1965: The Big “W”

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During their Thirties peak in popularity, motion pictures, and the theaters in which they were shown, played an important role in American society. With radio as their main competition, the movies provided information and entertainment. Going to the movies meant a pair of feature films preceded by a cartoon, newsreel, and a fifteen-minute chapter from a Republic serial viewed in comfortably upholstered seats. In the summer it also included air conditioning (a rare luxury at the time) which provided both a respite from the heat and a welcome chance to socialize after a grinding work week.

None of that mattered to me on a particularly frigid Friday afternoon in March of 1965. While in search of heat rather than air-conditioning, I was jonesing for the comedy blockbuster It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World which was showing at the Soldotna Theater. The film told the story of an eclectic group of comedians in search of a hidden treasure trove of $350,000 in stolen cash, their single clue being the phrase, ‘The big W’, but I was primarily lookingforward to seeing the antics of my comedian de jour, Jonathon Winters.

…but instead of noshing on hard-as-a-rock candy bars while sitting on equally hard seats,

I was curled up shivering in a thin California-weight sleeping bag under a lean-to that offered absolutely no heat retention to the occupants. It was my first camp-out with Troop 151, and we’d set up at the east end of the Scout Lake close to where the state campground is now located. It was there that I learned the first three rules of camping;

  1. Outside air temperature drops ten degrees when you have to pee.

Looking back from years of outdoor living with both army and as an adult scout leader, I shudder at the idea of a dozen ill-equipped and untrained boys spending the night sleeping outdoors in subzero weather. Even more distressing was the fact that of the three other dads who’d loudly talked for weeks about toughing it out with the boys, not one of them turned up on Friday for the outing. My dad was the only adult to show, but due to his overloaded schedule at the employment office he had little chance to prep or pack for the trip – after speeding home from the office, he tossed an assortment of gear and food into his backpack and drove us out to the lake.

Setting up was quick and easy – we split into pairs, claimed camp spots, and after stamping down sleeping areas in the snow we built lean-tos consisting of an overhead framework of saplings with spruce boughs providing cover. The final touch was a reflecting wall at the open end of the sloping roof, which in theory reflected heat from campfires into the space under the sapling roof1. Dinner was the first order of business, and it was at that point I learned the second law of camping:

  • Nothing tastes right without a bit of dirt kicked into the skillet while cooking.

Most of the Scouts opted for something fried, but I chose to make a foil-dinner2. On the drive out there’d been lots of talk about pranks, but one look at the scowl on dad’s face put an end to that option, and we turned in early to shiver the night away. Unfortunately, in his efforts to make up for the three ‘no shows’, dad overdid himself and developed a hernia. After checking that we were all warm and safe, he drove the mile or so home, promising someone would be out to pick us up in the morning.

Despite the lean-to roof, we had an impressive view of the night sky. Light pollution was a term that wouldn’t even exist for a couple of decades, and with the closest streetlight at least five miles away, I felt like I was on the set of Fireball XL5. It was a breathtaking vista, but the longer I took in the view, the more confused I became.

It seemed as though one of the stars directly overhead was moving in a westerly direction. It entered my field of vision, then turned and continued at a downward angle before turning yet again on an upward slant. The pattern continued forming a series of big W’s across the night sky before disappearing over the trees to the west, and once it was gone my attention shifted back to the main challenge that came with winter camping; staying warm while minimizing time outside of the sleeping bag by taking a leak as quickly as possible.

Daybreak came surprisingly fast, but breaking camp meant warming up frozen clothes, packing our gear, and walking out to the road while loudly complaining at each step. Home was a beehive of activity as Mom prepped Dad for a trip to the Wildwood clinic for an evaluation of his hernia. The next few weeks continued to buzz by as Dad went to the base hospital at Elmendorf for his hernia repair followed by the rest of the family during spring break the next week for dental work. The next night that I spent under canvas was during Scout camp the following summer where the discomfort of subzero weather was replaced by the equally odious menace of Howard Watson’s corn-fueled flatulence.

It wasn’t until we were planning for another campout the next fall that I learned the third rule of camping.

  • The hardest campouts give you the best stories to share.

I never did find out what the big in the Sky was, even when I was stationed at FT Richardson years later As this happened in the height of the Cold War it could have been part of some observation/reconnaissance effort by either us or the Russians but who knows…

Notes

  1. This was before I replaced my Godzilla mode of camping (cutting and smashing anything in my way) with the more responsible minimum impact mode.
  • Foil dinner recipe/checklist:
  • Brown the meat and parboil the vegetables first.
  • Place the meat and vegetables in the middle off a sheet of aluminum foil 18 inches square.
  • Pour condensed cream of mushroom soup over the ingredients and mix it in well.
  • Fold up the aluminum foil into a flat packet taking care to fold over the seams.
  • Fold a sheet of newspaper around the foil pack.
  • Wrap a second layer of aluminum foil around the packet.
  • Cook on glowing coals for half-hour, occasionally flipping the packet.

1981: One For The Road

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In my life I’ve had the opportunity to be involved with several groups of differing identities and I’ve found that each of those groups – whether educational, political, military, or cultural in nature has its own type of institutional wisdom, usually expressed in humorous aphorisms.  I’ve always liked best the ones I picked up in the service:

  • The most dangerous person on the battlefield is a second lieutenant with a map.
  • War is God’s way of teaching geography to Americans.
  • Just remember our equipment is all manufactured by the lowest bidder.
  • There’s a reason why the only gold-colored rank insignia are a second lieutenant’s bar and a major’s oak leaf.

I didn’t encounter that last one until late 1981 when I was transferred to the battalion staff where I had to work with not just one, but two majors who overlapped. One was the new operations officer, MAJ (Major) Beardsley, while the other was the outgoing operations officer, MAJ Clinton.

Clinton was an artilleryman who’d been assigned to the support battalion based on his secondary specialty (quartermaster) and he was not a pleasant person to work with, prompting one of my sergeants (also a lay minister) to comment ‘If I was Moses I’d turn every other Egyptian into a MAJ Clinton and have them bug each other to death’.  That was pretty close to my own assessment – we’d clashed on a major training event I’d conduced the previous summer, but to be honest, I was put off just as much by his appearance. He was short – just barely within the Army’s minimum height requirement, and his eyes were an unsettling light blue, light enough that I’d refer to him as ‘MAJ Bunny Rabbit’ to the other lieutenants.

He was also understandably abrasive. At the time the army had a strict ‘up or out’ policy when it came to officer’s careers – if you were passed over for promotion twice your career was over and majors were stuck between the proverbial rock and hard place. Moving up from second lieutenant to first lieutenant was almost automatic; chances for promotion between first lieutenant to captain was close to 90%,  but your prospects of making it through the next two jumps (captain to major and major to lieutenant colonel) were pretty grim, as in 60% or so. All of this happens after the officer in question has invested ten years in a very specialized career that doesn’t pay pension or retirement benefits until the twenty year mark. That was MAJ Clinton’s situation – he’d already been passed over once, and his tenure in the battalion had been lackluster and not likely to improve his chances with the upcoming year’s promotion board. He was not one to suffer in silence, and became unpleasant enough to have the entire office counting the days down for his departure.

After a short leave he was going to a professional development course but the timing of all this was a little awkward. Most PCS moves between Alaska and the lower 48 states happened during the warmer months, and entailed a lengthy road trip over the Alaska Highway. For this winter move MAJ Clinton chose to have his personal vehicle shipped while he and his family travelled by commercial airline. He was cutting it close, working up until the day he was to fly south.

It was only after he’d left at the close of business that last day at the battalion that his brief case was found next to a coat rack in our office. Getting the briefcase back to him was problematic – He was spending the night before the flight at a motel out by the airport so his personal vehicle had already been shipped. Normally the briefcase would have been mailed to his next duty station, but it held several documents critical to the upcoming promotion board so I instructed the duty driver take it to MAJ Clinton at Anchorage International airport the next morning before his flight left.

Now remember those little devil/angel figures used in old cartoons to portray ethical dilemmas? They’d hover over each shoulder of a character to represent the mental debate of opposing courses of action. In this instance my little devil punched my little angel in the throat and to set out to wreak havoc.

It was one of the few times in my military career that skills gained as an art major proved to be very useful. Using an assortment of file folders, spray adhesive, heavy-duty aluminum foil, and an X-acto knife, I made an X-ray proof silhouette of an M1911A1 .45 pistol and sandwiched it between two generic DA forms that I put in the pocket affixed to the inside of the briefcase’s lid.

A seven year old stood a better chance than I did of a getting a good night’s rest, but eventually I snickered and giggled myself to sleep, only to be jarred awake by a deployment drill at 04:00 the next morning. Despite the barely contained chaos of a pre-embarkation drill, I managed to get the duty driver out the door with the briefcase in time for MAJ Clinton’s flight. Even then it was another day-and-a-half before I got any of the details…and even then the information wasn’t very specific, other than for some mysterious reason MAJ Clinton had to take a later flight out of Anchorage International after a very animated discussion with airport authorities.

I kept my mouth shut, but eventually I was confronted by one of the company commanders who pieced the story together as details started filtering in. For a moment I thought I was in deep trouble, but he left me with, ‘If I tried something like that as a lieutenant they’d have put me up against a wall and shot me’.

It was something I’d definitely not do now- this happened in a simpler time twenty years before 9/11 when I was still marking the books in my personal library with my Social Security Number, but I’d like to think it restored the karmic balance for a needlessly unpleasant person.

1980: My Secret Weapon

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It was one of the first service-inspired jokes I heard upon being commissioned an officer in the army:

Q: Who’s the most dangerous person on the battlefield?

A: A second lieutenant with a map.1

No matter the source of their commission, newly minted second lieutenants are universally dismayed at the lack of confidence in their abilities from the officers and NCO’s they work with. Common wisdom is that a new officer anticipating his first troop-leading assignment should have some sort of edge or qualification that would bring them a smidgen of credibility for their first couple weeks of duty. Hopefully by then they would have done well enough in their assignments to earn a little bit of respect. Such items of respect include (but aren’t limited to):

  • Ranger tab
  • Jump wings
  • Aviator/flight crew wings
  • West Point class ring

…none of which I had when I was assigned to my platoon at FT Richardson in the early summer of 1980. A previously undetected vision problem cut short flight school for me, and jump school would be a couple of years in the future. All I had going for me was the fact that I was four years older than my fellow lieutenants and had a good amount of life experience working in the oil field and serving a two-year bicycle penance in New England, neither of which earned me any badges. However I had an advantage that had more clout than all those other badges combined.

I had my Beautiful Saxon Princess.

Lori was that rarest of treasures – the hottie that didn’t realize she was a hottie2, and whenever she was with me life was better, and any job I had at the time got easier. Don’t get me wrong – it wasn’t like she was just arm-candy all the time – but once the connection was made between the two of us as a married couple, everything got a little easier. I even had senior officers and crusty old warrant officers3 come up and introduce themselves to me just so I in turn would introduce them to her.

 There were only two times that her beauty failed to work its magic. The air in the room got noticeably frosty when she met the new battalion executive officer’s wife at a hail and farewell in the autumn of 1981. The lady was used to being the prettiest face in the group and didn’t take it well when all heads turned as Lori walked into the room.

The other time was later at that same party when Major Martin tried to corner her. Martin was the battalion S-3 (operations officer) and was my new boss. Despite the fact that he was sporting the most obvious comb-over EVER he styled himself a ladies man and was making his way around the room chatting up all the ladies. He perked right up when spotted my Beautiful Saxon Princess, but even though he was all smooth moves and slick pick-up lines she paid him little attention.

Finally she turned to him and asked, “Are you one of the privates who works for my husband?”

You know the time-lapse photography they showed in 7h grade science class where you’d see a lengthy process happen in fast motion? My favorite was a flower, a rose that slowly wilted and shriveled up in just a matter of seconds. That shriveling reaction immediately appeared in Major Martin’s face (and no doubt other areas of his anatomy) with Lori’s remark, and I expected some verbal lash-back, but somehow the executive officer’s wife chose that very moment to walk by, and any snarky response the major may have had was lost as he abruptly turned and hurried after her, a subtle clue in a mystery that remained unsolved until the following summer when she left her husband and ran away with the major..

Lori continued to work her magic after we left the army and embarked on a roller-coaster career of freelance art in two and three dimensions. Most notable was the way sales at conventions and acquisition of new clients took off when I started taking Lori with me. We even had clueless professionals pursue her (and fail) like Major Martin did all those years ago. We only stopped working together when I couldn’t work at all, and she still helps me, only now it’s with wheelchairs and pajamas…

…and she’s still the hottie that doesn’t know she’s a hottie.3

———————————————————————————————————————————————————————————–

Notes:

  1. Later on I learned the proper response:
  1. Q: Who’s the second most dangerous person on the battlefield?
    1. A: The platoon sergeant standing behind him saying “That’s right LT”.
  • I’m still amazed that I am lucky enough to be with her. My sisters pass that off as me just responding to her innate maternal/homemaking inclination as (according to them) I have a face only a mother could love.
  • …including one crusty old aviator who even had the general spooked. When my first battalion commander uncharacteristically maxed my efficiency report my fellow “butter bars” grumbled that he did so because he was sweet on my Beautiful Saxon Princess.
  • In this age of Internet and Facebook I often come in contact with people I haven’t heard from in decades. Invariably the first thing they’ll say is “As I recall your wife was quite attractive”.
Image

2023: Epiphany

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“Epiphany” can be defined as a sudden manifestation or perception of the essential nature or meaning of something, or an intuitive grasp of reality through an event or experience that can be both simple and striking. Sometimes it is attributed to divine inspiration or a sudden insight of logical deduction – either way it usually results in a marked change of thinking or behavior.

My most memorable epiphany came about fifty years ago when I had a (take your pick):

  • Road to Damascus
  • Alma the Younger

..experience that changed my life. As a teenager I was not a particularly bad kid, but I wasn’t a particularly good kid either; between the ages of 17 and 20 I spent a lot of time on unsavory activities that I had hidden well. Unfortunately, my behavior juggling act began to break down, and by the end of May 1973 I was in a real mess.1

I still remember the day – I was leaning on the frame of the door that lead from my loft bedroom into the attic proper, my eyes locked in a “thousand yard stare” at some spot across the pink Fiberglas (T) insulation, when the thought flashed, “I am never going to crash and burn again,” in a manner strong enough to make me twitch a bit. I closed the attic door, laid down on my bunk, and fell asleep almost immediately…and when I woke up hours later, I was a different person. The benchmark for “normal” had changed in my life and when I left home the following autumn it was not just returning to college but to a new life.

Fifty years later I am at a similar crossroads. Between the effects of advanced ankylosing spondylitis, the aftereffects of several fractures, and a continued minuet with Mademoiselle Pandemic, I have been bedridden2 for more of the last two years than I want to admit…and it has changed my life. I have been able to do little other than watch television, and while that sort of life might be some people’s dream, it has been purgatory for me.

For example, part of the change for me in 1973 was a physical change – I lost forty pounds and got into the best condition/strength of my entire life3. Now I can’t stand for more than sixty seconds, and my physique is more like that of Jabba the Hutt than the paratrooper I once was. For the first six months or so I was so weak I could do little other than sleep, and there were many nights that I went to sleep wondering if I would be waking up the next morning. It’s only been since I’ve started getting (a little bit) better that I’ve had enough energy to grumble about my situation…and I don’t like what it is doing to me.

…and then fifty years after the first epiphany I had a second one.

I’ve always been goal driven. My kids, my Beautiful Saxon Princess, co-workers, and friends have told me all through my life that “I don’t have the work ethic you do”. I’ve kept records of what I’ve written, drawn, or made in my life  -mI guess to keep score with the cosmos or my own mortality. Unfortunately, between age and ailment I can no longer keep up the pace. I need to have reasonable expectations in what I try to do and patience with myself when I fall short…and as much as I love them, I need to limit the use of calendars, lists, and planning matrices that fan the flames of doubt by creating a fear of not being able to keep up as much as they help me organize. I also need to avoid hanging on to negative thoughts and seize what is good in my life, especially my Beautiful Saxon Princess.

If I do need to measure what I do, I should give myself some latitude. For example, at one time my goal was to add to this blog at least twice a week, but then that became once a week, then once a month, then every couple of months. I want to change that frequency but after battling the ‘Rona for a couple of years the journey back is difficult. Many of my chronologically earlier posts have been taken down, so I am going to rerun it all while filtering in the new stuff I write. There is a part of me that resists this course of action, but I need to do something to jump start my life and embrace a new normal just like I did in 1973.

Notes   

  1. None of which included out-and-out lying. I just got very good at employing half-truths and diverting attention.
  2. More properly “recliner-ridden”. I have a massive “Papa chair” in our bedroom right next to the queen-size bunk that my Beautiful Saxon Princess sleeps in.
  3. When we were dating in 1976, I would do pushups with my Beautiful Saxon Princess lying across my shoulders.
  4. …not to mention I turned seventy last May.

CCC*6: The Buzz Lightyear Syndrome

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(I’ve been hammering away at this post for twelve years hence the lack of reference to Facebook)

I feel like I am taking a test.”

He was both baffled and concerned. We’d gotten to be good Internet friends, but he was convinced of a hidden agenda while answering my questions. He was writing an article on the role-playing game illustrators of the Eighties and had become intrigued with “the guy who’s work was all over the place but not as well-known as the Larry Elmores and Keith Parkinsons”. We’ve gone on to continue our friendship, but in the beginning he was put off by the times I was less than forthcoming. The sad thing is that he was right. I was testing him to screen out BLS – otherwise known as the “Buzz Lightyear Syndrome”.

Americans are schizophrenic when it comes to celebrities. We made a point of writing the concept of royalty/nobility out the constitution, but we are more obsessed with entertainers, sports stars, and British nobility than any other group on the earth .At the same time, our collective schadenfreude meter pegs out when a celebrity has any kind of trouble and proves to be just as fallible as anyone else. There’s also a fairly short life-span to our interest1. It happens with actors, (when’s the last time you heard about Brendan Fraser in the news?) athletes, (ditto Brian Bosworth) and, sadly enough in my case, artists.

Ego was never part of the reason I got into this business, and both my Beautiful Saxon Princess and I have always been kind and accommodating when approached by fans. Evidently that is an anomaly, as I’ve been told horror stories involving professionals responding quite cruelly to their admirers, and early on we decided to go against the grain and be approachable to any and everyone. For the most part it has worked out well, and we’ve enjoyed meeting, working with, and teaching countless good people, but as time went on we noticed a common cycle of behavior among a small percentage of those approachees.

  1. Lengthy fan mail expressing admiration for my work.
  2. Efforts to establish as many common interests as possible.
  3. Stepped-up attention-bombing via frequent letters, calls, or messages.
  4. Personal visits and a monopoly on time together at conventions.
  5. Separate Contact with family and other friends

….and this is usually the point where unless I was careful, I’d get sucked in. By nature I am a social animal, and working alone in a studio has always been a challenge, so it’s nice to gain a friend with similar interests. Unfortunately, this is also when the relationship hits a tipping point and the new friend starts to:

  • Become overly familiar, often using family nicknames.
  • Introducing me as his “famous artist friend Dave Deitrick”.
  • Drop my name in social or business situations.
  • Make expensive/extensive demands including (but not limited to) free artwork.
  • Use my name to usurp relationships with clients or gain special privileges at conventions.
  • …and eventually the relationship is turned upside-down with the fan becoming dismissive or contemptuous.

That’s when the BLS comes into full function and the person in question disappears off the face of the earth. Oh, I might hear from them eventually2, but in the same way Woody was replaced by Buzz Lightyear as Andy’s favorite toy, I become a nonentity. That sudden change isn’t as painful as losing an old friend from decades in the past, but there’s an emotional toll on myself, my family, and often deep gaps in my personal collection of original art.

It doesn’t happen very often, especially now when we no longer attend conventions and I am retired, but I’ve dealt with the phenomenon enough times to spot a BLS event in the making… and while it’s not as devastating as losing an old friend or relative, it’s unpleasant enough for me to find way to avoid it in the first place, hence the checklist of red flags to watch for during initial meetings. I pay particular attention to how they address me – “Dave” is limited to family members or friends from high school, and the “Joe Cool” use of just my last name will get you the door unless we’ve made at least one night/equipment jump together or spent at least one afternoon door-contacting in New England.

If any of the aforementioned warning signs appear when meeting for the first time I will politely answer any immediate questions then ignore further contact. I hate the fact that I have to do this as it feels like I’m using the velvet rope hung by trendy nightclubs to limit entrance to the “beautiful people”. I also hate to miss out interacting with new people – Some of my best/longest friendships3 started with a fan contacting me, but I am easily distracted and I have to protect myself, and more important my family, from that narcissistic 1% that replaces their toys (er) friends every year.

_______________________________________________________________________

Notes

  1. The two or three year gap between Bananarama, Expose, Spice Girls and En Vogue was enough time for memories to dim to the point that each act was able to bill themselves as “the first all-female superstar vocal group”.
  • One guy surfaced after twelve years to demand that I remove his name from my website. Another one surfaces every ten years to complain because I wouldn’t sign over all rights to a favorite piece of art.
  • Not every short-lived friendship involves the BLE. Friendships develop under many different circumstances, but change is the very essence of life and all too often a transfer, promotion, graduation, or major development in my health puts an end to a relationship.

   *Creative Curmudgeon Commentary

Brews To Go

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One of my favorite duties as a platoon leader was “Right Arm Night” – the practice of an officer taking his platoon sergeant (his “right arm”) out for a beer late on a Friday afternoon after a particularly hard week at work. Despite the fact that I am a nondrinker I feel it is one of the best of the army’s traditions and is great for morale and cohesion. My own platoon sergeant SSG Kraft would nurse his beer while I’d knock back a Shirley Temple1 as we’d share ideas just as valuable as the more technical conversations we’d engage in during duty hours.

My platoon leader days are long past but I have friends that I relate to in much the same way I did with SSG Kraft. Some of these men are friends of long standing dating back to my sophomore year in high school, but I’ve also more recent but equally solid friendships with current neighbors, recent students, and fans of my work. The only drawback to this newer group is the manner in which they are scattered all over the country, which precludes a group activity anything like a “right arm night”.

For instance, Damen DeLeenherr lives in British Columbia. He’s a family man working in the healthcare industry, but in his free time he’s building a home for his family and plays Battletech. Battletech is a tabletop miniatures game involving giant fighting robots, the development of which I was heavily involved with in the late 1980’s. Damen commissioned a Battletech-themed piece of art a couple of years ago, and since that time we’ve gotten to be such good friends that I think of him as another nephew.

It was Damen’s birthday a week or so ago, and while I wanted to give him a birthday present I didn’t plan very well – anything I found on line would be almost a week in getting to him. The puzzle just got all that more challenging because as the day went by I realized that what I really wanted to do was buy Damen a beer. The resemblance wasn’t screamingly obvious at first but he brings to mind a new millennium SSG Kraft with tattoos and 21st century haircut, and a brew seemed more appropriate than the totally tacky cash option I’d finally settled on…but there wasn’t much I could do to get some suds to him.

Then I got to thinking.

 You can deliver send/receive flowers in the space of a single day – why can’t we do that with beer? Picture a network of brewmeisters scattered all over the globe but linked with telephone and Internet like FTD or Candygram. Place an order through a local dealer before noon and by the end of the day your buddy could be knocking back a cold one. The idea is still in its infancy but I did come up with some names for the business.

Names like:

  • UberBrews
  • PayPabst
  • BudHub

I just have to remember to include Shirley Temples as one of the options.

  1. A nonalcoholic drink comprised of Ginger ale and a splash of grenadine garnished with a maraschino cherry. Kraft always maintained that I had more class than most tee-totalers: “While they get soda pop you order a mixed drink!”

(Props to Marty Calderone for nudging me back in front of the keyboard. It’s been extremely difficult getting back into the creative saddle since my “second go-around” but Marty’s words of encouragement have helped immensely)

1970: Kites

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(First posted in 2017, this post drew more attention than anything else I’ve published here with a good part of the response coming from the Indian subcontinent)

David R. Deitrick's avatarDavid R. Deitrick, Designer

I loved being a Cub Scout. When I joined in the fall of 1962 membership in Cub Scouts was the studliest thing a nine year old boy could do, and while wearing the uniform added a certain savoir faire to my game, it was the activities in our weekly den meetings that were the real attraction. I liked learning field craft; I liked learning to whittle. I liked making things with papier mache and I liked making costumes and performing in skits. In short I liked – no, I loved the entire program

…except for kites.

I went through most of the Cub Scout rank and arrow-head requirements like a freight-train until I hit the requirement to make and fly a kite, at which point the aforementioned freight train became completely derailed. While the handbooks had nice diagrams of both traditional diamond and box kites accompanied by precise measurements and…

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Music: David Crosby

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Distance in Alaska has been described many different ways:

  • It’s not the end of the world but you can see it from here.
  • It’s as far as you can go without a passport.
  • It’s so far north I can see Russia from my front porch.

…and while she was mercilessly mocked for that third comment, Sarah Palin wasn’t all that off the mark. While stationed at FT Richardson, we experienced more than one incident of real-world jamming by our counterparts stationed in the Far Eastern Military district of the Soviet Union.

Distance to family and friends living in the Lower 48 often seemed insurmountable, and that distance cut in both directions. We were far away from extended family, but we were also at the end of a four thousand mile cultural pipeline that delayed the timely spread of music, books, television and movies, and while I was fascinated by the world of popular music my only readily available source of information was the local newspaper, national magazines, and liner notes on the covers of the albums themselves…which in some instances was pretty sparse.

After wasting a Sunday afternoon trying to figure out who was who on the Déjà Vu cover, I borrowed copies of Retrospective: The Best of Buffalo Springfield, and the seminal Crosby, Stills & Nash album, then by comparing/contrasting cover photos I was able to finally distinguish David Crosby from Stephen Stills from Graham Nash and Neil Young. In addition to satisfying my curiosity, the knowledge helped me with a minor budgetary dilemma as the four of them had all recently released solo albums, and the money I’d been given as graduation gifts was burning a hole in my pocket. I started with the first name in the group and picked up Crosby’s If I Could Only Remember My Name…and in the last fifty years I’ve never stopped playing it. Over the years I’ve jumped on every1 technological bandwagon to roll down the musical highway, moving from records to cassettes to CDs to MP3s, and I’ve had a copy of (and eventually wore out) that album in each one of those formats.

I played through it several times last week when I heard the news that Mr. Crosby passed. From what I’ve read, given the way our outlooks on life were so diametrically opposed2 we wouldn’t have made good buddies, but golly-bob-howdy could that man sing. Like most rock vocalists he was a tenor, but there was a quality, a richness, and resonance that is difficult to describe, though Canadian comic Mike Myers’ penchant for describing Barbara Streisand’s voice as being ‘like butter’ comes close

(I prefer the label ‘vocal umami’ 3 )

Seventies trends in recording only added to the effect of Crosby’s voice. Before Walkman technology pushed everyone into their personal ear-pod existence, engineers would use more imagination in the way music was laid down; the first track on If Only I Could Remember My Name being a good example. Rather than just a straightforward recording the sound moves around – the point of origin for the introductory acoustic guitar work on the song entitled Music is Love seemingly originates in your left ear, then moves to your right ear, before moving back and roosting in the middle of your head…an effect that (at the risk of sounding contradictory/ ironic) sounds even better when heard via earphones.

 But his work is much more than a collection of engineering tricks. Despite a chaotic life filled with tragedy and self-destructive behavior2 he produced five decades worth of wonderful music that was as important for its content as its quality. Subject matter ranged from politics to social issues and again while much of it is diametrically opposed to my own values and world view4 it always comes across as potent and well-thought out.

Because of that philosophical depth I’d like to think that he’d have been equally successful in any era but the times had as much to do with his success as his talent. Management by committee didn’t have quite the death grip in creative industries then, and in our New Millennium it’s much easier to get airtime if a song fits the 2:45 format and appeals to the lowest common denominator5.

…but for geezers like me there is also the vinyl dimension that holds my heart. The introduction off compact discs in the Eighties came close to putting a stake in the heart of the phonograph record format. Audiophiles have been stating in recent years that the hiss, hum, skip and pop adds a warmth and subtle dimension to music from records in the same way that soft oil glazes lent the gentle smoky sfumato effect to the Mona Lisa, but for me the appeal of vinyl has what I call the ‘musical time machine effect’.

Once it’s been created, a digital tune is moved around & stored electronically, and there is a point where you have to wonder if there’s anything left of the original music.6 The copy of Music is Love found on my hard-drive had its origin in a CD that I bought in the late nineties and exists as a series of 1s and 0s that transforms into music only with the addition of electricity, and I have to wonder if it’s the same song as the one I ripped from that disc thirty years ago. Sound on a vinyl record is produced when a needle moves along the undulating path or groove made from the artist actual singing and playing which means the music from a record is only one step away from the musician(s) themselves. It also means that music from lines inscribed on the surface of a record can even be heard (with some effort) if you spin the record by hand.

…and when I listen to that original vinyl record the sound is coming from the same source as the first time I heard the album in my attic loft bedroom in 1971. It’s almost like I am reaching back through time to something precious…and as I am closing in on my ‘three score and ten’ mile-marker, that is a comforting thought indeed.

Notes

  1. Except eight-track tapes.
  2. He was a heavy drug user and would often say that “If you say you remember the Sixties you weren’t there!”
  3. Umami: A Japanese culinary concept only recently adopted in the western world. A fifth savory ‘taste’ which in addition to sweet, salty, sour, and bitter can be found in foods.
  4. …including an uncomfortable fixation on threesomes in the bedroom.
  5. Songs on this album range from standard length to almost nine minutes long.
  6. Bringing to mind Dr. McCoy’s aversion to beaming between a planet’s surface and the USS Enterprise via transporter.