A Parade for Nancy’s father:

[tinkerjack]

I did not know it was for him.
At first I was annoyed because the street was blocked in front of my shack by the Southern Pacific tracks. When I accepted the fact that there was no exit from the parking lot, I decided that I would kick back and enjoy it. “The True Women” riders of Schertz Texas, silent riders on bright shinning horses. were the best part of the parade, and also the bagpiper.

And the bag piper played on
And I joined the parade

Got dam musicians dieing young. I fuking hate it. I hate myself. He lived on my couch for 18 months a mean drunk. Every once in a while he would pickup his guitar a play song; those were the moments I lived for. 9/11/01 was the day it all imploded. The day I showed my ass. Like Cindy did at Crawford. But worse. As I watched the tape on the TV at the icehouse I was dreading the coming scene when I got home. Thinking about telling him about the bad news and listening to him rant about sand n*ggers. He was a good old southern boy from Virginia and n*ggers were a loathsome thing to him. Got dam near grabbed him by the throat the night he started the "my daughter is fuking a n*gger rant" only thing quelled the impulse was jitterbug's son just picking along in the back aground with his amp turned down low. It made it all sound so blueszee that even Steve began to smile. Pluck a duck and phuk my luck, I am not going to tell him because nothing travels faster than the speed of light except bad news.. He will hear about it soon enough, I decided not to tell him. Later a musician/artist/writer friend of ours stopped by to tell us that, “We are at war!”
He room mate gave me a quizzical look kind of like “you knew you crazy bastard, you knew and you did not tell me? Did I smile, did I shrugged like what the fuk, you know now. I did not say anything I am sure. Nothing sarcastic. But later that day he accidentally deleted all my messages on my answering machine. Probably was an accident. But I showed my ass. Later jitterbug came over and I started ranting again. Something he said that made us all smile, and I realized that I was not not making any progress in dealing with my mean drunk friend’s broken heart. The best he ever did was a mission two years, came back home to the valley and found a dream job in a old mountain top inn around Charlottesville, leaved there and did the out door grounds work in hog heaven for a country boy like him. Played the music at events on the Holidays, and weddings and stuff like that. Beautiful college woman for a girl friend, and her daddy was rich. How did he become such a tarnished gallahad sleeping on my couch? What do you call a musician who has just broken up with his girlfriend?

I turned from a friend to a stranger on him, as the months dragged on and I stopped being a cheerful giver, it was our second Christmas together I took him to see the preacher that He and jack talked to the day jack killed that kid on the bike. He used to sing a Flying Burrito Brothers song about Jesus Broke The Wild Horse in My Heart. Speaking of strangers, Camus, the line “mother died today…” I could say he died today, Jack told jitterbug a couple days ago, Jitterbug told me today, so until today he was still alive.

unedited


sleep tight rest in peace evie, guitars all over the valley weep for you.







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Bitter fame