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| Mike, Joe & Steve's Texallent Adventure This
page recounts the trip to Dallas Texas made by myself, Mike
and Steve. My own recollections are in black, while
Steve's are in blue. Chapter
One:
Instar is a computer software that I use as a management system for my insurance agency. I belong to a national users group that meets to share ideas on how to use the software efficiently. In order to make their annual conventions less, well, shall we say totally boring and “insurance-ish” and much more fun, Instar discovered there are many folks like me who also have a passion for music along with their ‘real job’ of purchasing groceries and paying mortgages and college tuitions. Thus, the Instar Allstars were born and asked to perform at the annual convention. I landed the dubious honor of becoming this group’s musical director. THIS year, I was allowed to bring some ringers from the VALVES to fill out the group. Mike & Joe were willing, and our journey of epic proportions began! Anyway, in order to get to Dallas, we had to take a plane. This trip included a number of firsts for me, including my first flight. Was I nervous? Well, yes, but not so much about actually flying. 7 years of Microsoft Flight Simulator had given me a pretty good idea of what it would be like on a plane, and in fact I felt reasonably confident that if the flight crew became incapacitated somehow, I would be able to swoop in and land the plane myself if necessary. My nervousness came from not knowing whether they were going to look at my fat ass at the airport and try to make me buy another seat. However, these fears were groundless in the end, because as I discovered later in the giant full length mirror facing the shower at the hotel, I have no ass at all. I am sans-ass. Assless chaps would be pointless on me. My once proud ass has been almost entirely absorbed by my back and thighs, so luckily I fit into the seats quite well. This was a good thing too because the flight was 4 hours long. So, what did I think of my first flight? Well, before we could even get on the plane, we had to listen to Mike bitching and moaning endlessly about why we shouldn't have to take our shoes off and how idiotic it is to have to do any security and damn it all how the damn Government is always tryin to screw ya. Once on the plane,I was disappointed not to find some super hot stewardess chicks (I dig uniforms) in fact the stewardess in our section was actually a somewhat roly poly guy who didn't seem to enjoy his job much at all. I enjoyed the flight for the most part. I have never had a fear of heights, and Steve and Mike were gracious enough to let me have the window seat, so I spent the entire flight more or less glued to the window being amazed at how humanity manages to build crap everywhere imaginable. Unfortunately, about 2 hours in, two things happened that sort of sucked, one was I got a headache, and the other was that we flew into a cloud bank. This lasted the rest of the flight, and was accompanied by a lot of turbulence which made the ride feel strangely as if we were driving in a bus on a bumpy road. I learned that Joe had never flown before. This had nothing to do with his obvious deficiency in wing to body ratio, or his being tossed repeatedly from the nest at an early age. Joe was excited to fly, and images of “hot stewardesses” danced in his head, looking much like the Dallas Cowgirl Cheerleader Calendar providing lap dances to all the passengers in coach. He also had visions of being driven through the airport concourses in one of those nifty little electric golf carts, going beep-beep-beep-beep as the sea of weary tourists parted before him. Mike continued to curse the government to anyone who would listen, and rail against security procedures. I had to forcibly restrain Mike from waving his box cutter in front of the guards, as he screamed “This whole security thing is bullshit from the extreme conservative beaurocracy of the establishment…..” at which point my brains became pudding and I mentally shut out his ranting tirade as I helped him put his shoes back on. Fortunately for everyone, his earrings did not set off the metal detectors. I like to play a mental game to pass the time while sitting at the gate at airports. I candidly eye the throng of waiting passengers, wondering if we were to accidentally crash the plane in the Andes and survive, which ones of the crowd would rise to the top and be the leaders, as well as who would be the most likely whiners. I also figure out if we were stranded long enough, which passengers we could eat. I noticed many of the passengers eyeing us in much the same way. There was a fellow slightly resembling Anthony Hopkins, who drooled somewhat impolitely at Joe. We cleared security and took our seats on the plane. Actually, the seats were already THERE for us, including one that actually fit Joe! He’d wanted a window seat for his first flight, so Mike and I, being the seasoned travelers we are, opted for the aisle and middle respectively. We dared not let on to Joe that we knew we’d be closer to the ‘hot stewardi’ contingent. Well, the hot stewardi never materialized. “Bastards!” seethed Joe under his breath as he began to rip his ticket stub into little pieces. As the plane reached its cruising altitude, we quickly became enveloped in thick clouds. Joe’s long anticipated view of the earth below – it’s ant- like splendor laid out like creation before him – the view he’d waited over forty years to view – the wonder of the marvel of flight and it’s spectacular vistas – was quickly dashed to pieces as the panorama of earth was obscured by the heavy clouds. “Bastards!” Joe said aloud again. The unhot stewardess brought an extra large oxygen mask for Mike, and approved Joe as an emergency flotation device. I continued to press the button with the picture of the little guy with the tray on the overhead control thingie, and when the unhot stewardess kept asking what I wanted, replied “Oh I’m sorry again. I thought it was the reading light!” Fool with the Valves? Not a chance, baby…. Chapter
2 We landed in Dallas at about 10:30 AM TX time and it was POURING rain. We somehow managed to land right into the worst rain they had had there in something like 20 years. I should mention at this point that I had packed my camera in my checked luggage, so I was unable to get pictures of any of this. I also learned that, while having a nice digital SLR is great when you want to take beautiful portraits of semi naked, half naked and fully naked women, they suck to take on a trip. More about that later. We hitched a cab from the airport and had the privilege of sharing the ride with a woman who's son's murderer's trial had just ended. She was a nice, friendly woman, but a bit of a chatterbox and we were all a bit amazed at her ability to talk almost continuously for the entire 25 minutes the ride in took. It was during that trip that I learned one of the great truths about Dallas, it's really big, and there's not a hell of a lot really in it. It's a huge city in terms of area, but it's extremely spread out. So, even though we landed at the primary Dallas airport, at no time during the ride to the hotel did you actually SEE any of downtown Dallas. After arriving at the hotel, I discovered that you can't see it from the hotel either, because the hotel was about 20 minutes from downtown. We grabbed our
gear from the luggage-go-round and limped to the curb to hail
a cab. The cab hadn’t exactly been hailed, but had been
rained on severely earlier in the day. Dallas was experiencing
some of the most torrential downpours since Stevie Ray Vaughn
penned ‘Texas Flood’. Our cab-mate turned out to
be the wife of Willie Nelson’s head of security, who proceeded
to babble on about her son’s recent murder trial, (the
son was the victim, not the murderer we soon found out), life
in Kansas, and the bizarre turn of events that was leading her
to Texas. The cabbie kept prattling into his cabbie-o-microphone
in a foreign language that praised Allah often. Ahhhhh, conversation
with strangers doesn’t get any better than that! Yes
Texas is really really big, and flat. Although it seemed much
like any big city, there were a lot more modern glass and chrome
monolithic structures than I would have thought. I guess we
all expected John Wayne to greet us at the airport on a horse.
Or perhaps Curly atop an oil gusher nyuk-nyuking “I’m
a geezer! I’m an unsuccessful cork!” For the record, I not only didn't get any porn, but I was afraid to spend much of anything. I think I got a total of 2 cans of Sierra Mist out of the mini bar for some ridiculous price, but a cab to the store would have cost even more. |
|
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This
was my room. I was able to get a room to myself while Steve
and Mike shared one, mostly because I threatened to snore loudly
and be as obnoxious as much as possible. The hotel was much
larger than I was expecting. In my years traveling around and
playing, I've mostly stayed at hotels that had names starting
with things like "FRED'S" and ending with things like
"MOTL". The room had a nice desk and a TV that got
about 6 channels. |
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You
can see my beautiful bass here in it's special super duper case.
I had to buy the case just for this trip to make sure my bass
got here in one piece. It weighs a ton and is not fun to carry.
The bed was a double, which I'm not really used to and I had
a lot of trouble sleeping here because the room was very quiet.
I wound up putting the clock radio in AM and just tuning it
to static so I'd have some white noise going on. One of the
first things I did after getting my crap together and making
sure I had everything was to take a shower. |
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I'd had
to leave very early in the morning and thought maybe a shower
would wake me up, as well as leave me relatively unstinky for
the rest of the day. It was after the shower that I found the
aforementioned full length mirrors, and let me just say WOW!
that's not something you want in every room in your house, scary
stuff! After the shower, I had just finished drying off when
I heard a soft knock at the door and a voice said something
completely unintelligible but before I could respond, |
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the door opened and a maid stuck her head in. She took one look
at my nude body and and screamed "El Diablo Il Gigantico!"
or something like that. They say that lesbianism is something
you're born with, not something you learn, but in the case of
that maid, I'm thinking that men will never again hold the same
allure they once did. After getting dressed, I spent a little time at the window checking out the scenery. Maybe it was before I got dressed, who the hell knows. |
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This window faced south towards downtown Dallas, but you couldn't
actually see Dallas, even when it wasn't pouring. The main view
out the window was of these two buildings. What you can't see
in this still photo, is that it was still raining very hard.
The rain at times was literally going horizontally and there
was lighting all over the place too. It just kept going like
that all night. |
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This
is the view to the left. The brownish building in the distance
is a Bed Bath & Beyond. We figured out pretty quickly that
the hotel itself was sort of like an island, there wasn't a
whole lot nearby and so if you wanted to eat, drink, shop or
anything else, you sort of had to do it within the hotel unless
you were willing to get a cab. There was shuttle service that
would take you to anyplace within 3 miles, but it wasn't the
sort of thing you would do just to go to the 7-eleven. |
|
Chapter
3 After spending the day farting around the hotel (and when I fart around the hotel, I FART AROUND THE HOTEL), watching the rain come down in sheets, blankets and afghans, we met up with Ward Stein. Ward owns some sort of insurance related company, which is why he was there, but more importantly, he was the rhythm guitar player in the band and even more more importantly, he had lived in Dallas at one time and knew his way around. He also looked a little like an older Mike Nesmith without the wool hat, which was sort of comforting in a way, what with me being a huge fan of the Monkees. He offered to take us out to dinner at "the best steakhouse in Dallas", so we grabbed a cab. The restaurant was a place called III Forks (that's a roman numeral 3, not "ill"), and the first thing you noticed when walking in was that the walls were covered with framed, autographed pictures of movie stars who had presumably eaten there. This made me wonder how strange it is that all of these people apparently carry around 8X10s of themselves everywhere they go so they can whip one out at a moments notice. "Hi, I'm Bruce Willis, have a picture". I have only been in places like this a couple of times in my life, it's the sort of place where every time you take a sip of water someone is standing behind you with a pitcher to fill it up again. It becomes like a race, to see who's quicker, you the drinker, or them, the filler upper. I found myself strategizing a way to fool the water filler and make her miss my fillup. "Hey, look over there? Is that Harrison Ford?". Nope, my water glass was fuller than a ship's knothole on pirate party night. The waiter also had this little knife blade doodad that he used to clean crumbs off the table. Anyway, we got a menu and I was pretty stunned by it. I'm never entirely comfortable when someone buys me, well, almost anything, and the prices on this menu were mind boggling. I also know zero about steak, other than that it tastes good and makes me say yummm sometimes, so I picked what I thought was the least expensive thing. Ironically enough, it was steak, and it was pretty good. Mike, who's a vegetarian, got some kind of fish thing after complaining loudly that they didn't really have anything for people like him and how the damn Government is always out to screw ya, but when pressed to explain which class of vegetables fish falls under, he simply grunted and implied that perhaps I should go and do something anatomically impossible with myself. While sitting around the hotel lobby waiting for exciting things to happen, we saw guitarist Ward Stein check in. Ward had graciously offered to take we Valves out to dinner. Visions of the restaurant scene from “The Blues Brothers” flashed through my mind in horror, but everyone was on their best behavior. Joe accepted the high chair and bib, Mike didn’t spit in the Guinness and send it back. Wonderful dinner and conversation ensued. There were more wait staff than silverware on the table, and the service was…well shall we say, entertaining. Thanks Ward, for treating our tapeworms to the best meal of the trip! Chapter
4 I'm
not sure how many of you are aware of this, but Mike and I played
together in a band a long long time ago called Chimera, and
the first lead singer in that band was a girl named Jen Jackson.
This was her circa 1979: |
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Forgive
the quality of the photos, it was dark in the club, and I didn't
want to use flash, I felt it would distract her and annoy the
audience. In any case, she came over and gave us both a big
hug and was giggling the entire time. I giggled too. She then
went on and performed solo, doing all her own material. She
sang in a sort of folksy Joni Mitchell kind of way, and I kept
expecting her to start singing songs about how the damn Government
is always tryin to screw ya, but the songs were mostly of the
love song variety, at least, I think they were, I was pretty
tired and they could have been about shiny pink flying unicorns
for all I know. |
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She
was quite good, and afterwards, we spent some time talking with
her before both she and we had to mosey (that's Texas talk,
though I never heard anyone actually say it, which kind of sucks
now I think about it). I thought she looked very different,
but Mike insists that I'm crazy and she looked exactly the same.
Well, I'm not blind, and so Mike must be wrong. We called a cab and left and between the rain and the length of the day (We had left Steve's house for the airport at 4 am eastern time, and by now it was something like 11 pm central time) we decided to go to the hotel and get some rest. |
| I didn’t know Jen Jackson from Mike & Joe’s past in Chimera, but her show was pretty cool. She had some OK songs, and lyrics. I would have liked to have heard her with a band. Nice friendly gal anyway. To settle the Mike vs Joe argument about whether she’d changed or not; having seen old pictures, I think I could have found her in the crowd. Chapter
5 Monday morning turned out to be a better day than Sunday, because the rain cleared up, and because I wasn't at work, and because no one walked in on me naked (you don't want to know how much time I spend naked). This was the day of the show, "the reason we were here". Steve and Mike went and had breakfast without me because for some reason they assumed I was still sleeping when they went, (I wasn't) and because they are evil sadistic bastards who know how much I love a good sausage with eggs, pancakes, english muffins, ham... Jesus would I like breakfast right about now. Sneaking to breakfast without me would apparently backfire on Steve the next day, so life is not without irony. We didn’t
so much sneak out without Joe for breakfast as we did try to
honor his request to sleep in a little later. In reality we
wanted to warn the pancakes that Joe might be down later and
to run for their little lives as only pancakes can run. But
it was a good buffet! |
|
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Now
that the rain had stopped and the clouds had cleared I had my
first chance to get a good look at my surroundings. Texas is
flat, really really flat. We're talkin Pamela Anderson before
her impants flat. I have never been anywhere in my life where
there were no hills anywhere and it was disconcerting. I thought
I would be able to see downtown Dallas from here, but I couldn't,
it was still too far away, though as far as I can figure, this
picture is looking right in that direction. |
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There was
a small airport almost directly beside the hotel, and while
you couldn't see it from my room, you could occasionally see
planes flying not far behind that building. The entire area
seemed to be made up of hotels and corporate offices. Dallas
is home to some of the blandest generic shiny mirror window
architecture in the world. There are a few interesting buildings
downtown. but most of the buildings around here looked like
they came from Office Buildings-R-Us. |
| I
must also confess to some disappointment at the lack of cactus.
I had assumed that Texas was, well, texasish, with cactus and
oil pumps and big guys with cowboy hats saying Y'all and lots
of hot women who looked like Victoria Principal back when she
was super hot. The band was to meet for the first time at noon,
so we made for the hall. Upon arrival, it turned out that the
sound company had not gotten there yet (we found out later that
they had forgotten about us completely). The rental equipment
company supplying the amps and stuff was there though, so we
were able to start working on some things. We were never able
to really rehearse for this, instead, the practice consisted
mostly of meeting the band and making decisions on what keys
the songs would be done in and how to start and stop them. It
would be up to each of us to figure out the rest of the songs
while doing the actual gig. I got into a bit of a panic, because
during this first meeting, I found I was having problems remembering
parts. I kept thinking they would send me back home in disgrace
when I screwed up all the songs. This did not seem like a good
omen. |
|
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This
was the stage we were using. Once again, I had to take this
shot in natural light, of which there wasn't a whole lot, and
I had no tripod so the pictures were a little shaky. The band
consisted of Steve on B3 and sax, Mike on guitar and vocals,
Ward on rhythm guitar, Paul Reynolds on piano, John Toth on
drums, and two female lead vocalists, Whitney James and Sue
Ogden. We spent about 3 hours making sure we were in fact doing
all the songs in the same key and that everything was doable
and singable. |
Mike
was put to the test when asked to sing a song by Billy Joel.
I was expecting his head to explode at the very idea, but Mr.
Punk Rock Black Flag actually did a creditable job with it.
After this practice, Mike, Steve and I went to the lounge, where
Steve and I had a late lunch while Mike opined about how the
damn Government is always tryin to screw ya. We babbled for
a while then went back to our rooms to do whatever it was we
needed to do and eventually get ready for the show, which started
at 8pm. |
|
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When the
time came, we made our way into the ballroom, where people had
started being seated to eat dinner and wait for the show. The
food looked impressive and involved coconuts, but we didn't
eat here. I never eat right before a gig, which will come as
a shock to those of you who surmise that I never STOP eating.
So, I spent the time wandering the hall trying to look inconspicuous
in my extremely loud hawaiian shirt. |
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I'd
have preffered to be wearing an actual Hawaiian named Leilani,
but she was not to be found. This was the dessert table, the
stage is to the left of this image. By this point in the evening,
I was getting a bit antsy and couldn't wait to get through the
show, and just crossed my fingers. I ended up sitting at the
back of the stage and warming up for a while. |
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This was
dessert. I show these pictures mainly to annoy our own Tom Gallagher,
who really wanted to go on this trip. See tom? Chocolate, mmmmm! I asked them to send a cake to my room, but they didn't do it. I had some after the show, and I can report that it was pretty good, but I still prefer buttercreme frosting to all this fancy schmancy creme stuff. There were apples on the table too, but, I mean, come on... Apples... cake... apples... cake... you do the math... |
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That's
Whitney checking through her notes before the show. All of the
equipment was rented except my bass and Steve's sax. 5 string
fretless basses are not common, and I felt I'd be taking a chance
on major sucking if I tried to play a 4 string fretted bass
again after all this time. As for Steve, apparently blowing on someone else's horn is considered bad form, As is tooting your own horn. I could make a joke here, but I'll leave it to you to fill in the obvious. |
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My
flash didn't go off here, but the important thing is that Mike
is making an obscene gesture. He's wearing one of Steve's many
loud jackets, this one made of the table cloth from an old italian
restaurant. I think that's Steve sitting with him, and if there
is anyone else there, no doubt they are sick of listening to
Mike whine about how the damn Government is always tryin to
screw ya. |
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Mike,
Steve and the man on the right is Ward Stein. Ward saved our
ass a few times, not just on Sunday when we got there but Tuesday
as well, as you will see. Very nice guy who's very much into
collecting nice guitars. And no, there was no photoshop involved
in Mike's jacket. Looking at the decor in the hall, I have to
say that I found snakeskin pillars to be an odd choice. |
Once the gig began, I was unable to get any photos, which is too bad. The band actually played amazingly well together, considering the circumstances. I was able to remember more or less everything I needed to so my pre-gig panic was unwarranted, and there were no major train wrecks or screw ups. In fact, I thought we gelled together as a unit remarkably quickly. John, the drummer was very good (I am very critical of drummers) and we were able to get a decent groove going. The folks seemed to like it, but more importantly, I think we were all happy that we'd been able to pull it off and come out sounding like we'd actually been together for a bit. The two leads, Sue and Whitney were excellent. Steve went a little B3 happy at times, and I felt sorry for Paul the pianist, who was sitting right in front of the leslie for the B3 and getting his head blown off by it. The amp I was using kind of sucked, and I was a little distracted by the tone I was getting, but overall things went far better than I expected. After the show, we ended up hanging out in the bar until pretty late, and then finally got some blissful rest. It was nice to have the show behind me, as I had been stressing about it a bit all day, now I only had one more mission to accomplish in Texas. Would I succeed? Does Superman wear red undies? We showed up at the appointed
rendezvous time and rendezvous’d. The backline was arriving,
although no sound system. We all drooled over the big stage
and huge hall, looking forward to the elbow room that is always
denied us with the Valves. The rehearsal was tough on the vocalists due to the lack of Mr Microphone, but 1st set singer Sue Ogden came in like a pro. She was a delight to work with, aiming to please, find good keys and make the show a success. 2nd set singer Whitney James arrived later, and did a polished job too. Two very different singers, who complimented each other quite well. Our rhythm section of “The Doctor” Ward Stein on guitar, Paul “knuckles” Reynolds on keyboards and John Toth on drums had all done their homework, adding to the musical gumbo that became the INSTAR ALLSTARS! |
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Next morning, I awoke fairly early and was reading and imagining all the sucky things I would usually be doing at that time of day if I'd been at work, when I got a phone call from Mike. Seems Steve was sick, very sick. He was barfing and doing all the other things you normally associate with being really sick. We may never know what caused Steve's illness, but faulty sausage is suspected, so eating breakfast without me turned out to not have been a good idea (as everyone knows, had I been there, there would have been no sausage left for Steve). We had more or less planned to rent a car this day and check out the city, so this left a big question mark. What were we going to do now? Eating was out, we were all afraid to eat at the hotel again. Mike and I decided we had to get out of that place for a while, it was beginning to feel like we were living in an aquarium. Hmmmmm.... what to do, what to do... Well, after much consideration, we decided to catch the free shuttle which would take you anywhere within 3 miles of the hotel, provided there was someplace within 3 miles worth going to, and then come back later in the day and see if Steve was still performing the technicolor sneeze. So, leaving Steve to his misery, we hopped the shuttle and ended up at a place called the Galleria. It appears that every mall called the Galleria looks more or less the same, with that weird tube like roof that the Worcester Center Galleria has. Now, apart from playing at this gig, I had one mission in life while in Texas, and that was to buy a "real" cowboy hat for my friend Shelby (And if you're wondering why that was so important, I will point out that she was the person who bought me my beautiful bass). Mike also needed to get some stuff for his little Mikelettes and his lovely and extremely understanding wife Laura. Neither of us found what we were looking for at this mall. I'm not sure exactly what I was expecting, but I thought it would be a little more... you know... texas-y. Instead, it was the same stores as any other mall you go to, Macy's, Nordstroms, that place that sells all the goofy gadgets, the usual collection of mallware. And of course, hiking all over the thing didn't exactly help my back, though the walking through the mall turned out to be minor compared to the torture I was to undergo later. So, after checking out the whole mall, we ended up back at the hotel. Man, was I sick. All I remember is looking at the clock and seeing 5am. That worrisome sick feeling was coming over me, saying, “you WILL be hugging the porcelain within the next half hour”. Well, the eruptions started sooner than that, and soon I was barfing and retching and doing all the nasty things associated with being violently ill. Now, I know most of you are thinking, “well, he earned it. Hanging out at the hotel bar, playing rock star and partying like its 1999”. But I want you to know kids, I do not drink! I have not had a drink in well over ten years! So either the sausage at the buffet is to blame, or it was a bad case of Joe’s revenge. In any case, I continued to retch until there was nothing more to retch, and then I retched even more violently every twenty minutes until about 2 in the afternoon. In between retching, I lay in bed with a cold compress trying to relieve my burning fever. I began to curse Texas, Instar, the hotel, the damn government that is always trying to screw ya, and even the Houston Oilers who had nothing to do with anything. I prayed to die and was afraid I would not. |
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When we got back to the hotel, Steve said that he thought he felt better and got up to take a shower and get dressed. We called Ward and asked if he was interested in going out with us for a while while we did the tourist thing. He said sure, and so we rented a car. I was voted to drive it, but Ward ended up driving into Dallas, since he was the one who knew where he was going. We ended up across from a place called the West End Marketplace... more about that later, but for now we walked from there to the world famous Dealey Plaza. World famous for being the place where a whack job offed a president, and then was offed himself by another whack job, and as a place where whack jobs to this day offer their own speculation about whack jobs hiding in the bushes and on the grassy knoll. I was determined
to not be a wimp, and I knew how merciless Joe & Mike would
be after this trip, if they were forced to be nurse maid to
a sick sax player. I also had absolutely NO desire to see Joe
in a nurse costume. So I got up, and feebly wobbled to the shower
and tried to clean up and regain some dignity. Joe & Mike
returned from their free shuttle bus tour of the mall, and were
nice enough to bring me a t-shirt. |
|
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This
is Dealey Plaza, I don't know who the statue is of, Mr. Dealey
I guess. I was sort of fascinated by the little fountain, there
are lots of little fountains in Dallas I noticed. The entire
place was a lot smaller than I thought it would be. I had always
gotten the impression when watching the movies of the assassination
that it was much more wide open. At first we thought all the
statues and stuff had been put there to mark the assassination,
but apparently it was there back then too. |
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And
this is the Schoolbook repository. What is a book repository?
It's just a warehouse for books apparently. If you look at the
far right side of the building and count 6 stories up, you'll
notice the window is open a smidge. That's where Lee Harvey
Oswald shot from, if you believe that sort of thing and aren't
personally convinced that it really involved the mafia and space
aliens. As with the area itself, the building is much smaller
than it looks when you see it on TV. |
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And
this is the "grassy knoll" which is indeed grassy
and knollish. Somewhere over there is where the Zapruder film
was shot from. On the left is the famous "No parking anytime
sign" which some believe may have been the real reason
for the assassination. Oswald apparently was extremely civic
minded and couldn't stand the thought of anyone parking against
the rules, and when the Limo slowed down and seemed about to
park, he just lost his mind and decided to do something about
it. That's my theory anyway. |
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And there they are, the men, the myths the legends. Steve is carrying my little camera bag, so he looks a little effeminate here. Mike is looking towards the grassy knoll and wondering if he sees little green men hiding behind the picket fence there, which wouldn't really surprise him, since the damn Government is always tryin to screw ya.. The picture with me holding Joe’s little camera bag? I’m feeling pretty weak in the knees, thinking this little bag would make a great thing to throw up in. |
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Steve still
wasn't really feeling all that great, so he took a seat to listen
to Mike's never ending commentary on the damn Government and
how it's always out to screw ya and just felt worse and worse.
As for me, I was still trying to figure out how to work the
damn camera. I have been using a Nikon for a couple of years
now, and I was afraid to take it on the trip, opting instead
to bring my older Olympus E-10 and I was having all kinds of
problems with it. Of course, within 5 minutes of turning it
on, I was reminded of all the reasons I had replaced it to begin
with. |
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And here's Ward, striding purposefully towards us like something out of a Clint Eastwood movie. He knew the whole history of this place, at least, the "official" history. the one that doesn't involve munchkins and crop circles and going through the looking glass here people. He gave us the guided tour of the place. That's the repository behind him. The picture of Ward “striding purposefully”? He IS a long tall Texan. Ward is about 6 foot 5, which certainly is a long drink of water. But I never heard him say “pardner” even once. Or “yonder” or “y’all”. And he never once said Supercalifragilistic-expialidocious. Could be why they forced him to move to Nashville. |
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This is
another view of the window. The most fascinating thing to me
about this was how close the building was to where the shooting
took place. After talking with Mike and Steve, we all agreed
that we had assumed that Oswald had shot across a fairly long
distance using the scope on a rifle. Actually, I took this picture
while leaning on a lamppost that was more or less directly next
to where the first shot hit kennedy. In fact, the ass end of
the red car is about where the limo was. Oswald was actually
so close to Kennedy that he could have probably killed him by
dropping a box of books out of the window Wile E Coyote style. |
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Ward is
pointing towards where the Limo first came around the corner
onto the plaza. Mike looks interested, but is probably thinking
the entire time about the damn Government and how it's always
out to screw ya. Steve is thinking that he hopes he doesn't
barf in the reflecting pool. As for me, I'm trying to figure
out a way to get the correct exposure in a tricky lighting situation. |
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A final
look back at the "knoll". You can see some guy pointing
in the distance. You tended to see a lot of people pointing
around there. You can't really see it in this shot, but just
to the left of this is the underpass that you can see Kennedy's
limo zooming under right after the shooting. Mike and I would
later go under that overpass several times after getting lost.
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| I expected Dealey Plaza to be a lot bigger and flatter. I’d always assumed the Book Repository to be farther away and a lot trickier a shot, even with a high powered rifle and scope. If Oswald had jumped out of the building, he would have landed right on Jackie’s little pink pillbox hat. It’s that close. I think that Zapruder fellow who photographed it all on movie film must have used a wide angle lens or something. Anyway, it was pretty creepy to be “right there”, and to go up into the Book Repository, right into the corner where Oswald shot. I was only a pup when it all happened for real, But I felt a distinct chill standing behind the glass partition, viewing the same view Oswald must have. Perhaps the chill was a resurgence of my sickness. Ward & I grabbed a cab back to the hotel, in which I collapsed and went white as a ghost according to Ward. Joe & Mike went to rack up the mileage in the rent-a-jeep. Oh – one final comment about Dealey Plaza.
It was over run with homeless people, trying to schmooze a few
bucks out of us unsuspecting Yankees. They’d walk up to
us pretending to be city tour guides, telling us “Yep!
Dar’s de grassy knoll..and over yonder is where Ruby plugged
Oswald. And up dare is where Oswald shot from. See up dare in
de winder? No, de odder winder. Yeah, DAT one on the sixth floor!
Yew kin go up dare, iffn yew wants.” Mike thought it was
good of the government to be providing so many jobs to those
unfortunate souls, even though they were probably really CIA
spies. Chapter
9 After this, we went upstairs to the "Sixth Floor Museum". They didn't allow cameras up there so I have no pictures but you can check out the website if you're curious. It was an interesting place and they've preserved the spot where Oswald shot from. Again, I can't stress enough how close this building was from the roadway. While the museum was interesting, there was also sort of an odd feeling about how they had taken this place where a tragedy happened and made it weirdly commercial. I guess standing where a president was shot shouldn't feel like Disneyland, but you never really felt you were at a place where such a historically momentous event took place. There was also a film playing in the museum that dealt with how the world reacted to the event, and included much crying and sorrow and pain. Without getting too political, I have to say that as I watched it, I couldn't help but think of how the world would react if Bush were to receive the same fate as Kennedy. Somehow I suspect world reaction would be very very different. One thing that did strike me about being in the 6th floor museum was first, how many people were actually UP there – it was pretty crowded! – and 2nd, how silent and reverent they all were. The display is pretty thorough, with photos and newsreels and artifacts. For those of us that recall Kennedy’s assassination, it was an impressive tribute to the man and his times. The “Oswald Corner” still totally creeped me out, and I had to get away from it. |
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Chapter
10 When
we left the museum, Ward and Steve decided to go back to the
hotel. Ward had a meeting and Steve still felt sick, so Mike
and I were left with the car. We walked back to the west end
marketplace, which is some kind of old mill or warehouse or
something that's been converted into a retail space. Unlike
the mall, this was all local companies and stores. The first
thing we saw was a store selling nothing but western stuff,
and I found the absolutely most perfect cowboy hat in the world
for Shelby. If I had been asked to design one from scratch,
this is what I would have come up with. This was also the place
where I ran into my first stereotypical Texan. His name was
Ben and he worked at the store. He wore a big 'ole cowboy hat
and had a big 'ole goatee and talked like a big 'ole texan.
He followed me around the store like I was a big 'ole shoplifter
but I didn't care, because I had my hat and that meant that
I could now really relax completely, since my two missions of
not screwing up the gig AND finding Shelby's hat were now accomplished.
There was also a huge antique store there, and we spent some
time poking around. It was the kind of place where you could
probably spend a couple of days and not really see everything
in it. We left there and had lunch across the street (Actually,
it more of an alley than a street. There was also this large
archlike thing that was decorated with symbols, including an
upside down pink triangle, which up here anyway is a gay pride
symbol. I can't imagine that that's what it means in Dallas,
but maybe the artist was gay and decided to sneak it in there).
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Chapter
11 Wednesday
arrived with all the promise of a young virgin bride on her
wedding night, hoping to God above that whatever is going
to happen that night, won't hurt and please don't let him
have nothing ... you know... down there,
lord, I've waited all this time and I mean, this is it, I
don't want to have to go back to the orbital sander again
and... We went to the store where Joe had met Big Ole Ben. I bought a cool Stevie Ray Vaughn type hat and a new pair of boots as well as some jewelry for my lovely and understanding wife Joy, and some Texas-ish stuff for my son Ben. There was a wonderful antique shop on the 1st floor where we spent some time. They had a ton of old brass musical instruments, including not one but THREE old brass Sousaphones. Had I figured out how to get one on the plane, our trombonist Joe Reidy would have had a new toy! The Church Lady that we met
at the airport turned out to also be a bass player, although
of the upright acoustic symphonic kind. She and Joe had a
bassist sort of reunion convention discussing all things bass
like. Mike continued to bury his head in his readings of anti-government
propaganda and being screwed. I don't even know what time we got back to Providence. I was pretty burnt out. The drive back to Steve's to get the cars was almost silent. We were all pretty tired. It had definitely been a full week. So, if you've actually read all of this, I'm frankly stunned, but you brought it on yourself. I will just take the time to say goodbye and good luck and remember, the damn Government is always tryin to screw ya, so be careful out there! After a non eventful flight – again with no hot cheerleader type flight attendants – we approached the Providence area. Joe & I debated on whether or not the bridge on the horizon was the Newport Bridge or the Jamestown Bridge, but whatever it was, it was all lit up and very bridge like. We landed safely, left our seat belts on until the captain went “DING” with the official little bell, and then joined the mad dash to get our stuff from the luggage-go-round. All in all, it was a wonderful trip, and we
wish to thank our fellow (and fellowe-ette) INSTAR ALLSTARS
for contributing to a 1st class rock and roll show. We look
forward to seeing Y’ALL again real soon! |
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