Mark is sound asleep at the other end of the house. Our seven rescue cats are scattered about, also sleeping soundly in their comforting places.
I sit at my failing desk-top computer,.playing Greenfelt solitaire, with Youtube cycling on another tab, remembering the several broken and mended pieces of my distant past, places and people who come to life and reopen an individual space in my memory..
Often but not always I have my relatively new hearing aids in place for greater clarity, revealing notes and tones in each segment of recollection that I had once anticipated before age and loud noises robbed me of certain highs and ranges. (I am almost certain a specific B-52's concert to the South of Denver was the culprit in giving me this constant ringing that the hearing aids somewhat mask.)
I mostly type now with one hand, the laft still unrecovered from the break in September that hours of recent therapy have not yet restored. Just another infirmity that time has added to the acid reflux, the diverticulosos, the treated skin cancer, ED, the hearing loss, the left knee that infrequently reminds of the steep ski slope of the Pike's Peak Resort when Gary and his two buddies left me to make my own way down to the lodge.
We make do with what we have left, as Beethoven continued to compose though he was totally deaf.
"Help Me" by Joni Mitchell. 1974.
I am in one of the Air Force's old WWII-era barracks at Vandenberg AFB. I'd spent the previous couple of months at Minot before my missile training slot opened up. A buddy and I had driven my 1973 Chevy Camero to The Warehouse, a retail location for audio equipment several miles north of the base, We'd removed the back seat earlier in the day for more room to pack in eight Advent speakers, four for each of us We did not want to make two trips.
We were going to need to keep the boxes to ship them to our respective missile bases. He might have been headed to Whiteman AFB. I had not used my free Air Force household goods.shipment yet. I had already hauled my cases of books and record albums my mom's rental house in San Pedro to my Bachelor Officer's Quarters (BOQ) room so most of my wordly possessions would ship from Vandenberg to Minot. The rest would fit into the Camero for the drive to Minot (I had flown to Minot on January 3rd, 1974, leaving the Camero behind with mom.)
Despite the incredibly tight fit, the two of us had gotten all eight Advent speakers in their boxes into the Camero and back to Vandenberg.
I don't recall if I had unpaced all four speakers or just two to connect to a used Marantz receiver, to see how they sounded. I had already bought a recommended turntable, based on a review from THE ABSOLUTE SOUND audio magazine. As with much else in that era, the offered an alternative impressions to the mainstream publications such as STEREO REVIEW.
I had dug through the boxes of albums to find Mitchell's COURT AND SPARK. "Help Me" seemed to be a pleasantly sonic challenge to test drive the Advents. I was not disappointed.
"Making Love" by Roberta Flack. 1982.
This was an entirely different time and place. I had been out of the service for several years. still living in my house in Colorado Springs. Lindsey Barton "Bart" Keeling was my friend. We must have seen the film MAKING LOVE at a local theater. I was at the local INDEPENDENT RECORDS store and bought each of us a copy of the 45rpm theme.
By the end of the decade, Bart had moved to Palm Springs. He'd been a good friend whom I missed. I was able to visit him only once. A few years later, a mutual friend told me outside the gym on Colorado Blvd. in Denver where I was then living that Bart had decided to stop taking his HIV meds, quickly deteriorated, and died that January of 2003.
We'd only hooked up once when we first met, rather awkwardly. We became good friends instead. The lines have always reminded me of Bart, "And I'll remember you...." I cannot here the song without being reminded of someone whose frienship helped me to cope with being alone and out of the service.
"Lotta Love" Nicolette Larson. 1978-9
This song always reminds me of my year and a half at the Air Force Academy. Bright, breezy, assertive yet poignant. The most wonderful time in my life until I met Mark. But unlike then, it collapsed into thr worst time in my life, one when I alost did not want to servive. When your most beloved career is crushed by betrayal and deceit, you never entirely recover.
"Make It With You" Bread. 1970.
Of all of the driving-to-San-Diego songs from the Summer of 1970, this is the one that stands out the most. I cannot help but think of those years when Mike and I were young and in college and not quite on the verge of being drafted.
"No Night So Long" Dionne Warwick. 1980.
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