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.”
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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.
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I've changed my comments settings to allow for anyone to comment. All comments are welcome, even spineless potshots from anonymous posters. Please, by all means, give me the tongue lashing I so richly deserve. I promise not to hunt you down and melt your keyboard with my plasma cannon. I won't, however, promise not to pout and make that face you can't stand.