[Author's note:This is a reconstructed entry, so the date is only approximate. Many of the items written here have been quoted often by myself over the years in many situations that applied. I recounting another major difference between atmosphere I attended college and the free ride everyone else seemed to be having at the time. I stress that meeting people my own age who had cars and money was a major shock to what I had been indoctrinated about attending university.
Also, I hesitated at first to publish this material, since I could not remember if it had been written for that purpose. If it sounds stilted, it may have been intended as a letter.]
And here is a photo of a yellow garage door. A mellow yellow door. I had gone up to this place to pick up an amp the Hippie had repaired. They charged him half the price of a new amp to solder a socket in place. Hey, wait till you hear what he has to pay to get his computer fixed.
By 8:00 I was on the road with the Hippie’s amplifier, actually two amplifiers, in the car. I went to the shop, and finally decided to give kforce a call. I got hold of the higher up, which I like when they answer the phones once in a while. It gives them a refresher of life at the entry level. It is only midday. Linton Blvd is 6.5 miles north of my turnoff to school on Palmetto Park Road. I dropped off the Hippie’s two amplifiers, a Line 6 and a pignose, at 2604 Sandy Lane. The tenant is operating a repair shop called ‘Amplifier Junkyard’ out of a house where half the space is a double garage. Certainly, if I was a musician, I would have learned to repair my own amplifiers by now. The Hippie plugged his guitar into the headphone jack and grounded something out. That such a common error could cause problems is a sign of the declining quality of American equipment. That little round trip cost me an hour today.
At 4:30 y’day I was at The Hippie’s for practice. The keyboard player showed up but not the drummer. Thus, it was me listening to them jam tunes from the 80s that I barely remember. I was never into easy listening or light jazz.
Remember that tune I tried to learn in Burnaby, called Year of the Cat? I gave up because it was just not worth it, but both of them seem to think it is musically just a fascinating thing. They also know all the really slow Led Zeppelin album tracks that I literally used to pick the needle up and pass over. Does anyone recall D’yer Make Her? It is pronounced Jer-may-ker and is a play on Jamaica, a raggae song. I knew it but not that it was by Led Zep. Give me rock and roll, dad-nerb it. However, I will learn all these things if it means getting back on a stage in front of women.
The Hippie, once he realizes he can say things without being misinterpreted, comes out with some amazingly similar ideas to what you see here [in my writings]. For instance, he regrets that nobody just hangs out any more. I have never suggested I like to play music for any other reason than that it increases my scoring average immensely. It also lowers their ages by close to twenty years, a big factor when you hit fifty. Poke your head into a lounge in the afternoon to see how other men my age try to tackle the same problem, and music suddenly seems ideal.
Afterward, we drove up to Ft. Lauderdale and chowed in a Mexican café. That is actually twice in one day, because The Hippie and I had breakfast at El Tamarindo. I didn’t get the name of the other place, but it was full of good-looking Spanish women. The keyboard player (Rick?) is married to a Portuguese gal from Brazil, and for close to twenty years now. He is the ex-FBI agent. We talked for over an hour of old college days and how things have changed. None of us really like the American Idol brand of music on the charts, it is all technique with no soul. All of us partied through a lot of college and realized it was really a rich kid’s game.
The Hippie’s parents not only paid for his college, they drove him to the Florida campus and dropped him off. My parents? Well, let’s just say I had to hitchhike 350 miles in the cold and walk the rest of the way. From what The Hippie describes, his parents spent a thousand times more on his college education than mind did for me, about $20,000 vs. $20. That is correct, my parents only spent $20 helping me get through college, and they begrudged me that.
[Author's note: It was in my second year away, I was just past 19 years old and carried everything I owned in the world in a knapsack. They sent me the $20 on the condition I came home for Xmas. I found out later they were telling the town they were paying for my university, and my presence was needed to confirm that lie. I remember it well, because the bus fare was $19.70 for the grueling 18 hour trip, leaving me just enough for a cup of coffee at the bus terminal [during a six hour stopover. Total trip time, 24 hours. I found out later they had sent my older sister a plane ticket.]
Actually, I fell for this trick for years, my parents always seemed to have money for you to come home, but not one cent to help you leave and strike out on your own. Oddly, my parents were far wealthier than The Hippie’s, having slightly over twice the income and living on the cheapest frontier left in the country. My brothers learned to freeload off their friends, something I never stooped to. My parents would pay for things, but only with so many obligations and strings attached that it was not worth it. My father expected me to work at least one year at menial labor for each $5.00. I am not exaggerating or making that up. Five dollars per year.
[Author's note: the above makes more sense if you consider my parents always treated my upbringing as a loan and constantly reminded me that I would receive nothing unless I guaranteed to pay them back. There were many arguments. If it was a loan, I wanted some say on the matter, the biggest item was a guarantee in return that money was being put away for my education as they had repeatedly promised. If I had no say whatsoever, it was not a loan, but a standard parental obligation, at least in my 14-year-old thinking. This “bald-faced stupidity” [as they called it] caused even more serious in-fighting for months at a time. I never understood parents who lay a guilt trip on their children just for raising them. If you stay, they berate you, if you leave you get nothing at all.
It's a shame on parents who let things get that bad, but in that day and age there was nothing to stop them. My parents saw absolutely nothing wrong with placing me in that situation. All I had to do to make them happy was drop out of school in grade nine and “go work on the farm” so they could “retire early”, and to hell with what I wanted. The thing most neglected was infrastructure. Eighteen years after The Hippie finished college, his parents bought him a car and paid his lawyer $8,000 in cash. Eighteen years, my friends. So don’t act surprised when I can’t relate to people with so few difficulties in their entire lives.]
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