother Jay’s Paganini violin processional as our vows were exchanged, the poems read, the veil
lifted, and the kisses sealed.
Commercial Art – No Invoice
Back on the drawing front, my prolific output far exceeded my ability to sell what I produced. I just
didn’t like what money did to art and I didn’t wish to waste my time merchandising myself.
Nonetheless, without really soliciting jobs, they tended to seek me out.
This was a fine situation. It enabled me to pick and choose the creative projects that I undertook, and
while the bulk of these were self-initiated non-commercial conceptualizations, there was a steady
barrage of mildly commercial projects from the valued people in my ever-changing immediate circle.
And so, I produced calling cards, stationery, logos, ads, and design consultations, rarely with any
invoices or strings attached, except that I tried to maintain the originals (or at least the contact negatives)
for my personal archives. There was satisfaction in this, but no sense of real success.
On the work front, I was one of the few, if not the only one, capable of producing appropriate inlay
designs for the bulk of Martin’s custom orders that begged such a service. My knowledge of guitars and
my sensitivity to the tradition of instrument ornamentation certainly qualified me for these tasks.
Accordingly, I became great friends with David Nichols of Custom Pearl Inlay in upstate New York. For
years he single-handedly executed the many hundreds of hand-cut fingerboard and headplate inlays that
graced the one-of-a-kind custom orders that helped to revitalize the spirit of Martin.
As computer-aided design and manufacturing technology developed, it became possible to replicate
inlay intricacies, especially with the advent of thinly sliced laminated abalone pearl called Ablam. This
was the brainchild of Chuck Ericson, the notorious Duke of Pearl and my good friends Larry Sifel and
Jeff Harding of PearlWorks. With Larry and Jeff’s computer aided inlay wizardry, an innovative
industry was born. These advances coincided nicely with the artist signature model projects that I was
initiating; in fact, most of the critical visual elements of the signature guitars could never have
materialized in any quantity without Larry and Jeff’s ingenuity and collaboration.
The first use of Ablam™ on a Martin guitar appeared with the execution of Gene Autry’s name in
mother-of-pearl on the fingerboard of Gene’s D-45S signature edition. Shortly thereafter, the first use
of computer cut Ablam body trim was approved for use on Eric Clapton’s 000-42EC. The quality and
precision of these inlays was clearly superior and replicable, and the yield from the endangered abalone
and mother-of-pearl pearl shells was significantly more efficient.
Every subsequent signature edition depended upon and benefited from this new technology. The
procedure for producing these inlays commenced in Photoshop on my Apple Macintosh computer. I
would create black and white silhouetted bitmapped images of proposed inlay designs and furnish the
completed files to PearlWorks. They in turn would create the intricate programs and tool paths for their
micro-milling machines, then test out my artwork by excavating the fingerboard cavities and cutting the
perimeter of corresponding pearl components. The results were startling and a myriad of incredibly
creative projects followed.
As Martin’s in-house digital manufacturing capabilities developed, an array of CNC and laser
machines gradually appeared on the shop floor. Using the same basic procedures developed with Larry
and Jeff, I experimented with artwork intended for laser burning into guitar parts. Although the laser
etching of graphics on spruce guitar tops was less than impressive, the process did have more potential
and contrast with darker woods like mahogany, and with the lightly singed surface of acetate
pickguards. Although the creation of laser-burned award plaques and novelties is now quite
commonplace, I was never able to achieve good results with any graphic applications on pickguards,
mostly due to the inherent and undesirable diarrhea-brown coloration of burnt plastic.
Nonetheless, conceptualizing and preparing digital inlay designs became one of my primary
specialties – perhaps even one of my shared legacies with my great friend Larry Sifel who sadly passed
away long before all of his endless and brilliant ideas could come to fruition. That job is up to us now,
though it is unlikely that anyone could approach it with the passion and skill that Larry did.
The challenge is to provide the creative interface between the musicians, the inlay artists and the
artisans who craft the guitars. When everything works, very special tools emerge that eventually find
their way into the hands of inspired guitarists, where visual and tonal beauty collide to yield magnificent
musical rewards.
The Gangster Of Love
The phone rang early one afternoon.
“This is Steve Miller.” The voice on the other end seemed familiar.
“THE Steve Miller?” I asked.
“Yes, I suppose,” he answered.
He asked if he might stop in the following day to see the factory. I told him I’d be thrilled to show
him around and wrote it into my schedule. I was a big fan of Steve’s and was excited about the visit.
He arrived just after lunch the next day with his wife Kim and a few members of the band. I rolled
out the red carpet and they all appreciated it. They don’t call him Stevie “Guitar” Miller for nothing. His
genuine love for the instrument came across clearly, and our mutual passion for guitars helped establish
the foundation for our ongoing friendship.
That afternoon, Steve ordered a number of stock and special order guitars. Some of the instruments
required some extra supervision on my part. Over the next several months, as the guitars became
available one by one, I would call Steve to update him on our progress. There was always an excitement
in the anticipation of a new arrival. During one conversation he suggested that I should consider coming
out to his home for a visit. I was flattered of course, but unsure about how serious the invitation was.
When he mentioned it again, I warned him that if he invited me one more time, I might just take him up
on it and he did, and I accepted.
Steve and Kim’s property was an artist’s dream: an architecturally beautiful home with guest
cottages across a small brook, an impressive recording facility and a comfortable art studio, all situated
along a rushing river that nestled into the snow covered peaks of an adjoining state park. I spent several
days with them, enjoying the conversation, the music and the cuisine. Steve and Kim were down to earth
and gracious, but more than that, they genuinely enjoyed sharing their sense of lifestyle and culture. We
played guitars, talked about instrument making and tone, did yoga, hiked and smoked cigars on the
porch.
Steve had always been an avid environmentalist and in 1993, he invited me to meet him in Southern
California for a special Earth Day benefit concert. I was unsure exactly what my role would be, but upon
arrival I realized that it was all right to simply relax and enjoy the event. Steve was sharing the bill with
Paul McCartney, Don Henley, Kenny Loggins, Natalie Merchant, K. D. Lang, Bruce Cockburn, Chevy
Chase and many others. The concert was exceptional and I was grateful to see all of the bands, including
Steve and Paul, from such a privileged vantage point.
Several months later, Steve’s band was again touring the summer sheds. They had a day off after
their Philadelphia show and Steve and Kim accepted our longstanding invitation to drive up to Nazareth
for one of Susan’s fantastic lunches.
Our relationship had grown to the point that on several occasions Steve had alluded to the possibility
of a position for me as his personal assistant, for lack of a better title. Impressed with Susan’s talent and
organizational skill, there seemed to be a potential role for her as well. This was a great and exciting
opportunity for us, but the real thrill came from the notion of reinventing ourselves and our careers. We
booked our flights and began to investigate real estate in the area. There was a great sense of
anticipation in facing the unknown.
Free Falling
The thrill of running a non-profit organization was beginning to wane. It was taking an inordinate
amount of time to book the membership checks, answer inquiries, write and publish the magazine, and
manage the logistics of the bi-annual Symposia. Beyond that, all of the extra work was beginning to
impact my time with Susan, so I gave ample notice to the Board of Directors and a search ensued for my
replacement. The transition was difficult, but when it was over I felt a tremendous sense of relief.
My guitarmaking friends conspired to secretly fabricate a special plaque for my contribution of time
to A.S.I.A. Grit Laskin cut and assembled the East Indian rosewood sections. Larry Sifel and Jeff
Harding at PearlWorks executed the incredible pearl inlay. The finished piece (above right) stands as
one of my most prized mementos.
My soft exit from A.S.I.A. was especially well timed given that Susan came home one afternoon
with a small package from the pharmacy.
Jet Airliner
So we flew to out to visit Steve and Kim Miller. It was overwhelming. The cheaper houses were
more than we could afford, so we looked in the adjoining towns surrounding the valley. The properties
were still very expensive. Steve offered to put us up in one of his guest houses until we decided on a
place. This was extremely generous, but Susan was feeling very conflicted about raising a child away
from her family. I was slightly scared that things might not work out with Steve and we would be
transplanted without a secure situation. Steve, sensing the difficulty of our decision, let the job offer
stand but suggested that we shelve the idea of moving, and focus on raising our child. We were relieved.
Fearing that I was about to fly the coop, Martin gave me a modest but needed raise. In the meantime,
one of my friends was going through a difficult divorce and needed to sell his house just north of
Nazareth. Sue and I liked the feel of the property and following our natural nesting instinct, we made a
snap decision and bought it.
Emily was born as the fall settled in. While she was still a baby, we visited Steve and Kim again. A
few years later, when Sue was pregnant with Gracie, Steve and Kim invited us out to their new home in
the Pacific Northwest. Steve had chartered a beautiful vintage sailing ship ironically named “Martin’s
Eden,” supplied with a captain, cook and crew who were all the same person. We joined Ned
Steinberger of Steinberger Guitar fame and his wife Denise, who was also expecting. Steve captained
his own boat with Kim and another couple who were close friends. We sailed in tandem through the
San Juans toward the Olympic Peninsula, stopping to spend the night in a tiny cove on the eastern side
of Lopez Island.
We cooked fresh salmon filets on our own boats. Ned and I, not constrained by pregnancy,
immersed ourselves in a bottle of red wine. Just after dusk, Ned, the captain and I rowed over to the
Steve’s boat in a small and unstable dingy. Steve was moored further than we thought and by the time
we pulled alongside, all of the deck lights were out. Everyone was sound asleep, including Steve who
had suggested earlier that we join him over for dessert. In spite of much giggling, splashing, and
boatside immaturity, nothing could rouse the Millers, hence the lyrics to Sleep Cowboy were conceived
in a raucous display of spontaneity.
I wasn’t sure that Steve appreciated my songwriting talent (or lack thereof). I admit that the lyrics
were a bit harsh, but it was all in good fun. I offered to split the royalties and he jokingly threatened me
with copyright infringement.
We pushed off the next morning fully refreshed and we survived the moody seas, mooring up in Port
Townsend for the Wooden Boat Show before sailing back the next day.
Ned had patented an ingenious adjustable neck for acoustic guitars and the three of us spent hours
discussing the merits. In fact, the combination of a player, a builder and an inventor inspired more guitar
talk than the females could bear.
Nonetheless, the seeds of a Martin/Steinberger adjustable neck collaboration were born, as well as
preliminary specifications for a Steve Miller Signature Edition. After returning to Nazareth, I started
churning out jokers and jesters, jet airliners and space cowboys, flying horses and flying eagles. In the
end though, Steve and I decided to mothball all of the inlay ideas in favor of an extremely pure design,
devoid of ego, that could stand on its own merits as a fine instrument. Of course, the guitars were all
gobbled up by the music stores in a feeding frenzy, proving that there is still integrity in restraint.
Sleep Cowboy
Some people call me the sleep cowboy, yea.
Some call me the gangster of snooze.
Some people call me “Snore-eese” (Snort, Snort)
Cause I’ve slept for the duration of the cruise.
Some people talk about me.
They say I’m catchin’ lots of “zzzzzzz’s.”
But its easy, it’s so easy to slip under
When you’re rocked by the rhythm of the seas.
Cause I’m a snoozer.
I’m a doozer.
In my cabin cruiser.
Do my dreamin’ just for fun.
I’m a sleeper.
I’m a peeper.
Don’t you buzz my beeper.
When the lazy day is done..
I’m a rester.
I’m a jester.
I’m the son-in-law of Lester.
I do my sleepin’ in the sun.
Oooh, Oooh, Oooh, Oooh
Oooh, Oooh, Oooh, Oooh,
Oooh, Oooh, Oooh
I’m the smoothest dude that you never did see
Cause I’ll be hiding under my bed’s canopy.
Dreamin’, dreamin’, dreamin’, I’ll be dreamin’ for a week
And when I finally get up, I’ll just go back to sleep...
Repeat (with prolific snoring in the background) and fade...
©1997 Sailor Music. All Rights Reserved.
(Sarcasm contributed by dick boak. No Rights Reserved.)
Laskin Red
One of the few guitars I have ever purchased from another maker was made by William “Grit”
Laskin. I had saved a soundboard of Appalachian red spruce, plus an extraordinarily figured set of
Brazilian rosewood. Martin wouldn’t use the sapwood, but for me that’s what made it all the more
special. I didn’t trust myself to do justice with such a precious set. I had always admired Grit’s
instruments and I commissioned him in 1996 to make a special guitar with these woods. When we
started discussing inlay, I decided that I wanted to poke fun at Martin. The headstock inlay features Grit,
standing on the top rung of a ladder inside a music store window, painting over the Martin logo from the
window. Grit suggested that since his last name shared three common letters with Martin, he would
depict himself replacing the “M,” the “R,” and the “T” with his own name in Laskin Red paint. The
resulting work of tone and art, complete with beveled built-in armrest, is one that I truly cherish.
The Sounding Board
After finalizing the prototypes for new models, it’s time to begin the daunting task of writing and
laying up Martin’s official newsletter, “The Sounding Board.” These magazines become the primary
vehicle for introducing the artist signature models, but the colorful tales behind these projects are often
too personal to include in company literature. Instead, I began to chronicle the anecdotes for this book –
that is until two fellows from England proposed that I capture the stories behind all of the editions for
the book “Martin Guitar Masterpieces.”
Palazzo Meets Bulfinch
In May of 2002, I received a call from an English guitar enthusiast named David Costa. I had talked
to him before, but the connection didn’t register. He said that he and two friends would be traveling soon
in the States. He wanted to know whether they could come by for a special factory tour?
I scheduled their visit and didn’t think much about it until their arrival one Thursday morning. David
was casually dressed and seemed rather artsy. His friends Colin and Pam Webb were a bit more formal.
All three were amiable and professional.
English accents bring out the Beatle in me and before long I was inflicting them with my typically
bad Liverpoolian impressions. Nevertheless, there was good humour (as the English would spell it) and
we all struck it off bloody well. They were impressed with the factory. They asked a lot of questions
about the limited edition signature model program and complimented me on my knowledge and passion
for guitars.
After the tour, we sat down for a chat. Colin and Pam were involved with book publishing. They
outlined a tentative proposal for a book about rare and limited Martin guitars. I thought it was a terrific
idea, but knowing how crazy my own schedule was, I suggested that I might refer them to a few
potential Martin experts appropriate for authorship of such a large project. I printed out a few names and
addresses for them and they looked up at me in confusion.
“You don’t know who we are, do you?”
I knew that David and Colin had been collaborating on books. I knew that David was a graphic
designer in London and that Colin and Pam were more involved with the business aspects of publishing
and packaging.
I didn’t know that David had done album covers for Elton John, Mark Knopfler, George Harrison,
Eric Clapton, the Beatles and many, many more music icons.
David perked up. “We’ve brought along some samples of some of the book projects we’ve worked
on together. I’ll bring them in from the car.” He returned with a large sack and emptied it carefully upon
the table.
“We specialize in high quality limited run books.” He handed over a copy of the best selling book
The Beatles Anthology, then a beautiful limited boxed edition entitled Eric Clapton – 24 Nights, and
finally an assortment of other lovely coffee table books.
“Why don’t you look these over?” Colin said. “We’ll be in touch after we return to the UK. The
books are for you.”
I thanked them profusely as we said our cordial goodbyes. After their departure, I flipped through
the various volumes they had given me. I was tremendously impressed with the overall design and
layout and I began to feel a sense of remorse in not having offered to write the book myself, especially
since most of the Martin signature guitars had happened as the result of my direct efforts.
I was particularly surprised and pleased when they called back several days later to say that they
really didn’t want anyone else. If I ever desired to be published, this was the time. I considered their
second offer a great compliment and opportunity, but also a daunting challenge.
I had already written many of the artist model pieces for Martin’s Sounding Board and had also
captured several of the more personal and humorous celebrity encounters for this Dot To Dot book. I
forwarded a few of these on to David and Colin via email to give them an idea of the informal firstperson vantage point I had in mind. They both liked what they read and soon an agreement was drafted,
reviewed, and signed.
For the better part of eight grueling months, I spent my late evenings trying to keep up with Colin’s
stringent deadlines. Although my chapters were generally late, I was at least able to keep David
thoroughly occupied during his layout and design process.
John Sterling Ruth supplemented the existing Martin photography with some ultra-high resolution
digital details and before long the book started to take shape.
Palazzo printed the book in Singapore and negotiated a U.S. distribution agreement with Bulfinch
Press, a division of AOL Time Warner. The marketing department at Bulfinch did an admirable job in
advance promoting sales. They even sent me to California for a book signing tour with Steve Miller who
had graciously accepted my invitation to write the foreword for the book. In addition to the huge thrill
and honor of being published, I came away with the heightened confidence I needed to finally finish the
book you are now viewing.
Since I had covered the subject of signature editions with relative thoroughness in Martin Guitar
Masterpieces, I wrestled with the issue of whether it was necessary to rehash any of those stories in
these pages. Since the initial stories were intended for this book in the first place and since some of the
anecdotes were too extended or revealing for the Martin book, I made the decision (in the spirit of
connecting the dots) to include the handful of the original unabridged artist stories here.
During the course of my writing routine, I was becoming more disciplined and structured. Sitting
down with the mouse and keyboard every evening started to feel like second nature, at least I was
achieving tangible results. I doubt I’ll ever be thought of as much of a writer, but if there is a specific
space to fill, let me at it. Give me a word count and I’ll write it to fit!
461 Ocean Boulevard
In 1992, Eric Clapton recorded an extended set of songs for MTV Unplugged. The highlights of the
show were Tears From Heaven, an intensely emotional lament that followed the tragic death of Eric’s
son Conor, plus a slow yet inspired acoustic version of the rock classic Layla. Every song recorded
during that session possessed a fresh magic that revitalized the mass appreciation for acoustic music.
The predominant acoustic guitars on the show had been Martins, so it wasn’t long before my phone
started to ring off the hook. Everyone wanted to know exactly what models Eric was using and whether
they were available. We had had a reasonable success the previous year with the Gene Autry Signature
Edition guitar. The project had sold 66 guitars and generated a charitable royalty for The Autry Museum
of Western Heritage.
It seemed too obvious that a Clapton Signature Edition would be extremely well received. With
Chris Martin’s blessing, I prepared a brief but sensitive fax to Clapton’s office in London. A heartfelt
and favorable response came back the next day and before long I was hard at work with Eric’s guitar
technician Lee Dickson, blending features from two of Eric’s favorite Martins. While the model was
being prototyped, I searched his lyrics for a numerical reference that might lend itself to an edition
quantity. Flipping through my dusty stack of albums, I landed upon 461 Ocean Boulevard. The number
was ambitious but seemed perfect given that Eric’s demographics transcended age, race and gender. We
offered 461 guitars and they sold out within hours of their introduction at the national music show in
Anaheim, leaving us all wishing that Eric could have moved a mile or two up the road – perhaps to 1461
Ocean Boulevard.
As the 000-42EC models made it through the line, it became increasingly clear that these guitars
were very special; a perfect collaboration with a legendary artist and an inspired guitar design. It would
be a tough act to follow.
Susan and I traveled to London with Chris Martin and his half-brother Douglas to meet up with Eric
backstage prior to one of his performances at the Albert Hall. There we were photographed presenting
him with the number one guitar from the edition. Eric was late to go onstage and slightly disheveled but
that didn’t squelch our enthusiasm for the moment.
Several months later, Eric flew to New York City to shoot the video for his hit Change The World.
He assumed that it would be easy to borrow one of his signature guitars, but they had simply all been
sold and he hadn’t brought his own guitars. He called my office in a panic. Having purchased #2 of the
edition, I hopped in my car and rushed to the Hoboken Train Station where the filming was taking place.
What a thrill it was to have my personal guitar in Eric’s hands during the filming of the video as well as
the ad promo for the movie Phenomenon and the cover of the jacket for the single release.
There would be many more Eric Clapton collaborations and models in the cards, including an
unprecedented Custom OM-50 Deluxe guitar with an alligator skin case, a tremendously popular stock
model, two Brazilian rosewood editions, a limited run of beautiful black Bellezza Nera guitars plus a
possible run of some creamy white Bellezza Biancas.
Writing To Fit
Writing to fit is like installing kitchen cabinets.
When a space avails itself, my mind dispatches a skilled apprentice to the jobsite who carefully
measures the job, making sure to calculate the complex angles to the nearest degree. Every fluctuation of
the floor and ceiling – every diverging theme is considered.
The exact perimeters outlined, he reports back to the shop where each noun is now sawn and fit.
Verbs are carefully selected like drawer pulls and hinges. Unnecessary adjectives are trimmed. Moldings
are punctuated, masking the unsightly seams. Corner miters converge like conjunctions. Descriptions are
sprayed like fine lacquers.
Pre-assembled paragraphs are loaded onto the truck. My mind drives – slowly so that the load
doesn’t shift. The installation isn’t quick. There will be adjustments. Prepositions prop up the uneven
sections – everything fits.
I stand back and look – a droplet of perspiration blurs the corner of my vision. A young woman
enters the room with her checkbook. She is pretty and she likes her cabinets. My work is done.
Iacocca’s
Lee Dickson had taken care of Eric Clapton’s guitars for decades. Throughout the course of our
collaboration with Eric, Lee and I had become good friends. When the Clapton Blues Tour came to
Philadelphia, Lee used his day off to come up to Nazareth for an afternoon at the factory. Afterwards,
we headed over to Allentown for a nice dinner at a small Italian restaurant owned by Lee Iacocca’s
sister.
We waited a long time for our pasta to arrive and to pass the time, Lee picked up the restaurant’s guest
book on the counter next to our table. Joking around, Lee signed Paul McCartney into the book with a
comment about his wonderful day at the Martin factory with dick boak. Then I took the pen and signed
Eric Clapton, with a wry comment about how nobody in the damn town seemed to know who we were.
We had a good chuckle about this, then set the book back in its place and went about eating our dinners.
Several weeks passed and my memory of Lee’s visit slowly faded. Then one afternoon, the phone
rang. It was a cub reporter from the local newspaper. He wanted to know if I could confirm the rumor
that Paul McCartney had recently been to the Martin factory in Nazareth. I didn’t have the faintest idea
what he was talking about and emphatically explained that Paul McCartney had never been to the
factory, nor did I expect that he ever would.
Defeated, he hung up.
The next morning, he called back and asked whether Eric Clapton had been to the factory recently.
“This is ridiculous.” I retorted. “Where are you getting this?”
He said that rumors were all over Allentown. I asked him to check the source and get back to me. I
really was becoming curious and annoyed about this. The notion that these two might have been in town
together or separately was absurd.
Another day passed. He called again.
“A restaurant owner says they were both in town. She said that they made an entry into the guest
book. They mentioned your name!”
“What restaurant?” I asked in disbelief.
“Iacocca’s.”
If it weren’t for the static connection, I think he might have heard my jaw hit the floor. It all came
back to me in an instantaneous flash of embarrassment and guilt. I had no choice but to confess. I told
him the entire story and apologized profusely.
I don’t think he thought it was very funny. On top of that, it spoiled his story. I suggested that he tell
what really happened.
“Oh yeah, that’s news,” and the phone slammed.
With a sheepish grin, I picked up the phone and dialed Lee’s number in London.
Bellezza Nera
One afternoon, I received a phone call from my friends at Acoustic Guitar magazine in Marin
County north of San Francisco. The publication was celebrating its tenth anniversary and the editors
were soliciting each major guitar manufacturer to create two matching custom instruments to
commemorate the milestone. Given that the guitars would receive considerable publicity, I was being
encouraged to think outside the box. I dubbed the project AG-10 and started to consider the design
options.
I had been experimenting with white Corian® and cream-colored Micarta® as potential fingerboard
choices for a Limited Edition Grand Ole Opry model. With a color close to ivory, the Micarta® material
seemed perfect, especially since I had been trying to develop a fingerboard design that would capture the
essence of the lettering and coloration on the Opry microphone placards.
After flirting with the notion of finishing the AG-10 guitar in black lacquer, it occurred to me that
the face view was beginning to resemble a photographic negative wherein all of the blonde surfaces
could revert to black and all the darker surfaces could revert to white. Extending this theme toward its
logical conclusion, the pickguard, bridge and headplate were specified in white and the bindings, nut and
saddle, bridge pins, and tuning machine buttons were changed to black.
The result was striking enough to draw an inquiry from Bob Dylan when he noticed the AG-10
guitar in the pages of the Acoustic Guitar magazine. He wanted one. We ended up making him two
“negative” prototypes for his Love and Theft tour. We held high hope that he might finally agree to a
Bob Dylan Signature Edition Martin model.
For months we waited for Dylan’s decision, but the phone call never came. Gradually, I came to
realize that the instrument could stand quite nicely on its own without depending upon Bob’s
endorsement. And so negativity found its way into the Martin line in the stunning form of the
HDN Negative Edition. Then with equal input from Eric Clapton and his Japanese friend Hiroshi
Fujiwara, eight beautiful black 000s evolved – their dark integrity inviting the inevitable introduction of
the Clapton/Fujiwara Bellezza Nera Limited Edition.
Double Trouble
On the country music front, Marty Stuart and Travis Tritt were touring together under the heading of
“Double Trouble.” Marty’s signature model had certainly caught Travis’s eye and one afternoon, they
descended upon the factory under separate cover. Marty arrived in a Checker cab and Travis in a
gigantic black limousine. The production of Marty’s model was in full swing and I took them on an
extended tour of the factory.
Afterwards, we all sat down and Travis rattled off specifications for what was at the time the most
expensive Brazilian rosewood Custom Martin guitar ever constructed. He wasn’t sure, however, exactly
what ornamentation to choose for the fingerboard. I happened to have my Custom OMC 12-String
Deluxe Cutaway with the “Vine Of Harmonics” inlay pattern (see page 179) with me. I had drawn this
pattern based upon the fractional harmonic subdivisions of the scale length. The tiny spines terminating
each branch were intended to bear some significance to the astute slide player. Not only did my design
have little practicality; Chris Martin gradually came to jokingly call it “The Vine Of Twigs” for the
obvious reason that it was practically devoid of leaves. As a crowning touch to my vine of barren
branches, I added a tiny wishbone as a subtle reference to my most prized possession, that being the
incredibly fragile wishbone of a hummingbird that I had found in the grass as a child.
Travis found some solace in this oddly attractive pattern and chose it for the fingerboard of his
extravagant instrument. To the benefit of the pattern, the inlay artists at PearlWorks took poetic license
in choosing a wide variety of colors from their pallet of shell and composite stone.
Travis’s guitar was magnificent – twigs, wishbones and all, and it is a great honor to see him show
up occasionally on a TV special or video cradling it in his arms. I think Travis took particular pride in
the fact that he had out-performed Marty in the ornamentation department, let alone cost. Marty just
rolled his eyes and raised the ante with a sly comment about outperforming Travis in the taste and tone
departments!
Marty had been married to Johnny Cash’s daughter Cindy, and though they were long since
divorced, Marty had maintained a very strong tie with Johnny. We both thought a Johnny Cash model
would be a winner, so Marty made the call for me. The next morning I received a very enthusiastic hand
written fax from Johnny and we were on our way.
Johnny Cash
It seemed pretty obvious that the “Man in Black” would want a black guitar. We went back and forth
a few times with some ideas and ended up with an elegant D-42 model with 13 patriotic pearl bordered
abalone stars as position markers and Johnny’s signature at the last fret. The completion of the prototype
coincided nicely with the Telluride Bluegrass Festival. I lugged that guitar across the country and up that
beautiful mountain, eventually meeting up with Johnny behind his tour bus.
Johnny looked weary, but he and his wife June Carter Cash were very gracious. He loved the guitar.
It’s hard to not get excited over such a piece of personalized art. Right in the middle of all of this, up
comes Stormin’ Norman Schwartzkopf, a longtime friend of Johnny’s. I found him oddly refreshing. We
talked while Johnny strummed. He performed well that night, considering that his illness would get
much worse in the months that followed. Looking back, they were such warm-hearted people. Our
project takes on a special meaning now, and of course the guitars are stunning and rare. I remember
seeing a television special that Johnny did with his good friend Willie Nelson, who was so taken with
Johnny’s guitar that he sang a song on camera with it. The next day, Marty Stuart again rose to the
challenge and furnished me with a special phone number. I called it.
Willie
The phone tones pulsed, then….
“Hello.”
“Yes, ah, hello. I’m trying to get in touch with Willie Nelson?”
“This is Willie.” said Willie in a very soft monotone. Marty had given me the cell phone on Willie’s
bus. I was a bit startled to be talking to Willie so directly.
Willie was smooth as silk. He liked the notion of having his old guitar replicated. Trigger was
undeniably one of the most famous and recognizable instruments on the planet. In the late 60’s, Willie
had had an inexpensive “Conn” nylon stringed guitar with an ingenious onboard pickup. One night, it
got badly damaged during a show and Willie took it in to Shot Jackson’s in Nashville to be repaired.
Shot couldn’t fix it, but he had a brand new Martin N-20 hanging on the wall.
“Can you put the pickup from that thing into the Martin?” said Willie.
“Sure can,” said Shot.
It’s a gas to look at photos of Willie and that guitar through the years. Willie was clean cut when the
guitar was new. A decade later, his hair was shoulder length and the N-20 had a few scratches and dents.
By the mid 80’s, the guitar was starting to show some serious wear and so was Willie, but he didn’t want
to get it fixed. The sound was just right, in spite of the fact that there was a sizeable hole worn right
through the soundboard. The guitar had become such an integral part of Willie’s sound that he invited
his closest friends and band members to sign the guitar and soon it was covered with legendary names:
Cash, Kristofferson, Haggard, Jennings…. and a hundred more.
So when the IRS got on Willie’s case, it’s no surprise that the first thing he did was hide that guitar
away. It sat safely in his manager’s office for months until things cooled down a bit.
Willie was scheduled to do a concert in Valley Forge. I made plans to meet him there so that I could
talk measurements and take some photos of Trigger. After the show, I waited backstage with Waylon
Jennings and seventy-five middle-aged women. Finally one of Willie’s roadies came to get me and
Waylon. Those women were so envious. I hopped up on the bus and there he was, relaxing at his table.
He stood up to greet us and I said, “Hello, Mr. Willie.” I wasn’t seated for 15 seconds before a gigantic
joint was lit and passed to me. It was a peace offering of sorts, and like a cavalry captain sitting with
Geronimo, it was impossible to refuse. After a few moments it didn’t matter if I inhaled or not. It would
have gotten to anybody just through osmosis!
There were five or six big guys on the bus, plus Waylon, and Willie’s little sister Bobbie. One of the
big guys passed me the joint and reassured me: “Don’ worry, little feller. Yer safe with us. An’ ya’
know, Willie’s the only remaining cannabis-based life form on the planet!” This was somehow
comforting.
After twenty minutes or so, Willie decided he was ready to go outside and sign autographs for the
several hundred twitterpated women that were nestled around the bus. I realized then that I too needed
his autograph in order to create the digital artwork for the fingerboard. I handed Willie my notebook
opened up to a blank page. He reached out with his Sharpie and made a squiggle. I looked at it in
disbelief. It was completely illegible.
I didn’t want to insult Willie, but I handed the notebook back to him. “Willie, I need you to do it
again.” He squiggled again, this time a slightly more intelligible squiggle, but a squiggle just the same.
Returning to Nazareth, I worked on the fingerboard artwork for the prototypes and my friends at
Fishman created a faithful version of Willie’s unusual pickup. Everything came together nicely. When
the first guitars were completed, I called to check Willie’s schedule and was amazed to find that he was
going to play the State Theater just ten miles east of Nazareth. I met him the afternoon of the show in the
parking lot of the Larry Holmes Commodore Inn across the river in Phillipsburg, New Jersey. I arrived
at two and the bus driver informed me that Willie was still asleep. At three, I was summoned. I grabbed
the prototype and climbed up the steps onto the bus.
This time it was just me and Geronimo. He lit the joint and passed it my way. The stuff never
seemed to affect him very much. He looked at the prototype with great interest and sized it up against
the genuine Trigger. We joked about making a machine that would attack the guitar just like he does in
all the right spots, but before we knew it, it was time to head over to Easton for the sound check. Willie
suggested that I leave my car and drive over on the bus. With wafts of marijuana smoke seeping from
the vents, we crossed the toll bridge and exited onto 4th Street. The Easton Circle was under major
construction.
There was a tiny sign at the end of the exit ramp that said: “No Busses or Trucks.” Of course, that
sign was only a few feet off the ground. In the tour bus, we were too high to see it. Willie was too high
as well. The smoke inside the bus was so thick our visibility was as obscured as our judgment. Poodie,
our driver, proceeded boldly toward the circle.
Two lanes became one and the bus came to a halt. It was impossible to turn at the circle. Poodie tried
to back up, but there were a dozen cars behind us. The stalemate lasted long enough to attract a young
police officer. He banged his fist on the bus door. The sizzle of extinguished embers emanated from the
sink disposal as a wave of paranoia swept through the bus. Willie said: “Just relax everybody. This bus
has diplomatic immunity. We’re a separate country.”
Poodie slipped off the bus and closed the door with such grace, only a few acrid wafts made it to the
vicinity of the officer’s nostrils. He wanted to board the bus in the worst way, but Poodie wasn’t about
to permit this without a search warrant. After fifteen minutes of verbal wrangling, the frustrated officer
begrudgingly issued a $250 traffic violation. He had no idea who Willie Nelson was, not that that would
have made any difference. He cleared the cars in back of us and supervised the slow de-vacuation of the
bus. Soundcheck would just have to wait.
After the show, Willie greeted people on stage. He had both versions of Trigger and several
snapshots were taken. The guitars raised some nice royalties for Farm Aid, the mayor of Easton
intervened to void Willie’s ticket, and life returned to some sense of normalcy for everyone, except of
course for Willie.
Masiakasaurus Knopfleri
More than any other recording artist, I have been enamored with Mark Knopfler’s musicianship and
guitar playing from his first Dire Straits album up through his movie soundtracks, collaborative
partnerships and solo releases. When the opportunity presented itself to collaborate with Mark on a
signature model project, I seized it with passion and commitment.
Identifying the optimum mix of size, tonewoods and appointments for Mark was not an easy task,
but gradually we honed in on the specifications. While we were working on the initial prototypes, a team
of paleontologists from the University of Utah were digging for fossils in northwestern Madagascar.
They weren’t having much success, that is until they inserted a Dire Straits CD into their boom box.
Almost immediately they found dinosaur bones from a previously undiscovered species. It became their
running joke that if they didn't play Mark’s CD, they wouldn't find any fossils, but when they did they
would hit the jackpot.
They decided to honor Mark by naming their new discovery Masiakasaurus knopfleri. In the
newspapers, Mark responded that he was most honored to have a fast-moving, versatile and vicious
creature named after him.
I thought the story was very amusing and proceeded to design an assortment of dinosaur inspired
inlays for the fingerboard, but upon proposing my idea to Mark, he was less than enthused. I think that
all the newspaper articles and hubbub had gotten to him. Reluctantly, I placed my inlay designs on the
back burner.
En route to the annual MusikMesse in Frankfurt, I arranged to stop in London to meet with Mark
and put the final specifications to rest. Appropriately, he was recording a tribute to Hank Williams, Sr.
with his fellow band members and Emmylou Harris at Nomis Studios in Shepherd’s Bush. I arrived
quietly right in the middle of the session. When they took a break, Mark greeted me briefly and sat me
down with a cup of tea right smack in the middle of the studio. Watching the recording process was
remarkable, especially in such close proximity.
Following several takes, everyone retired to the console to review the playbacks. After much
rewinding, Mark decided that a few extra tracks of vocal layering would be necessary. When Mark and
Emmylou headed back into the studio, it became clear that this would take some time. I went downstairs
to the cafeteria for some lunch. Halfway through my salad, Mark came to my table with his tray and
said: “Mind if I join you?” I was taken aback but thankful that he was opting to sit with me instead of
Emmylou.
I had a lot of issues that needed to be resolved in order to finalize the specifications. While eating
our lunches, we discussed the difficulties surrounding the cutting of his special rosette design, then we
tackled some last minute inlay ideas. With great hesitancy, I produced my illustration of the tiny
dinosaur and made my final case for its inclusion.
“I know you don’t want this on the fingerboard,” I pleaded, “but how about we bury this little critter
inside the body, laser etched on the front block above the serial number?”
I waited. A gleam appeared in his eye.
“Then everyone can discover the little Knopfleri for themselves, just like those blokes in
Madagascar!”
“Exactly!”
Two months later, the prototypes were nearing completion. Mark was kicking off his US tour in
support of his Sailing To Philadelphia CD release. I had extended an invitation for a factory visit and on
a sunny Friday in April, a chartered helicopter descended loudly upon the Nazareth Speedway.
Accompanied by bass player Glenn Worf and guitarist Richard Bennett, Mark disembarked and
stretched, then hopped into the Martin van for a short tour around Nazareth before being whisked over to
the factory to see his prototypes in process.
Knowing that these fellows appreciated good
cuisine and given the scarcity of any first rate caterers, Susan prepared a gourmet lunch that included the
wonderfully fresh mozzarella from Calandra’s Cheese Shop. The locals like to refer to the shop as
“Cheeses of Nazareth.” That’s our Nazareth joke. Mark and his crew found this most humorous.
After lunch, we headed back to the Nazareth Speedway for a few quick laps around the track at a
dizzying speed of 50 mph. Actually, the asphalt was being repaired in preparation for the weekend’s big
race and Mark’s tour insurance didn’t allow for any risk taking before performances.
With the evening’s show at Philadelphia’s Tower Theater calling, everyone climbed back into the
helicopter for what Glenn fondly described as “a walk in the air.” The following night we were fortunate
to catch Mark’s performance at the Beacon Theater in New York City. The music was superb, Mark’s
guitar wizardry was as dazzling as ever, and we got to sit next to Bette Midler!
As the guitars came through one by one, it became clear that Mark’s strong convictions regarding
how his Martin model should look and sound were naturally inspired. Several of the instruments found
their way into the deserving hands of Mark and his band mates who soon released a largely acoustic
album entitled Ragpicker’s Dream. That’s where the relevance and satisfaction really is – to place
wonderful tools in the hands of wonderful musicians.
Too Bad You Are A Communist
One afternoon, I was flipping through one of the guitar magazines and noticed that Joan Baez was
pictured with another brand of guitar. I was horrified. She had been playing a 1929 Martin 0-45 guitar
throughout her entire career. I called her office immediately to find out why she wasn’t playing her old
Martin.
Nancy, her assistant, wasn’t 100% sure but thought that someone from another guitar company had
told Joan that her Martin was worth more than $100,000 and that she was crazy to keep it on the road
with her. Apparently, she was then presented with one of the competition’s guitar models. Heeding the
advice, she retired the Martin to her bedroom closet and started touring with the non-Martin model. I
was distressed.
Nancy said she would have Joan contact me and sure enough, within a week, I took the call. Joan
confirmed the story, but added that after thirty years of constant use, her old Martin was the worse for
wear. The fingerboard had been poorly replaced and one of the inlays was missing altogether. There
were some hairline cracks in the sides and the action was high. I offered to restore the guitar for her at
no charge and she graciously accepted. Several weeks later a heavily insured carton arrived at the
factory containing the legendary and precious guitar.
Shortly after the guitar was unpacked, my phone rang. It was Milt in the Repair Department. He was
very distraught. He wanted to see me right away. I walked back to his bench.
“You won’t believe this.” He turned on a small light that he had placed inside the body of the guitar
and handed me an inspection mirror. I took a look. There, on the underbelly of the top, the bold words
were haphazardly scrawled:
“Too bad you are a communist!”
The statement was legible only with use of the mirror, which meant that someone had purposefully
written the words backwards. It occurred to me that Joan might have had the instrument serviced during
the Vietnam War years, most probably by someone who seriously objected to Joan’s politics. Milt was
worried that she might think that someone from Martin had done this. He asked that I call her with the
news. I did.
When I reached her on the phone, I asked whether she was sitting down. I wasn’t sure how she was
going to take this. Slowly, I told her the whole story and as the word “communist” rolled off my tongue,
there was an uneasy silence, then a spontaneous burst of laughter.
Joan laughed for several minutes. She found the story ironic and hilarious.
The restoration of the guitar went beautifully. Before returning the completed instrument to her, I
took very careful measurements and photographs. She was so thrilled when she received it. She wrote
me a very nice note.
In the weeks that followed, I proposed a Limited Edition Joan Baez Signature Model Martin guitar,
with royalties that would support Bread & Roses, the West Coast music charity that her sister Mimi
Farina had founded. Joan loved the idea and we proceeded with a prototype that drew its inspiration
from her old 0-45 Martin. As the prototype neared completion, I awoke in the middle of the night with a
brainstorm. Why not make a special label for the underside of the top, readable only with an inspection
mirror that told the story in short order, complete with the “Too Bad You Are A Communist” punch
line. Joan loved the idea.
Martin ended up making 59 of these very special guitars. The edition size was based on 1959, the
year that Joan Baez came onto the scene at the Newport Folk Festival. The entire edition sold out
immediately.
Eventually, Joan’s tour brought her to the Ballroom at the Belleview Hotel in Philadelphia. I met
her there. She was playing the number one guitar and halfway through her performance she stopped.
Holding the guitar proudly up for the audience, she spent five minutes telling the entire story. The
audience roared.
I understand that when Joan Baez is bold enough to travel with her precious Martin guitars, she
always tells that story with great animation and pride.
Sting
Gordon Sumner (AKA Sting) kept a Manhattan apartment in the same building as Paul Simon and
Saturday Night Live producer Lorne Michaels. Sting’s equipment manager and guitar technician was
Danny Quatrochi. Danny’s best friend and neighbor was John Kurgan. John was a professional
musician, amateur luthier and recording wiz. I met him during one of his many visits to Martin and we
became good friends.
Through John and Danny, I proposed a special Martin signature model collaboration to Sting. Sting
was receptive enough to discuss it further, so John made an appointment with Sting’s assistant Teresa.
On a sunny Thursday morning in 1997, I met John near Central Park West and he helped me with my
gear. I’d brought a Martin Humphrey nylon string guitar, my prototype Martin acoustic bass, my
pinstripe electric bass, and an assortment of strings and accessories that he had requested. I was aware
that Sting was fond of art, so I brought along a selection of my prints.
We entered through a modest door on the first floor. The apartment was paneled tastefully in
traditional dark cherry. To our right was a comfortable waiting room with overstuffed leather couches
and chairs. To the left was a simple office setup with a bank of telephones where Teresa and her staff
managed Sting’s affairs. She informed us that Sting was meditating and would be with us shortly.
I set my things down and sank into the leather couch. There was art everywhere. I didn’t realize it,
but above my head was a large Rembrandt original. John pointed this out. It was hard for me to imagine
that one could actually own art of that value. I mulled around the waiting room in awe looking at Sting’s
treasures, and then Teresa came in and said that we could go upstairs.
I gathered all of my paraphernalia and awkwardly started up the elegant spiral staircase to the second
floor. Along the way I passed a Monet, then a Renoir, then an Egyptian sarcophagus, then a large
fragment of Roman relief to the top landing where I clumsily readjusted my load, turned to the right and
gasped.
“I’ll be damned if that’s not the original set of barrel back dining room chairs from one of Frank
Lloyd Wright’s Prairie style houses in Chicago!”
Being a big fan of Wright’s, this was even more impressive than the paintings.
From the next room I heard a quiet voice say: “That’s quite astute!”
It was Sting, sitting on a small Persian carpet in the full lotus position. He looked extremely relaxed
in his blue spandex skivvies. I’d heard all the stories about Sting’s yoga and its effect upon his sexual
capacity. I entered the large living room with my wares and set everything down neatly.
“What’s in the box?” he asked.
“Oh, just some swag.” I smiled.
“You don’t have any Martin designer sweatpants in there, do you?”
“‘Fraid not.” I laughed. This set me at ease as he slipped on a T-shirt and took a seat at the piano
bench to see what I’d brought. John helped me get the various instruments out of the cases and Sting
inspected and played them all with care. I knew he was an excellent bass player, but I was particularly
surprised at his adeptness on the nylon string guitar. Beyond that, he possessed an obvious charisma and
magnetic warmth. I found him intensely creative, sharp-witted and personally warm.
After looking at the instruments, we sat down and discussed the details of a model. It wasn’t long
before the subject of rainforests came up. I had been one of the founding board members of the
Woodworker’s Alliance for Rainforest Protection (W.A.R.P.) so I was well versed on the subject. Sting
asked about the status of mahogany and rosewood. I told him that I thought we should avoid using
rosewood, but that we had some lovely quilted mahogany. My feeling was that the boycott of mahogany
provided greater incentive for burning of the rainforest canopy to create cattle grazing lands, whereas
use of these woods returned money to the local community and showed them the economic value of
sustaining their timber resources.
Sting pondered the merits of my argument, and concurring with my basic logic he said, “Well then,
let’s do it.” And we did it. He took great pride in signing his name for me a dozen times on a blank page
for the digital signature artwork. We agreed that the charitable royalties from the project should go to
Sting’s personal cause, the Rainforest Alliance. I returned to Nazareth and began solidifying the designs.
I spent an inordinate amount of time working on an Amazon tree frog rosette motif which I abandoned
out of sheer technical frustration. Anyway, Sting loved the rosette on his antique Renaissance guitar and
I replicated this with the great help of master luthier Michael Gurian. Finally, specifications were agreed
upon, woods were selected and matched, and two prototypes were initiated. Concurrently, I untangled
all of the legal snarls with Sting’s longtime manager Miles Copeland and in record time, our simple
contract came back fully executed.
The prototypes were stunning. John Kurgan and I made arrangements to meet again with Sting in
Manhattan. I was very excited when Sting first opened the case and set his eyes upon prototype number
one.
“You’ve done me well!” he said with a sparkle of pride. He agreed to some photos that I took with
my Nikon. A few weeks later, I was off to the Nashville NAMM trade show where the model was
introduced to the music dealers and a flurry of media attention began to encircle the project.
Within days of returning from Nashville, I received a panic call from Sting’s publicist asking about
the guitar. I explained the project to her and the logic of using the quilted mahogany but I could hear
doom in her voice. There had been some bantering on the web about Sting’s guitar being made of
rainforest-unfriendly wood and instead of trying to defend the position, Sting’s people decided to
abandon ship. Miles called shortly thereafter to inform me in no uncertain terms that we would be
canceling all of the orders and rescinding the model from the marketplace. Fortunately, we had only
made the two prototypes. Sting called me personally to apologize and say that he had underestimated the
groundswell of public opinion about the use of mahogany and that he would gladly work with me to try
to salvage the project in a newer, more rainforest-friendly direction. Of all the calls, his was the most
civil.
So we swallowed our pride and returned to the drawing board. This time around, I focused on
SmartWoodCM Certified timbers forested in compliance with standards set by the Forest Stewardship
Council. The Sitka spruce soundboards, although uncertified, were reclaimed from logs that were
destined to become pulp for baby diapers. We prototyped a nylon string guitar and an acoustic bass.
Once again, John Kurgan and I made arrangements to deliver the instruments to Sting in Manhattan for
his approval.
Sting had just released his “Brand New Day” CD and was rehearsing with his band prior to a lengthy
world tour. John and I met up and were buzzed past security at SIR Studios. There were several
rehearsal rooms at SIR, each slightly larger than a basketball court. A full stage with all of the
microphones, amplifiers and instruments was set up along one wall of the studio. Sting was seated on a
stool in the center. He nodded and gestured for us to take a seat on a small couch that faced the stage.
For forty minutes, we sat sipping Earl Grey tea and listening to our personal run-through of the tour play
list, then the band took a break for lunch.
“What do we have here?” Sting eagerly opened the oversized acoustic bass case and started
thumping out bass rifts.
“Cool!” he grinned. He took it over to the stage and plugged it in. Dominic Miller, the extraordinary
guitarist in Sting’s band, was noodling around on the nylon string and they fell naturally into Sting’s
country hit Laughing Through My Tears. It was a special treat to hear Sting play that bass. He used it for
the rest of the afternoon, then walked over to say goodbye.
“I’m keeping this one, right?”
“Of course! It’s just for you.”
It wouldn’t be the last one. I had electrified one of my Size 5 Mini-Martins for him. He loved its
crystalline sound and used it to record Dead Man’s Rope on his solo release Sacred Love. When he
started touring with an assortment of small-bodied Martins and Ditsons, John Kurgan and I pitched him
on another signature edition – this one a little high-strung Terz guitar made with an assortment of
sustainable woods that would make his friends at the Rainforest Alliance proud.
Simon Says
Roger Sadowsky had put me in touch with Paul Simon’s offices in Manhattan. Several phone
conversations with his management followed and Paul was responding positively to the idea of a
signature model collaboration with Martin. I was excited by this since I had been a Paul Simon fan from
the start. I knew his lyrics inside and out and appreciated the detail he put into his songs. When the
opportunity presented itself to drive into New York City to meet with Paul, I seized it. I had been told
that Paul was a bit difficult to deal with. This, combined with the huge effect he had had upon me, left
me nervous in anticipation of our impending visit.
“A winter’s day, in a bleak and dark December.” Lyrics from every song were swirling in my head
as I approached the famous Brill Building where he kept his offices. It was freezing cold and the wind
howled.
There was a small grocery store on the corner. I went in and bought two large fresh-squeezed orange
juices. I was remembering orange juice lyrics. This would be my peace offering.
I announced my arrival to the security guard and after a phone call upstairs, he showed me to the
elevator. I was heavily laden with guitars and a selection of prints of my drawings. As I entered, Martha,
Paul’s receptionist, greeted me and let me know that Paul would be running late for our meeting. I was
invited to make myself at home.
His office was divided into two rooms of equal size. The one with Martha’s desk doubled as a
museum for Paul’s gold records and Grammy awards. I put my guitar cases down and hung my coat.
I peeked in the other room. It was more like a living room, warmer and cozier. There were several
cushy chairs and sofas, a grand piano, and an assortment of instruments arranged around the perimeter
of a Persian rug.
After allowing the case to acclimate slowly, I unpacked my 000-42S Soloist (See page 180) that I
had brought along to show Paul. It was a very special 12-fret guitar with Brazilian rosewood and
Adirondack spruce. I sat on the leather couch next to the front door and began to play. Time passed and
Paul’s assistant Mark had come in to greet me. Leaving the guitar perched on the couch, I had joined
Mark at the large glass meeting table in the center of the room. We talked and waited for Paul to arrive.
Minutes later, the doorknob jingled and the door creaked open very slowly. Paul was dressed in a
heavy coat with a fur-lined hood. I think it was the same coat he wore on the cover photo of his second
solo album. He poked his head in long enough to pull the hood down and away from his head. He saw
my guitar lying on the couch and with one foot in the hallway and the other propping the door open, he
reached quickly for my guitar, picked it up, strummed a chord, set it back down as quickly as he had
picked it up, wrinkled a knurled frown on his forehead, looked up, and blurted:
“I don’t think so.”
He put his hood back up, pulled the door shut with a loud abrupt slam... and he was gone.
I looked over at Mark in horror.
“Is that it?”
Mark was speechless. We both sat there staring at each other, our jaws gaping in disbelief, when
suddenly I saw the large wooden door begin to creek open slowly like a cheap Vincent Price movie,
Paul’s head appeared sideways. A wry smile crept over his face.
“Just kidding!” He hustled through the door, hung his coat on the hook and came over to properly
greet me.
We settled into the more comfortable room where we talked guitars for an hour. It took that long for
us to realize that you can’t talk about tone. You have to listen. So Paul decided that a visit to the Martin
factory was in order. Several weeks later, he arrived in Nazareth with his son Harper. They had a field
day playing the dozens of different sizes, styles and shapes available. At the end of the day, the
specifications were decided upon and the prototypes were initiated.
Months later, during rehearsals for Paul’s Broadway show The Capeman, I delivered the prototypes.
Paul seemed stressed. He was clearly letting the play get to him. It was Christmas time and I did my best
to cheer him up.
More months passed. Paul’s instruments were finally ready and I arranged to deliver them in person.
He was recording songs from The Capeman at The Hit Factory. When I arrived, he was sealed up in one
of the sound stages with a large group of background vocalists. When he finished recording, he came out
to greet me.
Paul played the two signature guitars until he was satisfied that they were
exceptional, then he motioned for me to follow him into the sound studio. There were two huge mixing
consoles. One of the recording engineers was rewinding the recently recorded track from the 50s doowop song Bernadette. Paul asked him to queue up to the beginning of the song with his lead vocal turned
off.
As the playback began, Paul picked up his handwritten lyrics, and standing right next to me, he sang
the entire song.
Stephen Stills
Perhaps more than any other group from the Woodstock generation, Crosby, Stills, Nash (and
Young) embraced acoustic music before the word “unplugged” was even conceived. In spite of some
lateral endorsement deals, they had all owned and played Martin guitars throughout their careers.
In addition to being an extraordinary instrumentalist and songwriter, Stephen Stills was also a
significant collector of Martin guitars; in fact his purchases of older Style 45 Martins had drawn so
much attention in the guitar market that Martin vintage instrument prices were affected across the board.
His passion for guitars inevitably brought him to us and we began working earnestly on a stunning
Southern Cross Signature Edition D-45.
Given Stephen’s vast knowledge of guitars, there wasn’t much room for error. Nonetheless, I
managed to create a pickguard with one too many mother-of-pearl stars in the Southern Cross
constellation, and in spite of our miscommunication about the coloration of the top, the exact height of
the ivoroid bindings, and the style of the fingerboard inlays, we managed to introduce a corrected
edition, limited to no more than ninety-one exquisite guitars. In spite of their accuracy and integrity,
they carried a retail price of $19,000 each. It was going to take a special effort or a miracle to sell all
ninety-one.
Excited about the edition’s introduction, Stephen flew in from Los Angeles to rub shoulders and sign
autographs. When the show closed, I gathered a small group and took him out to dinner at Morton’s
figuring it would be a nice way to thank him for making the long trip. Stephen ordered an enormous
steak that came to the table on a plank of wood that certainly would have yielded several guitars. He
easily carved his way about half way through it, then his appetite surrendered. The remainder was
eventually relegated to a doggie bag. With his unabashed signature grin he confessed: “I’ll polish this
off later this evening.” And that was that!
We returned home well fed, but unfortunately only about half of the guitars had been sold. And then
miraculously, the phone rang. It was ABC Television. Ted Koppel’s Nightline was looking to expand
their Friday night programming with human interest stories. Specifically, they wanted to do a celebrity
feature about a Martin artist signature model project. We suggested Stephen Stills and the producer
Jacques Grenier – a Martin guitar devotee – loved the idea.
Stephen made his Mecca back to Nazareth once again to be filmed overseeing the production of his
model. Weeks later, ABC reciprocated by flying out to Los Angeles to film Stephen at home with his
collection of Martin guitars. To cap it off, Nightline lugged their cameras into the Anaheim NAMM
Show to interview random customers about Stephen’s model. When the edited show aired several
months later, the phones rang off the hook and the remaining half of the edition vaporized as effortlessly
as that slab of beef at Morton’s.
Mayberry
I’d been trying to get in contact with Andy Griffith for nearly two years to no avail. One afternoon I
called a number that I thought was his manager’s, but a shy Hispanic woman answered and when I said I
was trying to reach Andy she responded with confusion in broken English. Wrong number?
After several months passed, I returned to my quest. This time I was successful in reaching Andy’s
agent in Los Angeles. He suggested that I send a proposal, which I promptly prepared. I had watched
Andy play his unusual Martin D-18 throughout his career and I suggested in my fax that we replicate his
D-18 as a limited edition offering.
The next morning my phone rang.
“Is this Mr. Boak?
“Yes, this is Dick Boak.”
“Well howdy. This is Andy Griffith!”
It was Andy all right. I couldn’t believe I was having a conversation with the Sheriff of Mayberry.
“I want to tell you the story of that guitar,” he said with great excitement in his voice.
He proceeded to explain how at the beginning of his career in 1958, he had been cast in the starring
role for Elia Kazan's A Face In The Crowd. In that debut role, Andy played Lonesome Rhodes, a guitarplaying Arkansas rascal who rose from hobo to corrupt media star and king maker. The prop
department, knowing little to nothing about guitars, bought a brand new Martin D-18 and proceeded to
paint it completely black, gluing sequins spelling out Lonesome and Momma on its face. Andy was
quite distraught that they had ruined such a fine instrument. After the film was completed, Andy
“liberated” the guitar from the prop room and took it back to his apartment.
Faithfully, he set out to restore it, removing the sequins and sanding off the black paint to the bare
wood. It took him nine days to get all of the black paint off. In the process he sanded through the
headstock decal and removed the pickguard. Not knowing how to restore the original finish, he took the
guitar out onto the New York City streets in search of a guitar shop that could spray lacquer.
On the Lower East Side, Andy stumbled upon a small instrument maker’s shop. The owner agreed to
refinish the guitar, but at Andy's request, he didn’t replace the decal or the pickguard.
The proprietor was none other than the legendary John D'Angelico, now acknowledged to have been
one of finest makers of archtop jazz guitars ever.
This guitar became Andy's favorite instrument and he used it on all of his classic musical
performances on The Andy Griffith Show and Matlock, and on his many country, gospel and bluegrass
recordings through the years. It was no wonder that he was thrilled to collaborate with me on a special
Martin signature edition.
Over the course of the ensuing year, I became friends with Andy and his gracious wife Cindy. The
guitar project was a huge success of course, but the best part for me was getting to know Andy during
our many conversations. Like the characters he has portrayed, Andy is exactly who we would all hope
him to be – simply and purely – himself.
Name Dropping
Of course I’m most fortunate and thankful to have met and befriended so many of my musical
heroes. It took me several years to lose the nervousness that typically surrounds celebrities, but they’re
just people and generally they like to be treated like average Joes.
Giving credence to celebrity can gravitate to name-dropping and even groupie-ism. Nevertheless,
I’ve dabbled in doo-wop with Dion and gnawed on scrapple with Merle Haggard and his earthy crew at
the Nazareth Diner. I awakened Graham Nash from a sound sleep at 5:30 in the morning because I
forgot about the time difference in Hawaii. I chomped on over-boiled corn on the cob with David
Crosby and navigated Lionel trains with chief engineer Neil Young.
In England, I discussed dinosaurs while dining with Mark Knopfler and chortled a carafe of cabernet
in skiffle-king Lonnie Donegan’s roadhouse chambers. I challenged protocol with Stormin’ Norman
Schwartzkopf while waiting to board Johnny Cash’s black tour bus with my black guitar at Telluride.
On a foggy morning, I breakfasted on scrambled eggs and marmalade toast with Shawn Colvin.
I salivated over sashimi with Roger McGuinn, sliced sumptuous sirloin with Stephen Stills, and sang
synchronized Spoonful sonatas with John Sebastian. I smoked stogies with Stevie “Gee-tar” Miller,
swallowed my pride with Paul Simon, and swapped swag with Sting.
Arlo asked me if I’d ever been arrested and Willie nearly got me arrested.
I sorted through sound posts with David Bromberg and feasted on crustaceans courtesy of Jimmy
Buffett. I joked with Joan and jammed with Juber. I ate American Pie with McLean in Maine and
reminisced with Rowan and Rice at the Ryman.
I certified crocodile cases for Clapton, bartered with Babyface, and commandeered koa for Keb.
I pleaded the fifth with George Martin while totally missing McCartney. I trashed the Troubadour
with the Trio, carted camels in cabs for Frampton, and caught full moon fever from Petty.
I hobnobbed with Howe and laughed with Longworth – harmonized with Del and honky-tonked with
Kitty – caroused with Carthy and cheered with Chinery – fantasized with Fogelberg and toured with
Travis – drank a beer with Bob Weir and played possum with The Possum.
I hid reverently behind a rack of amplifiers while like a ghost, Bob Dylan floated up onto the stage in
a hooded sweatshirt for his pre-show sound check.
I almost touched Jim Morrison’s boot in Baltimore, while he was wearing it. That would have been
something! Marty Stuart called me a rascal and that I am, but it’s not about me, is it? It’s about them,
and it’s about the music.
It is a great gift to have others share themselves with you and to share back. As the jazz classic lyric
goes: “The greatest thing you’ll ever learn is to love and be loved in return.”
It has been a great honor for me to collaborate with so many great artists and bring to fruition so
many great instruments, but it doesn’t end there. The guitars have a life of their own and they last much
longer than people do. Magically, they find their way into the hands of great musicians who use them to
make great music.
Fifty or a hundred years from now, someone will pick up one of these special guitars – battle-scarred
and lacquer-checked with integrity – hold it up and strum a chord. Maybe they’ll know that I had a hand
in the conception and design. That would be just fine with me.
Evening rain.... eternity!
Breaking Away
One evening, I received a call from master archtop guitar maker Bob Benedetto. His shop was less
than an hour north of Nazareth and our close proximity had enabled me to become friends with Bob and
his wife Cindy. He’d been working alone, but had decided that he wanted to take on an
apprentice/employee. Because I was managing A.S.I.A. and publishing Guitarmaker Magazine, I knew
just about every guitarmaker in the country. Accordingly, he sought my advice. He wanted someone
who would be compatible in personality and receptive to learning, as opposed to being set in a particular
style or method.
I scrolled through my alphabetical database looking for potential recommendations and it wasn’t
until I reached “U” (file #2147) that I landed upon the name of my best friend and cohort, Dale Unger.
Dale had been working in his family’s plumbing business his entire life, but his heart was in
woodworking and guitarmaking. He had considered trying to get a job at Martin, but his timing was off
and Martin probably wouldn’t have been able to take full advantage of his capability anyway. When I
saw Dale’s name on the list, everything clicked.
Bob called Dale the next day and before I knew it, he was working part time on a trial basis. The two
were perfectly suited for each other and soon Dale was working full time, learning every aspect of Bob’s
craft and process. This was especially helpful to Bob. The extra set of hands enabled him to expand his
production with extra time to focus on a collaboration with Fender/Guild and to make the necessary
plans for a move back to Florida.
After several years, Bob and Cindy did in fact pack up shop and head south. With Bob’s full
blessing, Dale decided to try going out on his own. He took out a loan to get him through the transition
and furnished his home shop in Sciota with all of the necessary power tools and spray equipment.
One Saturday, Dale came down to work with me on a logo design. He had chosen “American
Archtop,” a great brand name for his guitars and surprisingly one that was not taken. Together, we set
about developing ideas and before we knew it, a bookmatched “AA” design was starting to evolve. I
sketched half of the pattern and scanned it into my Macintosh. We flip-flopped it, stretched it, and
modified it several dozen times until finally we were satisfied. The next week, Dale sent the artwork off
to a specialty company to have laser-cut silver-foil transfers fabricated. When they came back, they were
perfect.
Excited about his new business, I commissioned one of the first orders for one of his archtops. Dale
conspired with our mutual friend Dave Nichols at Custom Pearl Inlay to create a special ebony tailpiece
with my name and my triple-stranded infinity symbol inlaid in abalone shell. The resulting instrument
was beautiful – so good in fact that it really came in handy as a display piece. I’m honored to have my
name on such a special guitar and Dale reaps some promotional value being associated with me. Every
now and then, if I’m lucky, he actually allows me to borrow or play my own guitar!
A number of key jazz players have become Dale’s customers and in the 7-string community, he has
developed a strong reputation. He was successful in corralling many of these players into a collaborative
CD project and once again, Dale needed my computer expertise to complete the CD cover and package
design.
Dale’s business has thrived since he first ventured out on his own in 1998. He has had a backlog on
orders of at least a year or two, even in the difficult economic aftermath of 9/11, and he manages to
complete about twenty special instruments a year.
After getting his guitars on the covers of a few of the more respected jazz magazines, Chris Martin
began to take notice of Dale’s success and invited him to co-instruct the first annual Martin Acoustic
Design Course at the Northampton Community College.
Following that success, the conversation veered toward the potential of a collaborative archtop guitar
project with Dale. Our friendship survived the contract negotiations and the first Martin/American
Archtop prototypes were completed in the summer of 2003. After considerable engineering angst,
production models began to be delivered in the fall of 2004.
Susan and I had looked forward to revitalizing The Church of Art after a string of tenants, but we
never seemed to have the energy or the time to get anything started. With the building vacant, Dale
proposed renting the space to teach private courses in Archtop Guitar Construction. Eventually, his
vision for the future of the church superceded my own and although it was an emotional decision, I
agreed to sell. What better candidate than “Deacon Dale” to keep the Church of Art moving forward.
The Unraveling
An old acquaintance of JC’s named Dr. Mike Miller had had a rather successful side business
smuggling and distributing significant quantities of hashish until the Feds intercepted one of his
shipments. Not wanting to face prison time, Dr. Mike went on the lam, but the government decided to
exert their insidious leverage. They paid a little visit to his parents and threatened to seize their home
and possessions, and take them into custody for the rest of their God-given lives. This tactic was
effective. Soon, Mike turned himself in deference to his parents.
Being very much aware of what the government was willing to do and not wanting in any way to
place his own family in jeopardy, JC made a decision to keep his whereabouts completely secret. The
only person who did know was Bill Lynn, who had received a brief communication from JC in Jamaica.
Given that the local detectives were all over Bill to reveal information about JC, Bill concocted a story
of JC’s ultimate demise to fend off the inquiries and in time, it worked.
Oddly enough, Bill Lynn, being the musician that he was, owned a Martin guitar. One day, he called
to get a replacement case for one of his instruments and it wasn’t long before we were talking about JC’s
disappearance.
Over the course of the next several years, Bill and I had many lengthy conversations. We always
discussed guitars and we always discussed the mystery of JC’s vanishing act. During one of our
conversations, I was pressing Bill for any tidbit of information that he might be harboring about my
cousin. In a hushed voice, he asked if I would hold what he was about to tell me in complete confidence.
I indicated that I certainly would. He told me that the rumor in the islands was that JC was “no longer
with us.” I was shocked and distressed and I carried this possibility with me furtively for many years,
assuming the worst. Just at a time when I began to feel an obligation to share the awful rumor with JC’s
parents (my Uncle Jack and Aunt Marty), they received an amazing and heartfelt letter from a woman
named Mimi in Jamaica.
During his exile in Jamaica, JC had cleaned up his act, quit his propensity for alcohol, joined AA,
and succeeded in a career in the field of sports equipment, having risen to the respectable position of
plant supervisor. He had met and fallen in love with Mimi Gauthier, a French Canadian expatriate
working at the Montego Bay Yacht Club.
Through the course of their developing relationship, JC confided his dilemma in not contacting his
family. Mimi had her own perspective, given that during a ten-day excursion and conference in Central
America, her own father had passed away and her family in Montreal was unable to reach her. Upon her
return, she learned that the funeral service had already taken place. Devastated by this, she urged John to
contact his family, but given the potential ramifications, his repeated response was, “What do you want
me to do?”
In time, Mimi took the bull by the horns and in spite of his reluctance, she wrote a sincere and
heartfelt letter to JC’s parents, explaining who she was and that their son was alive and well in Jamaica.
Exhilaration was followed by many phone calls and subsequent visits to Jamaica by family and old
friends. It was magnificent to have JC back in our lives.
The dark cloud hanging over the situation was that the laws of extradition had changed and Attorney
General Janet Reno had given her ultimatum to bring in as many outstanding warrants as possible.
Federal marshals, embarrassed that they couldn’t catch the bigger fish, threw their lines out for the small
ones. A quick review of Uncle Jack and Aunt Marty’s phone records showed a long list of calls to JC’s
Jamaican number. It was only a matter of time.
JC was dressed to the Ts en route to give a speech and accept a special award for his company’s
softball team. Within Montego Bay’s free-zone, he was intercepted by a soon-to-retire US Marshal Don
Crawford (no relation) who verified JC’s identity and placed him under arrest. After several weeks
chumming with the Rastafarians in the Kingston jail, JC was extradited to Ft. Lauderdale where with the
assistance of a good attorney and his family, his case was carefully prepared. My Uncle Jack, my
illustrious cousin Chip, and I made arrangements to fly down for his hearing, serve as character
witnesses, and do our best to see that he was well represented.
Just prior to the hearing, I was in Frankfurt for the annual International MusikMesse. After a very
rich Italian dinner one evening, I started to feel very ill. As midnight approached, I became more than
slightly concerned that I might be having a heart attack. I took two nitroglycerin tablets and crossed my
fingers. By three in the morning, I was alligator clipped to a primitive Frankensteinian EKG at the local
Krankenhaus. There, a confused German doctor assisted in my decision to hightail it home on the next
available flight.
In hindsight, it is likely that I had been suffering from food poisoning or worse yet, gas! I was,
however, cognizant enough of my heart condition that upon returning home, I went directly to my
cardiologist. He identified two troublesome blockages that he was able to clear using what the catheter
experts fondly refer to as the Roto-Rooter. I was feeling better, but to my extreme dismay not in any
condition to fly to Florida for JC’s day in court.
When his day finally came, the judge really didn’t pay too much attention to the original charges. It was
the fact that he had fled prior to sentencing that ruffled the governmental feathers. Nonetheless,
everyone seemed to realize what an upright fellow he was and what a severe personal price he had
already paid. He was given a relatively lenient three-year term less time served, and after a year and a
half he was released on good behavior with 18 months of probation.
His citizenship restored, JC was free to resume his life in Jamaica with Mimi where for several years
they have cared for and bred Doberman pinschers. For more than a decade, his father (our Uncle Jack)
had faithfully and selflessly tended to his wife Marty’s deteriorating condition, so it was a shock to
everyone when Jack himself took ill. JC wasted no time in joining his sister Carol in Cleveland to be by
their father’s side as he gradually slipped away. That Jack Crawford was a special person, one of a kind,
a genuine and honest man with a tremendous propensity for giving of himself and bringing joy and
humor to all around him – especially children, who laughed without control in his presence.
Deprived for so many years of contact with my cousin, I boarded a plane for Cleveland to reconnect
with him and experience the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame from a perspective that only he could provide.
There, my cousin’s true story unfolded before me, dispelling the incredible myths and fables that had
surrounded his unusual odyssey, and revealing a uniquely singular man of integrity, personality,
charisma, warmth, intelligence and unparalleled humor – an uncanny acorn not very far from the oak.
Grapes
At a very young age, I discovered that I possessed the special talent of being able to stuff
exceedingly large numbers of grapes in my mouth.
The caveat is that no chewing or puncturing is allowed. Smaller green seedless grapes are of course
preferred, and grapes are counted going into the mouth, not out. Believe me when I tell you, it’s better
that way. The first time I demonstrated this talent in public, I was surprised to find that onlookers
generally become extremely amused. Such encouragement has only prodded me further to attempt
breaking my previous records.
It was no surprise that at the peak of my fortieth birthday party, my assembled friends presented me
with a sizeable bowl of grapes. The challenge was on. I took it seriously.
The videotape was rolling. Like a deranged chipmunk, I tucked the first dozen back between my left
earlobe and the space where my wisdom teeth used to reside. The second dozen quickly balanced out the
right side. Then I worked on the lower flanks, inserting the tiny green globes along my chin line. I
reached the fifty count and the crowd cheered.
Anyone who has seen footage of Dizzy Gillespie playing his horn knows that the human cheeks are
capable of uncanny flexibility. I stuffed another forty-eight grapes easily into the ever-expanding
pouches beneath my upper cheek bones. My eyes were getting puffy, but I hadn’t even explored the
inner mouth area or the lips. As I broke one hundred, my audience was spellbound.
My previous record had been one hundred and eleven grapes, an inspired performance that ended
only after the contagious laughter of my friends had enveloped me. I was careful not to get caught in that
trap again.
With furrowed brow, I breezed past the one hundred and fifteen mark, the crowd now gaping. There
was still some room near the roof of my mouth. Oh, and I’d almost forgotten about the space under my
tongue. One hundred and twenty three. I found a spot near the edge of my lip, but when one went in two
popped out. I quickly replaced them with two more to spare. My face was bursting in every direction.
One hundred and twenty six! One hundred and twenty seven!
I held my mouth firm as I rotated to show the hordes. A new world record! One hundred and twenty
seven. A prime number. Indivisible. With grape skins and drool for all.
Solo (Outward Bound)
I am the one between two bridges;
the one you pass as you scurry by.
I am busy here on my unique island.
My mind, my hands, my clever eye...
have fabricated things for you:
a seat should you prefer to sit.
Come relax and share my view.
I’m really rather proud of it.
To use my bridge you pay a toll:
a simple nod or should you choose,
some conversation, rest or drink.
I’ve orange juice. Sorry, no booze.
My sculptures aren’t from far away.
My clock, my hawk, my rippled tower,
my lavish garden and driftwood swirl
were all found here within the hour.
When I complete my furnishings
I’ll pass the time with pen and poem
knowing that tomorrow night
I’ll be warm and dry in my own home.
The wind will knock my relics down.
Floods will wash my spot away
and though I held no ownership,
it was my place – alone – today.
Our lives are short compared to these
majestic groves and solemn trees.
If when we’re gone, they still remain
our living here won’t be in vain.
But if these places disappear
our children will not visit here.
And that, my friends is sad. No joke.
Most sincerely... Richard Boak.
Silver Hill
Rudy and Lynn Hilt were Vince’s neighbors out in Pennsburg, twenty-five minutes west of
Nazareth. They were such a creative couple that our meeting was inevitable. After Vince introduced us,
our friendship took on a life of its own. They became honorary and everlasting deacons of the Church of
Art.
Rudy and Lynn lived there on Silver Hill with their two young boys, Brian and Forest, and Rudy’s
father Pappy.
Pappy was a contractor who lost the use of his legs after falling off a roof at a construction site. He
stayed active and prolific though, immersing himself in woodworking, violin making and stained glass.
Lynn was an extraordinary jeweler, though her artistic life often took second fiddle to her role as
mother and wife. When she was able to find the time, she would produce earthy and organic earrings,
necklaces and bracelets with an uncanny sensitivity to craft and choice of materials.
Rudy was irrepressible. His creativity bubbled out in every direction and medium, but because of his
cumulative experience as a designer and builder of homes, he kept returning with some reticence to that
particular skill. His early homes were freeform and hand hewn in an almost counterculture fashion. But
with each opportunity, his sense of design and technical knowledge matured. Though his degree was in
art, it became increasingly evident that he was a more capable in the field of architecture than most of
the officially certified architects in a very wide radius.
So Rudy zeroed in on his strong points and formed Architectural Focus, a small architectural design
firm that offered an efficient and cost effective alternative to traditional architect-built homes. Before
long, Rudy was attracting the most prestigious and wealthy clients in the broader Lehigh Valley area.
Every home he designed became a living testament to his talent and an effective calling card for future
work.
Growing out of the small offices on the ground floor of his home, he invested his energies and
finances into a beautiful studio adjacent to his home. There, a team of draftsmen and women turned out
scores of working drawings and models. The industry surrounding Rudy’s projects was surprising.
There were scores of hand-picked sub-contractors that were getting a major piece of the pie. To comply
with architectural regulations, Rudy paid a per-drawing fee to a willing architect in order to legitimatize
the blueprints.
Rudy began two very high budget homes along the fairways of a local golf course. When
construction started, the homes began to attract a great deal of attention. This attention activated a group
of powerful architects in eastern Pennsylvania who had become increasingly jealous and envious of
Rudy’s successes. After all, he was infringing upon their client base and making them look bad. They
not only didn’t like it. They weren’t going to stand for it. They made life very difficult for Rudy,
eventually forcing him to hire a full time certified architect onto his staff.
This solution only further angered the architects, who were well connected in the political and
financial circles of the Lehigh Valley. When Rudy and Lynn encountered a few months of cash flow
problems, an architect’s lawyer serving on the board of the bank quickly foreclosed. Rudy and Lynn lost
everything: their home, their studio, and their business. With a great sense of loss and despair, they
gathered their belongings and chased their dreams to Sedona, Arizona.
A lot of people were devastated with their departure, but in the years that followed, there were many
phone calls and visits to Arizona.
One night Susan and I were near Pennsburg and for the sake of curiosity we drove past their old
home. The lights were on. It was painful to see someone else living in the special space that they had
created. We had heard that one of the lawyers that had foreclosed for the bank had acquired the home for
pennies on the dollar. It was sickening.
That night, I noticed that Lynn’s beautiful hand carved Silver Hill sign was still displayed near the
front driveway. To me, this seemed so inappropriate. For more than a year, I developed an assortment of
schemes and fantasies for retrieving the sign. Then one mild moonlit February evening, I found myself
slightly inebriated, returning from Bethlehem with cohorts Dale and Jim (last names withheld to protect
the not so innocent). I suggested to them that the night seemed right for a visit to Silver Hill. They had
both heard the whole story.
We stopped at Jim’s house to pick up a bow saw, and then we headed out Route 248 toward
Pennsburg. Halfway there, the adrenalin began to pump. Jim was driving his SUV. Dale was riding
shotgun. I was in the back trying to disarm the ceiling lights and fold the back seat flat. As we drove past
the property, the sign shimmered from behind a crop of bushes. There were no lights on at the house.
Just an extra car parked in the driveway. A quarter mile up the road we turned around in a cornfield and
pulled over. The timing seemed perfect.
Heading down the hill, they let me out about a hundred yards above the house, and then proceeded
all the way down the hill where they were instructed to wait for five minutes. Bow saw in hand, I walked
down toward the house. Strange tractor-like noises came from a property up on the right, but I was soon
beyond view.
I slipped behind the bushes, set the saw down and tested the post. It rocked with relative ease back
and forth. I gave it a vigorous workout but it just wouldn’t lift it out. I tried the saw but the post must
have been locust or some equally impervious hardwood. Finally, I grabbed the sign itself and gave it a
strong twist. The rusted screws gave way with relative ease. The sign was mine.
Containing my excitement in the increasing darkness, I tucked the sign and the saw under my arm
and walked thirty or forty yards down the hill until a pebble crackled under my foot. The neighbor’s dog
began to bark. He wasn’t very far away. It sounded like a big dog and I think he had my scent. My heart
raced.
The dog just barked and barked. I stood sheepishly along the roadside waiting to see whether my
accomplices would come through.
The dog’s owner finally came to his back door. “Whaddaya hear, boy?” His voice traveled clearly up
the hill. “Come here. Come on in.” The dog refused and continued his brainless barking. “Right now.
Come on.” I envisioned the wagging, slobbering creature lurching toward a Milk Bone. “Good boy!”
And the dog was inside.
A few minutes later, I heard a vehicle lumbering up the hill. It was Jim and Dale all right. They saw
me leaning up against the fencerow and pulled to a stop. I picked up the sign and the saw, hopped in and
off we went.
The sign was in pretty bad shape. In the weeks that followed, I cleaned it up, reinforced it and gave it
a backing. After some wire brushing and a few coats of deck stain, it went off in high style to the little
town of Cornville, Arizona. There, I suppose an unsuspecting Rudy and Lynn cut the bubble wrap and
revealed the tiny piece of American tragedy, love and justice. Now, the sign has found an appropriate
wall upon which to hang.
Jalopies
Susan was commuting to Philadelphia in her rundown baby blue Volkswagen Beetle. It was in pretty
bad shape. Occasionally, parts would fall off in the street and I would run across to the Mobil station for
an instantaneous diagnosis. One day, I took an odd looking greasy cylinder over to Terry the mechanic
who held it in his hands with a puzzled look.
“Aw, you don’t need that thing.”
“What is it?” I grimaced.
“Not sure, but the car will run fine without it.”
A few weeks later, the gas pedal became disengaged and the battery fell through the rotted
floorboards behind the driver’s seat, but with a few coat hangers and some duct tape, the damn thing just
kept on going – a miraculous jalopy.
We’re all jalopies – resilient ones at that, but when the warranties expire and the parts begin to rust,
it’s only a matter of time.
Foresight
Having nearly lost my eyesight as a child, I suffered a month of total darkness inside my bandages
and by the time the light finally returned, I had come to cherish my vision beyond all other senses.
Ironically, that which is most precious to us is subject to the most vulnerability.
More than four decades later, I was working at my Macintosh on a late Friday afternoon when all of
a sudden darkness hovered down like a liquid eclipse. I didn’t understand what had happened. I tilted
my head at different angles to see whether the condition was temporary. There was a sliver of light at the
very bottom of my sight and the blackness was like a floating drape, or the gracefully undulating wing
of a manta ray.
I called my eye doctor immediately after making the short drive home but he was on vacation and
his office had forwarded calls to another number. I dialed again and after explaining my situation, I
made an appointment for early the next morning with the substitute. He listened to my description and
peered with his light. I suppose he saw the scar tissue from my childhood accident and mistook the
striated cloudiness for a cataract. He really didn’t have a bright enough scope to inspect my inner eye. It
simply wasn’t his specialty, so my detached retina remained undiagnosed. He suggested that I make an
appointment during the next week with my regular doctor. I called Monday morning and scheduled a
Tuesday appointment.
I was glad that I didn’t need to miss work on Monday, since I had planned an important trip to New
York City to deliver some prototype signature edition guitars to Sting. The absence of vision in one eye
didn’t bother me that much, at least not until I was informed that my retina was indeed detached and that
time is absolutely of the essence with this affliction. I underwent surgery on Thursday – six days too late
in the concerned eyes of the capable Dr. Sinclair. The operation took many hours but seemed to go
smoothly. After spot welding the torn retina back into position with a barrage of laser bursts, a bubble of
gas was infused to replace the inner vitreous humor of the inner eye. With my eyes facing downward,
the premise was that the bubble would exert enough pressure upward upon the healing retina to hold
everything in a suitable position. The only dilemma was that this regimen required that I lie face down
and still for the better part of two weeks. In a moment of brilliance and compassion, Susan ordered a
massage table and co-endured the tremendous burden of my recovery. One of the few joys was my
daughter Emily’s fascination with smiling up at me from beneath the table’s porthole.
Gradually, the bubble dissipated and the bandages came off. I had some small semblance of right eye
vision for which I was most thankful, but after two weeks had passed I found myself once again under
the close scrutiny of my eye surgeon. The spot welds had failed. The retina was once again detached. I
became despondent and discouraged, in no mood to return to surgery, let alone bear two more weeks of
the face down regimen. Only through the positivism and prodding of my surgeon was I convinced to
give it another shot. After the second surgery, my face was black and blue – swollen like a pummeled
and defeated boxer. Worse than that, my eye had undergone so much devastation that in effect I was
rendered blind, though a murky and disconcerting brightness did manage to seep through. I healed
slowly and wore my black patch proudly like some cantankerous pirate.
Oddly enough, anything is better than what I had endured. Now I am most content with one working
eye – “driving with one headlight” as they say. The good eye has become stronger in fact. Accordingly,
my sense of vulnerability has shifted fully to the left where my perception resides – my last precious
bastion of visual connectedness, the essence of my life and work and purpose.
Thanking Dr. Garzia
In the year that followed, I underwent a hernia operation, a vasectomy, and a gradual loss of stamina
and breath. Concerned that my heart was straining, I changed to a more aggressive cardiologist and
surrendered to the necessary testing. Heart problems run pretty deep in the family and accordingly I had
maintained a hyperawareness to the eventuality. The first time I felt the sensation I was feeding heavy
planks into the sander in the blistering 105° heat. There was a dull pain in the nape of my left shoulder.
Given that my heart was nearly six inches southwest of that spot, I surmised that like my grandfather, I
might be developing an aneurysm. I went to the doctor to ease my mind and instead came home
depressed over the apparent weak hand that I had been dealt.
Ah, but for the wonders of modern technology. Three catheterizations and a single bypass later, I
have ridden the emotional roller coaster of mortality and cholesterol. While shivering on the operating
table prior to succumbing to anesthesia, I sparred playfully with my heart surgeon, Dr. Garzia, who was
scrubbed, gloved, and ready to split my rib cage apart, peel my mammary artery from the inside of my
chest and graft it to the left anterior descending coronary artery of my beating heart – struggling though
it was from a 100% blockage of sirloin steak gristle, overly buttered corn on the cob, and accumulated
egg yokes.
I promised Dr. Garzia that if he did a good job, I would acknowledge his great contribution toward
the completion of this book, which lay in a dreadful state of disarray through years of second-guessing
and neglect. But now we’ve arrived together at this last page. Obviously, he came through.
After the operation, I began connecting the dots; after all I had six weeks of mandatory time off to do
it. I made tremendous progress, but the conclusion remained a struggle. After all, how do you end a
story that hasn’t finished?
One of my post-adolescent philosophical theorems was titled “Death As Infinity,” The basic premise
acknowledged the possibility that when the heart stops beating, there is typically enough oxygenated
blood remaining in the brain to allow it to function for many minutes after life as we recognize it has
ceased.
If the heart is the true drumbeat or rhythm of life, it seems plausible that it is also the body’s
timepiece. As the heart slows gradually to a stop, the perception of time must surely become distorted.
Anyone that has taken a barbiturate or anti-depressant knows that time can indeed slow down. Perhaps
with no heartbeat, there is no perception of time and the brain can be left to its own mysterious devices –
electrical charges racing through millions of synapses, activating memory and imagery. Could this be
the tunnel of light that those who have returned from near death describe – timeless and infinite
knowledge and perception?
I held great fascination with this idea, but in time, I came to view it as a playful and meaningless
conjecture – a philosophical excursion without substance or solace. Like a blind man with insomnia,
perception by itself is an empty and lonely shell.
Isn’t it interaction, emotion, experience, and creativity that constitute the more tangible traces – the
footprints of our lives? Isn’t a more useful measure the assessment of our impact after we have
departed?
“I read the news today, oh boy – four thousand holes in Blackburn, Lancashire!”
Epitaphs
“John Doe expired at the local hospital on Friday afternoon. He was 79 years of age. We don’t know
what he did or why he did it or what he died from or anything about his purpose on the planet, but he is
survived by a confused wife and family, and a long list of uncles, aunts, cousins, nephews and nieces
that will no doubt evaporate with obituaries just like this, if they’re lucky.”
I don’t mean to be pessimistic, but a short paragraph in the local newspaper is not an adequate way
to summarize or honor a lifetime. The typical obituary is a pathetic and drab pronouncement and the
services that follow are often equally dreary. Natural transitions should be celebrated, not bemoaned.
People live and die and are forgotten. That’s a fact. What better options do we have as human beings
to circumvent this reality? Certainly we live on in our children’s futures, but their lives belong to them.
I found my answer in a small community cemetery on a back road near Rockport, Maine. A painter
named Nicholas Snow had directed me to the exact location. His father, the poet Wilbert Snow (a
contemporary and friend of Robert Frost) was buried there. Frost and Snow! I’m sure their literary
friends relished the name-play.
I walked through the tall grass until I came to the spot. There was no gravestone – only a flat plate of
bronze relief, inscribed with a poem in the words of the man who lay below:
Wilbert Snow
And I must say farewell
To you, more precious than the morning sunlight,
More tender than the mist on summer ocean,
More permanent than granite to my need?
Should I go first across the oozy channel
In quiet seasons I will come to you,
Will come at midnight when the bay's soft silver
Is cleft with one wide lane of quivering gold–
Come to you sleeping when Orion reaches
The crowded summit of his glittering hill,
And crowd your mind with youth's long memories:
Impart my spirit's breathing to your hair,
Let my blood beat again in tune with yours,
My eyes meet your sea-troubled eyes once more;
Then will you wake
To know your dream was something more than dream,
Aware love's flame reached out across the void,
And over your planet's darkness lit the stars.
1884 - 1977
I don’t know exactly what it was about the poem that struck me so heavily that afternoon, but as I
read the last couplet I simply fell apart – my tears were without control. I stood there for a long time and
watched the droplets splash upon the ridges of the bronze letters – small salty pools forming within the
Ds and the Os.
Certainly it is a beautiful poem. It is concrete and eloquent. Like paintings, poems can have different
meanings to different people, so I won’t try to unravel or analyze the phrases here. One thing I do know:
Many others have stood there and read those words. In that context, words can penetrate deeply.
I found out later that Wilbert didn’t write the poem for that purpose. Instead, it was selected from
one of his books by a family member to serve as his epitaph. What a special way to remember someone
and to be remembered. In that sense, this book is my bronze plaque.
Long after we are gone, wouldn’t it be extraordinary for our lives to be viewed in their totalities –
not simply as short paragraphs in discarded newspapers – and even if all of the individual ingredients of
our lives aren’t that exceptional or earth-shattering, when taken in context don’t they belong together,
congealed into a completeness – the amassed result exceeding the summation of the individual elements.
Fully connected – dot to dot.
I’ll See You In My Dreams
Grace was five years old. One night while putting her to bed, I asked her whether she ever had any
dreams. She said “Yes, Dad. I dream about the grassy meadow at the bottom of the waterfall.” I looked
at her with great surprise and said. “Grace, I had the very same dream.”
A brightness filled her eyes. She looked up at me from behind the covers, her blanket tightly in hand,
and said “Dad, why don’t we meet in our dreams?”
“That’s a great idea Grace. Where shall we meet?”
“Let’s meet on the rock ledge behind the waterfall.”
“That’s perfect!” I kissed her and tucked her in.
The next night the conversation continued. I learned that our house was at the top of the waterfall
and that we owned magical unicorns that could fly. That evening and endless evenings to follow, Grace
and I would mount our unicorns in our dreams to explore the pristine world where no one ever became
sick. Sometimes we would ride on the backs of our magic dolphins. Susan and Emily gradually became
enthralled and without hesitation, Grace invited them along. We swam in the river by the grassy
meadow. We unearthed dinosaur bones in the sandy tar pits. We paddled kayaks on the exotic rapids
that cut through the jungle – each night there was a new adventure.
One morning as I prepared to depart for California on business, it occurred to me that our fantastic
dream routine would be interrupted. I knelt down and asked Grace what we should do. She looked at me
with great seriousness and calmly answered, “Dad, dreams can travel anywhere.”
“Oh yeah!” I realized. We made our plans and picked our designated meeting place. The next
afternoon, I called from the West Coast.
“Dad. Where shall we meet tonight?”
Dreams know no distance, no boundary, no limit.
“Wherever I am Grace, I will meet you there!”
Vicariousity
Our children either embrace or discard what we attempt to give them. From the looks of things,
Grace and Emily have grasped and applied the joys of creativity. Their early years have been filled with
great passion for dexterity, craft, art and music.
I would love to take credit for this, but at best I provided an erratic and sometimes hyperactive
example of self-determination and purpose. It is Susan that has filled the overflowing craft cabinet with
supplies and encouraged their vast array of projects while I sat proudly on the bleachers cheering. She
has also dedicated herself to their pursuit of knowledge while showing tremendous patience and support
for my health tribulations and self-engrossed diversions. For that I thank her.
When all is said and done, it is the children that surpass us, forming genetic connections between the
past and future. It’s impossible to imagine what they will become, but there is great solace, hope and
awe in the notion that we can live long past ourselves through them and their successive offspring.
Vicariousity is experience through another rather than first hand, using sympathy or the power of the
imagination. Granted, we are reduced in time to faded photographs in drawers or dusty books on
shelves, but the invisibility of our influence and shared experience holds the real connection to and
potential for immortality.
Sonnet For Emily and Grace
Before your birth my life was self-immersed
with wood and words and ink, my art would flow.
These empty tasks were carelessly dispersed
to feed the need for self worth and ego.
Your toddler clothes were gradually outgrown –
two girls transformed to women gracefully.
The fruits of all the savored seeds we'd sewn
had blossomed to become our family.
One day I might seem gone, but I’m not through.
Remember how we laughed and don’t be sad.
Our dreams will merge – my calling out for you
to carry on and relish what we’ve had.
To share a portion of your lives for me
has sealed my soul to yours eternally.