C'est la Vie

1971

1971, I was living on a hippie commune in Iowa. We supported ourselves with our own rock and roll band called, "Music From the Orphanage." (I was the equipment roadie guy. No musical talent at all.) In the summer of 1971 Chuck Berry came to town, playing a concert at the Col Ballroom in Davenport. At that point I had seen the Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, The Doors, Jefferson Airplane, Led Zepplin, The Who, Grateful Dead, Joe Cocker, and various lesser bands, yet it was Chuck Berry that we had to go see. Without Chuck Berry, those other bands might not ever have seen the light of day. Sadly, Chuck Berry did not get the respect he deserved in 1971. There were no more than one hundred of us at that concert in Davenport. It was the best rock and roll concert I have ever experienced. We danced, we sang along with Chuck, and best of all, we got to talk to him as he was getting ready to leave in his giant Cadillac. Seriously, that is all he had. A Cadillac, a guitar, and a blonde white woman with him. I have no idea what he thought of the gaggle of dumb white kids who flocked around his Cadillac, but we loved him. One thing though, there was one kid who pissed me off. During the concert (we were right up against the stage), this one kid kept holding a pair of blue suede shoes up in front of Chuck Berry, and shouting out "Blue Suede Shoes, play Blue Suede Shoes." Well for fucks sake, how embarrassing. Blue Suede Shoes is not a Chuck Berry song. That is a Little Richard song. Seriously, what must he of thought of these dumb ass kids in Davenport, Iowa. 

Lila and Al Move to the Suburbs

Baby Alan

My earliest memory of my home town, Tinley Park, is riding in a canvas baby buggy being pushed by my mom along Oak Park Avenue. Back in the early years the town didn't have home mail delivery. Everybody had to go pick their mail up at the post office. So Mom would stick me in the buggy and my sister Peggy would walk along side, that is, until she got tired. That would happen about one block from home. Then Mom would stuff Peggy in the buggy with me. That's probably when I'd start crying, but I don't really remember the crying. I probably never did cry. It must have been Peggy. Anyway, I thought about how our family ended up out in the suburbs and asked my mom to tell me the story. It turns out that she was the one crying. Mom was not happy with the move at first, and for a year she....  Well, I'll let her tell you about moving to Tinley Park. 

 

Aba-daba-daba, Daba-daba-aba, Remedium Decapito Zipperary

The electrician has already spent six days working in our home, and has one more day scheduled. He has divided up all the circuits so that we don't pop breakers when Mark turns on every appliance and light at the same time. He has installed new outlets, new lights, he has run new lines under the floor from the back of the house to the front. He has pulled about a mile of useless, unused wiring from the guts of this house. He has done all this for a price, not a small price, but a deserved price. And what does Mark think of all this work?

"Why is he still here? How long is this going to take? I want my house back, I don't want strange men in the basement making noises like a nest of rats down there."

The problem with Mark is that he does not understand all the work that has gone into this rewire of our house. He doesn't understand that it will now be less likely that someday we will come home to a pile of bricks and smoldering ashes. If Mark cannot actually see what has been done, if he can't touch it, he isn't happy. No, Mark thinks that the electrician should have come over, and like Samantha Stephens, twitched his nose back and forth a few times fixing everything in one day. Well too bad. Just call me Darrin. I want it done the old fashioned way, I want our electrician to actually do the job. And he has done a great job. Now if only Mark could stop behaving like Endora, everything would be just fine. 

Flea Market Flip Out

Back in the fall Mark and I were at the flea market over on Broadway, and Mark found a nice medicine cabinet that was of the same era as our house. He got all excited.

"It'll look nice in our vintage bathroom" Mark said. "Just take down that big ugly mirror and put this in there."

"Sure, I can do that. No problem." I told him.

And that is how it always starts. Some little innocent sounding home improvement project that goes off the rails. Seriously, what could go wrong? Simply remove the old mirror, four screws, and install the new one. Oh, did I mention that the new vintage medicine cabinet also is wired and has lamps? Anyway, I unscrewed the four screws securing the old mirror to the wall and gave it a tug. Nothing, didn't budge. It was glued to the wall and I would have to pry it loose. So I taped it up with duct tape and started prying, and tugging, and wedging it off of there with a metal scraper. It still wouldn't come loose. So I started tapping at the scraper with a hammer, then I started tapping at the mirror itself with a hammer. Suddenly there were shards of glass everywhere. It turned out that there was an opening behind the old mirror where the original medicine cabinet had been. I found that out when the hammer went right through the glass and kept going. So I continued to hammer at the mirror and got much of it off of the wall... and on to the floor, sink, toilet, in my pants, everywhere. Unfortunately, not all of it came off. I am now stuck with tiny shards of mirror stuck hard to the tile wall. I have chiseled at it and scraped it, but it is slow going. Very slow going. I have given up for now. I'll go to the little hardware store over at Devon and Clark tomorrow. It's a real old timey hardware store full of old guys who seem to have an answer for every problem. Not like Lowes or Home Depot, where they just tell you an aisle number and wish you luck.

I'm Going to Need a Part For That

IBM System 38. I was very good at fixing these things a long time ago.

I have very vivid dreams. I don't know why. I don't take too many drugs, just blood pressure and cholesterol pills. No LSD, pot, or cocaine. At least not in the last few years. My dreams are very realistic, very true to life. None of that stuff with misshapen faces or cartoonish backgrounds. In fact, sometimes my dad shows up in my dreams. I like those dreams, it's nice to see him once in awhile. Of course there are those dreams they always talk about where you are naked in a room full of people you know. That would be weird.

Lately I have been having some odd dreams where I am still working for the computer repair company I used to work for. It usually starts out where I am trying to fix something at a customer's site. At some point I figure out that I need a part and I will have to go back to the office in Alsip, Illinois to get it. That's when I realize that I haven't been out there in a very long time. I wonder if I am even still employed by them, but then I realize I am getting a paycheck deposited every week, but still it's been a very long time. And where is my beeper that lets me know I have a call? I can't find that. I get a very bad feeling about all of this. At that point the dream usually morphs into me standing in the Alsip office with all the other employees hanging around. The boss is there, and the woman who dispatches calls is there. That's when I become aware that I am standing there naked. I always wake up at this point. But hey, it sure was nice to see all my old co-workers again.