Early Musical Memories Part III

Musical memories: Part III

I wrote to my parents and told them about my roommate and his magical talent and that all I wanted for Christmas was a guitar like my roommate Ernie had.  Come Christmas morning a slender oblong boxed present was handed to me.  I was immediately suspicious and disheartened because I knew a real guitar couldn’t come in such a shallow little box.  Sure enough, when I opened the present I found a half-sized plastic toy guitar with mono-filament fishing line for strings.  It had a colorful twisted yarn lanyard as a "strap" and a small plastic crank that played a music box hidden inside the body.  I turned to my parents and said: “I’m sorry, I guess I opened one of Randy’s presents by mistake”.  Randy was my little brother, not much more than four at the time, and I assumed that anything this trivial had to be for a young child.  I was wrong.  I don't think my parents wanted to make any kind of major purchase until they saw that I was serious about this "guitar business".

I put that embarrassing toy in the back of the closet, never to be seen again and vowed that I would find a way to get a real guitar.  Over the ensuing school year I managed to convince my father that I was serious about the guitar and would do anything to obtain a real one.  I gathered my meager savings and  went down to Horner’s Music store in downtown Honolulu and bought my first real guitar.  I think it cost about $125 and I’m sure I had to do some extra yardwork to afford it.  But of all the things that I have possessed in my life, nothing brought me more joy than that first beautiful shiny Spanish guitar.  It had real wooden inlay and a seductive womanly shape.  When I put my nose in the sound hole and gave a sniff, it transported me to exotic lands of sandalwood and incense; it smelled of romance, adventure and intrigue.

At night, I would sit on my bed in my "summer P.J.s" after dinner and play and sing the folksongs that were all the rage at the time; songs by Peter Paul and Mary, Joan Baez, the Gaslight singers and others.  Soon I was lying on the bed with the guitar on top of me and often I would drift off to sleep in that position.  I've talked to other guitarists who also fell asleep with their guitars, when they were young and first unlocking its mysteries...  Years later my brother, who had the bedroom next to mine, told me he used to sit outside my door and listen.

Back at boarding school, as the folk music craze took over our campus, I became one of a fraternity of young enthusiastic players.  We would visit each other’s rooms learning new songs, chords, and finger picking techniques.  I became a master of ‘double thumbing’, 'travis picking' and other finger picking techniques.  Back at school one afternoon, hearing my roommate and me playing a duet of the haunting surf song "Pipeline", our headmaster came into our room for an appreciative listen.  Thank you, Mr. Jim Taylor, that meant a lot to us.

By my junior year, I was accomplished enough to be invited to join our school’s prestigious (in our eyes) folksinging trio the Somerset Three.  Somerset is a rural county in England.  Why this name was chosen for the group is known only to our  predecessors.  Bevo Biven, Gaylord Dillingham and I played for school sports rallies, impromptu assemblies and other engagements, often in consort with the school’s glee club and choir.  The big event of the season was the Thanksgiving gig at the Kona Steakhouse when many of the students, along with their parents, would gather for a long weekend.  Unfortunately our star, Bevo, who also played the 5-string banjo got deathly ill and couldn’t perform.  The father of my other "trio-mate" Mr. Ben Dillingham, chairman of the Hawaiian Republican Party and general all around big-wig, told Gaylord and I: "Boys...There is a saying in Show Biz...THE SHOW MUST GO ON!!!"   We had to quickly cobble together an impromptu set of tunes with some of the younger student folksingers that were in Kona that weekend and our efforts were predictably awful.  My music partners urged me to get a twelve string guitar to give us a bigger sound.  So I went back down to Horner’s Music Store in downtown Honolulu again and bought this huge twelve stringer.  The strings were way above the fret board and the only way I could play certain chords (F comes to mind) was to attach a capo to the fret board.  I adopted finger picks to beef up my sound and though it was a monster to play, it sure sounded good.  Other dorm mates used to come into my room to hear me play this big old twelve string guitar.  I loved it.  Me?  Play for you guys?  Well, OK...

The only other guitar-related event, of any note, to take place in boarding school was when my roommate and I (different roommate, different school year) got into a lively discussion on God and His sense of humor and His pension for forgiveness.  Billy Helbig had attended Catholic school before being sent off to "the rock", as we fondly called our school.  He was a very devout Catholic which meant he was scared shitless of an angry and vindictive God.  In an attempt to allay his fears about The Almighty and His punishments.  I opened up our dorm-room window and shouted into the night sky: "Hey God...fuck you!"  With a heart-stopping shriek, my roommate grabbed his pen knife and stuck it into my guitar.  I don’t remember what happened after that I was so horrified.  He had violated my precious baby!   So I had to laugh when he flopped down on his bed and promptly hit his head.
  

I got dumped from the trio because I was busy with the basketball team and I got involved with a new musical venture that recently arrived at our school; musical theater.  My former Somerset Three music mates regrouped as a duo.  They called themselves "The Maudlin Minstrels".  I think they were "maudlin" because they missed me...  Anyway a new teacher and his wife were huge Gilbert and Sullivan fans and convinced the headmaster that the school should put on "The Mikado".  My brother and I both got singing leads in the play and we had a ball.  The next year I was the pirate king in "The Pirates of Penzance".  This was the most fun I had in my five years in boarding school.  Forget you "Maudlin Minstrels"!  I'm singing on stage in a Kabuki outfit complete with makeup, Japanese Samurai wig and fumanchu fake mustache!  Being the shameless extrovert that I am, I was in heaven.  My junior year, when I was rehearsing my part as the pirate king, our headmaster, Mr. Taylor, came up to me and said:  "Mike, my boy, you don't look at all well.  I think you should go visit Mrs. Pelfrey in the infirmary."   It turns out that Mr. Taylor was my understudy and he desperately wanted my part (it turns out he was a closet thespian...).   I told him I was fine and I would be going stage as planned.  He was free to dress up like a pirate king and wait in the wings if he wanted...  The student body and many of the local islanders had a blast watching us make spectacles of ourselves up on stage in spot lights.  Personally, I found it quite thrilling to be performing in front of an audience.  I still do...

Many years later when I was playing music professionally, my partner, David Beamer, used to get so nervous before we played he couldn't eat for fear of tossing his cookies.  I never understood this "stage fright" affliction.  I guess I'm just shameless that way...  L&K  Mickey da Mayor

Early Musical Memories Part II

     I wrote yesterday about Hernando's Hideaway and how the Bossa Nova was to blame for Doris Day's romantic problems (sure hope things worked out for her...).  Other music in our bungalow by the sea was also being played.  We had an old spinet piano that sat on the back deck (called a lanai in Hawaii).  It was never tuned, to my knowledge, and was subject to the salty sea air.  (The ocean was about fifty feet from where the piano sat.)  On weekends, we would often barbecue on the lanai.  As us boys (brother Tom and I) kept the coals glowing with a little hand-held battery operated fan, our father, jolly after a couple of "hi-balls", would sit down at the piano and bang out his set of jazz chords.  Jazz is supposed to be improvisational, but our dad's playing always sounded the same.  I didn't care.  My dad was playing music; a new sound that was very different from pop radio and show tunes.

In the evenings, after dinner, my parents retired to the den.  There they would recline in their matching brown naugahyde barca-loungers; my mother, to read her romance novels and my father to listen to his jazz music.  He had a Roberts reel-to-reel stereo tape deck that he was hooked up to by headphones.  He would put on tapes of his favorite artist, Dave Brubeck.  Then he would pull out his pen and a legal pad and start writing.  He was grading each track and jotting down his impressions.  Us boys liked to spend time in the den, which was also my father's home office.  We would sneak in there when "the folks" weren't around and look at naked ladies in my dad's medical books; not too exciting.  More exciting was finding the file where my dad kept materials for the speeches he sometimes gave to the Honolulu medical community.  My dad always started with a few jokes and he kept a joke file.  The main items in this file were Playboy magazine party jokes.  You may remember (I know the guys do...) that on the back of the Playboy playmate of the month fold-out was a compilation of slightly naughty party jokes.  My dad had carefully pulled out each of these fold outs so that he had a reservoir of humorous material to break the ice with his audience.  Tom and I could care less about the jokes.  These naked women were far more enticing than the ones in the medical books.  I suspect our father enjoyed both sides of the fold-out too...
    

He would occasionally let me sit in the "Papa bear" recliner, put on the headphones and listen to "The Dave Brubeck Quartet".  Strange and wonderful new music was pouring into my ears through these headphones in "STEREO-PHONIC SOUND!"   Dad explained that one of the things that distinguished this jazz music was that Brubeck liked to dabble in unconventional time signatures.  "Time signatures?"  I thought a signature was signing your name.  My father, who had a rudimentary understanding of music theory, explained to me about 2/4, 3/4 and 4/4 time, which had to do with the rhythm of the song.  My first taste of this new type of rhythm was a song written in 5/4 time.  It was called "Take Five".  I immediately fell in love with the song and its beautiful saxophone melody.  The song was composed by the quartet's superb sax player, Paul Desmond, who once said he tried to make his horn sound like a dry martini.  As I listened, something seemed different about the song but I was too musically naive to put my finger on it.  "Mike, try counting out the beats and see if you can hear how many beats are in each measure".  So I started counting from the first down-beat of piano chord and base note.  Sure enough, it went "one two three four five, one two three four five".  It was composed so elegantly that a neophyte like me couldn't tell the rhythm was "kinky" unless I counted it out.  Whoa, music is taking on a whole new dimension.  Now I've got to be aware of the lyrics, the melody and the beat.

During this time, after several heartbreaking miscarriages, our stepmother had finally given birth to a son.  Now she and our father had their own child to raise.  The relationship between stepmother and stepsons had soured some by then and, in order to raise their new son without our bothersome presence and reminder of that other woman who had been our father's first wife, we were packed off to a boy's boarding school on the island of Hawaii.  Hawaii Preparatory Academy was a small school, grades seven through twelve, perched high on a wind-swept cow pasture, near the village of Waimea, the headquarters of Parker Ranch.  All of the area for miles around was cattle country and the ocean was ten miles away.  This was surely a bold new adventure for us; part excitement; part trepidation.
  

My roommate, that first eighth grade year, was a local boy from a little sugar cane plantation town called Hawi, about twenty-six miles away.  Ian's father was the assistant manager of the plantation and when I first had a weekend visit to the house, I marveled at the fact that sugar cane fields surrounded the house on three sides.  The Banks' people were originally from Edinburgh and the father spoke with a delightful Scottish accent.  Ernie (nickname) was a tall pale fellow.  He had a large troublesome nose that he was constantly blowing.  (he must have been allergic to sugar cane or cows...).  He kept his "snot rag", as he called it, under his pillow when we retired to the ringing of the "lights out" bell each night.  I was occasionally wakened to the sound of his nocturnal honking.
  

My attitude towards Ernie changed dramatically one day when he reached under his bed and pulled out a guitar case.  His guitar was a Harmony arch top acoustic jazz-style guitar.  Ernie played with a pick and his current favorite music was instrumentals by "The Ventures".  He started playing their current hit "Walk Don't Run", and I sat there on my bed, no doubt with my mouth agape, and fell in love; not with Ernie, although his stock shot up in my eyes seeing this wonderful new talent that he had, but with the idea of playing the guitar.  "If I could do that, I wouldn't want for anything more!", I thought to myself.  I asked him if he would teach me to play and I was soon learning how to play guitar chords.  The strings on this old arch top were about a half inch above the fret board and it took quite a bit of strength to play the chords cleanly, especially the bar chords.  After a few minutes my soft finger tips were hurting from the exertion but Ernie said not to worry; if I kept at it I would develop callouses and the pain would lessen.  I started learning about minor and major and seventh chords and how I could also play solo notes.  My newly calloused fingers began exploring the rest of the fretboard, finding out what was musical and what wasn't.  I had found a new passion and couldn't wait to write to my parents and tell them what I so desperately wanted for Christmas; my own guitar.  More on that, perhaps tomorrow.  Mickey da Mayor

Early memories of music, Part I

I know a dark secluded place
A place where no one knows your face
A glass of wine, a fast embrace
It’s called Hernando’s Hideaway, Ole!

Hernando’s Hideaway was the first record I ever remember hearing as a child.  It was from a Broadway show of the early fifties called "The Pajama Game" and it was our signal that the cocktail hour had officially started at our little bungalow by the sea in Kahala a sleepy little neighborhood of Honolulu; just past Diamond Head.  It was my mother’s theme song.  I picture her wearing brilliant red or black chinese pajamas, her black hair swept up with lacquered chop sticks in the back, a cigarette holder in one hand and a martini in the other, waiting to greet her and my father’s guests for the evening.

Much to our sorrow, her light was extinguished at an early age and within a year a bright new bulb, our stepmother Jean, had been plugged into the mom socket.  She brought a new regime to our sad little household of three including new music.  Annie Get Your Gun, Finian’s Rainbow and The King and I took the place of the mystical hideaway and the music of our beautiful, exotic mother, who was now referred to as ‘old mama’, faded away.

As I fell in love with my new mother, so too, did I fall in love with her music.  She and I sang about the lazy little still just beyond the hill with my papa sittin’ in the moonlight.  So count your sheep, mama’s singing you to sleep with a moonshine lullaby (Ethel Merman in "Annie Get Your Gun".  Thanks to a Mr. Finian, (Finian's Rainbow) I learned that the lord made Adam, the lord made Eve, he made them just a little bit naive, and that anything you can do, I can do better...anything you can do, I can do too.

Those old pre-vinyl monophonic records were played on a wooden hi-fidelity victrola with one speaker that sat on a low table between the dining and the living room.  Since stereo hadn’t been invented yet I didn’t know any better and those songs, echoing through our living room, reverberating off the polished stone floor, sounded like Broadway opening night to my ears.

When I was about ten or eleven I was given a small transistor radio.  It wasn’t much larger than a pack of smokes and it had a white twisted double plastic wire coming out of it that ended in a glass bead you stuck in one ear.  Every night that summer I lay in bed at night and listened to radio music. Catch a falling star and put it in your pocket.  Blame it on the Bossa Nova, the dance of love.  I’ve got a lucky penny and a mustard seed but a warm and tender love is all I need.  When this old world starts getting you down.  I climb way up to the top of the stairs...upon the roof.  A haunting, androgynous "Danke Schoen".   The popular songs of that summer were transmitted through that little glass ear piece directly into the  deepest recesses of my brain.

One day, a distant relative passing through town came to visit.  He was young and handsome and he sang and played the guitar.  That first night after dinner, he pulled out his guitar and started to sing and play.  "The fox went out on a windy night, he prayed to the moon to give him light, he had many a mile to go that night before he reached the town-o".  To hear someone, sitting in front of me, singing and playing the guitar filled me with such joy that I burst into laughter and couldn’t stop.  I was soon sent to bed for my behavior, but not before I heard the fox tell the geese and the ducks that "a couple of you are gonna grease my chin before I leave this town-o."

I don't listen to contemporary "music", if you can call it that.  It doesn't seem too musical to me.  Often profane lyrics over heavy percussion sampling other people's songs doesn't seem to musical to me.  I sometimes feel sad that today's kids will probably never know a dark secluded place called Hernando's Hideaway.  Ole.  Love &Kisses, Mickey da Mayor

Davey goes for the quadruple axle and an old friend shows up from the past

     A note to readers:  Our dear friend Dave just survived quadruple coronary bypass surgery and is currently in a lot of pain.  He's at the VA hospital in SF.  The lamprey, referenced below is in response to a former e-mail to my brother.  It also pertains to my blog entry "Heavy Lies the Crown on the Head of the King".   I should have titled it "A Surfeit of Lampreys"


Hey Timmy,

I agree that one lamprey for dinner is one too many...  I just googled lamprey and there was a video showing a huge sea lamprey that was found upstream.  Apparently as dams are being demolished one of the unintended consequences is the migration of the sea lamprey.  It kind of looks like the description of the slime eel, rendered so lyrically by our friend Martin Cruz-Smith in Polar Star (ha ha Timmy...italics again.  Did you ever find your secret style cache?)  Keep looking.  Such a writer as your esteemed self should have all the tools of the trade made available to you.  Anyway, the lamprey is kind of like an eel but it doesn't appear to have eyes.  It has a round mouth filled with sharp teeth arrayed in a radial pattern.  Perfect for a horror movie.  THRILL TO THE SIGHT OF THE GIANT MAN EATING NUKULER LAMPREY !!!!  I wonder if Roger Corman is still available to direct...

I just forwarded you an update on Dave's condition written by his Lady, Anna, yesterday at 5:22 PM.  I think the planned visit with Nicole for Friday is out as Dave himself is pretty much out-to-lunch for awhile.  As Anna keeps me updated I'll forward the news along to those who knew Dave.  He is at the VA hospital in SF.  His nine years in the navy have accorded him free medical and dental.  Can you imagine what the out-of-pocket for a quadruple by-pass surgery would be, plus the extended hospital stay?  Might even be as high as the $ 750,000 I incurred from Marin General!  Curiously, I got one last bill from them the other day.  It was for $ 75.  It was so nice of them to drop the last four zeros...
  

Thanks for your encouragement on the blog.  As an unsophisticate in the social media realm, I don't know how to go about promoting it.  I'm thinking maybe I wear a sandwich board with an ad for my blog on it.  I'll wander around in the parking lots of shopping malls.   "Titter and guffaw your way through the misadventures of our sad-sack hero, Mickey da Mayor of Happy Acres and, occasionally, his brother."  If anyone stops and asks, I'll hand them a card with my link on it...

I'm off this afternoon to get my cardio vest strapped on for 24 hours.  You'll recall I was supposed to do that the day after I came back from visiting you down in Pacific Grove.  Speaking of PG, Matt was in Whole Foods yesterday, as he is everyday, and he ran in to a guy named Eddie Green (not his real name).  Who apparently runs a successful restaurant in your neck of the woods.  I met Eddie when he was working with my contractor on securing the permit for the  cottage.  We became friendly and he eventually moved one of those small humpbacked trailers onto the horse pasture (we had four horses sharing the pasture then).  Because he was compensated so poorly by the (evil) contractor he worked for, he didn't have much money.  What money he had he mostly drank.

     He was a good cook who had formerly been employed in reputable dining establishments in SF.  He probably lost those jobs because of the drinking.  Anyway, in lieu of rent, Eddie became my PMS (personal man servant).  Every night, when he was staying in the trailer, he would cook dinner for me.  Because of his indigent circumstances, he knew where to score free food.  There was a food bank in Marin City and a church in Sausalito, and on certain days, at the most opportune hours, I would drive MB to these sources of sustenance and he would come back with a box or a bag of charity food; three day old bread; produce too long in the tooth to interest regular shoppers; boxes of dried soup mix; cans of government surplus cheese, etc.  I would supplement this by buying a nice cut of meat or fish from the market and Michael would whip up a toothsome meal for the two of us.

     Some nights when he came up to the house to perform his PMS duties he was already in the bag.  Amazingly, he could still cook while inebriated.  One night he brought our plates into the living room where I was sitting.  He handed me my plate then, as he was seating himself in the chair next to me he knocked his plate against the table and it ended up (upside-down, of course) on the floor.  "Oh God Eddie!  Look at that mess!  Go back to the kitchen and get something to clean that up with!"  But it was too late; he was already passed out in his chair.
  

We also used to get fresh fish from our next door neighbor Lee Parsons a very jolly and funny purveyor of men's haberdashery.  Lee used to go fishing with his buddy Ralfie and they always scored big, it seems.  (When Ralfie got married, Lee was the best man.  While they were standing there at the altar waiting for the tardy bride to show up, Lee leans over and whispers in Ralfie's ear:  "You know, Ralphie... she's not coming".  That Lee...what a kidder---I don't know if she ever did show up...)  For awhile, during one of our el Nino years, we were getting fish that were usually found off the shores, incredibly, of Central America.  Lee would give me part of his catch in exchange for fruits and veggies from my garden.

     One day he brought over three freshly caught Rock Cod and tossed them in the kitchen sink.  "Here you go, Stevens.  It doesn't get any fresher than this!"  He exclaimed and he was right.  When Eddie. turned on the hot water to clean and gut  them, they started flopping around in the sink.  Yeah, Lee, you're right; it doesn't get any fresher than that.  Boy did we have some great cuts of Salmon in those days too.  Free fresh fish, fruits and veggies from the garden and starches and other sundries from the food bank; and a chef to cook it for me.  Those were some halcyon days at Happy Acres.  In addition, I can't  forget the wonderful musical company of master guitar player Dave Weeks and piano wizard John Rosenberg, both of whom were also in residence here.  All this took place fifteen years ago as I was turning fifty.  Nicole was still my inamorata then, and we used to have wonderful parties.  Nicole and her Thelma-and-Louise buddy Pammie (now known more formally as the Duchess of Berserkely...) would attend and entertain with chick duets of doo wop songs.  Maestro Dave Weeks knew all the tunes.  We could never stump him.  It seems he could play and sing all the songs that we loved.
     

We threw me  a big fiftieth birthday party and Eddie Green performed the  'chef-ing' duties.  It was quite a to-do.  I rented tables and chairs from a party store and we had over seventy people situated in the back yard.  That was back when I had a lot of friends; before people really got to know me...  Anyway, as I mentioned, Eddie Green had quite a drinking problem.  I found that out the next morning when I heard a thump on the living room floor above me.  I got out of bed and went upstairs to find Eddie lying on the carpet with half a bottle of rot gut vodka beside him.  He had taken my truck and gone down the street to the local liquor store.  I told him to go down to his trailer and get sobered up.  Others were also encouraging him to sober up which he did.

     He went into a program in the city.  I've seen him a few times since then, some years ago, and he has done a splendid job of cleaning up his act and, as far as I can tell, is now a sober and virtuous human being.  As I mentioned, he had a solid background as a restaurant cook before becoming my contractor's step-n-fetch-it boy and falling to the temptation of John Barleycorn.  I hope he has a long successful career in the restaurant biz.  Timmy, if you do run in to him, tell him the mayor remembers him fondly.  Oh...and tell him to come up to Happy Acres and pick up his raggedy rusted swing chair that's sitting in the back yard.

 Love and kisses, Mickey da Mayor

                         50th b'day party in back yard

                       Davey installing his old PC on my computer desk

                      Eddie Green with two of my guitars, living room

         Chef Eddie, in his toque taking a break from b'day prep

Whale Watching in Monterey, Eventually

This is a story my brother wrote for a local paper where he lives in Pacific Grove just south of Monterey.  Near the 17 mile drive and the famed Pebble Beach Golf Course.  The seaside there is the loveliest and, when the swell is running

Otter Views – Check one off the list

Tom Stevens for CST

A brother’s visit dovetailed with perfect early November weather to send us whale-watching aboard the “Princess Monterey.” 

“I want to check it off my list,” he explained.

As checkoffs go, this one involved fewer logistics than some of Mike’s other adventures – swimming in the Nile, trekking in Nepal, river rafting through Costa Rican rain forest. All we had to do Tuesday was get to the Monterey Wharf by 9:30 a.m.

Given his 40-year Bay Area residency, I was surprised Mike hadn’t already been on a whale watch somewhere along this coast. “All this time, and this is your first one?” I chided. 

“Don’t forget that Waikiki canoe ride,” he said. “You lived in Hawaii all those years, and you never went until I came out that time.”

This was true. When you live and work in a tourist economy, it’s easy to look down upon activities pitched primarily to visitors. In Hawaii, the beach boy canoe ride is one of those. Like a fire knife luau dance or a mai-tai sunset cruise, it’s too “touristy” to appeal seriously to residents. 

I tried to explain this to Mike at the time, but he waved me off. “It’s on my bucket list,” he said, “and I don’t get out here very often. Come on. It’ll be fun.”

So we went down to the beach concession at the Royal Hawaiian and booked a canoe ride. After a short wait, we and two other malihinis were issued paddles and life vests. Two beach boys steadied the canoe as we heaved ourselves aboard. The brawny steersman sat astern; his sinewy partner in the bow. They gave us a brief paddling lesson, but it was soon obvious they would need little help from us. 

We reached the takeoff zone without incident. The stroker and the steersman dug into the turn, and the big boat swung smartly around. Emerald green waves humped up in the near distance. “Huki!” the steersman commanded. As we four in the middle plied our paddles furiously, the beach boys at either end pulled long and strong. 

Soon we felt the canoe accelerating as the wave caught us from behind. The stern rose, the nose tilted down, and we shot shoreward in a joyous blast of whitewater. The wave carried us all the way back into the shallows, where we turned around and headed out for the next one.

“That was a rush!” I laughed.

“I told you,” Mike said. 

By the time we boarded the “Princess Monterey,” Mike’s whale watch idea was looking equally auspicious. Rowdy, windy weather had cancelled the Monday afternoon cruise. But by Tuesday morning, the bay was as smooth as a bolt of blue silk. Long ground swells lifted beneath us as we cleared the breakwater, but there was nary a whitecap in sight.

Nary a whale, either. “That’s fine,” Mike said. “I’m happy just being out here on a day like this. Seeing a whale would be gravy.”

Without making any promises, the boat’s aquatic specialist had nonetheless seemed sanguine about our whale-spotting prospects. “We saw humpbacks feeding yesterday morning off Moss Landing,” she announced over the PA system. “So we’ll head back over there today.”

Her diesels throbbing, the Princess bore swiftly through the swells, sending blasts of spray outward and foamy waves caroming off the hull. Several dozen would-be whale watchers from India to Indiana lined the railings, our eyes searching the horizon, our legs planted in wide, bos’n-like stances. Call me Ishmael!

We remarked on passing sights: sea lions, sea otters, sea birds, jellyfish, a pod of Risso’s dolphins, a bobbing cluster of orange crab pot buoys. As the twin stacks of the Moss Landing power plant hove into view a mile ashore, the cry went up: “Flukes at one o’clock!”

And not just flukes. Many sets of flukes. Also baleen sheets, pectoral fins, dorsal fins, knobby heads, majestic rolling torsos, and great cathedral blasts of exhaled breath. The aquatic specialist surmised that a run of anchovies had drawn the humpbacks and a hyperactive throng of sea lions to this spot. 

Having only seen sea lions stacked up like sausages and bellowing from islets, buoys and breakwaters, I was totally unprepared for their feeding behavior. Racing along in dense packs, they shot through the ocean like torpedoes, at times porpoising into the air for extra speed. The churn they generated reminded me of the PG triathlon swim start.

At one point the Princess idled at dead slow, and the soundtrack of wild nature stilled all conversation aboard. Waves slapped, birds cried, whales boomed, sea lions splashed in synchronized squadrons. Frenzied fish fountained among them with the sound of a steady silver rain. 

  “I’ve never seen anything like this,” I said.

Mike just smiled.

     A couple of humpbacks in the middle of Monterey bay.  10/13

Heavy Lies the Crown on the Head of the King

     I've been watching a Showtime special on the Tudors.  It's a four season production of unserpassing extravagance.  There are ten episodes in each of the seasons.  We start with King Henry and his first marriage to Katherine of Aragon of the Spanish realm.  Alas the queen fails to give birth to a son and the king trumps up reasons for an annulment based on Leviticus from the bible.  (whosoever shall marry the wife of his brother has sinned in the eyes of God and shall not bear offspring).  The king is married to his brother's wife (he died offstage...) and though he has born offspring, that offspring was daughter Mary--not the male heir he so desperately wants.    Right from the start we are shown the king's main purpose and desire is to father a son and damn any other consequences.  Treaties are made and broken with France and Spain when the king divines that those kingdoms do not support his desires.  I'm starting the third season now and much hijinks have ensued, and will continue to ensue...  Ann Boleyn has already lost her head over her inability to produce a male heir.  Next up to bat, Lady Jane.  In the wings are the future Queens Mary and Elizabeth; both Henry's daughters.  Cardinal Woolsey and Sir Thomas Moore have already struck out.  On deck is Thomas Cromwell.  Although he has batted well in the past, he has not faced the king's best stuff.  The English catholic lumpen proletariat are pursuing armed rebellion against the crown for his suppression of their faith and his promoting of this new fangled "Anglican Church" of which Henry is the head.

I, of course, was aware of all the players from this era of England's history (1530's).  But I had forgotten who did what to whom and why.  It's been very elucidating.  I wouldn't want to be at the court of King Henry.  You could easily displease his majesty and incur most painful results.  (the rack was featured in one episode).  Since the former wives of the king have fared so poorly, one wonders why any fair young maiden would want to be the next queen; unless you were damn sure you could produce a male offspring that had a passing resemblance to his royal self.  Since we know from history that there are four more wives yet to come to bat, I fear things will not go swimmingly for Queen Jane in future episodes.  Ah well, at least she had the Rolling Stones write a song about her...
                    A very blurry picture of Lady Jane

                                      Likewise Queen Katherine, the first Mrs. Henry VIII

A family portrait of Henry with his three children, Edward, Mary and Elizabeth all of whom ascended the throne with varying degrees and success and longevity.  To the right of Henry is his fool, no idea what he's doing in the picture.  It may be some kind of photo-bomb...

                                              Ann Boleyn before head was detached.

       I have since seen a few more episodes and as I feared Queen Jane struck out.  She did give birth to a son so that was the good news.  We'll see where that goes in future episodes.  The bad news:  She couldn't deliver the goods on her own so the "surgeons" who were attending the birth had to do a Caesarian section.  They showed the "doc" pulling out his scalpel then they cut away, as did the doc.  Curiously, the lovely and good Lady Jane nee Queen, did not survive having her belly and womb cut open.  Plus... no anesthetics in those days!  Truly, life could be nasty brutish and short.  I googleized the kings and queens of Jolly Ould England.  Starting with William the Conqueror in 1066 no king for the next two hundred years even made it to 65 which would have qualified him for medicare.  There were various reasons given for the early demise of the royalty;  arrow to the back; killed in battle; starved to death (in the Tower of London, no doubt).  One royal dude contracted dysentery from consuming peaches and wine---go figure...   My favorite was the guy who died from "consuming a surfeit of lampreys".  Is a "surfeit of lampreys" like a nosegay of flowers?  A murder of crows?  An exultation of larks?  Leave it to Wikipedia to put the "oy" in royal...
  

  L&K,  Mickey da Mayor

Diamond Deb's First and Last Backpacking Adventure

        In 1974 I was living at Happy Acres with my girlfriend, Diamond Deb.  I was in my mid-twenties.  I was slim, strong and in very good shape from numerous strenuous outdoor activities.  Deb, on the other hand, although equally young, was not slim or particularly strong and engaged in zero outdoor activities.  She worked in a doctor's office and had the envious privilege of a two hour lunch break every day.  This was before the era of jazzercise or dancersize or any of the other aerobic workout activities that were about to become all the rage, especially among women.  For her lunch break, Debbie would come home from work (five minutes away) and lie on our waterbed and watch soap operas for two hours while eating her lunch.  I was playing music at night for a living and had my days free to play volleyball doubles at the College of Marin with my buddies or run the local trails of Mount Tamalpais near our house.  I was usually outside, when Deb came home for lunch, doing something manly and physical like the aforementioned, or collecting all the junk that lay all about this former horse pasture of three+ acres, and tossing it in the dumpster.  My plan was to clean the place up so I could board horses here again for a little extra dough.

        My music partner and I were just another Steak & Lobster guitar and voice duet.  My father's admonition that music was a good avocation was never far from my thoughts.  Although we garnered a modest following at our various venues, I had no presumption of making music a career.  I mean; what was the next step up the ladder for us?  Polka dot jump suits in a side lounge in Reno?  I don't think so...
        Debbie always demurred when I suggested some kind of healthful outdoor activity like going for a hike on the trails all around our homestead.  That Spring I prepared to make my annual backpacking
sojourn to Yosemite.  "Diamond Deb", says I, "I'm getting ready for my annual trek to Yosemite.  I'll only be gone for four days and tell Dave (my musical partner in crime) I'll see him in Fresno for our gig at the Refectory Steakhouse."  "Wait!", protested the Diamond D, "you're not even asking me if I want to go with you?  Ever occur to you that I might like to go backpacking too?"  "Listen Deb", I replied, "Backpacking requires a certain amount of...I dunno...being in shape!  Since we've been together I haven't seen you doing anything remotely physical in nature."  "Listen, you jerk! (she actually used a somewhat stronger epithet ending in 'hole' ", the Diamond Diva retorted, "I'm younger than you are and I swam in high school!  Just for you knowledge Mr. Smartee Pants, I almost made the swim team!"

        I tried to talk her out of it, but she employed the nuclear option.  "If you loved me, like you say you do, you'd let come with you", simpered DD.  And with that, the matter had been settled.  She procured various camping and backpacking gear from similarly doubtful friends and we loaded up her VW camper.  Our weekly three night gig was in the bay area and after the last gig was finished, Deb and I  headed out to Yosemite at 2:00 AM (the gig finished at 1:00 AM, followed by a couple of pops at the bar before closing time) and drove all night.  I had found what looked like a nice little hike with the trailhead at Wawona at the southern entrance to the park.  It wasn't overly long and the loop included a nice little alpine lake at each night's stopping point.  My little tourist map of Yosemite, unfortunately, did not include any topographical lines, connoting altitude change.

        The next morning, though a bit red-eyed from no sleep, we eagerly embarked on our first camping adventure as a couple.  "See Mike, doing stuff like this is what will bond us together.  To make love last, you have to water the garden.  It says so in my relationship book".  With that positive and pleasant thought hanging in the air between us we headed up the trail.  And I do mean up.  Fairly shortly into our hike, Diamond Deb let out an anguished cry, threw off her backpack and flopped down on top of it.  "My God!  I'm having a heart attack!"  She cried.  "Feel my heart!  It's beating at, like, two hundred beats a minute!"  As she lay there on her pack with her chest heaving at, like, two hundred beats a minute, I realized that having never done any sort of aerobic exercise, she had never experienced a significant elevation in heart rate.

      "Deb, just take it easy and breathe.  Your heart is just doing what it's supposed to be doing under the circumstances.  You're not feeling any searing pain and crushing weight on your chest are you?", said I.  "Well, no, not yet.  But at this rate my heart's bound to give out soon.  I can't sustain this level of breathing and heart rate for long."  "Just rest and you're breathing and heart rate will start to slow down.  You're just not used to this level of exertion", I tried to reassure her.  "Why didn't you tell me we were going to be scaling a damn mountain!" she retorted between sobbing breaths.  "I'm sorry, Hon, there was no elevation change noted on the map; just these little lines connecting these three lakes.  I'll tell you what", said I, "It's probably only a couple of miles to our campsite.  I'm feeling fine so I'll carry your backpack for you and that will make your hike a lot easier."

        As we slowly ascended up the trail, we began to see snow all around us and it eventually covered the trail as well.  Things were warm and sunny down at Wawona, where we started, but I should have factored in the fact that it was April...  As we proceeded, the trail disappeared and we had only the opening between the pine trees to guide us.  That did not help alert us to streams beneath our feet that we would have stepped over if we had seen them.  Deb was feeling better, now that her eminent heart attack had been averted, and offered to take up her backpack again.  Soon after strapping up again, she had her first plunge through the snow to one of said streams.  "Shit!  I just broke through the snow and stepped into ice water!  My feet are sopping.  Oh, God!  Why did I ever consent to go on this stupid trip with you!"  "Well, if you'll remember, it was you who asked to come; I tried to discourage you."  "Oh shut up.  What's that up ahead.  Is that a tree trunk over a river?  Are we supposed to cross over on that thing?  Look how fast that icy water is moving.  Is there another way around?  I've got a bad feeling about this."
     "That little brook is called the Chilnwalna and it leads to the Chilnwalna Falls.  It's probably really pumping with all this snowmelt.  Maybe we'll be able to see it from our campsite which, I'm sure, is just around the bend up there, on the other side of that swiftly moving stream of icy water that's heading for the falls."  "Shut up!  I know what you're trying to do.  Why are you trying to scare me?  I'm already freaked out enough about trying to make it across that log."  In my most soothing voice I tried to reassure her about the log crossing.  "Listen, Hon, I'll go first.  Follow my foot steps.  Put your arms out for balance and look straight ahead.  Just walk normally, but carefully.  Think how good you'll feel when you get to the other side!  You only have to cross about eight feet of stream."

        I started across with Diamond Deb close behind me.  I was about three feet from the end of the tree trunk bridge when I heard a splash behind me.  Turning around, I saw a pair of hiking boots, sticking up in the air; midstream; heading merrily toward the Chilnwalna Falls.  In a moment Debbie had managed to right herself.  As soon as her very cold and wet head broke the surface she started screaming hysterically.  Between shrieks, and many epithets, all of them aimed at me, she managed to slog her way to snowy river bank where I was able to help her clamber up and back on the trail.  I was once again handed her pack and told what I could do with it.  After a short interval we came to a lovely alpine lake... surrounded by snow.  There was one patch that had been mostly in the sun and it was relatively dry.  That was where we made camp.

        Debbie immediately ordered our camp instructions.  Pitch the tent, gather firewood and start a huge bonfire, cook dinner and set out all our wet things to dry.  She was, understandably, too pooped to do anything but lie there and shiver, having run clean out of adrenaline.  I did as I was bid and we soon had a roaring fire going.  We propped our wet clothes on sticks near the fire.  My beloved Purvetta-Cortina hiking boots were sopping and icy cold.  If I was to have any comfort for tomorrow's hike I had to get those babies warmed up in a hurry.  We lay there near the fire smoking a joint and enjoying a bit of well earned grog while we watched our clothes steaming in the firelight, our bellies full of freeze dried din-din.  Suddenly Debbie let out a shriek and pointed to my boots.  The heat of the fire had caused a huge goose egg to swell up out of the vibra sole of my left boot.  I quickly jumped up and grabbed it and plunged it into the snow.  Eventually the swelling died down but those boots never quite fit the same again.

        The next year I did a forty mile hike along the John Muir trail heading south from Tuolomne Meadows.  Diamond Deb, the gal with ice water in her veins, didn't ask to join me.  As I was leaving I thought I heard her mutter something about being eaten by a bear...

                         Happy trails, campers!  Mickey da Mayor of Happy Acres