Dec 16 (08.12.15.odt) I copy all of this stuff so you do not have to save The difference between a person (feeling that he or she is) having a life whose overall theme seems a pleasant one, & one that seems unpleasant, lies in one's accumulated body of images, sensations, & emotional, spiritual, mental, and physical experiences' ability to develop 'wise' decision-makings. Broken homes appear to yield a larger percentage of broken-spirited people than do together homes; although I am aware of hundreds of images of together homes people heading into negative-resulting territories, often dragging their offspring along with them to a life that any sane, decent intellect could perceive as not going in the best of directions. By best, I mean a lifestyle & life-attitude that seeks, as a consciously-pursued philosophy, friendlier outcomes for all involved. Exceptions to the rule from out of broken homes are not rare. This basket-case-itis business, now permeating the majority, comes about from mostly negatively-charged emotional states-of-being; created in day by day, hour-by-hour exposures to misbehaviors among media, themselves, parents, relatives, schoolmates, etc. By misbehaviors, I mean: Activities that don't result in 'friendly' responses or outcomes. Add human-friendly here, and humane, to this exercise in fathoming the depths of my possible insight or presumptions-of- 'enlight- enment'. Add in the mention of grace, as an exemplary state-of-being, thinking, feeling, and believing mirroring natural processes, not unlike the values observed in the philosophical approach of native indigenous peoples of the past who 'respected' their domain with a reverence comparable to how I perceive this grace business to be: As an ambient state that exists in nature and that sure feels like it swells my 'heart' with that sense of a pleasantness I wrote of earlier; that I should think is far more desirable than the alternative. Wouldn't you agree? ¶ While living remote, alone, frugally, and simply in my rural ambient reverie, I often try to ignore what I sense to be the ever-sorrier states-of-being, thinking, and acting as portrayed by our media into almost every home in the land. Radio & son keep me abreast. As hard as I try to ignore those aforementioned ever-sorrier states; as hard as I try to avoid overly-dwelling upon such mental-states-of-negativism as they represent, nonetheless, they haunt me and taunt my awake time on a regular basis. ¶ Far more desirable to and for my way of operations, would be for me to be applying what intelligence and common sense that I actually may have left, into the more positively-oriented of progressive, constructive, spirit-food-acquisition type thinkings and actings. So?: Why do I bemoan, badmouth, bitch, and feel complaint so much? I've often pondered this (seeming) inability-to-ignore that festers within my thinker's trillions-of-teenybits. Lately, I seem to have settled the matter—partially, anyway—by the 'answer' that I currently am 'telling' myself: That, as I am a sensitive of one sort or another, I am experiencing, on a very 'deep' sensual level, the cumulative hurt, pain, and sufferings of all of our billions of us humans, and all life. Recognizing this 'collective', primarily extra-sensory feeling, eases the sense of painful sympathetic resonance within whatever frequency or wavelength these thoughts propagate themselves my way. It's a grieving sorrow for all of us to have to bear up under and still work toward betterment in whatever way each of us, as individuals, find most comfortable, compatible--and pleasurable, if at all possible. Agree? Okay then. Now that we've got THAT straight: What else's important?
I ben capt'n & crew, knew all what to do, had the tools, played the fools, for a folly, la-la-la. Slipped and slided, peeked and hided my way through foamy muck and thousand-fold waves; splashed and sloshed, and splooshed my way toward the shore. My 'hook' (anchor) found a grip in the 12 feet thick mud of the bottom there, about 8 feet under the surface. Shore beckoned, and waterfront reckoned with all sorts of mysteries & intrigues; both imaginable and unknown. And my friends there always welcomed me as one of their own, and we partied, making much musical throbbing in the process. And if all else failed, at least my post office box contents might spice up the espresso at the cafe next door. There might be a female or two worth looking at, maybe, but I know that none of them would agree to live like I do. Life based from a working boat as home base, coats one such as me (I was then) in the salt-slimed methane odor of the mud along shore; in much the same way as the fishermen get so saturated in fish scales & guts & slime that after many showers, the odor still clings. Scratched up, scraped, bruised & stank y from my perennial efforts in waters, mud, reed-marshes, and sands of marine salvage along the 1000 miles of inland shores of the S F bay region; so, I didn't do much skirt-chasing--at least, not very actively, anyway. 95% of the care-givers during my upbringing had been female, & (I thought) overly strict, and then, at times, overly-indulgent and patronizing, this inconsistency spoiling me rotten, leaving me rather skeptical about females-in-general, and skittish when finding myself getting too close. So, water rat that I'd become: I boated my boat & salvaged my salvage & kept to myself a lot during those first few years of living & breathing the being & doing of a waterborne human salvage machine; while enduring the emotional distress over the divorce deal; with all the poor self image factors such a situation, throws in for good measure. A couple years later, I was again surfacing toward more positive pursuits. Such is the really-astounding and astonishing amount of inborn resilience of my (&our) inheritance.
(new subject) Throughout the whole of my late teens & young adulthood, I kept up regular music-making with the many other musical-performance-inclined whom I had known from my 10 yrs. into this being-a-musician thing. Going & confronting possible other bands, bandmates, or bar jobs was never my strong suit. I was a wild-eyed rock and roll ignorantly-egomaniacal imitator, singer-while-playing 'covers' of tunes popular in the mid-50s to mid-60s, shy about going & facing the music of trying to sell a job—or myself. What kept me employed was my clear correct toned singing voice that somehow managed to recollect on demand any number of dozens & dozens of songs' music, their word progressions, & solos, while dancing rountines in a white shirt, tie, shiny shoes, and 'monkey' suitcoat of many colors. Our band leader had 5 different sets of suit-coats: Fire engine red, gold la-may, blue, white, and a paisley green that shimmered in the stage lights. In the picture that serves as the back cover of this bound collection, I am wearing the gold la-may one. The oft-referred-to hated Farfisa electronic organ (of Joe's) is what I am playing. Joe Thompson, (the guy behind me) who had encouraged me to come help him finish off this gig, down in the bowels of S.F.'s tenderloin district, he'd had contracted (Musicians' Union required signed contracts between band & bar owner) with his soon-to-be-former band-mates, & who, subsequent to this photograph, kept me employed for over the next approximate four years. Taken, shortly after I had turned 21 years old(Aug '61) & could finally earn more than the 10 or 20 bucks that teen dance jobs provided. When I finally made 21, I joined the Musicians Union so I could get union wages of $31.50--I think it was then--when I started that bar band era of my life. Because the contracts paperwork didn't seem that difficult to me, I was 'elected' by Joe and sweet voiced drummer, Larry, to be the union's designated 'leader', who was responsible for delivering the completed contracts between band & bar owner to the union's office by early evening before the gig at the latest. For this, I was paid an extra $3-per-night. It was during this time that I first met Joe Tate.
Self-awareness issues of early 1965—divorce proceedings instituted by wife & inlaws--coinciding with the drummer's girlfriend getting pregnant forced him to quit and go get a real (day) job—and me getting dumped by my wife and had bought a boat!?!? pretty much killed that lucrative band set up and left my musical involvement(s) at some loose ends, with the gigs farther and farther apart. Hell: I had a boat now and was merging to a new life off of the land. Even so, I had more than a dozen gigs that year, after the Joe Thompson Trio broke up. And next year was one 6-weeks' worth of 6 night-per-week keyboard job that qualified me to collect 39 weeks' worth of state jobless checks over the next year &½. Then, there was a whole summer of weekend gigs at a tiny English pub style bar at #1 Main street in Tiburon; the Sunday gig running from 1PM to 10, in the summer of '66, (at 26): as a duo: me on hated Farfisa & a drummer friend.
Joe Tate was the rhythm guitar player in an eastbay (SF) band named Red Shepherd & the Flock when I first became aware of him in the early-60s. We, our band, my band Joe Thompson Trio, had gotten into one of the better venues over in the (northern) east bay, playing for the drinking dancing hordes of enthusiastic attendees 9 PM to 1:30 AM on a 2 week contract for Friday &Sat. nights. This was renewed for a month, with the added job across the street in the after-hours joint from 2am to 6. We usually went to breakfast after our gigs before heading home. Somehow the grapevine informed us about, & made us curious to go see this band on our way home that this bar had them wailing away in, starting at 6 am (!?!) opening time until 10:30 am. Red & his flock kept us awake & jumping, & even game to sit in with the band & so forth. One thing leads to another & we exchange gigs with Joe's band for a week or 2, here & there around the scene, & is where my acquaintanceship with Joe began. ¶ Fast forward to 1968, after Joe's band--renamed Salvation--with a recording contract & lots of free equipment to wail away on--got their first album done & were into #2 when I visited their hideaway studio in the Simi Valley area northeast (?) of L.A. proper in late 1967, just before their manager absconded with their $50,000.00 front money. Well, when he split, the goodies had to be returned & the band broke up; & then Joe had been hauled back to Kansas by his ex-wife for arrears child support & thrown in the hoosgow for a month til his girlfriend bailed him out & set him back up in CA with a lot of love. By & by, Joe somehow ends up buying (for one dollar!) a potential giagantic headache, from the city fathers' point of view, but free & clear as far as Joe & all the rest of us who came to 'party' at his place were concerned. The prize was an ancient wood 80 by 40 ft. by 9 ft. deep gold dredge barge from somewhere up the inland rivers, that had large square steel tanks strapped all around the original barge. With 4 stories of increasingly smaller-dimensioned houses, one atop the other, squeezed in the space between the 4 gigantic wooden timbers that made the 60 feet tall “A”frame quadrapod for the 100 feet long, 18 inch dia. steel pipe derrick-boom's upper guywire backstays, with the pilot house up on the 4th floor—if you count the full headroom basement bilges then it would be up on the 5th floor. Awesome long steel boom sticking out & up at a 30 degree angle, suspended on its thick guywire backstay support cables. It was a gass to walk all the way out there to just sit for a spell at some 40 feet above the water, & eyeball everything below. For $1 Joe bought this place from the old nasty longtime Napa St. boatyard & pier owner who'd floated this eyesore of an elderly hulk into the picture windows of the Sausalito Cruising Club & sunk it there, a hundred feet off, just to enrage the mayor and city council members—who were members of the cruising club--who'd told him he couldn't park that thing—or the drydocks—anywhere near the Sausalito city limits & he got mad & went & floated & towed the dredge, (and then: the four monstrously-humungous old ships' drydocks hulks) down from their upriver graves; parked & sunk them in the shallow waters right in front of all of his detractors--in their face. And then, sold it to Joe for a dollar just before he died. ¶(drydocks) No clear title (plus: they were immovable) allowed unrestricted use of them any old how or way we so pleased. We had many orgies & parties, there, & fixed a lot of small boats on the drydocks decks, which never flooded in high tides or storm surges because the four 100 feet square thick, 16 feet deep wooden barges (with 80 feet high hollow towers on both sides of the main deck)--sunk in only 8 feet (average) of water—almost an acre of free space 300 yards from the nearest shore: Whatta dream. & the collective salvage efforts of the dozens of us wannabe marine salvage types must have yielded thousands of dollars; if you don't count our labors, which we didn't. The unusually gigantic thick pump housings down in the bilges were built of brass & bronze, & sometimes took weeks to get taken apart by those brave enough to brave this dangerous low-tide-only work at a slippery sea level, wielding large heavy tools. Marine transients & drug smugglers occasionally took refuge there. I used it as a way station or hideout (from bad weather conditions) in addition to the time I spent in their innards worrying some brass valve off of its steel pipes, or piece of 880 volt copper cable loose from its encasement in unyielding steel conduits. Or hanging from a bosun's chair ½ way down off the towers' corners, prying loose (& saving) the hundreds of 2 inch long copper nails tacking around the edges of the 4 by 8 feet, 1/8th inch thick lead sheeting leadpatch waterproofing the corner joints of the tower walls. I got almost a ton of lead off those tower walls' corners!!
There are a couple of representative chapters about stuff I or the drydocks did to each other in the “BOATLIFE” memoir manuscript I wrote in 1998.
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