Is it weird that I’m feeling a little sentimental right now?
I’m feeling it for Sharon,
but though she seems so far from my mind so much of the time, she’s all around
me, in all the possessions that I ninety-eight percent have her to thank for. The
rest is my man stuff, though she played a part in all of that too. She was
there for every major purchase. All my music stuff. The quad. The bicycle. Whatever
I needed, she was in favor of me buying, and she’d often make the purchases,
since she had online accounts back then, and I didn’t.
Anyway, shifting gears, I had a song I was working on. I’m shifting out of
melancholy, but not really. I’m just moving into a more ambiguous, jaded,
emotionally unavailable phase. I am post-grieving, but also post just about
everything. I better write the words down before the idea completely escapes
me.
It’s called “I’m Too Fucked Up For Love.”
We can do all the things you want to do
Hold hands, call each other sweetheart too
Go for walks, text and talk
Make reservations for hotels
Run up our gas bills
And try to get each other’s pets to be cool
It can be just about everything you’ve dreamed of
But honey, I’m just too fucked up for love
Putting on our raincoats, we can
Walk along the beach
Take a day or two of freedom
So we can find ourselves some peace
When will these inner voices cease?
I’m being vilified for my deeds, but my needs I must appease
Captain Courageous, step up to the plate, please
----
OK, let me just say that I started out
This thing—with the best of intentions
Something decided to invade my mind
Rendering me completely under its spell
And I can’t question it; that will just be that
I have an arrangement with myself inside my head
----
No, really. The semi-rhymie poetry crap, I don’t do so well.
If I rhyme too strictly, it seems trite. It’s a limericky sort of affair, or
nursery rhyme sounding crap that’s just so banal. I can’t get myself to write
good songs.
I will be back to criticize myself later. It is late, but I
thought I’d get an early start, since technically it is morning. It has been a
long day. I’ll tell ya about it tomorrow, when it is today. I mean, it is
already, but after I sleep for a bit and then wake up. Later. ‘Sout
----
Later, it is. And I will forestall re-reading this last bit
of early morning poetry, since I already can tell by my closing that I was
probably higher than I’d like to admit when I wrote it.
Sharon
always used to poke at me, “So, how high are you?” I always responded with my
thumb and forefinger, making the sign for “this much.” She would laugh and
spread her hands way apart, like she was estimating the size of a rather large
fish. “More like THIS much,” she would laugh. I couldn’t get anything past her.
I woke up at about 8:30 AM this morning. I don’t feel like I
could conquer the world today, but I’m not as godawful tired as I was on
Sunday. Those Saturday music dates really take it out of me. Yesterday, I
chopped wood and hoisted my amp, possibly straining my groin, but still I am not
as tired as I was on Sunday.
So, my amp arrived yesterday. It was a day early. It came on
the UPS truck while I was sitting out on my front porch. Good thing I was out
there, since the gate was shut, and they would have wound up having to
re-deliver. Seeing the condition the box was in, I’m glad it didn’t have to
spend any more time in his truck. The driver dropped it on the lawn when his
dolly upended on the uneven grass in my front yard.
I managed to get it into the house and unbox it. Poorly
packaged, it only had a single layer of bubble wrap inside of a cardboard box.
The only item they really went all out on was the tape. They must have used a
whole roll of extra heavy duty packaging tape. It gave the cardboard a
transparent skin that could probably make the whole thing waterproof to 10 meters.
When I first fired it up, it sounded horrible. A loud hum
and weak, jangly audio. Just like my other amp. I went outside to feed the
guinea hens and shut the gate. It was humming so loud that I could hear it from
the back deck. I came back in and resumed playing with it, bringing out my
strat for the occasion.
I fiddled with the knobs, and one came off in my hands. So
much for the pull-out boost. Someone had replaced the pot with a non-pull out
variety and glued the knob on with rubber cement. The Tolex has a few rough
spots, and the front faceplate has a ding that I couldn’t see in the pictures.
Other than that, and the fact that it probably fell off the back of the UPS
truck, it looked in decent enough shape.
Concerned about the hum, I called my amp guy, Skip Simmons.
Skip is the whole reason that I bought an older Fender like this one. I had no
idea of the differences between the tube amps of today vs. the ones made 40 years
ago. Apparently, the hand wired circuitry was better than the printed circuit
stuff they have today. Anyway, he only works on the older ones, and seeing as how all
tube amps need work from time to time, I thought I’d buy one that my local guy
could work on.
Skip’s fame in the amp repair business is legendary. Pros
from all over the country ship their antique amps to him to restore. I knew
that whatever was wrong with it, he’d be able to fix. Just dialing his number
must have gotten the amp calmed down, since it stopped making the hum by the
time he answered the phone.
“Do you work on Fender Twin amps?” I asked him.
“For you, of course,” he said. He was always saying nice
things like that because we are neighbors and we went through the Cascade Fire
together.
“I wasn’t sure,” I said, “since these things are so heavy. I
thought they might be on the list of stuff you don’t work on anymore.”
“Nah, man. Since it’s you, I’ll look at it. I’d even look at
some piece of crap newer printed circuit amp for you, just cause it’s you,” he
said.
I hit the jackpot with Skip. He’s a good egg. I met him during the Camp Fire when I was housing an evacuee and
his mom. Greg Miller, my temporary refugee, was a kindhearted soul, and an old
friend of Sharon’s.
When the Camp Fire threatened their home in Berry
Creek, he and his mom (and three dogs and two cats) all stayed at my house for
a week or so. During that time he managed to burn some broccoli in a pan by
letting all the water boil out. He also left for a half a day with the crock
pot on high. If I hadn’t turned it down, all the water would have boiled out of
that as well.
Greg was as kind and thoughtful toward people as he was clumsy.
When he accidentally broke the on/off switch on my subwoofer by packing the
closet too full of stuff, he searched and searched until he could find a guy
locally to look at it. He helped me load the monstrous speaker cabinet in my
car, and we drove it over to Skip Simmons’ house. Skip doesn’t work on printed
micro circuits, but he took the speaker in to look at it anyway.
Skip took the board out and examined it. Too delicate of a
repair job for him, he knew of a guy in Sac that would do the work for a
reasonable price. He offered to ship the board to him, so I didn’t have to
drive down there, and he never even asked for the money for freight. I did wind
up giving him a big bag of weed, since he wouldn’t take any cash. He was
appreciative, although, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t up to the standards of anyone
in the market for weed these days. Damn those kids and their hydroponics.
I'm reaching the end of the page, and this story is going
nowhere, kinda like me. The end.