When I burst onto the Bohemian scene in Toronto, September of '73, Sam Green was the first to become my friend. We had both done a guest set at Fiddler's Green and Sam struck me as a pint sized Paul Newman. In December he introduced me to the tall dark and beautiful Mary, who studied acting and once lived with demented radicals. Mary had many interesting stories, about getting bit by a raccoon in a zoo; posing with diamonds for a perverted jeweler, and one about the air raid siren going off and everyone in her house wanting to be picked up by the "Trafamadorians." In the aftermath of the sexual revolution of the Sixties, Mary was like a moral compass to me.
I often visited Sam and Mary at the Green residence on Summer Hill, and would dine at the long dark table beside a wall of rare books. Sam's mother sometimes lent me volumes; my favorite being an antique edition of The Golden Asse.
Returning from my Bicentennial tour of Washington DC, Nashville, and Frog City Florida, I headed to Sam and Mary's place. In the three weeks I was gone my two best friends had moved into a place together in the Annex, near the University of Toronto. Both of them had joined bands, Mary was with the Earth Movers, with Paul Nash — Sam played bass for the Cowbirds. The diminutive rocker was torn between the outlandish behavior of a musician’s life style and the looming trappings of married life.
When I walked in from my Southern excursion Mary greeted me bending over to read the caption on my T-shirt. "Frog City, Florida, Burp'. Why don't you take off your backpack and make yourself comfortable?"
"We got your postcard," Sam said, putting his hands in his pockets, "Very obscure."
"You should see the one I sent my mother. Risque! I like your new place." It was the first floor of a two family house on Howland Avenue. Paintings by Mary's grandmother adorned the walls and an antique cobblers bench served as a coffee table. Various plants and dried flowers were arranged neatly in contrast to the scattering of Sam's fine collection of rare and bizarre board games. Mary brewed some Mocha Roma tea, and gave me the mandate to ramble on.
My Bi-Centennial Excursion
My first ride was in a late model Ford LTD headed towards Montreal. We stopped for a hamburger and coconut cream pie, all for a dollar fifty.
After seeing the geodesic dome from Expo '67 I took an Amtrak train across the border and yucked it up with a magician in the club car. We were playing a wild scrabble game and the border guard became suspicious about me after seeing one of the words that I had placed on the board. Played nearly every song I knew, and some I didn't know.
Made it to Washington by the morning and went to the Air and Space Museum, then an exhibition of Goya's works at the National Art Gallery. I followed a guided tour up to the portrait of Napoleon. Saw the impressionist stuff. Then I went to the Freer Gallery and saw some Oriental art.
On Tuesday it was kind of cloudy as I bought a ticket on the Amtrak bound for Petersburg. I left the capital wearing an orange T-shirt and light green corduroy cut offs.
In Petersburg I got a tentative gig at the Flying Duck, a restaurant that sported an albino walking catfish. Ended up at the proprietor's house all night looking at Civil War artifacts. A procession of guns, bayonets buttons and uniforms were brought down the attic ladder and were paraded before me. In the morning I was driven to Ettrick for Kentucky Fried chicken and boarded the bus.
Nashville didn't impress me, though I did go to a lot of tourist attractions. Saw the Acropolis, and the Country Music Hall of Fame. Walked around with my white Stetson Hat and Martin guitar. Looked across the street at a man who pointed me out to his buddy saying something like 'Hey look, there goes another one.'
Took a bus to Natches Mississippi and had some black-eyed peas and soul food. Walked around and saw some kids pushing a soapbox derby that sagged in the middle like Spanish moss. Talked to a young black man who strummed a few chords on my Martin in an empty lot.
I went to New Orleans and stayed at the Baptist mission. There was a weird man there who told me all about working the carnivals in Saskatchewan, with the wooden donuts and coke bottle concesion. He told me all this because I admitted being from Canada. I took the mandatory shower and slept in one of the two hundred bunk beds.
The next day I took an afternoon excursion on the Natchez steamboat, up and down the Mississippi. On the steamboat a blond girl struck up a conversation with me; she was a sales rep in rural Arkansas for a grocery concern. We ended up in the spray of the huge paddle wheel, with her not inclined to short lived entanglements.
Outside a cathedral I played Dust on Your Dulcimer, The Tree and the Wind and The Gypsy Doughboy. A fellow traveler walked with me to the French Quarter, where we dined at a Mexican buffet. The cockroaches scampering in front of his hotel were two inches long. I headed back to the mission.
Woke up very early on May 31, 1976. I was on a top bunk, with my trusty gas mask bag of black books and the guitar attached to the steel bunk with a bicycle chain. On the next bunk there was a chubby man around 30 from Virginia who looked like a truck driver. I thought he was a truck driver by the wallet chained to his belt. A few clouds suggested a tricky day. Went to the Trailways terminal for grits, eggs, toast and coffee. Saw a girl with a guitar, but she said her strings were 'too dead' to join me for a jam. She wanted to photograph the Astrodome.
Walked down Bourbon Street and went into a bar to listen to some Dixieland Jazz. I sat by myself for about fifteen minutes; the band was good. A short man named Harold, about 35, with black mussed up hair and fairly good features said, "What's happening?"
"It's gonna rain."
"Introduce yourself to the two ladies that come by," he said, "I have to make sure my car doesn't get towed."
Two young ladies, Cynthia and Jo, joined me as Harold left. Harold came back, paid the tab and the girls suggested I join them shopping. We went to a store, where dresses from the Forties and Fifties were on display. There was no change room and the clerk kept apologizing for the 'disarray.' Outside; alone with Cynthia I was distracted from the enticing setting of the French Quarter.
We returned to the jazz bar and sat at the bar, which faced a huge mural, of a funeral parade of jazz musicians on a rainy day, just outside the very establishment. Cynthia was wearing a long jade skirt, made of a material that had an emerald blue twinkle to it, with a white shawl. We both had a mint julep. As we toasted our frosty mint filled glasses we put our heads together and tried to think if there could be anything more romantic to do in New Orleans.
I happened to notice Harold, walking down the street with a lady across the street. I pointed them out to Cynthia who stood in the doorway and watched them walk up on by. We also spotted Jo, who came into the bar.
Cynthia walked out suddenly and left me alone with Jo, so Jo and I went to a little park across the street where I played a few songs, including Hearts in Harmony.
Finally we were all back together, and the girls asked Harold if I could come along with them to Miami, where they were doing surveys. Harold took me aside, and said there is no room in the car. "But you can meet us in Miami." He gave me a number and a time to call to arrange a rendezvous.
Jo got out of the back seat and said good-bye, then Cynthia stood up and said good-bye. For some reason our good-byes caused the cars to get backed up around the block, seeing that the car was double-parked. I was quite happy walking down Bourbon Street and saw a three-year old kid wearing a white and red striped outfit jumping gleefully in the neon reflections of a puddle on the street.
A day later I was sitting by a telephone booth, under a sky studded with stars. Beside a humid telephone booth I waited to place a call at the end of the Keys on US Route One. 'This here,' the man at the motel office said, 'Is the Happy Vagabond Campground.' My mother took the call and had some money wired to the Western Union in Miami Beach. I walked across the murky darkness to the Laundromat and sat down and made a long awaited entry.
In Miami I met someone to travel with at the bus station. He was wearing a Yellow Caterpillar hat with a shiny yellow nylon backpack. I thought he must have just flown in from Alaska or something, but actually, he was a German tourist named Jergan. He was thirty-two, and had come to practice 'Survival' in the Everglades. He talked me into helping him rent a car, and being the co driver.
Jurgen was a 'survival' aficionado. He had everything that a person would ever need to keep himself alive in the everglades: A wind-up shaver, Swiss army knives, binoculars, canteen, Boey knife. He handed me what I thought was a clear lozenge, and grunted 'survival,' but just as I was about to pop it into my mouth he said, "No—to make fire—magnifying glass." The reason I thought the magnifying glass was edible was because once while traveling in Norway, just after my delicate operation, I was given a ride by a NATO soldier. When I asked him what kind of rations he was issued he gave me a white sugar coated gummy candy. So I thought Jurgen was making the same joke. The magnifying glass was the size of a lifesaver.
For about a week we drove around to different trailer camps with Miami being the nucleus of our activities. We went to Frog City and took a tour in an airboat. In Coconut grove Jergen tried to impress some girls by splitting a raw coconut in half with his knife.
Finally on Friday, the day I was to contact Harold, Jurgen and I pulled into a truck stop called Louises' Idle Inn. Jurgen enjoyed a few beers while I sat and played every country song I knew for Jaunita and the truckers. It was just one long counter where they served canned beer and potato chips. When we walked out I realized I had missed making the call to my friends, and would not be hooking up with them in Miami.
We drove to the Sea Aquarium, stopping by the ocean to shave. I parted with Jurgen and bought a train ticket home. Before I boarded, I procured a huge length of salami and two mangoes to eat on the way. As I sat in the scenic dome car, I opened my journal and bit off piece of proverbial salami: Nobody ever paints a perfect picture of real life, if they did it would get up and walk off the canvas.
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