Almost Too Good

I saw this guy play in 1985 in the basement of what I believe was a "Unitarian" church in Fitchburg, Ma.

One of the lasting memories was talking to Cam Streeter who worked in a little health food store that I frequented for a lot of Rice Dream rice milk stuff and ampules of ginseng extractum.

But, Cam Streeter appeared to be an 80 year old woman who looked more like 65, and might have even owned the little health food store that was recommended to my by my chiropractor.

Doctor Delisle was that chiropractor and, as Father Shauris, a priest who taught at my high school and fondled several boys put it; was into "a lot of esoteric stuff." That stuff just turned out to be a devotion to some kind of Indian religion that believed that their was always a Christ presence on earth; and though the man from Nazareth eventually departed earth, there is a living Christ, and I believe he had gone to India to sit at the foot of him; and described an incident that could be corroborated by his wife who witnessed him floating to the ground like a feather after falling from a some considerable height.

And, so the guy would crack my spine into place. This always seemed to "unwind" mostly all of the tension, and I would feel very restful and nonplussed, but then would leave his office and re-enter a world where there were car payments to make and alarm clocks to obey. A world where a 22 year old, who would really rather play music all day, and have money come in from somewhere; than to go to his job that was taking 8 hours plus the commuting time, 5 days a week.

Somehow I wasn't a great electronics technician. I had gone through a 5 month program at Sylvania Technical School, now defunct I believe, but I was working alongside a guy who had an electronics hobby at home. You can't compete with that. Going home, smoking weed and then playing the guitar for a few hours after every work day isn't going to cut it. This guy was reading schematics, soldering components, and designing his own home stereo equipment for a few hours every night.

So, after I started going to Grateful Dead shows, and dropping acid; the stars kind of aligned to get me canned from that job by a very nice manager named Lou Gemellaro. He was kind of a Lou Grant (Mary Tyler Moore Show) style of figure. Kind of stocky and a little bit gruff.

Lou had been absent the day that I was hired by that startup company. I had been recently fired by Wang Labs, which was, at the time, the 3rd largest computer company in the world, behind IBM and Digital Equipment Corp. The cause given to me by them had been "Because you apparently don't care, and..." I don't remember the rest, as I looked over the shoulder of Jack Greenhalf, who was kind of a Ted Baxter from the same TV show (catch it on Decade network) at the cars going to and fro on Route 495 which was nicknamed "technology highway," by the way, it was approaching nightfall and so some of them had their headlights on and some not, it was that much on the cusp of day and night. I felt a great relief and excitement building up in me. I wasn't crazy enough to quit my job at that company that was literally so large and apparently haphazardly organized that at one point I was assigned a new manager (Ted Baxter) who was never notified that I was under his supervision, but my former manager was notified that I was no longer any concern of his.

The result was that I had no supervision, and would basically punch in, and then walk around the building measured in units of football fields and sight see.

I would visit the guys in an office area where there were cubicles that they never seemed to be in. I would flirt a bit with some young ladies who were tethered to soldering stations or other testing equipment, I got my weed and sometimes hash from a dealer who worked right out of the building on the third floor in the "manuscript" department. His job was basically to match the right manuals with the computers being shipped out with price tags like $3.5 million on them, and I guess to wrap them tightly in cellophane using a machine made for that purpose.

But, when you bought hash off the guy, he would send the lump through the same machine and it would come out in an airtight little cellophane package like a CD comes in. You would have to have sharp finger nails or be a good biter just to get at your hash.

I might swing by an see that guy. I always had plenty of cash because, having nobody who thought he was my manager, I was literally able to clock in at one of the half dozen or so entrances to the place; and then go back to my car and go for a ride somewhere.

I might go to the beach, about a 40 minute drive away. There, I might take off my shoes and sit in the sand, perhaps looking out at a rising moon over the ocean; thinking of the splendor of the universe, and the fact that I was clocked in at Wang labs, making $7.35 per hour.

I had a seafood place that I liked to go to in Reading, Mass. Maybe I would visit friends somewhere.

I would find my way back to Wang before the end of my shift, so I could clock out. This arrangement allowed me to take advantage of all the overtime that was available to us employees (a term I use loosely in my case). I could clock out 12 hours after clocking in, on any given day, and thereby get 4 hours of "time and a half" as that was the deal. And Sunday was double time. Yep, $14.70 per hour I would get for clocking in Sunday morning at 5 a.m. and then finding somewhere to sleep until noon. For, on weekends, none of the supervisors, who were salaried employees would come in. The whole company pretty much came in to sleep off their Saturday nights with no supervisor in sight. This was 1983 and there weren't really cameras "everywhere," at least not at Wang.

So, I was getting a pretty good paycheck each week, and had all my time to myself.

There were just as many days though, when I would take the walk around the place. There were, I think 4 floors and one corridor that went past a bunch of vending machines that were nearby a cafeteria that had huge windows that faced Route 495, the technology highway. I would spend time in there, abstractly gazing at the cars, wondering who was in each and where they were going, type of thing. I would probably make a good cop, lol.

And I liked to go into the office of An Wang, the founder of the whole shebang. He had a huge ass desk, there was a portrait of either him or some other Wang hanging on a wall, and there was a very plush leather chair that swiveled. I would sometimes sit in that chair. If I could do it all over again, I think I would have brought my little Fostex 4 track recorder and a microphone and my guitar in to "work" every night, and then set up and recorded songs in An Wang's office...

I also spent a good deal of time right where I was supposed to be, goofing around with the buddies that I had made over the course of me having a supervisor who would come around periodically to check upon me. 

We liked to run around the large floor having fights by using rubber bands to sling-shot electronic components at each other. Capacitors mainly, because they are shaped more like missiles than any other components in the bins of them that lined one whole wall. The people who normally worked in that area were day shift people. I was on the second shift. It started at 3:30 in the afternoon. At 5 p.m., all the supervisors clocked out. I guess one of the perks of a managerial position at Wang was that you could work normal business hours. And so, "When the cat is away, the mice will play," is the way my co-worker and friend Mark Palermo used to put it.

It was upon one of these occasions when I was where I was supposed to be when Jack Greenhalf approached me and introduced himself and told me "I guess I'm your manager." It had been a newsflash that had reached him that day; after I had had a solid 6 months of whatever you would call a government that doesn't have any rulers over the people.

And eventually, as the line between tripping at Grateful Dead shows, and being a systems integration technician at Wang Labs, Inc. began to blur, I was somehow sitting in front of Jack, who was looking perhaps more Ted Baxter-ish than ever, getting the speech that started with "Because you apparently don't care and..." and feeling a lifting sensation as if my body was getting lighter and time was slowing down, as I looked over his shoulder at the cars on the highway, missing what the guy was saying because of daydreaming about what the people who had already turned their headlights on were like, compared to the ones who hadn't put them on yet. The sun was down, but there were bright pink clouds on the horizon, and a bright pink future for me; realized this moment as I sit here, type of thing...

But, I still wasn't ready to leave the human race and become a busker who lives in the woods with a group of raccoons as company.

So, I applied for a job at Artel Communications on a day when Lou, the big boss had been absent. I told them that I was relatively happily employed at Wang Labs but was taking some of my vacation time looking at other opportunities; actually using the greener grass analogy, I remember that.

I was hired because the owner of this small company which at the time employed only about 14 people and only one technician who went home every night and played with electronics for hours, thought that bringing in someone from such a huge company as Wang Labs would be a feather in their cap, and that maybe I would bring with me a certain culture of huge success, kind of like if they were a soccer team in some little country like Uruguay and had a chance to get a player off of the Manchester United team, or whoever wins the World Cup a lot...

Only, well, there I was getting fired by Lou, who looked kind of like Lou Grant, just about a year to the day after being hired.

Lou was trying to be upbeat and positive and told me stories about jobs that he himself had had and loved. And that there was a job out there just perfect for me, type of thing.

The Forehead Of The Aforementioned Master

What a long strange trip it has been to get here.

I was out of work, yet still had hefty payments to make on a new Colt Turbo, and I wouldn't be seeing Doctor Delisle for any spine cracking, I figured, which was kind of a bummer.

I was invited to his office, one evening, for a special gathering which his religion had a name for, and we were to be joined by, perhaps the guru of my doctor, a man who had sat at the foot of the living master in India and had been zapped by bolts of pure light which emanated from the forehead of the aforementioned master, and he was going to be in our presence.

And, so, on a cold winter night, about a dozen people sat around the office in a circle and then, soon entered a man who is hard to describe except as being in very good spirits. He was kind of between small and medium with curly half gray hair, and had under one arm a quantity of hardcover books.

I remember think something to myself like: "So this is the holy man?" whereupon the guy, as if addressing my thoughts exclaimed: "I just walked across the pond!"

There was a small pond right across from the doctor's office.

He started to hand the books out around the circle. I was still thinking about how the guy had practically answered my unspoken thought, when he handed me one, saying "It's frozen," as he did. The book felt like it was frozen, so I thought he was referring to it. But then, I connected his two comments and got the joke about walking across the pond because it was frozen.

But, in that instant, he was actually saying the two things at the same time. But, how was he to know that I was the one who had thought: "So this is the holy guy?"?

The rest of the evening went by in the same swirl of him saying things seemingly out of the blue, that seemed to address whatever I was thinking. I'm not sure if we all meditated, or if the book had been "The Liberation of the Soul." It surely wasn't "Be Here Now," which I also acquired through the good doctor with his esoteric stuff. That one had an extremely loud florescent cover.

So, being so blown away by the guy who could apparently hear my thoughts, it was with a sense of grave spiritual consequence that I took the advice of the guy who had floated to the ground after falling out of a tree, when he suggested that I go see Cam Streeter at that particular little health food store. He had written her name on a small piece of paper. It was as if he was trying to show me how cool that name looked in writing. It did. Cam Streeter.

I think I might have told Dr. D. that I no longer had coverage through my company's insurance which included regular chiropractic visits among it benefits, because I no longer had a company. I might have lamented having about 3 years of high payments left on the Turbo. Plus, the insurance payments were high because, I guess in my exuberance over being employed by the 3rd largest computer company in the world, I had signed up for the "all the bells and whistles" coverage.

Well, not long after that, the car was wrapped around a tree. 

I was immersed in the Grateful Dead by then and was at the house of one Danny Young. He was a gruff kind of country-ish deadhead, who was 25 to my 22 years old. And so he kind of took the roll of the older, more tie-dyed in the wool deadhead. He was physically stronger than me, kind of resembling a bear; as opposed to the giraffe that I might have been more akin to. He had a full beard, a pickup truck, plenty of rifles and a 9 mm. pistol, and he lived kind of out in the country. In a log cabin type of house at the end of a narrow road that winds its way at least a mile off the main road before snaking its way by the cabin. The road can become slippery in the winter and living on Grimes Road, as that is its name, is almost justification for owning a Jeep, which is what Danny did own. A Jeep out of which the sounds of the Grateful Dead could often.

I suppose I was always slightly uneasy about the fact that Danny could kill me at any time; I had met him through friends; But, I think I was introduced to him as a novice deadhead because he did take up the role  took up the stance of showing me the ropes or the ways of the deadhead. He I also was doing enough acid at the time to be able to see him as being some kind of allegorical figure; Danny Young. It was like he represented me in my youth, or was a spirit guide sent to help me through my early 20's.

Well, Danny and his roommate, another husky voiced lumberjack vibe type guy who would wear the plaid red and black shirt with leather coveralls over them, and had his own arsenal of weapons, had a few people over this particular night, besides myself, whose Colt Turbo wasn't wrapped around a tree.

It was in the driveway, as I sat at the kitchen table, participating on a card game called "gut." It is a game where everybody gets 2 cards, then everybody passes one of those 2 to the right, or left, at the discretion of the dealer.

A pair is good, when playing gut. But it is an intensely analytical game in my opinion. We were playing for amounts of money, which became pretty considerable, at times.

The game is analytical because, say one of your cards is an ace. Are you really going to hang on to an ace, hoping the guy to your right or left is going to pass you one. Who holds on to an ace, expecting to be passed one? So, you pass the ace, when you get one.

So, you hold on to an ace if you get one, because you always pass your ace because there is no chance that you are going to have one passed to you because; see rule #1.

So, gut is a really analytical game. Even if you adopt the strategy of always passing your high and low cards and hanging on the the middle ones (hoping for a pair of 9's which will beat 80% of other hands) then the people to your left and right are going to start hanging on to their high cards because you are the guy that will pass an ace or a king every time.

There were two couples, and I think one young lady unaccompanied, along with myself and Danny Young, and his roommate. The fireplace was kept ablaze with logs that had assuredly been chopped by the residents of the house. Why pay $80 for a chord of wood when there so many perfectly good axes laying around the log cabin of a house.

They had a dog named wolf. Of course they had a dog named wolf.

I was noodling around on my acoustic guitar, and taking my attention off it only to flip the 2 cards dealt me up, and then to pass one. Upon seeing my final cards, I could also feel the words "in" or "out" kind of written across my field of vision like a watermark. I would merely just say "in" or "out" accordingly and then go back to picking the guitar. Well, money started to pile up in front of me; something like $111.00, I recall. There was even a point, after I had won 3 or 4 straight hands that the young lady to my right said: "Give me that guitar," which I did, to no avail to her as I continued to win.

A little past midnight, the two couples departed, within 10 minutes of each other; having been wiped out in gut by a skinny guy with glasses and no rifles, and I did the same about 10 minutes later. I was starting to feel covetous of the wad of money on me; and became impatient to just get back home where I could pile it on my bureau and have sweet dreams about what I was going to do with it the next day. I would probably go to the Sunday flea market in a little town not far from where Danny and Wayne, as that was the lumberjack looking guy's name, lived, at the end of a long narrow and winding road.

The road was iced over pretty thickly. It had been warm enough during the day for the foot or so of snow to melt in the February sun, only to freeze into a sheet of solid ice after that sun went down, as people in log cabins played gut.

I knew that my desire to take the money and run was kind of pulling me out of the zone where the words "in" or "out" materialized out of thin air. It was a kind of selfish feeling, but on such a winter's night I just wanted to get home. The money was timely as, I had just lost my job and was saddled with high car payments and high insurance premiums.

So, I embarked upon Grimes Road in Hubbardston, Mass, with the Grateful Dead cranking out of my stereo as I snaked my way left and right in between trees which were about the only indications of where the road was, as some fresh snow had fallen. And there were the two sets of fresh tire tracks from the two cars that had left before me.

After about a mile of creeping along, periodically testing the traction by pressing the brakes and doing an occasional slalom to see how the steering was I eventually got to where Grimes Road T's into a more major road.

I had my high beams on and so it was easy to see that there was a car up ahead of me which was about 5 feet off the ground and wedged between two trees like a Sichuan dumpling between two chop sticks. One of the girls whom I had wiped out in gut was standing on the passenger side with the floorboard at about chin level. Her partner was climbing down from the driver's side in the clumsy manner of a drunk that would get his car 5 feet off the ground and wedged between two trees.

What happened was that the plows had come and cleared that road, with their blades shoving all the snow to the side where it was piled about 3 feet high and covered in solid ice. That it was also kind of pitched like the ramps that Evel Knievel's used bears mentioning.

And so, there they were, with her yelling something like: "I told you to let me drive," or "I told you to slow down!" They must have been doing at least 35, I thought, noting the elevation they were able to get.

And, there I was, just wanting to take my pile of money home. But, I couldn't leave them there; that wouldn't be the Christian thing to do, I thought, with some irritability. And, so I begrudgingly turned my car around to go back to the log cabin so that I guess a tow truck, a crane? could be called.

I was aware that I was doing the Christian thing begrudgingly, and just wanted to get it over with, so I headed towards the cabin. The Grateful Dead were blaring out my speakers; the song was Mississippi Half Step UpTown Toodloo, and it has a line or two about the time Jerry Garcia was involved in a car crash, the impact of which made his boots come off. "...Lost my boots in transit; a pile of smoke and leather." the lyric goes.

Well, I teased the fact that my car winds up wrapped around a tree a few paragraphs back, and I'm getting to that.

In my impatience to get help for Speed Racer and Nagging Nellie (not to help myself, but to get help) I was taking each icy corner a little faster than the last, and right before Jerry sings the line about the car crash, I came around a corner a little fast, and for some reason glanced at my speedometer to note that I was doing 35 miles per hour, and then, that I was turning the steering wheel but the Colt Turbo with 3 and a half years of payments left on it wasn't turning.

Then, I saw that I was going to hit a tree, but perhaps just nick it.

But the front right corner of the car got enough of the frozen solid tree to just about stop it dead. My head had hit the windshield hard enough to make a head shaped impression; not quite enough to go through. I only had a few seconds to admire the shattered glass in the shape of my head before the blood started running, it seemed, straight down my forehead and into my eyes.

It's really hard to see with blood in your eyes; it wants to coagulate, or something.

As far as my ears were involved, my stereo wasn't installed in the dash but was just a loose component that sat on the passenger seat that I would have to pick up in order to change cassettes or whatever. It went flying and wound up with its volume cranked way up, just in time for Jerry to sing the line about the car crash which sounded distorted from being turned up too much.

I had to feel around for the thing because my eyes felt like they were sealed shut with blood. I wound up just turning the ignition key off to stop the blaring.

Then, after I grabbed the handle and opened the door, there was a shot of pain coming from that hand which made me let go just as fast, and I tumbled out of the car and found myself on all fours staring down at the money which had fallen out of the front pocket of the army jacket I was wearing.

In that instant instead of in or out, the words were more of the tone of: You are going to get help for those people begrudgingly, and you mockingly ascribed it to being motivated by Christian love. And now you see how quickly you can become deaf and blind and lose your car, and your money; Don't EVER do anything begrudgingly in my name...or you might wind up in Shreveport. You might want to scoop up that money before it gets soaked in blood.

I had only been about a tenth of a mile short of the cabin, and so I walked back there; and I guess we called for help for our airborne buddies, and then I got a ride from Danny to a local emergency room, where a splint was put on my left hand ring finger.

I remember getting home and removing the splint and then forming a chord on the guitar. And then trying to slide to another chord but having the finger catch on a fret as I slid and it being painful. I believe I was able to bend the bone into a suitable angle for playing, by gripping the neck like I did. That would be a great story if I was the greatest guitarist in the world; how I bent my own bones...  

So, it turned out that my insurance had been so good, that, after sending a guy with a bald head out the driveway of the log cabin, where the Colt had been slid to (I believe Danny just pushed it wit his Jeep) who said: "Oh, yeah, it's totaled; the frame's bent" and then paying off the balance of the loan on the thing; they even sprung for something like 6 months of chiropractic treatment, for my finger! I was right back to getting my spine cracked every week and having experiences; and I might have been low key searching for my own guru who can walk across frozen lakes.

And, so, armed with her name written on a small square piece of paper, I went to the little health food store and wound up having a pretty interesting conversation with Cam Streeter and I concluded that Dr. Delisle might have just been sending some business a friend's way; and not necessarily sending me to the magic potion lady who was going to impart wisdom unto me; although I was hanging on her every word at first; seeing if that same thing might occur where everything said refers to everything at the same time. The book is frozen, the lake is frozen.

But on one of my trips to that store for Rice Dream and this ginseng drink that had an actual ginseng root suspended in it; Cam told me that she thought I was going to have an interesting life, based upon whatever we had talked about.

So, anyways the point of the post is, as stated, Cam was also at the performance of Guy Van Duser, who actually did the Stars and Stripes piece that night. So when I next went to the health food store she asked me what I had thought of the guy. I remember saying: "Well, he is almost too good."

And Cam Streeter saying: "I know what you mean."

That's all, just a quick Guy Van Duser anecdote. He also had with him that night a partner named Billy Novak, who played clarinet and penny whistle, almost too good, too.