June 2, 2004
We went west to see the band in what has become a yearly Memorial
Day ritual, something akin to a bad Blues Brothers move in which my old friends
insist on picking up the pieces of their youth, to relive glory days they did
not know where glory days when they were young.
Since our moving to Jersey City, we had grown out of touch
with Jimmy and others – not so much because of distance, but the direction of
our lives.
And since his moving west to Lake Hopatcong in 1985, the
whole area had changed and become less comfortable – largely due to ever
increasing development.
The state had removed the kinks out of the winding road from
Route 80 to where Jimmy lived and worked, and in exchange had allowed
developers to plow down whole mountainsides of trees. Everything looked naked
or posh, far from the resort area my grandfather dragged his kids during The Great
Depression.
My first Garley Gang encounter with the area came in 1972
when Jimmy, Frank and I went there to get drunk to recover from our failed
romances.
We found a small combination bar and liquor store just up
the street from the library and across from what would later become the local
Quick Chek.
The bartender didn’t like us on account of our long hair, and
neither did the rednecks who thought we were trying to steal their girls.
We got out of there with our lives and decided to go find
Richard Haas, who Jimmy claimed was staying at their summer retreat on Bertrand’s
Island.
We got sidetracked by the bumper cars – which was Frank’s idea
– each of us climbing into our own car in the attempt to take out our aggression
on each other. It didn’t occur to me until late that Frank was still recovering
from a broken neck at the time, and still wore a collar when he felt discomfort
or pain.
Still drunk, we left the park, Jimmy decided to find Richard
and we came out onto the slanted narrow streets behind the park where we were
confronted by three large dogs who took a particular interest (or so Jimmy
claimed when he leaped into my arms) in Jimmy.
We abandoned our search for Richard and sought refuge in
Frank’s car.
It would be a whole decade later before I actually found the
house again when Jimmy asked me to meet him there in the summer of 1982 when I
brought back my ex-wife and child for him to meet, all of us wandering down
into the amusement park where Jimmy did his best to keep my daughter amused.
Three years after that, Jimmy moved into the house with
Richard in a move as dramatic as retreat to Richmond by Robert E Lee,
foreshadowing some great surrender I was only vaguely aware of.
I made such frequent trips to the place I might have lived
there as well, even though Jersey City as a longer haul to get there than was
Passaic.
After Frank’s death in 1995, my trips grew less frequent,
partly because my own life in Jersey City became very complicated – I was
taking care of my mother until her death in early 2002, and I had a job that
consumed my time.
Jimmy had settled into a career of his own at the local library,
and though he still worked on art and music, he seemed content – even after he
got put out of the Haas house in 1994 and lived in an old house near the
library he was convinced was haunted.
Jimmy got nostalgic for strange things – including old tapes
he and I did (sometimes with others) while high and kept trying to convince me
to do more. We never got around to it.
I always ached for the reunion of the band – the real band –
in whatever configuration they could arrange.
Two years ago, we went to see John, Jimmy and Garrick perform
at the fire house. This year, Jimmy told us, John assembled a whole band
including drums, base and keyboard.
And under a tent in a field, the band played although only a
handful of locals sat with us, perhaps the volume being too loud, a far cry
from the more acoustic version than won praise two years ago.
I liked it, although I could feel tension among the band
members, bringing back the glory days when they were always fighting. Some of
it had to do with John moving in with Jimmy’s sister, but it was more than that
– something I still haven’t put my finger on.
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