Faces of Death

Yeah I know, I know - not exactly a subject that's easy to get comfortable with.  But, it is a fact of life - the final one, actually - and we all deal with it as best we can, painful as it is.  I've had a good dose of dealing with it so far this year, and therein lies the tale of this installment.

Thanatos barely let 2011 be a week old, before making the first dread appearance - to claim my own Mother this past January.  Whilst it was terribly painful for my family and me, it was neither unexpected, nor "messy."  Mom passed quietly in her sleep, with all of us around her to see her off, hard as it was.  There was the usual pain of loss, and the noticeable gap in all my family's lives due to her departure of course, but at least we all knew that her passing was as calm and low-key as we could ask.  Her loss is still keenly felt, but she remains in all our hearts, and will remain so until we all can join her on the other side.


Little did I know that Thanatos had another visit on his schedule - this time, to me.


Flash forward to, of all dates, D-Day, June 6.  I was on my way home from work, a little before 11 pm.  Per routine, I was rolling down the quiet 2-lane blacktop, looking forward to my bed and rest.  Nearing the junction about a mile away from home, I spotted the lights of what I took to be a tractor-trailer, likely one of the corn or grain rigs common in this neck of the woods.  I didn't give it much thought, but I did reflexively hug the white line on my side, to try and minimize the slipstream from his trailer when we passed.  And I began braking, as the junction was just ahead. 

As we closed and began the pass, I instantly knew something was amiss, as the silhouette of the passing vehicle resolved itself into a rather LARGE John Deere, pretty similar to this: 




 


And if that wasn't enough, I got at best a 2-second glimpse of what looked like a good-sized telephone pole, coming straight at me, perhaps hood or windshield height from the ground.  Little did I know that the tractor was towing part of a field-planter behind it, and the hydraulics had failed, placing fatal danger directly in my path.  No time to brake hard; no time to brace for impact; no time to even holler "Oh, SH*T!!" before the end came.  Mortis was literally right in my lap, and there was absolutely nothing I could do about it.


The tractor was travelling roughly 20 mph; I was rolling at 55, for a combined impact speed of 75 mph.  Now, I was driving my brother's tool truck; an ex-AT&T rig with a Chevy Cheyenne cab and short-wheelbase chassis, crowned with the heavy utility box in the back.  The impact started just above the driver's side headlight, buckled the hood and rode the fenderline to the cab, sliced through both the windshield posts and the B-pillars at the rear of the cab, before finally striking the top of the utility box, and snapping off.  The elbow joint sliced all the sheetmetal on the driver's side about 2 feet lower than the bar proper, before it too was sheared off by the tool box.  The motor in the truck was shoved back about half a foot; when it was all over, I had the dashboard and steering column pinning my legs to the seat.


Aside from a severely bruised knee, and some windshield glass lacerations, I walked away from the wreck.  How that bar missed me - at that speed - I'll probably never know.  By rights, I should have been decapitated, at the very least.  When the first-responders arrived on the scene {including my oldest nephew, who's a proud Volunteer Firefighter}, one and all instantly thought "Fatality."  I did too, when I saw the wreck remains at the salvage yard a couple days later.  God spared me for a reason, quite obviously.  Nevertheless, I was still badly shaken by the experience - but Thanatos wasn't done working me over, just yet.

Exactly one week later came a cruel shock, when my dear Blues-Cat Pushy unexpectedly expired from a puncture-wound.  





Near as we could figure, Pushy was making his daily rounds, and hurt himself on some building rubble in the vacant lot across the street.  My niece spotted him lying in the neighbor's driveway, screaming in agony.  We went and fetched him home, but the poor little guy passed away literally in my arms about ten minutes later.  We found one neat puncture on his chest near his heart; it had been obscured by his long fur.  Pushy likely lost his footing, and landed square on a small piece of rebar, impaling himself.  He managed to drag himself to the neighbor's drive before collapsing for good.  Pushy was only 5, and had plenty of life left ahead of him.  I won't be the same without him.

This sudden, shocking, and senseless tragedy freaked me out good and proper, let me tell you.  I really felt like I was living an awful variation of the "Final Destination" series of films.  The whole "Cheat Death, and Death will come gunning for you again" mess.  Even now, a good 2-1/2 months later, I'm still carrying a sense of deep foreboding inside.  Time will likely ease this, of course - but then again, one never knows.  About all I can do is keep the affairs right-and-tight, and enjoy my time as thoroughly as I possibly can.  We all live under these circumstances to one degree or the other {thanks to random chance, like what's described here}, but my recent intense brushes with that dread Cloak have impacted me deeply, to grossly understate things.


As such, the pace is likely to pick up a bit here, as we get ready to transition into the fall and winter.  I'm going to maximize what time I might have left, with strong determination, and a clear purpose.  I figure that's the best way to put a brave face on a grim, but inevitable, reality.  It's a part of life, after all.  I'm {cautiously} diggin' it, myself.


More shortly.

Do What You Like

After a rather busy week, time to decompress!!  Although it's been rather chaotic, I can look back over the last couple months with a certain amount of satisfaction.  Forward progress continues, my immediate situation is reasonably stable, and I got a much-needed morale boost from an unlikely source.  It came a just the right time, too.


If y'all are familiar with either my Facebook page or my MySpace blog, this chap will need no introduction:

This is of course the great Ginger Baker, one of my Drum Mentors and good Facebook friend {as are his kids Nettie, Leda, and Kofi}.  Ginger turned 72 yesterday - right in the middle of his European tour.  See, last year Ginger was strongly advised by his doctor to retire for good, due to some health issues I won't get into here.  On both his official website and his Facebook pages, Ginger admitted to being a bit at sea about the prospect.


I was fortunate enough to talk with him about it a little bit, and I offered up some modest advice by quoting the title of one of the songs he wrote when he was in Blind Faith.  As intended, it got a laugh out of him, and we dropped the matter there.  Well, it seems that Ginger took my sly teasing to heart - he's out on tour, doing what he loves instead of "moldering away his golden years" as he remarked to me in our conversation.  What with the daily grind, I only found out about it a couple weeks back, but like I said earlier the news was a real shot in the arm for me.  If Ginger can keep fighting the Good Fight despite his obstacles, well then so can I.

This neat little epiphany coincides with some ongoing dialogue between myself and good old Uncle Buffalo.  We got to talking about some of our respective musical experiences, and he reminded me of some of the sheer fun we used to have together a few years ago:

That's my buddy Doc Sweetwood blowing harp on the left, as I groove hard behind him.  For practically all of 2008, I was a Regular at the various weekly jam-sessions Uncle Buffalo sponsored; the above was a Tuesday night at the Delmar Lounge in St. Louis.  Loads of great plays preceded and followed this particular one, and the momentum rubbed off on my regular band gigs that year, to boot.  So much so, that I had a full CD's worth of material ready to record, and a string of regular work lined up for 2009.

Of course, the damn d'horse obliterated almost everything, and I've been scrambling like mad ever since to get back up on that plateau again.  Of all the things lost, time is the clear front-runner as my biggest nemesis.  It takes time to come back from being wiped out; time for wounds to heal; time to stabilize the "three hots and a cot" situation; etc., etc.  There have been days - sometimes weeks and even the odd month or two - when I feel I can't keep going through the daily slog.  But now all I have to do is look at the above pic, or think about Ginger Baker to be reminded that my goal is a worthy one, and much brighter days will eventually come again, if I can just somehow see it all through.

That song I mentioned to Ginger {the title of this very post} says it all, and is exactly what I'm aiming for.

More shortly.

Dogging Them Dog-Days

Well, at least the bloody heatwave broke for a bit here.  Felt good to sleep with the AC off, and the window open last night.  My sympathies to those of you who are still baking - locally, we'll be back in the oven by the middle of next week.  Hey, it is still August, after all.

Things are s-l-o-w-l-y starting to move in the right direction again, and I'm pleased to say that September will be a minor return to form, with a couple surprises to look forward to.  I've been so busy and frazzled the last couple months that my ulcer revived, and has been demanding attention.  Attention will come, but without pause for recuperation.  I'm nowhere near out of the hole the damn d'horse left me in, and any setback short of me permanently assuming room temperature will be glossed over as much as possible.  I've been out of circulation far too long already, and I want my life back.


The payoff down the road ought to be pretty sweet, though.  I just hope I live long enough to see it!!  A recent near-fatal encounter with one of them free-range John Deere 7R's has made me appreciate how fleeting life can be, even if the going is rough already.  Hopefully, things will begin to balance out, my labors will finally be rewarded, and all shall be well.  We shall see.


Lay back and groove for a bit, Fellow Babies.  The fourth quarter of 2011 just might be the first rays of a new rising sun..........  {word up, Jimi!}


More shortly.

Buffalo Stampedes!!!

What, August already?  How did that happen so damn fast?  Geez, I just start getting back on my feet, and some joker bumps the calendar's selector switch up to 78rpm's.  Sigh.

Besides the obvious of being summer's peak, our eighth month always gets me to thinking about Buffaloes.  No, not just the familiar four-legged kind.  I'm talking a couple different other varieties of the species.  First and foremost is a mechanical variety I became fascinated by around the age of 10 or so:

This odd beast belonged to the Union Railroad.  It started life as an ordinary Baldwin DRS-66-1500 that looked like this:

Around 1960, it was shipped off to GM's then-Electro-Motive Division {now E-M Diesel, owned by Caterpillar}.  EMD put a new prime mover in place of the original, and added one of their own hoods to the long end of the carbody.  The short hood remained as-built, but nine years later it was cut down for better visibilty.

This fact, coupled with the down-sloping panel that joins the taller EMD hood to the shorter Baldwin cab, gave this unit, and the rest of her sisters the look of a "buffalo grazing," hence their nickname.  They survived in service until 1980, when they were retired and scrapped.  Although I never got to see one in person, I did stumble across a very similar Chicago & North Western rebuild, being scrapped in the old St. Louis Auto Shredder's complex between Granite City, and East St. Louis,  Illinois around August 1985 or so.

As locomotives go, I've always had a soft spot for such "Frankenstinian" units - they gave the railfan hobby a great dash of spice, and were also a pretty good illustration of railroads making the proverbial lemons into lemonade.  Not all such "freaks" worked well, or lasted very long post-surgery, but the Buffaloes sure did.  As one shop foreman said, "An EMD motor with Westinghouse electricals is nearly indestructable."  Since the Union was at the time a subsidiary of US Steel, their Buffaloes literally had their hooves - er, wheels run off them as they lugged heavy ore, coal, limestone, and finished steel trains 24-7/365 for a score of years.

Although I only briefly glimpsed a mechanical Buffalo in person, the more organic varieties soon made presences in my life, with considerably more impact.  Classic was the incredibly tame and friendly one who "adopted" me during a visit to Grant's Farm in St. Louis when I was in my 20's.  See, I had some sugar cubes in my pockets that I was going to feed to the always-present Clydesdales in the stables during my tour of the park.  Before I could, I was waylaid by a frisky bison who was most curious about what was in me pocketses; he literally started nuzzling my hip when I visited his part of the range.

Now, having a 2500 pound, seven-foot tall {across the shoulders} beast nuzzle you like a puppy-dog is not an every day experience.  One half-forceful butt from his muzzle alone would have given me compound fractures, and let's not even think of what the rest of him could do, if even mildly preturbed!  After quickly bogarting the whole of my sugar-stash, my new bison-friend decided that this hairy toothpick wasn't a bad sort, and proceeded to follow me all around the park for the remainder of my visit!

Me and my new one ton shadow traumatized the stables, petting zoo, tram-ride station, and Michelob-sampling pavilion before he was finally corralled by the staff, allowing me the chance to escape.  I don't think I've ever seen SO many stunned faces, outside of a gig situation!!  All in a day's work, far as I'm concerned.  A critter's a critter, and I dig critters, so 'nuff said.  However, there was one more Buffalo destined to  cross my path, in the tradition of "good things come in threes."  Regular readers of my old MySpace blog will know what's coming next, but for my new Friends here, consider the following:

That's me on the right, alongside my Great Friend Buffalo Bob.  We first crossed paths around 1989 or '90, bumped into each other again in 2003, then finally began building a proper friendship starting in 2008, which continues to the present, I'm proud to say.  BB digs the real buffaloes too, and whenever we get together onstage somewhere, it's fair to say we both cut loose with our best stampede-impressions!  Aside from music, we see eye-to-eye on a lot of other things, and BB's take on all of 'em reminds me very much of that frisky bison with a sweet-tooth at Grant's Farm.  If the hairy toothpick is into it, he'll get into it as well.

Of course no friend of mine - Great or otherwise - is entirely safe from my legendary teasing-habit, and BB is no exception.  We got to talking about buffaloes {of all things} one day, and he made some remark about the Sacred White Buffalo that turns up in many Indian legends and customs.  Curious, I did a quick Google image-search - and nearly fell out of my chair in helpless laughter.  Five minutes with good old MS Paint gave me a hilarious take on "separated at birth?"  

For his part, BB took my joke in stride when I slammed him with it on my old MySpace blog.  Oh, he's clobbered me back several times since, but I think this incident was the start of a lot of silliness between the two of us, which is ongoing as I type this post.  BB's sense of humor is just as broad {and warped} as mine, and we go to great lengths to regale each other whenever the opportunity arises.  My favorites have been the times we've gone after each other onstage.  BB lays down a lick he knows will set me off, I obligingly go off, and then we try our best to baffle each other with some of the craziest musical tangents one could imagine.

Afterwards, he'll always slam me about drinking too much Tea, or having a flashback or whatever, and I usually toss a "serves ya right" right back at him, always with a huge grin on my face.  BB's not afraid of much as a musician; if I want to try something silly, he'll go along with it on the spur of the moment. He's one of perhaps four other musicians out of the hundreds I've encountered in the last 25 years that has that special quality.  It makes for some magical times onstage, believe me.  Hopefully, we'll have some more good times together in the not-too-distant future, now that I'm slowly coming back to life again.

So, that's my tale of the Buffalo Stampedes.  Animate or inanimate, I've yet to encounter a more fascinating species.  Strong, no-nonsense {well, maybe a little nonsense}, and steadfast-to-the-last; I consider myself very lucky indeed to have them as a part of my life experience.  These hot August days always remind me of the noble Bison, and how much I dig 'em, even if they do think that jazz smells funny.

More shortly............