Charlie Watts, the heartbeat of "The World's Greatest Rock 'n' Roll Band" (as they used to dub themselves), is gone; It hurts me, but now it really is time for the Rolling Stones to Fade Away

 The tom-tom echoed from the darkness that enveloped Legion Field. Counting Crows had just finished an expectedly whiny set, most of which, fortunately, was lost in the rumble of anticipation in the packed stadium.

"The Rolling Stones are in town, man," yelled a guy with yellow teeth, beer breath and a leather vest he wore bare-chested. He tossed his bucket of popcorn in the air, and it covered me. He didn't apologize.

"Blame it on the Stones," is how my friend, Kris Kristofferson, put it long ago in one of his blistering attacks on Middle America.

The tom-tom gave way to the voice of Mick Jagger, who, with Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood by his side, came out with the best version of "Not Fade Away" since Buddy Holly told us what he was gonna do.

The man who played those drums, Charlie Watts, died today.

I am devastated. I already was not happy that Charlie was not going to be a part of The Rolling Stones upcoming visit to Nissan Stadium. Health woes had sidelined him, and former Letterman drummer Steve Jordan is taking his place.

He was 80, but his death surprised me, even though I had been told that Mr. Charlie really looked pretty ill.

I guess the Jagger-Richards-Wood money machine will continue. But really, no one can take Charlie Watts’ place.

I have been listening to Charlie for six decades, since the 1960s, when I first bought Rolling Stones albums, the favorite of which is “Beggars Banquet,” the last full album with the original quintet.

There was band founder Brian Jones, bassist Bill Wyman, guitarist Keith Richards and Mick Jagger. And Charlie Watts providing the beating heart.

Of course, that lineup has changed over the years, but the core remained: Mick, Keith, Charlie and Ronnie Wood, who stepped in after Mick Taylor decided being a Rolling Stone would kill him.

It did kill Brian Jones before him, of course.

And Wyman, the only Stone I’ve ever had the opportunity to meet and speak with, retired. Darryl Jones, who is not on center stage, is a role player on bass. And he’s not Wyman, nor would Keith and Mick want him to be or sound anywhere near as powerful. He does not get his quarter of the million-dollar nightly guarantee. He’s on salary.

Hey, hee, get offa my cloud. There were only four real Rolling Stones – including Ronnie, who has more than paid his dues after assuming the guitarist role, to accompany Keef, in 1975.

 I first saw Ronnie when he was co-leader of Faces, with Rod Stewart holding microphone duties, back in the late ‘60s or early-‘70s when Smokin’ Joe Matejka and I hitchhiked through a blizzard to Des Moines (from Ames, Iowa, where we attended school) to catch them at the Iowa Armory. We slept in the back of our “chauffeur’s” station wagon later, because snow had piled up during the show.

But this is not about Faces today: It’s about The Rolling Stones.

Now there really are just three.

And only two of them, the school chums, Keef and Mick, who helped Brian Jones start his band, are still performing. Only three are alive, including Wyman, who enjoys the quiet, artistic life.

Personally, I think it’s time for The Rolling Stones to make a graceful exit.

Course, I’ll still be there if they continue. Which they probably will, until all of them are dead … which really probably isn’t that far into the future. Perhaps they'll keep going until Mick is The Rolling Stone, singular, something he tried for awhile, unsuccessfully. 

I’ll never forget those six decades of drumbeats and the jazzy sound of Charlie’s snare. Perfect counterpoint, a disciplined backbeat to what, when it began, was the music of anarchy. The tom-toms in the darkness of Legion Field are in my mental replay booth continuously, should I ever need to hear them.

Now, of course, it’s just show biz. Big paydays. Vegas-style, flashy clothes, and old men seeking the Satisfaction they found in their youth. Still fetching, of course. I still love this band and would rather see them -- with Charlie on the sticks -- than any other outfit. I'm an old man, and they give me energy, save me from a 20th nervous breakdown when I'm angry or sad and decide The Stones are my afternoon LP or CD (or even 45 rpm) antidote.

But, with the death of Charlie Watts, the heart of The Stones no longer is beating.

R.I.P. to Mr. Watts.

Thanks, old fellow.

Of course, you were only a decade older than me. And I really wanted to see you and hear you one more time.

You can’t always get what you want. From today on, it’s not ever going to be possible to get what you need. Not even if you try sometime.

Paint it black.

 

 

 

The scar on my left leg made Marc smile and talk about poker, bluegill, and Camp Spikehorn and Al Kaline ... memories are dreams in past tense

The Camp Spikehorn gang lost a chunk of its heart and soul at around 1 a.m. Detroit time on August 21, 2021.

Yeah, that’s just a few days ago as I write this. I found out about it on the morning of his death. It was waking hours for me when the note arrived. I was wide awake. It didn’t matter to Marc anymore. They had already taken his body for cremation.

His soul was long gone.

I knew it was going to happen. In fact, I wrote a blog about it last week.

I spoke to Marc Champ’s brother, Jeff, for a long time in the hours before Marc died. Jeff said he figured Marc already was gone, shooting the shit with dead friends and relatives. Maybe, I reckoned, he was playing poker with Grandpa Champ.  Jeff’s a deeply spiritual man, so I don’t think he said “shooting the shit.” That’s just my paraphrase. And Marc doesn’t mind. Still.

Actually, I had called Marc, who I knew was succumbing to a rampaging attack, a massacre caused by liver cancer, when Jeff picked up his cell.  I was overdue for a dream come true, perhaps, but I clung or clinged?? to hope. I’d been calling the last few days.

His wife, Cathy, had let family know a few days before that Marc couldn’t speak much – his mouth was painfully irritated by the disease treatment or the damn cancer itself – but he welcomed calls.

She said just to call his number and leave him a voice mail, and she’d make sure he heard it.

That’s what I did. One night I read him the blog I wrote earlier in the week that focused on our Camp Spikehorn summers. That was a day camp that Marc and Jeff and my brother, Eric, and I attended. It was on a road behind the Grand Rapids Zoo, if I remember correctly. Of course, memories are just dreams in past tense, a semi-wise old man told himself this morning while pounding on this keyboard, after watching the funeral on a live stream.

Every summer, Marc and Jeff spent a lot of time with us, in our house at 507 Elliott Street in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and, before that they summered with us at our house at 1812 Beverly Road in Sylvan Lake, Michigan.

That’s outside Detroit. We lived in basic post-WWII construction there, as my mother and father had purchased their first home outside Pontiac, where dad coached and taught at an all-Black junior high.

That was not long after WWII, and I know the young men who my dad coached always worshiped him, one or two even coming down to visit my dad in his last years down here in Nashville. How my parents got to Nashville is a different story.

In this space, though, I’m talking about Marc and Jeff. How much I love them. How much I hurt now that Marc is dead.

We had such fun as kids. Not just at Camp Spikehorn or at Camp Optimist (we went there one summer as well….) I don’t think it was by the zoo, or maybe it was the one by the zoo… doesn’t matter. Like I said, memories are just dreams in past tense.

I remember my mother, gone 22 years now, as she herded the four of us, skinny little kids, when we walked barefoot from the house on Beverly Road to the end of the street, where it opened up to Sylvan Lake and where the neighborhood beach was located.

If it was hot and if we didn’t whine about it, Mom would allow us to pull off our short pants and go for a swim in our underwear.  I was probably 4 back then. So was Jeff. Marc and Eric would have been 6. I seldom swim in my underwear anymore. Probably not politically correct, anyway.

The boys spent parts of their summers with us because their dad, my beloved Uncle Joe Champ, had been severely injured in the Battle of the Bulge. For you youngsters who think America’s wars were in Afghanistan and Iraq and grandpa talked about Vietnam, as horrible as those pointless wars were, the real hell was in Europe and Asia in the 1940s, thereabouts. And Uncle Joe helped save the world from the Nazis. At a cost. Flamethrower fire burned his lungs. There was a V.A. sanitarium for such-injured soldiers out in Arizona. There also was air that was breathable out there. The air in the Detroit area was flavored by Ford, GM, Chrysler and Packard plants.

I hear Arizona air is pretty damn filthy nowadays, seven-plus decades later. When Grandpa Champ moved down to Nashville in the 1970s to live with my parents, after Grandma died, Nashville’s air was good, too. “Clear and blue as an Arizona morning,’’ Grandpa would say. Wonder how he’d describe it now?

Grandpa Champ, who would take his son, Uncle Joe, and Aunt Florence (Joe’s wife) out to Arizona – along with Grandma Champ – had been a foreman on the line for Nash automobiles. But that’s beside the point. Or as a friend once said to me: Let’s get right to the point. That friend then offers up a great suggestion, but that’s for another day.

Anyway, while Joe, Flo and Grandma and Grandpa Champ were out in Arizona, Marc and Jeff stayed with us. Their big sister, Michelle, must have stayed with friends.

So, that’s where Camp Spikehorn came in. As did dune buggy rides along Lake Michigan and trips to the Drive-In movies to see “The Shaggy Dog” and some stuff by those intellectually challenging Stooges or that wascally wabbit. (Oops, there goes political correctness again). We’d have a bag of 12-cents McDonald’s greaseburgers.

What I’ve not gotten much into so far here today is Walnut Lake, where my grandparents lived in a small house in the hollow, across the swamp and a bog from the Lake.

We’d all meet up there in the summer as well.

Spending summer days and nights at Grandpa and Grandma Champ's house in the hollow by the marsh at Walnut Lake, Michigan, meant that at least half the day was at the lake. And in the evening, Al Kaline and the Detroit Tigers were always on the radio or the old black-and-white TV. Grandpa filled his pipe with Prince Albert in the can.  

And, he’d climb from his old, leather chair, first kicking the footstool out of his way, grab his walking cane, and make it to the round table in the kitchen.  When my grandparents died, my brother, Eric, was supposed to get that table, by the way. Teddy took it, though. The last time I saw him, Eric was holding me back from killing him for being evil to my mother, who helped raise him, as well. He was just a cousin to all of us, an older cousin, Shirley’s offspring. And, as far as we figured, the best thing he offered us was the speedboat he kept at Walnut Lake.

Marc, Jeff, Michelle, Eric and I would take that thing out, usually me at the wheel and throttle, and torture it as the sun rose. I’m sure they all loved us in the houses along the lake.   

Sometimes, we’d all load up in my dad’s car and go down to Briggs Stadium, home of The Detroit Tigers. That’s where the huge scar on my leg was produced. More on that later, if I decide to ramble that way.

But this is a story about Walnut Lake, about Marc, who is dead, and Jeff, who always was a joker. Michelle, who now lives among Kentucky’s Amish, often was around, at least until she married John, who is dead now, but was a helluva good guy. That’s not the direction today, though.

Course, Eric and I almost always were in Walnut Lake when Marc and Jeff were.  

Cigar smoke. Or Prince Albert in the can jammed in a pipe flavored the air in the little, square house Grandpa built with help from my Uncle Les, Shirley’s husband. They are dead long ago, having produced Teddy and Delores. I don’t know whatever became of those two, though I do wish them well.

Grandpa thought he ruled the house. Unless Grandma decided otherwise. “Now Bea….” “Well George ….”

Maybe Marc, Jeff, Eric and I would sleep out on the back porch, screened in and not really locked. Can you imagine that in 2020? Course this was back in the 1950s and maybe early 1960s.

I’d love to be able to sleep on my deck here in Nashville, but I don’t have a gun. The worst thing I could do to an intruder would be spray him with skunk repellent or bust him over the head with one of our tomato plants. Skunk repellent smells almost as bad as a skunk, but that’s another story that I’ll likely not ever get around to telling.

Back in the late 1950s, Grandpa once went out into the woods, pounding pieces of timber together in the middle of the night, as we slept on that porch.

Scared the shit out of us, as Marc might say. Well, actually, that’s what I say. We trembled because there was a killer … or perhaps a monster on the loose … in our eager and impressionable minds… and he/she/it might be in those woods, among the black walnut trees and berry bushes.

We didn’t sleep well that night. It wasn’t until the next day, when he showed off the timber pieces over his breakfast of pepper and scrambled eggs (mostly pepper) and kippers (sardines) or fried perch, that we learned the truth.    He had been the monster. Laughed like hell that he’d scared us so.  We laughed, too. We all thought he was the guy who, I think they say “hung the moon.” Whatever. He was a great man.   

I have his pipes and pipe rack here in my office. I don’t smoke any more. But sometimes I’ll smell one of them, and it reminds me of Grandpa Champ. And Marc and Jeff. Grandma. Michelle. Me and Eric at Walnut Lake.

After the sun set, Grandma would take us out to the vegetable garden, where we'd dig for night-crawlers and put them in an old cottage cheese carton filled with black soil.

The plan was that we would be ready to get up at 5 the next morning to paddle out onto the lake and catch bluegill, sunfish and perch. Cleaning them later at the stump out back while Grandpa smoked his pipe.  If we caught a bullhead, he’d pound a nail in its head so he could skin it.

Grandpa would bury the innards, hoping that Topsy, the black beaglish hound, would not dig them up, roll in them or eat them. She did frequently. Helluva good dog.

When Topsy died, Grandpa and Grandma got Spuddy, another beaglish dog, who (along with Grandpa) lived with my Mom and Dad in Nashville after Grandma died.  Another story. A dog story..

I’ve told some of this story before, I think after Al Kaline, the Tigers’ slugger died, because his heroics had been the soundtrack when Grandpa taught me, Marc, Jeff and Eric, how to play poker. Grandpa played for keeps. If it was matchsticks, he’d clean us out. Play for pennies, boys? Well, Grandpa taught us how to lose with grace. If one of us occasionally took in a decent pot, though, he’d smile. He would be glad we’d learned enough to beat him. Then he’d redouble his efforts so he wouldn’t lose the next hand to those “Gawd Damn Kids.”

I may already have mentioned this, but in summers, we’d, of course, be barefoot as Huck Finn as we walked along the path through the bog and swamp and across the oiled roads (They used to spray oil on dirt roads back then to keep dust down in the summer. I doubt that they do that anymore. Probably not politically correct.) Our bare soles turned to black shortly after dawn every day and sometimes Grandma would scrub them as we were in the bathtub at night.

Grandpa used to work, checking people in at the beach, as he sat in his chair (he was crippled by arthritis). If we were good, and sometimes the other boys, at least, were, he’d give us each a dime to go into the clubhouse and buy penny candy or an ice cream cone. It was Walnut Lake, so generally I had walnut ice cream. People tell me that it’s pretty exclusive out there at Walnut Lake nowadays.

Back then it was a blue-collar town and beach. Now, I think rich people, probably mostly millennial assholes and their parents and offspring, live there with their fancy speedboats and lack of sentiment about what that lake meant to us.

I guess I should get back to Briggs Field or was it Briggs Stadium? Shit, doesn’t matter. It was a real ballpark. Hot dogs and beer and Coke were sold. Maybe peanuts and Cracker Jack. No raw octopus and sake or whatever the fuck they serve at ballparks today.

It was in the time of double-headers, and about halfway through the second game, Grandpa Champ got tired.  I think he waited by the park, because of his arthritis. But we, Dad, Marc, Jeff, Eric, me, would have to go get the car. Anyway, we were parked bumper to bumper across that part of Detroit. It was before the chicken man was blown up in Philly while in Detroit they burned the city down and Roger Smith killed GM. (I put the chicken man in here, because Marc liked Springsteen. If you don’t catch the reference, it’s OK. But they blew up the chicken man’s house, too.)

From the stadium, we had to walk across the bumpers of the cars to find dad’s white, convertible Oldsmobile.  Unfortunately, one of the cars had a broken headlight and the sharp glass grabbed my left leg when I dragged past it. Blood spurted like in a Peckinpah film. Nah, not really, but it bled like hell.

I think my Dad, the only WWII infantryman who was nauseated by blood… actually, he probably saw too much of it, caused some I’m sure, while in his late teens and early 20s … panicked. I think they wrapped my leg in a T-shirt and we went home where Grandma and Mom tended to it.  When Dad died a couple years ago, the family gathered at Eric’s house, where my Cousin Marc (or Maurice, as the big-city fancies in Detroit call him) and I were drinking 12-year-old seltzer. He asked me if I still had that scar.

I showed it to him. The sight of that 60-year-old scar made Marc happy.

The other day, after Marc’s earthly remains had been removed from his deathbed, I called his number again. His voice perked me up.

“I just wanted to hear your voice again, Marc. I love you.” Hell, I paused a second, hoping, I suppose, that he’d pick up.

We’d talk of Camp Spikehorn and Walnut Lake. Four skinny little boys running across hot oil to get to the berry field or to get into the lake. Or to go fishing, if Grandma felt like taking us.

Evenings losing five-card draw to the old man we all worshiped.

Marc, as far as I can tell, had a regular life, though he fought through tragedy. His war hero dad died early in his life. A first wife died from too much of the poison that comes in bottles, if I remember right. He had a stepson he loved who fell from high-iron while working construction on a Florida skyscraper. A second stepson, child of his wonderful wife, Cathy, who set up the phone and also took such great care of her dying husband, also died.

That tragic fabric, though, never stole Marc’s soul. God, or whatever, took care of that the other night.

Besides that, he found and created happiness, despite the sad. He loved to play golf, sell siding and windows, smoke cigars and taste good Scots whisky.  His brother and sisters loved him.

So did his cousins, who saw him infrequently, but when we did, our hearts turned us into those skinny kids from all those years ago.

And, especially, he had a second wife, Cathy, who gave him all the love he could handle and missed out on earlier in life. And, to see them together, you knew that love was reciprocal.

Cathy’s grandchildren became his, too. And he finally retired simply to spend time babysitting those kids. At the funeral service, one of his stepchildren talked about how Grandpa Marc made sure he could watch, through a window, the kids playing in the backyard when he was confined to bed.

The old scar on my leg sometimes itches. When scratch it, I always think of Marc.

At least I have my memories, my dreams in past tense.

 

A few phone calls with a woman who used to "Dream. Dream-dream-dream" that her son, Donnie, would visit his old, black room

Margaret Everly used to call me, complaining about her sons.

I think Phil was in Los Angeles, hanging out with Warren Zevon, a healthy enough pursuit that I wish I'd been able to enjoy.

But Don was here in Nashville and in Kentucky.

A former confidante of both Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix, he was hanging out at Brown's Diner, where he obviously enjoyed the hamburgers. That's the only place, other than on the stage, that I ever saw him.

But, according to Mrs. Everly, either Don or Phil never visited her. She just said "my son hasn't visited" or somesuch.

Since Phil was not around, as he was getting his "shit fucked up," as Zevon would say, or hanging with Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers (again, something I'd enjoy), I guess it must have been Don.

Her house was a few blocks from my own, although in a slightly more upscale corner of the neighborhood.

"I just don't know why he doesn't come home," she said. "I kept his room like he had it. It's all painted black..... If he's not coming home, I think I'll get it painted."

Again, it must have been Don's room. According to published stories, he'd enjoyed LSD with Jimi and others. I believe she told me there were posters all over the walls and ceiling of the black room.

The quotes and recollections are hazy and paraphrased, as I wasn't taking notes. She simply was calling to see if I could get her son to visit. And nothing grabs my heart like a distressed mom.

I never accomplished that task, getting little Donnie to go home. I tried, I just couldn't track him down.

But I'm sure Don did, on his own, finally visit his mother..

Actually, now that I think about it, the first time I spoke with her, Nashville Banner icon Bob Battle, who knew everybody, switched her over to me.

"This is the mother of The Everly Brothers,'' Bob said. "Maybe you can help her."

She called several times for nice chats. She did invite me over to see the room, but by the time I decided to do that, the number I had no longer was in service. I imagine the room had been painted and the house sold.

Now both the boys are gone, after Don's death Saturday.

Margaret survives, however.

And man, I loved the music of The Everly Brothers. Bye-Bye Happiness.

Thank you for the phone calls, Mrs. Everly.

Boys, thanks for the tunes.

Tom T. Hall's death really pisses me off, but maybe he's with Miss Dixie now. Thanks for the friendship and love of two great people

 

Tom T. Hall's death pisses me off.

Two of the people who made me feel most at home in Nashville were Tom T. Hall and his wondrous wife, Dixie, aka "Miss Dixie."

Dixie died in 2015. Her heart was mighty and we loved each other.

Tom T. died today at age 85.

He was my friend.

They both welcomed me into their home. Life was lonely for Tom T. in recent years. So much so that on a few occasions, he even invited me up to Fox Hollow for some coffee and bullshitting.

We talked of books -- he liked mine and I cherish his -- and music. His music. His verbal pictures of blue-collar life and yearning and disappointment and occasional triumph are some of the very best words ever put together by a songwriter, country or otherwise.

The last time we shared coffee together was a snowy, early spring day, if I remember correctly.

He told me that he sure liked a book I'd written -- "Shoebox Full of Toads: Farewell to Mom" -- a lot and he asked me to sign it.

"God damn, that's a sad book. Good. Real good. I know you didn't write it to make money. It's just one of those things you wrote just because you had to, wasn't it?" he said. "I know how that goes."

Sometime on our coffee sipping day, he looked over his cup and said "Tim, why don't people write letters anymore?"

I shrugged.

First thing I did when I got home was write him a long letter of thanks, for his hospitality, an apology for taking up so much of his time and a mention of how much I loved and missed his wonderful wife.

If things are as we are taught, then Tom T. and Dixie are together again. That's a great thought for me, as I loved them both.

I don't know what else to say tonight other than I was appalled that the local news stations didn't lead with Tom T.'s death.

It was like the fourth or fifth story, a simple one-minute, easy-way-out piece of so-called journalism.

Tom T. Hall was a damn nice guy who made magic with his words.

Largely forgotten in recent years, he really didn't mind it.

He was a great man, who made a huge impact on country music. I appreciate his friendship.

And his death, as noted earlier, really pisses me off.

"Junior Birdman" plays in my head as I battle sadness with Camp Spikehorn, Scotch with Marc, Topsy and oil-stained feet on a country road

 I learned today that a cousin, who I love like a brother, is in the fight for his life up in the Detroit area. 

I don't need to go into details, other than the fact I left him a slightly profane message on his answering machine, because he is unable to speak clearly because of some irritation in his mouth, apparently caused by his treatments. I'm a newspaperman, so profanity flows naturally.

Since I couldn't talk with him, I talked into the machine about the summers he and his brother spent with Eric, me and my mom and dad. And I said that he better get feeling better because the bus was getting ready to take us out to Camp Spikehorn, outside Grand Rapids. 

I know none of that makes much sense to anyone but me. 

But my Champ cousins and my brother and I grew up together, at Camp Spikehorn or running down the dunes over near Holland, Michigan. Or the one Thanksgiving when we all were outside my grandparents' (George and Bea Champ's) house at Walnut Lake and a deer hunter shot into a tree near me. I survived. In fact, we thought it was kinda cool.   I spoke with my cousin a few weeks ago. The diagnosis was dire, but he was counting on months, years even. Now they are talking about hospice. He'll be 72 in September.  He was baby-sitting his grandchildren when we spoke.

Oh yeah, and then there was the beach at Walnut Lake. We'd walk on the trail through the swamp from the Champ house and across the dirt roads, that had been sprayed with black oil to keep the dust down. 

We spent our summers with black soles on our feet, either from going to the lake or just across Sunnycrest to harvest wild blackberries in the field.  

And the dog, Topsy, my grandparents' old hound, who would follow us through the woods and back. Sometimes, by the time she got home, she smelled of the dead fish she'd rolled on near the beach. We probably didn't smell so good ourselves.

It's been a lot of decades since Camp Spikehorn and the beach at Walnut Lake. But in my life I've never been happier than those days, before life began catching up with me. 

My cousin, Marc, and his brother, Jeff, not only mean everything to me, they are my connections with my early, happier life, my "Wonder Years" or whatever. And their sister, Michelle, too, though she was older and not as much around us as the boys were.

Their dad, my Uncle Joe, had his lungs turned into so much Swiss cheese by Nazi flamethrowers in the Battle of the Bulge. For a long time, my mom, his sister, and their folks didn't even know if he was alive. No officers came to the house to say he was dead. But if he was alive, nobody had kept good track of him.

But he was healing, slowly, in a British hospital. He came home mortally wounded into a decade-long death dance. Yet he laughed and hugged. He was a great and loving man.

When I was a kid, Uncle Joe was my hero. I named my son after him. Uncle Joe also scared me, as on the days of family gatherings out there in the small house in the woods at Walnut Lake, he'd have to go into my grandpa's bedroom, where Grandpa Champ would work the old hand-pump oxygen machine in an attempt to keep Joe alive.

Uncle Joe died long, long ago.  I remember when my mother got the phone call in Grand Rapids, telling her that her beloved brother had finally succumbed to Hitler's war machine.  I never saw her more grief-stricken as she wailed away at the telephone nook, by the reach-through between the stairs landing and the dining room.

She had been vacuuming the dining room when the call came.

I saw him in his casket, but my parents didn't think I was old enough for the funeral. Eric and I waited out the funeral and ate fresh tomatoes. No, that's not really a big deal, but it's true. I would rather eat fresh tomatoes than go to funerals now, but that's not proper death etiquette.

I probably ought to think this through more, turn it into some sort of formed writing. But I'm just typing from my heart right now. And it hurts.

It had been a bad day already, as I dealt with work issues.  My meeting with a boss was interrupted by a phone call I couldn't take, but I recognized the number. It could only be bad news. And I knew it had to be about Marc.

Tears crept into my eyes, which I rubbed, but continued my meeting. Had to. Gotta take care of my family and I love my job.

I focused on my boss and what he had to say to me, but I really didn't feel completely there. I knew that something had gone wrong with Marc in his battle with cancer.

And it had, as I found out when I talked to my own brother, Eric, and to our cousin Michelle.

I laughed a little bit in my soul, though, when I thought of the four of us, like brothers, riding the bus to Camp Spikehorn. Singing the "Junior Birdman" song, complete with the hand-motions. If you never did that, you are supposed to turn your hands upside down, forming upside-down goggles with fingers, as you sing along about the upside-down airman.

Marc and I served as bartenders once at an ill-fated family wedding. No details needed here, other than that the marriage didn't work, but the wine and Scotch really fueled the bartenders. My dad had provided the booze, and he wasn't stingy about quality. Marc and I relished Dad's choices so much that we each took a bottle with us back to Eric's apartment, where we drank the night away. And talked about Camp Spikehorn.  

Because of life, we haven't been together a lot since we were elementary school kids. 

Our parents all moved us around the country. 

There were occasional family get-togethers. Mostly at funerals, though.

I'm rambling here.

I can't say what will happen. It certainly looks bad. But I don't know if I've ever been around a more-upbeat guy than Marc. I'll never forget that smile, the hug, the fact we kissed each other on the lips, Mafia style, when we saw each other.

I've lost a lot of my friends to cancer. My parents are gone to disease and age. A cousin on the Ghianni side of the family, my beloved Ronnie Conte, died long ago because there was a congenital hole in his heart that finally caught up with him. Jim Kelly and some of the Buffalo Bills came to his visitation. But that's another story. 

Other "friends" decided that my politics, ethics and my general sense of fear and loathing mixed with mad laughter wasn't worth putting up with. I didn't need them, anyway. Ah, look at all the lonely people.

But I've kept going, knowing there were people in this world I loved and who loved me. Marc, Jeff, Michelle, Eric, Ronnie's brother Robbie. And, of course, my daughter, son and Suzanne. 

For me, well, this is a sad time. I'll be even more lonely one day, I hope not soon, because of this fucking cancer.

The laughter, the kisses on the lips, the Scotch and the hugs will be missed.

I told Eric, "it's that time in life when this shit begins to happen. We are old, brother."  

I guess we are.

I know that I feel old today when I think about this magnificent cousin who is fighting for his life.

I just hope he takes a moment to think about Walnut Lake. Topsy. Black-oil-covered soles. 

And those musical bus rides to Camp Spikehorn. "Up in the air, the junior birdman; up in the air upside dow-ow-own; up in the air, the junior birdman, keep your noses off the grou-ou-ound."

Uncle Sam is gone, leaving me in the "oldest" Ghianni generation with memories of Challenger, ET, cow tongue, Como bar and Santa Fe "snake"

 

It’s around here someplace, perhaps. But it’s always in my memories. Because of tumult in my house caused by the flood of a week-plus ago, there’s no way I’m going to start digging for old photos of the film and negative and slide kind.

And it may be gone. But I can picture it now. It’s my Uncle Sam Ghianni, almost 40 years ago. He and I had stopped to eat a nice plate of cow tongue at a Basque restaurant in the high desert of California the night before.

He had left a bit early from his job as an engineer on the Space Shuttle – he was working on Challenger at the time, and I was fortunate enough to walk through that doomed vehicle while it still was just a skeleton.

I’d driven his big, diesel-powered Oldsmobile down from Palmdale/Lancaster that day, parking for a while in Hollywood and then heading out to Universal Studios.    It wasn’t a theme park yet, though you could take a little boat ride through a circular pond where “the shark from ‘Jaws’” would pop up and growl. I’m not sure it was one of the dummy sharks used in the movie, but it was a little cool.

And, since it was a weekday, the primarily Japanese folks who joined me on the ride laughed and snapped pictures of the shark.

The big secret at Universal was, while we could wander among the sound stages, see demonstrations, visit the sets not being used, no one could go near the one big hangar-like studio building where Steven Spielberg was filming something called “ET.” Those letters were painted above the main door to the hangar, but tourists were not allowed to walk near.

Anyway, it was one of several trips I’ve made to Los Angeles and California over the years, going all the way back to my wandering hippie years, which included crashing on the floor of my uncle’s then-residence in Placentia, down in Orange County, for a few days. It was a needed respite, because I’d been on the road for a month in my old 1965 Falcon, sleeping on roadsides and campsites.

In New Mexico, a doctor I’d never met – Dr. Gutierrez – performed some minor surgery on my left leg. He didn’t charge me. The lobby was filled with Native Americans and I was apparently in what Huck Finn would call “Injun Territory.”

After New Mexico came about a month in Arizona, leading up to a long trip downhill – I turned the gas off in the old Falcon someplace near Flagstaff and put the Falcon in neutral and coasted downhill for about four hours.  Oh, occasionally, I had to turn the car on to get up a hill, but mostly, the Falcon was going downhill, finally running out of downhill slope someplace on the outskirts of a dirty little city named San Bernardino.  Now it’s a big city, by the way. And it’s still dirty.

Still, that trip was 50 years ago, and Wizard, a college friend guy who was along for the ride and none of the driving and who slept all day while the car was moving, and I rolled into Placentia and refreshed a few days, using my Uncle Sam’s shower, sleeping on the floor of his living room.

“Man, you guys smell,” he almost joked us when we first arrived.

That’s a long story and ends up with me having an Orange Julius while waiting for the taping to begin for The Johnny Carson Show. The stand was just across Alameda from the NBC Studios (at Alameda and Olive) in Burbank.  Being in the studio while Johnny did his schtick gave me almost the same kind of thrill I felt the first time I saw The Rolling Stones. Well, not really, but it was cool. David Carradine and Buddy Hackett were among the guests.

Enough on that trip, other than to say I tired of my car partner someplace near Fisherman’s Wharf, and we began the long drive home. It took about a week and a half, as we had stops. And since Wizard slept all the time, we eventually got to my old dorm at Iowa State, where we crashed for a few days. While Wizard slept.

It was many years later when personal trauma led me to one night call my Uncle Sam from my apartment in Clarksville, Tennessee. I was being spiritually suffocated, but no need to go into that here.  I needed a break. I asked if he’d mind if I flew out to California to visit him for a few days while he worked at Edward’s Air Force Base and the Space Shuttle Program.

It was a great trip, and, usually I’d drive him to work sometime around 5 a.m. and then have the car for the day. I explored mountains and beaches and bars, finally picking him up when the workday ended. Most evenings we stopped at a little Mexican diner where we had massive chimichanga plates and a beer or maybe more. We laughed. He introduced me to other space engineers – this was “their joint” – and, well, I had a helluva time.

One night, he decided that instead of the diner, we’d go for a ride out on the blue highways through the high desert, which found us at near sunset in the midst of Basque country, where the hills were filled with sheep and shepherds.

“I was here once before,” he said. “I think you’ll like it. You ever eat cow tongue?”

That’s where, while Spanish/Basque musicians played, we ate big plates of cow tongue. Only time I’ve ever feasted on one of those, but it was good and we washed it down with Basque wine of some suspicious vintage.

Enough on that. The next day, he was off from work during daylight, going in at night, I think. So we again went out into the desert, this time to a mountain along the Santa Fe rail line. He thought I’d like to see this mechanical marvel, which had a train looped several times around and through the mountain as it rose up from the desert floor.  That’s where the picture I’ve not found comes in that I took of my beloved Uncle Sam – everyone else called him Uncle Johnny, even though his name was Sam (aka Sabatino or Samuel) -- as he stood in front of that mountain with the train snaking around it.

The next day we drove through the beach towns outside of L.A., including Manhattan Beach, where he at one time had a rib joint. He went broke, but he still bragged about his rib sauce and expertise whenever that topic came up.

In the years since, Sam finally retired, he and Ginnie eventually moving to Mountain View, Arkansas. We actually saw him fairly frequently, as he would come over to visit his big brother, my dad, Em J. Ghianni, 10 years his senior.

And, for decades now, Sam has been there for every funeral, wedding (some had more than one, you know) and gathering. He also came over to nurse his big brother as my dad’s health began what eventually was a long descent toward death in 2019.  He’d stay with his big brother for a week or two, as the two sipped scotch, ate fruit and cheese and talked about growing up in Buffalo, New York.

My brother, Eric, and I always figured we’d go over to see him in Mountain View sometime after my dad died. My wife, Suzanne, and I shared similar plans for a year ago, scrapped because of the Trump virus.

Joking. COVID-19. I shouldn’t joke about Trump, as my uncle and I had disagreements about that candidate and president, and we avoided conflict. To me, Trump was and is a corrupt thief, misogynist, racist, liar and treason-monger. My Uncle Sam, who had been an activist in Bobby Kennedy’s 1968 campaign (that ended thanks to Sirhan Sirhan in the hotel kitchen), had grown conservative.

He liked Trump. I despised the asshole of a president. And we agreed to disagree. I think only once did he object, publicly, to one of my rare political posts on Facebook.

I did disagree completely with his own, more-frequent, political posts. But then we’d talk on the phone – I had to remind him he was the head of the Ghianni family, the last one left of the five children of Alfina and Sabatino Ghianni.  Johnny died as a kid. Frances, Rita and my dad all lived fuller lives. My Uncle Al Conte, my own godfather, who was Fran’s husband, also was dead.

So, I told Uncle Sam that since my dad was gone and he was the last one left, he was sort of “The Godfather” of the Ghianni family.  He could issue offers we couldn’t refuse, though none of us wanted to sleep with the fishes.

He laughed, but he took the role seriously, calling in for quick checks on everybody. Not long conversations, but they always ended with “I love you” on both ends of the line. “Talk again soon.”

The last three or four weeks I’d been trying to get in touch with Uncle Sam, leaving messages on his phone. I told him I was just checking in, and I’d call again soon.

The last message I left was me wishing him a “Happy Easter. … I hope you are cooking ribs at church (or something like that),” I said in the voice mail.

“I’ll call you again in a few days. I love you. We all love you and Ginnie.”

I always told him in those messages that he could call me back if he wanted to, but I’d get him soon, regardless.

Well, I don’t know if he heard that Easter message.

Last Thursday, April 1, he went for his first COVID shot.  I don’t know if that had anything to do with the fact that basically he shut down hours after Moderna went into his arm.

He had a lot of health difficulties, so there likely is no correlation to the shot, although he could have had a bad reaction that triggered some of his other woes with fatal fury.

Ginnie got him to the hospital and he was improving some until Tuesday. He was on full-on oxygen, but he seemed to be improving.

 The techs were wheeling him down for an X-ray to make sure he didn’t have pneumonia when he coded. I’m sure he knew the techs, since one of his pastimes was as a hospital volunteer. He also was like the No. 1 congregant, the head Columbian or head of Knights of Columbus, or whatever at the small Catholic Church in Mountain View.

There was a “DNR” in his living will.  He just had turned 88 years old.

That whole generation of Ghiannis is now gone. My dad, the oldest, was born shortly after Alfina and Sabatino were processed through Ellis Island.

It’s odd to me now, after 69 years, to realize that I am the last generation left. My cousin Robbie Conte (Fran and Al’s kid) and my brother Eric.

That’s it. Just the three of us who gathered around the Easter table in the duplex walk-up on Folger Street, just around the corner from the Como bar, really one of those famed Italian coffeehouses, I believe, where plans were hatched.

Grandpa Ghianni used to take me there. He’d have whiskey. Me, ginger ale. I’m sure Rob, his late brother Ronnie and Eric were there, too.

Now as a member of the oldest generation of Ghianni family members, I’ll have to make sure that my kids know enough to realize that their family came here seeking the American Dream. They were, literally, the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free. The wretched refuse of the teeming shores of Italy.

They achieved those dreams, of course. All of that generation achieved far beyond what they could have in the mountain villages over the Adriatic.

Maybe someday, I’ll go to those villages to see if there are any Ghianni family members left, some who perhaps have heard stories of Sabatino and Alfina. Or who were there when my dad, Emilio, and his bride, Dot, visited maybe 40 years ago.

I could tell them all about my experiences, my family, my father. Rita. Fran. Uncle Sam. Maybe throw in an anecdote about my Uncle Al Conte, who was the nicest human being I ever met.

I love my family. I miss all of those people.

Uncle Sam is dead now.

I guess that makes my brother Eric the don, the head of the family.  I’m sure he’ll wear that mantle well, as long as he can fulfill his duties in sweatpants. Long story, there, but true.

This “column’’ was written, stream-of-consciousness style, in the hour or so after I had a long conversation with Ginnie. So there may be errors of style, none of substance.  And none of the heart.

“My uncle was a great guy,” I told Ginnie.  And, in unison almost, we said “he was a kind person.”

What a drag it is gettin’ old, a friend of mine once sang, as his own childhood pal played the guitar.

 

  

   

   

Death of G's Pancake House is sort of an obituary on some damn nice nights. And damn the flood

 

 

I wasn’t made for these times.

Oh, I’m not talking about the flood of 2021, which for the second time in 11 years, has altered my lifestyle.

Not that my lifestyle is all that great, I suppose, but I do take for granted things like dry shoes, floors that don’t bubble and a good night’s sleep. All of those things vanished at about 1 a.m. Sunday, when 8 inches of rain fell on my nice, fairly pastoral, little section of Nashville.

Within moments, it seemed, water from the rainfall – it had been raining for three days, really and the ground was saturated – snuck into my basement. It spread quickly. And for the last three days now, we’ve been cleaning up, drying out, praying for no rain for awhile and dealing with insurance (Allstate does not return calls or show much compassion… and my contractor, who is going to try to figure out a way for this not to happen again.

Since the last flood I survived was 11 years ago, well, if that cycle continues, I’ll be 80 next time or just a fistful of forgotten ashes. In either case I don’t want to go through this crap again.

But really what I’m lamenting today is that one of my life’s favorite places, a greasy little all-night pancake and coffee joint, on Riverside Drive in Clarksville, Tennessee, is closing.

If you know me or have read anything by me over the years, you may know about G’s Pancake House.

Forty years ago, and for a few years on either side of that mark, it was a 2 a.m. Sunday destination for me and my best friends, fellas with names like Badger and Death and Chuckles and Flash. The Stranger made it occasionally. Tony Durr, occasionally. Those last two, like the pancake house, are dead.

Well, Badger didn’t make it much back then, as he wasn’t a newspaperman – which is all I ever wanted to be until the corporate bastards took it from me and sent me out into a world where no one hired 56-year-old men who refused to backstab to stay on the right side of corporate politics.

But you’ve read that story before (and it is available in book form). This little essay is about G’s Pancake House.

When Jerry and Rob and I finished up the Sunday Leaf-Chronicle newspaper in Clarksville, we’d generally go to a little place called “Camelot” to let the local cops try to loosen us with good Scots whiskey and where DJ Jimmy in the Morning lay face-down on the front table.  He’d often raise his head long enough to buy us a round.

Often Chief Sheriff’s Deputy Eddie Patterson – a foil during working hours, but a helluva good friend when he had his pistols packed in the trunk of his car – was the most generous guy when it came to buying drinks. Since he was pumping us to see what we knew, perhaps he turned in the receipts to Sheriff Billy Smith.

We pumped Eddie and the other 15 or so cops and deputies who joined in the all-night frivolity among a mix of college students (not that many, really, as this was a pretty rough bar, the kind where a dispute over arm-wrestling might send a fellow through the air and landing on a table, which would break.).

We would applaud and hope it didn’t happen to us. There were a few members of the nearby 101st Airborne as well.  

They were hoping not to get into fatal wrecks on Fort Campbell Boulevard while returning to post. My publisher had decided that there were so many of those dead GIs littering the sides of our roads, we shouldn’t report them anymore. Bad for city image.

That’s beside the point in this story, which is about the closing of G’s Pancake House. It wasn’t just those of us who stayed out all night who ended up at G’s.

Sometimes, other, less-desperate and desolate folks, would join us if we went right after work, at midnight or 1 a.m., on either a Friday or Saturday. There is a “famous” picture of me holding court with a bunch of newspapermen late on one Good Friday.  We broke flapjacks and drank coffee, and, of course, prayed over these sacramental elements.

Anyway, there really were countless nights at G’s. It’s where I got my name, still valid among many of my old friends, or at least the ones still alive (a diminishing breed) of “Flapjacks.” We all had names. Dumbo. Flash. Chuckles. Death. StrawBilly. Street. Larry (too stiff a butt for a nickname, but a good guy nonetheless). If our friend, Scott Shelton, a radio newsman was with us, his nickname was Badger.

I moved out of Clarksville back in the very late 1980s, on the cusp of the 1990s. I didn’t go back to G’s often in the last three decades.

There were a few, perhaps even a dozen, gatherings of the so-called “News Brothers” (again, see the book) there over the years.

For many years, we held an annual reunion in Clarksville. Those pretty much stopped when Scott died.

Oh, he wasn’t one for all-night frivolity. He was too busy at home with his wife, Elise, or admiring his Beatles statues. Me, I was trying to stay away from home for much of that time back then in what was a different life of melancholy and asking “Why?”

Our gatherings generally would be at G’s. The last one actually came after Scott died. Following his funeral, all of us who didn’t have to beat it back to Nashville, Hoptown or New York City (none of us were from New  York City), ended up for a three-hour wake of sorts. Again, flapjacks and “Flapjacks,” with his best friends.

Laughing about Badger and about our old times together.  I remember Frank “Wuhm” White, an occasional News Brother, telling me on that afternoon nine years ago that I really hadn’t changed over the years.

I guess I hadn’t. Still haven’t. Which, as my old friend the Pilgrim said, is a blessing and a curse, but the goin’ up really has been worth the coming down.

Anyway, enough about me and my meanderings. This is supposed to be about the death of a pancake house.

One of my former bosses, Dee Boaz, sent me a link to a Clarksville Leaf-Chronicle story today that says that G’s is shutting down after business ends Friday.

G’s Pancake House was begun in 1972 in the Riverside Drive location, according to the little feature story.

This week, the owner decided to close the restaurant begun by her father. “On Friday, the original location of G'S Pancake House at 803 South Riverside Drive will serve its final charbroiled burgers, fried catfish, steak and potatoes and of course, G’S Super Breakfast with pancakes,” according to the story by reporter Gary Estwick.

I spent the best part of my life in Clarksville, as far as I can remember. Although my search for personal happiness and sobriety came here in Nashville, beginning in 1988. So I don’t know the reporter, and I do know that the newspaper is nothing like it used to be.

No crazy associate editor, chain-smoking, wearing shades and a Hawaiian shirt and urging everyone to laugh, even as we put together stories about teenage killers, the Full Moon Rapist (I made up that moniker) and Manson-style killings. And, of course, the tragic saga of Chico the Monkey.  

What once was a huge and historic building housing the oldest newspaper in Tennessee now is the D.A.’s office. I think the newspaper is put out in a closet. I know the printing presses are long gone and the pathetic little product (not blaming the reporters here, but corporate greed) is printed, I believe, in Knoxville.

Or Louisville. Yeah, you really can get breaking news in a paper if you print it three hours away … another issue. Of course, it’s all about websites now. I wonder how many website stories are clipped out and put in family Bibles and Little League scrapbooks? They don’t even run free obituaries anymore. We used to hold the presses to make sure all the funeral homes in Clarksville and surrounding cities got their obits in to us. We’d type them up and typeset them. And it made families feel part of the newspaper.

Well, The Leaf-Chronicle did run sort of an obit on G’s, of course, this week.

And it hit me almost as hard as if a person I know had died. Like I noted earlier, the last gathering I call recall there was after Scott “Badger” Shelton’s funeral nine years ago.

The time before that was perhaps two months earlier. Scott’s wonderful wife, Elise, a long-time friend of mine, as well, had worked hard to get Scott to that year’s reunion of the News Brothers.

He was dripping with oxygen hoses and cancer death was in his eyes. But there also was a gleam of happiness. Sure, he knew his time was coming, way too soon. But he was there. At G’s. Eating flapjacks with his old buddy, Flapjacks, who used to drop in on Scott’s news programming decades before at WJZM Radio in Clarksville.

I’d drop in before I showed up for work at 5:30 a.m. or take a smoke break and walk over there to play with Badger and Jimmy in the Morning.

I should note that none of us took our work lightly, but journalism used to be a deadline-heavy occupation, filled with caffeine and nicotine, Scotch, beer, lies and sad truths.

When sane people were in their beds, thinking about how early to get up for church or for Junior’s soccer match, we were still at work.

When we got off, we needed a place to go to blow off the stress, to laugh. Yes, there was a lot of death and destruction with which we dealt. And there were gory photos we had to look at and size for the pages.

And sometimes when we saw those photographs, we just had to laugh.  Not out of disrespect, but to keep our sanity.

Well, sometimes I just have to write to blow off those stresses, like figuring out how to keep my house from flooding and which of the soggy stacks of old newspaper clippings should go in the trash or recycling bin and which can be saved. Not many, by the way.

As I said, being a newspaperman was all I ever wanted to do. I was not prepping for some horseshit P.R., 9-5, job.  I also loved my colleagues in the news business. I didn’t mind that people viewed me as a “free spirit” as long as they judged me factual and honorable and compassionate.

I also love, perhaps more than anyone else, the traditions of a newspaperman.  Hard-drinking is in my past, of course, but I sure as hell enjoyed it, after deadline, most nights. The smoking, cigarettes sending their trails of white up into the air of the newsroom or the Camelot or G’s Pancake House, also were of that profession, of that era. Of bygone times.

I’m decades past my G’s years. But it always has been reassuring to think about those time, those nights. That particular Good Friday. Christ you know it ain’t easy to be an old-fashioned newspaperman (or newspaperwoman) anymore.

In fact, I really think that these younger people, as good as they are, have missed out on the most fun and meaningful parts of that culture.

Like going through a half-pack of smokes and a short stack of flapjacks and maybe 12 cups of coffee while laughing into the night and waiting for dawn to break while having good newspaper fellowship at G’s Pancake House.

It’s closing.

I’m cleaning up from another flood.

Many of the folks mentioned in this story, from Chief Deputy Eddie Patterson to Scott Shelton and Jimmy in the Morning are gone.

The News Brothers are old and scattered.  Donald Trump is partly to blame for that, but that’s another long story.

I’ll never love a group of guys, collectively, as much as I loved the News Brothers.

And I never laughed into the night, after dealing with the horrors of reality and murder, as hard as I did at Camelot and G’s.

Camelot closed long ago.

Now G’s is going away.

I’m 69, not 30 or 35.

And I wasn’t made for these times.

Christ, you know it ain’t easy.