A Good and Profound Education

It is Monday morning and after a late spate of confusing dreams I am feeling quite lethargic again today. I feel groggy, as though I didn’t get a proper rest.

I kind of sleep-walked through my ablutions, exercises and prayers. I have just checked email and there is nothing personal in there.

Jean emailed me yesterday again from Oregon to tell me she and her husband are involved with a Gurdjieff study group. They are reading a 6 volume commentary by Maurice Nicoll, the same man Roger the Apes told me about during our talks on the cliffs at Santa Cruz when I visited in the mid-70s.

Roger spoke in an English/Australian hybrid accent as a Briton who had emigrated to the antipodes as a teen and found work there and much adventure.

You think your arguments are something, man? Observe a most ancient argument! And Roger then pointing to the huge surf crashing over the cliff-side rocks.

I was truly fortunate though as a young 20 something to earn the friendship of Roger Apperley, Ken Worley and John Mise who although 10 to 20 years senior to my age, welcomed me into their circle. It was a good and profound education.

I was singing at The Cats restaurant in Los Gatos at the time when Ken the bartender (a heavy set and well educated Texan who sometimes doubled as bouncer) introduced me to a bronzed, blond and very fit Roger (think young Michael Caine) who was just back from ship board duties in the South Seas and was hired on to help Ken behind the bar.

The three of us didn’t become close friends until I left the restaurant to move to Santa Cruz where I found a small cabin near the beach and began performing locally. Roger in the meantime had met beautiful black haired Cleo a co-worker at the Catalyst in Santa Cruz and the two of them moved into the ground floor of an old house in town. She called him her Tudor man...and the locals sooned began calling Roger Tooter.

John, Ken (who had also taken new work as a barman in Santa Cruz) and I became frequent visitors to their home. John was a retired (didn’t like the gig) professor of Literature at San Jose State, and amidst many tokes of Acapulco Gold, cups of Lapsang Souchong tea and jugs of California red we carried on discussions on life, love and art into the wee hours and sometimes over several days.

Vern Bennett a gifted pianist who played locally and Norman Thomas a gruff and white tousle-haired painter were also important friends much older than myself but who adopted me as a younger brother providing both fraternal friendship and nourishment to the young troubadour who had stumbled into their company.

Norman, then in his late 60's used to drag me around to the local bars where he introduced me as his son and then began chatting up the young ladies who served us. I still remember that he told Ken and Roger that he liked me because of my tough little Irish mug!

This morning as I putter through my routine these memories drift through my consciousness and evaporate like smoke as quickly as they appear. I can't dwell on them in greater detail as I must leave for work in the next few minutes.

How I survived and flourished in those days of the late 60’s is still a mystery to me! But what a rich and colorful slideshow of memories those days still provide!