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If you could read my mind … Like it would make any difference

Last night I saw a TV spot advertising an upcoming Gordon Lightfoot concert at our local Julie Rogers Theater. Two thought struck me when I viewed the commercial.

First, Gordie is beginning to show his age. Aren’t we all? I guess you see someone in a picture on a record album and it just sticks with you. The man is 73 years old though and didn’t, from the brief shot on the tube, seem nearly as weathered as Willie Nelson. Of course, Willie has been around all that smoke and out in the sun playing golf. It’ll weather a man, for sure.

Second, I think about the venue in which Lightfoot will play being similar to the one in which I saw him perform back in 1978 at San Diego Civic Theater. The Julie Rogers, once known as the Beaumont Municpal Auditorium, has total seating of about 1,600. The San Diego venue almost 3,000. Both venues may have been different in capacity 33 years ago. I only visited the old municipal auditorium once and that was in high school for Jerry LaCroix and White Trash, after Edgar Winter had departed the band. Winter and his brother Johnny, are from Beaumont by the way. LaCroix and some of the other band members are also natives of Southeast Texas and Southwest Louisiana. Nevertheless, I think I stood up during the whole concert because they played music that would get you moving even if you were dead. The point is both facilities — in Beaumont and San Diego — are small enough for one to appreciate a mellow performer like Lightfoot. I can only imagine Lightfoot coming on for the Rolling Stones during the concert I saw at the Louisiana Superdome only a month or so after I saw Lightfoot in California. It just wouldn’t work.

I can’t remember how much I paid to see Gordie in 1978. I went with one or two shipmates and the fact that we were in the Navy back then, with me as an E-5 making about $600 a month, I can’t imagine the admission was too pricey. That is actually part of the reason I went to as many concerts as I did back in the 1970s. I was a real freak for music and, some would argue, a real freak. And rock concerts were abundant: The Doobie Brothers, Jerry Jeff Walker, Willie Nelson, Fleetwood Mac (three times in two countries), ZZ Top, the Stones, Van Halen, Aerosmith, Jeff Beck, Bob Seger, Allman Brothers, Marshall Tucker, just to name a dozen.

Looking at Ticketmaster, about the cheapest seat I could find for the Lightfoot concert in January was about $50 on Ticketmaster for a balcony seat. That isn’t Himalayas-style nosebleed as when I saw the Stones, Doobies and David Lee Roth-era Van Halen at what is now the (oh goodness) Mercedes-Benz Superdome. Of course, $50 today has the same buying power as did $14.50 in 1978, according to my favorite little economic tool, the Inflation Calculator, from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

I would love to hear Gordie play “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” or, probably my favorite GL song, “High and Dry,” even though he might not even play the latter anymore on stage as it never was a well-known song for him. The truth is $50 is a little steep for a Tuesday night’s entertainment. I probably wouldn’t find being seated and unseated with 1,600 folks too difficult these days, but cavorting with 50,000 or 60,000 people as I did  at the Superdome to watch the Stones just would be something I can no longer hack.

Both Gordie and I are getting old(er), no doubt about it.

 

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Being poor is okay, but …

But your new shoes are worn at the heels

and your suntan does rapidly peel

and your wise men don’t know how it feels

to be rich as a bitch. — With Apologies to Ian Anderson (Jethro Tull), “Thick As a Brick,” — 1972

 

The term “bitch” has no meaning relating to our beloved female species, nor dogs, nor female dogs. Rather in this case, in a parody of Jetho Tull’s melodic tune which means, I have no idea, the word is just a superlative. Rich as a bitch. That person is really rich. Be he a he or she a she or he a she or she a he. Nevertheless, they are rich. Really, really rich. Rich. As a bitch.

This parody was born of a Navy roommate, a Maniac named Dell. Yes, he was a Maniac, as in, from Maine. No Mainer. No Downeaster. Maniac. Before he left to return to Maine for good as far as I know, he gave me this cool bumper sticker. I still have it somewhere. It said: “Made in Maine. By Maniacs.”

When Dell and I hung out, in his little pickup or my little Corolla heading to the bars or to friends off the beach in Gulfport, we were both so poor we couldn’t pay attention. Like so many of my interesting co-workers, roommates, shipmates or just plain mates from the Navy, I never saw Dell after he left for home after his “separation.” As usual, I will give you more than you need or want to know. Those of us who signed up for four years in the Navy were “separated” when those four years were up. Most, or best I can recall, all, of us actually agreed to six years of service. Four years were active duty and two years could either be active reserve or inactive reserve. There were and still are variations, especially if you wanted to just go the active reservist track.

With the two wars going on these days since the last, forever, many active reservist and even a number of inactive reserves have been called up. When I served in the late 1970s, we were told it would take a world war before we would be recalled as inactives. I spent my two years inactive never giving a thought to being recalled. This included the beginning of my first year of college on the GI Bill. Oh sure, there were wars going on then as well as various military actions. Remember the U.S. hostages taken by Iranian radicals?

I wasn’t particularly worried about going back to the military, not that there was anything to worry about in the first place. I worked as a firefighter at the time, even though a number of my co-workers knew that would not protect you from going war. Our department had no civil service protection, so during the Vietnam War firefighters were subject to the draft. The lieutenant with whom I served the longest and several other firemen served in the National Guard rather than go to the infantry in Phuc Yu. Another lieutenant I served with ended up in the Marines in the not-at-all-demilitarized DMZ, still another was a clerk but that didn’t stop shelling and rockets from being permanent parts of his memory thus causing him forever to jump at loud noises. Not the best set of circumstances when those fire bells went off at night, but we all lived as best we could.

It was unthinkable that I should get called up in the inactive reserve from 1979-80 and I wasn’t. One really hot day, in the same kind of summer we are in now, I walked up to the mailbox and pulled out a big manilla envelope from the Navy. Inside was a nice, big, framable certificate that said I was “Honorably Discharged.” I was thanked for my service. I said: “You’re welcome.”

Okay, I’ve gone on here. That is so because I wanted to talk about a very important and extremely expensive portion of the U.S. Government, that being the military, of which very many of my relatives and friends and I was a part.

The military fed me, housed me, paid me, washed my uniforms more or less, gave me a haircut whether I needed it or not, gave me free health care, mostly kept me out of trouble and gave me a path toward becoming an adult, if I was so inclined to start walking down said path. But we weren’t paid very much. I remember selling my blood in between paydays. When I was on a ship, this being after Mississipppi, I would have to borrow some bucks from a shipboard loan shark. But hey, everybody has to make a living.

Beer could be purchased out of a machine in the barracks for 30 cents — if you liked Schlitz, Old Milwaukee and Olympia. I did, pretty much. But we weren’t getting rich, digging a ditch, as the old Army song said.

So my buddy Dell and I cruised down Broad Avenue off the Seabee Base in Gulfport, Miss., headed for the beach, down past where the Chimes lounge and John’s Laundromat and Bar gave the hard-core drinker like some of the old “lifers” a place to indulge at 7 o’clock in the morning. This was the old Navy, back in the 70s. People aren’t even supposed to drink in today’s Navy. I’m joking of course although not much. But as we headed toward the beach, or the bar, or Dell’s girlfriend’s trailer, we’d ride along, broke but yet happy, singing although skewing the lyrics from Jethro Tull.

“And your wisemen don’t know how it fe-he-he-he-he-he … heels

to be rich as a bitch.”

Warren Buffett, you may have heard of him, does know how it feels.

So I thought I’d just pass this along.

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What song is that you don’t want to hear?

My local daily news tells me a new burrito place is soon opening in Beaumont called “Freebirds” and another is soon to follow in nearby Nederland. The shop in Beaumont is taking over where Geo Burrito was located, which took over one of Novrozsky’s places which moved down the street in the Kroger shopping center at Folsom and Dowlen. Novrozsky’s is a pretty good local hamburger chain but I really don’t eat there much anymore since they seem to have given up making their great buffalo burger. I’ve never eaten at Geo’s, either at the aforementioned old Novrozsky’s or another ex-Novrozsky’s and ex-Geo’s on Calder and Lucas.

The reasoning for my not checking out Geo’s and why I likewise will probably not try Freebirds is because their style of burritos and other items are a little too tres chic for my taste. I like tacos and burritos that either come from a cart, or from a place where English is a second, or sometime third language. Or else, I like my own tacos and burritos that I have, well I don’t know if “perfected” is the right word, but have crafted over time. Others might not like those food items. But I do. If I want to make something for someone else I will make chili con carne, a great old Tex-Mex dish of which there is no right and no wrong. Or I will make some Jambalaya on the bayou me oh my yo.

Also, I am not too taken in by a place that is named for probably my least favorite Lynyrd Skynyrd song. The only time I saw Lynyrd Skynyrd play was during their “Nuthin’ Fancy Tour,” on the best I can tell March 18, 1975, at the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg. A Wikipedia entry said “Free Bird” was on their “typical set list” for that concert tour so I might have heard them play it. I couldn’t guarantee that though. This would be during the time, also according to the Wikipedia, that “Free Bird” hit Billboard’s Hot 100 list at No. 19. Since all I had for a car radio was of the AM variety, back during that time while driving all around Mississippi or an occasional trip across South Louisiana back home for a weekend of Navy liberty to East Texas, I would hear “Free Bird” quite often. Ditto for a live version of “Free Bird” that peaked the charts at No. 38 in 1977. It is the same version that is played quite frequently on “Album Oriented Rock” FM stations or “Classic Rock” or whatever, played ad nauseum. The same song where LS asks: “What song is it that you want to hear?” and the answer is, unfortunately, “Free Bird.”

To shorten matters, I’ve long liked “Sweet Home Alabama,” “The Needle and the Spoon,” “The Ballad of Curtis Loew,” “Give Me Three Steps,” “Gimme Back My Bullets,” “What’s Your Name?”and a host of Skynyrd songs. It was quite a shock to hear, about 2 1/2 years later after I heard them in a great concert at USM, upon a beach in Guam from some “Good Ol’ Guamanian Boys” that Skynyrd lead singer Ronnie Van Zant, band members Steve and Cassie Gaines, the assistant road manager, pilot and co-pilot were killed on impact when their plane crashed in Mississippi.

I still like to hear the Skynyrd songs that I love to hear. I feel “Free Bird” has become a stereotype of the redneck Southern rocker who plays the song louder than it has a right to be heard on a stereo system that costs more than his 15-year-old pick-em-up truck does.

No, I don’t really like Freebird. I probably won’t like Freebirds burrito place either. I guess if someone, a guest, from out of town wants to try it, I will just to be polite. And I might like it. But I kind of bet that I won’t.

And, no the song I want to hear is “Sweet Home Alabama,” or perhaps “Give Me Three Steps.” Maybe even the Skynyrd version of the great J.J. Cale song “Call Me The Breeze.” I’d like to hear damn near anything by LS except “Free Bird.”

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Wanted: Simpler, quieter, less complicated

At times I wish the pace of this old world was a little bit slower. I suppose that is a sign that I need a vacation away from everything, the TV and Internet included.

You may hear older folks or even those people who are not so old wish for “simpler times.” I suppose when I was a kid, in the early to mid 1960s things were quite a bit simpler than today, but they weren’t all that much simpler or even “the good old days” for many. I think I first heard of Vietnam when I was 7 or 8 years old. Not too much later, that piece of ground in Southeast Asia would come to an omnipresence  in our society until at least the time I had enlisted in the military. Growing up with a draft, with a war killing tens of thousands of young people, some of whom you knew, was not at all the good old days and weren’t particularly simple.

Then, pretty much all of my life I have known about “the bomb” although it seemed for the most a real and looming threat  for the first 30 or so years of my life.

Yet, times were in some respects simpler when I was a kid. I can remember watching water rushing through a culvert after a heavy rain and staying entertained for a good half hour watching the sandy brown liquid runoff run all which a ways.

We didn’t  have a phone in our house until we moved into our grandmother’s place, after she died. The phone, one of those rotary dial versions, was also on a party line with the older lady who lived in our then-deceased Uncle Algie and Aunt Ada’s house across the field. Unless there was an emergency Mrs. Irons wasn’t about to get off the phone until she had finished telling someone how she made her fig preserves. We had TV of course. It came in only two colors in our house, black and white. It seems there was always some kind of record player around and a radio. I was kind of techno nut even back then. I guess if I hadn’t been so lazy I might have built a ham radio. But I remember when I was about 10, my parents bought me a fairly nice, though not terribly expensive radio with AM/FM and two shortwave bands.

For as long as I had the radio, up to my early high school days, you couldn’t hear much on FM because there weren’t very many FM stations in our area. But I learned a good bit that prepared me for this vastly more complicated world today by listening to shortwave stations, including those from Communist lands such as Radio Havana.

There was a time when I was going to college that I didn’t pay much attention to TV, I didn’t even have one where I lived. The only time I’d watch was when I was on duty at the firehouse. I’d listen to the local radio stations where several of my close friends were deejays. Of course, I listened to music. A good many friends had very high-powered sound systems. We used to scare the cows away when I lived in the country and one of my friends would bring his monster Klipsch speakers over for a party.

From the time when my friend Bruce showed my how to write with his computer in 1989 until present time it seems I have learned a little more technology each day and have seen the techno world explode into one new thing and another. Along with cell phones that record videos and take pictures and allow Internet access to the cable TV networks that provide the so-called “24-hour news cycle,” the complex world has become even more complex. The world is real-time 24/7.

The president of the U.S. watched live from the White House on Sunday as a U.S. Navy SEAL commando team raided and killed the man who is responsible for a number of terrorist acts including ones on Sept. 11, 2001, in which two loaded passenger planes were crashed as missiles into the World Trade Center in New York, another jet was crashed into the Pentagon and a third went down in a Pennsylvania field after passengers fought terrorists for control of the plane, killing all passengers and terrorists. More than 3,000 Americans were killed that day.

Less than 24 hours later, a DNA test confirmed that one of those killed in the SEAL team raid which happened in Pakistan was indeed Osama bin Laden. Although most of the raid was videotaped, the president decided not to show the world the death pictures of bin Laden, fearing the photos would inflame passions of would be terrorists. Shortly afterward, a whole big deal erupted by both friend and foe of President Obama (no relation to Osama, Mamma)  over whether the pictures of the dead terrorists should be shown. Now much of the world is complaining about the pictures not being shown.

Now, again in real time, we once more we are dropped down into the vastly complicated world and since I am back to where I started, perhaps the self-analysis helped me some, but I still need some time off and a chance to disconnect from most of the world’s literal USBs. Perhaps I can go somewhere with the only sounds existing come from wind gently blowing through the treetops, water lapping through rocks on a river or large creek, or perhaps be startled by the hoot of an owl nearby or be amused by the dueling calls of whippoorwills. Time to cut off the phone and the Internet and the 24/7 cable.

Of course, I’ll take my digital cameras. ‘Cause you still need pictures or even a video of it so it can be a reminder that there are such places to getaway on a day just like this one in which that ever circling drama known as life threatens your sanity.

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Wigged out Baptists — KC bound — Good eats at Starvin Marvin’s

So I see those lunatics from the Westboro Baptist Church from Topeka plan to protest at the funerals of those killed in Saturday’s shootings in Tucson. The  Rev. Fred Phelps and his gang of Baptist jihadists go wherever there is publicity so they can spread the gospel of anti-gay hate. Amazing those folks with their syllogism that the departed in these shootings and others including KIA American soldiers died because a) God Hates America  b) Because we have turned our backs on God’s way especially by allowing homosexuals in our midst. Well, maybe that isn’t really a syllogism perhaps it is 1/2 a syllogism, or even a half-assed syllogism. It’s been awhile since I studied logic.

I can’t believe these folks from Kansas call themselves Baptists. I’ve been around Baptists all my life. I went to a number of Baptist churches in my younger days. And I can honestly say I never came across any devout Baptists, any devout Christians for that matter, who were such antisocial jackasses.

And that’s all I have to say about that.

Speaking of Kansas, I should be in or near there one week from today as I am supposed to go to Kansas City next week thanks to one of my sidelines. I expect it will be cold. It”s been cold the last couple of days. Here on the Texas Coast a 45 degree day, especially one with wind chill in the 20s or 30s passes for cold. Well, in my estimation it is cold. Have I mentioned lately that I  live in Southeast Texas because it is usually pretty warm here? That’s not the only reason, but that is a major one. We also have the best chili in the world in Texas. And the biggest dips**t for a governor. But that’s not really a plus.

And that’s all I have to say about that.

Today I had lunch for the first time at Starvin Marvin’s, kind of in the neighborhood. I was a bit afraid it might be too rich for my blood as their TV ads kind of give that impression but the place that is best known for its ribs and hand cut steaks had a reasonable lunch. I had what was the special, which I believe is called their Texas Club. It looks pretty impressive coming from the kitchen as the sandwich is stood up on its ends. I found it a good eats nonetheless with several meats and cheeses. I smelled garlic somewhere, perhaps on the toast perhaps in the meat, if you can smell it you know it’s there. The price with a tip was about $11 for just myself. A little high, perhaps for a sandwich and steak fries and iced tea, but not really, not these days. They have a huge outdoors area with a large fireplace, that was stoked up on “hot” today and some other outdoor fires were burning while plastic helped keep some of the cold out. Still, I wasn’t brave enough to try it.

This is what used to be Rocky’s Road House and who knows what before that. It’s now part of the “Beaumont music scene” and it was the first place I’ve been in years where I knew every song playing from the sound system, from The Doors “Roadhouse Blues” to “I’m Free” from The Who’s “Tommy.” Impressive to an old rock n’ roll fart like me. Oh, and the waitress told me the truth, at least in her mind, about certain menu items. Give that gal a raise. For dang sure give her a good tip. Good atmosphere, reminds me of the Armadillo Palace in Houston.

Whether the name of this bar and grill — they have happy hour specials — was influenced by the little African cartoon character from “South Park,” I don’t know. I do know I had to wear my heaviest coat today which has a hood and it sometimes makes me look like Kenny from South Park, as in “Oh my God, They killed Kenny, you bastards.”

Starvin Marvin’s

2310 N. 11th St.

Beaumont, TX

(409) 234 5002

Deep O’ Meter: 4.5

(I occasionally do a restaurant review. I decided I would put my own stamp of satisfaction/dissatisfaction upon those eateries with the “Deep O’ Meter.” Eight Feet Deep, the name of this blog inspired it so an 8 on the Deep O’ Meter would be the best you could get. You won’t see many of those. I am pretty picky about restaurants, yeah, sure you are. The 4.5 I gave Marvin’s is above average.)