Steve(Can)
Well-known member
Thursday night banjo night! and I'm in the shed. It's down, close to 20° likely 10° in an hour or two. A balmy 48° in here, I could crank the old kerosene heater to 60° but I'm cheap. And it's kinda like a dodge truck I had one time, I mean cranking it to 60 on a hill was just asking for trouble. So I get into mischief on the Views Forum, give Ma Betty a hug and try to leave something to make SteveO. spit his coffee through his nose in the morning. Tough job, but somebody's got to do it. 
And I've closed that off, and sitting here fixing to mind my own business, pick up the banjo, tune the first string........PLANG and it breaks. And I'm sitting here thinking, dang, but kept a set of strings last time I strung some strings (geesh note to self.... that's not so bad.....got a set of strings, last time I strung some strings...) dang, just broke a string on the banjo.
So I dug out the old set of strings (put them in the compartment in the case), and untangled the one I needed out of the pack, got it back to the banjo and said damn.
I said damn, cause I sat there holding that wound up old string in my hand and was gone.
Gone in an instant, back to a time, gosh, gotta get a pencil... back 60, 70, 80, 90, 2000, '10, '20.. '22.... 22 to 80 = back 42 years.
It's 1980, I'm on a beach in Californa. I'm living there, on the beach, fancy mansions in the hills, and I'm living on the beach. Ha! And I got big bushy head of sunbleached blonde hair, I'm tanned like an indian, cause I am one I'm told. And I'm holding a coiled up chunk of broken guitar string, walking through the dark between the campfires, looking for a group of Swiss bike tourists who somebody said had a guitar. Thought they might have an old one tucked away in the compartment of their case. Found the Swiss, but I think they were German, though it wouldn't make any difference to me. Didn't understand a word they said, but there I met my wife.
Yeah, no shit, right there holding that guitar string in my hand. But that's another story. What I was thinking about was the guy whose guitar that string was off a. His name was Randy and he was my friend.
Randy and I became friends, gosh just a day after I stumbled up that beach into the state park campground. Spent the night before, sleeping on the dunes, but in the morning was intercepted by State Rangers. These people were decent folks, not much older than I was, and when I showed ID and told them my story, we chatted and then they kindly directed me to the campground, otherwise it was a ticket for sleeping on the beach. I lived in that campground for close to two months. Five bucks a night, a pretty good deal, a shower, a bathroom, a spiked exit to keep anyone from coming in through the out door. And right on the beach, with a blue, blue ocean and only white sand as far as eye can see. Five bucks a night for paradise man.
I had an small orange tent... ok, how stupid is that?.... but it was small and dry and what I had when I left, and I never used it anyway, usually just sleeping under a tree or on that ledge under overpasses if it was raining. Dang, who in their right mind would be setting up a bright orange flag saying, "hey, here I is!" But in a campground, that was different, five bucks a night made you ligit, and you didn't mind setting up camp. Course, when settling in, neighbours are important, so you kinda take a look, and as I was taking a look, I met Randy.
Randy was my brother, I knew that the minute I saw him and I think he saw that too. Two strangers from two completely different worlds, and immediately you knew. I'm not talking any weird stuff, don't even start down that path, I'm talking brothers, like David and Johnathon, faithful friends, friends to the end and more than friends, brothers. And he had a guitar.
Now I loved guitar, wasn't ever good, but I'd play chords and write songs... funny songs sometimes, sometimes not so much. When I went travelling, seemed to bulky lugging along a guitar, maybe could have I guess, but I was travelling light. I'd pump down the road for hours, pack on my back, not trying to hitch a ride, just walking along and singing away to the beat of my work boots thumping the ground and the wind through the trees and the birds singing and a train roaring by all filled in the music so sweet. No it wasn't drugs, cause I didn't carry drugs, I'm as legit as legit can be, gotta be that way, otherwise the next time an officer pulls you over, that's the end of the ride.
So I didn't carry a guitar, but whenever I met somebody who had one, we'd have something to talk about. Man, some guys can sure make a guitar talk, and most times I just sat and listened with my mouth hanging open. Anyway, Randy had a guitar and when we started talking about that we ended up sharing a campsite. Now it's $5 every other night. By the time I left there, there were 4 tents and 5, sometimes 6 other people living on that site. Now we're living in paradise for a dollar a day, with people who have become like family. Good deal.
Randy was a vet and served in the Marines and in the Army Corps of Engineers. That was before I knew him. He had a wife, once, and a kid, but that was before too. Randy had a face, you'd remember it if you saw it.... decent and pleasant enough guy yet could make himself look like the devil. Good trick and he used it when he had to. I'm serious, the first night I met him, after I set up my tent and laid out my stuff and joined him at the campfire, he said, watch this, I can make myself look like the devil. And holy crap, in the firelight reflected on his face, there across from me sat the devil. Then he straightend out his face again and laughed and said, told ya!
I kid you not, the guy could make himself look like the devil, yet he was a decent man, a very kind and thoughtful man, a man with scars, and a guitar.
So Randy and I would sit up at night and play guitar. He knew some Neil Young stuff and I was Canadian and could tell him about "a town in North Ontario... big birds flying across the sky" and that sort of stuff, so that was cool. He played Dylan, "but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now" and that was cool too. When he passed the guitar to me, I started rattling off a travelling ditty... "I've been sitting here, dreaming 'bout dixie....... think I found a cure, it damned near fixed me..... " he laughed when I sang it through, and asked who wrote it, and I said, guess it was me. And we were brothers for ever more. Randy was a lot of things, but in his heart, he was a Christian. Like I said, brothers for ever more.
2 months, heck don't seem like that much these days. Gosh, these days, you get to the middle of the month and it's gone. Hell and getting to the middle is nothing.... a day, four days, a week, two weeks, turn the calendar. It's crazy. Aw, but back then, what you could pack into a day, let alone a week, two months! I could go on two years what was packed into those two months, heck 20 years, 20 years later those days are so full they're still crowding out days here and now.
So one night, the string on Randy's guitar broke. I broke it, just like I did the string tonight. I wasn't tightening it into the stratosphere... just normal and THANG.
Cripes in all these year, only happened to me twice. So I'm sitting here with a looped up old guitar string in my hand and thinking.
Yeah, so there we are, somewhere out between the fires, there on that beach in california, night breeze blowing in off the ocean. A dollar a day in paradise. Here's this girl with the biggest, brownest eyes you ever seen in your life, sitting with her knees to her chin in the light of the campfire and there I'm standing my mouth wide open, that old guitar sting in my hand. Anybody speak englsh? And she blinks and nods.
So back at the fire are Randy, Bob and Gwen from Conneticut, Jack from New Jersey, and Wayne, not his real, real name, from who knows where the Mormons where after him from, and Tim the artist from the restaurant. The poet and that bunch, a few campsites over... and I'm on the other side of the campsite, just slayed. You ever fall in love... I mean, really fall.... like falling off a ladder, or a roof, or just wandering along and off the edge of a cliff. Hi, I'm Steve.... Hi, Im Kate. but that's a different story.
.......
And I've closed that off, and sitting here fixing to mind my own business, pick up the banjo, tune the first string........PLANG and it breaks. And I'm sitting here thinking, dang, but kept a set of strings last time I strung some strings (geesh note to self.... that's not so bad.....got a set of strings, last time I strung some strings...) dang, just broke a string on the banjo.
So I dug out the old set of strings (put them in the compartment in the case), and untangled the one I needed out of the pack, got it back to the banjo and said damn.
I said damn, cause I sat there holding that wound up old string in my hand and was gone.
Gone in an instant, back to a time, gosh, gotta get a pencil... back 60, 70, 80, 90, 2000, '10, '20.. '22.... 22 to 80 = back 42 years.
It's 1980, I'm on a beach in Californa. I'm living there, on the beach, fancy mansions in the hills, and I'm living on the beach. Ha! And I got big bushy head of sunbleached blonde hair, I'm tanned like an indian, cause I am one I'm told. And I'm holding a coiled up chunk of broken guitar string, walking through the dark between the campfires, looking for a group of Swiss bike tourists who somebody said had a guitar. Thought they might have an old one tucked away in the compartment of their case. Found the Swiss, but I think they were German, though it wouldn't make any difference to me. Didn't understand a word they said, but there I met my wife.
Yeah, no shit, right there holding that guitar string in my hand. But that's another story. What I was thinking about was the guy whose guitar that string was off a. His name was Randy and he was my friend.
Randy and I became friends, gosh just a day after I stumbled up that beach into the state park campground. Spent the night before, sleeping on the dunes, but in the morning was intercepted by State Rangers. These people were decent folks, not much older than I was, and when I showed ID and told them my story, we chatted and then they kindly directed me to the campground, otherwise it was a ticket for sleeping on the beach. I lived in that campground for close to two months. Five bucks a night, a pretty good deal, a shower, a bathroom, a spiked exit to keep anyone from coming in through the out door. And right on the beach, with a blue, blue ocean and only white sand as far as eye can see. Five bucks a night for paradise man.
I had an small orange tent... ok, how stupid is that?.... but it was small and dry and what I had when I left, and I never used it anyway, usually just sleeping under a tree or on that ledge under overpasses if it was raining. Dang, who in their right mind would be setting up a bright orange flag saying, "hey, here I is!" But in a campground, that was different, five bucks a night made you ligit, and you didn't mind setting up camp. Course, when settling in, neighbours are important, so you kinda take a look, and as I was taking a look, I met Randy.
Randy was my brother, I knew that the minute I saw him and I think he saw that too. Two strangers from two completely different worlds, and immediately you knew. I'm not talking any weird stuff, don't even start down that path, I'm talking brothers, like David and Johnathon, faithful friends, friends to the end and more than friends, brothers. And he had a guitar.
Now I loved guitar, wasn't ever good, but I'd play chords and write songs... funny songs sometimes, sometimes not so much. When I went travelling, seemed to bulky lugging along a guitar, maybe could have I guess, but I was travelling light. I'd pump down the road for hours, pack on my back, not trying to hitch a ride, just walking along and singing away to the beat of my work boots thumping the ground and the wind through the trees and the birds singing and a train roaring by all filled in the music so sweet. No it wasn't drugs, cause I didn't carry drugs, I'm as legit as legit can be, gotta be that way, otherwise the next time an officer pulls you over, that's the end of the ride.
So I didn't carry a guitar, but whenever I met somebody who had one, we'd have something to talk about. Man, some guys can sure make a guitar talk, and most times I just sat and listened with my mouth hanging open. Anyway, Randy had a guitar and when we started talking about that we ended up sharing a campsite. Now it's $5 every other night. By the time I left there, there were 4 tents and 5, sometimes 6 other people living on that site. Now we're living in paradise for a dollar a day, with people who have become like family. Good deal.
Randy was a vet and served in the Marines and in the Army Corps of Engineers. That was before I knew him. He had a wife, once, and a kid, but that was before too. Randy had a face, you'd remember it if you saw it.... decent and pleasant enough guy yet could make himself look like the devil. Good trick and he used it when he had to. I'm serious, the first night I met him, after I set up my tent and laid out my stuff and joined him at the campfire, he said, watch this, I can make myself look like the devil. And holy crap, in the firelight reflected on his face, there across from me sat the devil. Then he straightend out his face again and laughed and said, told ya!
I kid you not, the guy could make himself look like the devil, yet he was a decent man, a very kind and thoughtful man, a man with scars, and a guitar.
So Randy and I would sit up at night and play guitar. He knew some Neil Young stuff and I was Canadian and could tell him about "a town in North Ontario... big birds flying across the sky" and that sort of stuff, so that was cool. He played Dylan, "but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now" and that was cool too. When he passed the guitar to me, I started rattling off a travelling ditty... "I've been sitting here, dreaming 'bout dixie....... think I found a cure, it damned near fixed me..... " he laughed when I sang it through, and asked who wrote it, and I said, guess it was me. And we were brothers for ever more. Randy was a lot of things, but in his heart, he was a Christian. Like I said, brothers for ever more.
2 months, heck don't seem like that much these days. Gosh, these days, you get to the middle of the month and it's gone. Hell and getting to the middle is nothing.... a day, four days, a week, two weeks, turn the calendar. It's crazy. Aw, but back then, what you could pack into a day, let alone a week, two months! I could go on two years what was packed into those two months, heck 20 years, 20 years later those days are so full they're still crowding out days here and now.
So one night, the string on Randy's guitar broke. I broke it, just like I did the string tonight. I wasn't tightening it into the stratosphere... just normal and THANG.
Cripes in all these year, only happened to me twice. So I'm sitting here with a looped up old guitar string in my hand and thinking.Yeah, so there we are, somewhere out between the fires, there on that beach in california, night breeze blowing in off the ocean. A dollar a day in paradise. Here's this girl with the biggest, brownest eyes you ever seen in your life, sitting with her knees to her chin in the light of the campfire and there I'm standing my mouth wide open, that old guitar sting in my hand. Anybody speak englsh? And she blinks and nods.
So back at the fire are Randy, Bob and Gwen from Conneticut, Jack from New Jersey, and Wayne, not his real, real name, from who knows where the Mormons where after him from, and Tim the artist from the restaurant. The poet and that bunch, a few campsites over... and I'm on the other side of the campsite, just slayed. You ever fall in love... I mean, really fall.... like falling off a ladder, or a roof, or just wandering along and off the edge of a cliff. Hi, I'm Steve.... Hi, Im Kate. but that's a different story.
.......
Anyway, had to split it up, here's the rest...
