This is my favorite performance of the band, an outdoor concert at a bikers' picnic in August 1975, which I recorded. I left some of the sidetalk in this version that is not included in some of the other versions I gave out over the last few years.
The day begins with the quiet before the madness of
customers: a container of OJ, a glimpse at The New York Times, and a moment of
reflection.
We seem to have arrived at yet another great moment in time,
a conjuncture of importance that comes with Jimmy’s return to Passaic.
It hardly seems as if three and a half years have passed
since his last being here.
He seemed to live in Towaco for an eternity.
This has much to do with his infatuation with Ginger.
A huge portion of Jimmy’s soul inhabits that large house,
like smoke rising from its chimney into its wooden rafters, embedded permanently
along with the scent of burning wood.
Jimmy and I spent a number of evenings seated in front of
the stone hearth, talking, playing guitars, listening to classical records.
It was the earthiest of places, full of last century’s wholesome
feelings, and yet close enough to civilization to seem practical.
In fact, too close, with civilization creeping closer inch
by inch, hemming in that little hill so that you could not go a mile in any
direction without running into walls of concrete.
I remember one Christmas climbing up that hill with rain at
its bottom only to find the top covered with snow, making me realize that each
visit there was traveling into another time and into another world, a magical
world that somehow defied the temptation of civilization during those years
when Jimmy was there, and is perhaps part of what attracted him there.
And for those three or so years, I often found Jimmy
puttering around outside, digging the earth with his hands, painting in one of
the remote rooms upstairs, tending gardens, clearing stone and glass he found buried
in the slanted back yard.
Each time I visited him; Jimmy was up to something there.
Yes, he and I both understood that it would not last –
everything came to an end eventually.
But at the time, the end of dreams such as this were hard to
visualize.
Jimmy appeared to have found his place in the world,
becoming the Merlin character he so envied from the Mary Steward books, the
aging Merlin who was learning the arts of the earth.
I thought the end would come differently than it did, that Mrs.
Fennelly would finally come to realize that the place was just too much to
handle for her to keep up alone and would sell it back to civilization and the
tide of progress – which always tends to ruin thins like this in the supposed journey
onto better things.
I think this is why Jimmy worked so hard, struggling to delay
that inevitable day, knowing down deep in his heart, even he couldn’t keep it
back forever.
And even though he had minor victories, it was always a
losing battle.
But even the struggle was a delight: the smell of lilacs in
season, the grinning faces of the orange button marigolds, the gray faces of
the dusty millers, and for three seasons, he struggled to grow radishes,
carrots, pumpkins and tomatoes, stirring them up out of the soil like children,
green umbilical cords clinging to them as he gave them birth.
He hoed up the thick black soil, dug, planted and even
begged for those plants to grow, raising them from seedlings in the kitchen
when it was still too cold outside to plant, even after the thaw, they hanging
in pots from every window, he petting them like pets, their green limbs
overflowing their pots, like green rain, sweeping down, creating veils
throughout which he could squint out at the world beyond.
The sunlight through these veils alone created a kind of
magic.
But there had to be a price for all this, and part of this
was watching the woman he loved drift away.
For much of what he did in this magical world involved her
with the presumption that if he created paradise, she might be enticed, he
always assuming that paradise required two people.
Jimmy made Ginger into a goddess long ago, and I fully
believe that he thought of her when he tended his flowers and plants, she the
greed buds he prayed would blossom into something grand, her face in each of
the flowers he tenderly caressed, he holding her at each stage, at 17 when he
met her, and 22, when she left him at Pine Street, and on and on, each a growing
monument to a magical time we all knew could not last.
I like to think he tried to protect her from the inevitable
pain. Oh, yes, there had to be pain – for in the end, even Eden came to an end,
and in fact as much as Jimmy wanted this to be Eden, it was not.
He and she were two souls with differing visions of the
world.
Jimmy was essentially a mystic with a hazy view of the real
world. He was not a dreamer the way many were. He understood the darkness and
evils that could work their way into the deluded dreamer. He simply avoided the
whole issue, pretending such things did not exist when he knew they did.
To me, early on, it was Ginger who attempted to blind
herself to what the real world was about, making awakening all the more
painful.
In Eden, it was knowledge that devoured Eve – ambition for
something more. Ginger seems to want to be something more than she is, and
wants Jimmy to be something, too – and seems to see Jimmy as wasting his
talents.
Jimmy could have become president had he wanted it.
Ginger seemed to learn from Jimmy the rudiments of survival,
but having learned them, began to grow beyond him and away from him, using Buddhism
to obtain something Jimmy could not provide, meeting others who could help her.
She would be something someday with Jimmy or without him.
Now, Jimmy returns here, devoured by Beowulf’s dragon,
learning for the first time that Ginger is not a goddess at all, but a dark
queen whose sin – the need to be more than she is – cannot be erased merely by
Jimmy’s love.
Maybe cutting his finger on Thanksgiving had nothing to do with the
news that Ginger is getting married – to someone other than Jimmy.
But it took Jimmy a long time to come out and tell us.
He said that it didn’t affect him at all.
“It’s only Ginger getting married,” he said. “It had to happen sooner
or later.”
He said she told him over the phone on Thanksgiving, an apparent slip
of the tongue that required her to come north to explain.
Happiness has a way of bubbling out and not likely meant to cause hurt.
Jimmy, however, IS very hurt.
Something is being taken out of his life, if not love, then someone he
considers hugely important.
And he can’t quite bring himself to like this “new” fellow of Ginger’s.
He tells me he thinks the man is beneath her.
But Jimmy has made a goddess of Ginger and that’s the problem.
No one ever be good enough for her – not even Jimmy.
Jimmy said Ginger claims this “new” fellow is a lot like Jimmy –
something Jimmy clearly didn’t want to hear.
I keep recalling the tale Jimmy repeatedly told about how he stole Ginger
from the clutching grasp of Ralph.
He says he remembers the exact day and time and the things they did
together.
He also remembers the failed attempt to live together and the sense of
failure he felt when she said she had to leave.
She’s all grown up now, hardly the 17-year-old Jimmy first swept up,
and in growing up, Ginger has developed her own philosophy of life. She lives
in the real material world while Jimmy seeks some existence less physical.
“It had to happen,” Jimmy told me, the pain in his eyes so obvious I
almost have to cry just looking at him, but a controlled pain, and that, too,
is part of the problem.
Maybe if he had begged her to stay one of those previous times. Maybe if
he had cried like a normal human being might in the same situation.
But his pride seems to make him resist showing the kind of emotions the
rest of us would show.
He keeps the worst for himself, giving everybody else his wit.
Now, the year ends on this long, sad note.
The song which ten years ago had been one of joy is joy again, but not
for Jimmy.
Now, he is alone again.
Now that special hope which had been in the back of his head all along
is shattered, and he sits on a mountain, a nowhere man with no blue meanies to
blame, not unless these meanies are the ambiguous feelings which he has felt
since his first meeting Ginger back in 1970.
He doesn’t have anyone else to whom he can turn, upon whose shoulder he
can cry, or anyone he can cast hate at, or even a place where he can hide.
There is only the sad call of age and the empty years ahead.
Ginger has grown up, and grown away from him, and part his ability to
mature is to learn how to accept the fact of it.
Just why we kidnapped Frank Quackenbush that day in 1975 I don't think
any of us know even all these years later.
Perhaps Jimmy suggested it. Or we have since talked ourselves into
believing Jimmy did.
At first – when we were all sitting in Louis’ living room at 86 Passaic
Street concocting the plan to dump him in the middle of the Tappan Zee Bridge
and leave him there – Frank thought we were kidding.
None of us were if he could make it back on his own and we bet against
each other as to whether he could or not
Had Frank thought we were serious he would never have gotten into the
van with us.
He didn’t figure it out until a few blocks later at which time he
started to complain, and a few blocks after that when we reached Clifton, he
begged us to stop, and finally, he simply started to moan.
We would have done it, too, had not the inevitable question arisen as
to who was going to pay for gas and tolls, at which point we turned and went
back to Passaic to get high.
This was a period of time I still envy when Garrick, Jimmy, and Lewis
had built an impromptu artist community in an apartment complex owned by Garrick’s
aunt. Louis, a photographer, and his girlfriend Jewell were still in school.
Louis and Garrick were supplementing their income by making jewelry in some
sweat shop in Hawthorne. Jimmy was both artist and musician. I figured they
needed a writer like me to make a full set. But Jimmy, me and Garrick in a very
small space did not mix well, and I eventually made my way uptown to what Jimmy
later called “the fancy apartment,” and when I went broke there, I moved back
to the rooming house in Montclair.
Jimmy had moved into Passaic after leaving Pine Street (late 1974 or
early 1975) at a time when red vans were all the rage in the Garley Gang.
Louis had one, which he used as a roadie for the band.
I drove a red van starting in June 1974 when I left the card company
for the cosmetic warehouse.
Jimmy actually got a job driving a red van for Outwater Plastics on River
Drive in Garfield in early 1975.
Sometimes, Jimmy and I would pass each other on the road. We kept
telling each other we should meet up on the road somewhere, but never did.
Jimmy got obsessed with finding the headquarters of 84 Lumber company whose
signs he kept seeing everywhere along the road. He never did find it. I found
one of its New Jersey facilities much later during a trip to Cape May and kept
meaning to tell him, and regretfully never did that either.
Garrick moved out of the apartment with Jimmy in the place Louis previously
lived in, briefly living in 84 Passaic Street before moving onto a larger
apartment at 82, while Jimmy moved into 84, and some Latino family took over 86.
When Jimmy lost his job with Outwater and could not pay his rent for a
year, Garrick’s aunt evicted him. He moved back to his father’s house in West
Paterson and lasted there until his father told him he had to get a job – after
which he came to Passaic again, and lived in Garrick’s attic. I moved into 84
Passaic Street on March 1, 1978
By that time, Jimmy and Garrick already planning moves of their own.
(Jimmy would later return briefly in 1984-85 but it wasn’t the same. I had lost
my job as driver and by that time, all three red vans were consigned to
history.
I don’t know why this means so much to me or why I felt such joy waving
to Jimmy when I saw him on the Parkway, he coming while I was going, and yet
both of us caught up in some strange magic – he would later call synchronicity –
one of those silly coincidences that make life interesting.
And to this day, I wonder if Frank would have made back from the Tappan
Zee Bridge had we had the money for gas to get him there.
As much as Jimmy depended on Frank to get him around, calling him at
all times, all seasons to get him from one place to another, these journeys
were fraught with frustration -- especially in the early 1970s when Frank was
apt to take Jimmy the long way around to get any place.
At some point when the three of us were in Haledon and needed to get
some place near Oakland either to meet Garrick or Ginger, Jimmy insisted that
Frank take well known highways to get where we're going.
Jimmy was naturally in a hurry as he always was to get some place most
likely we were seeking pot first and then seeking to make the meeting later
Frank insisted he knew a shortcut, something that would get us to the
first meeting first and then on time for the second meeting -- and despite Jimmy's
protest, Frank took off in a direction completely opposite the one Jimmy
wanted.
I had been on this trip with
Frank before and knew where it ended up eventually. Since we had often taken it
to get to where Jimmy intended but I was uncertain just which was quicker and so
seated in the back seat as I always was, I generally kept my mouth shut.
I let the usual dialog take place in the front seat where Jimmy
insisted that Frank hurry and Frank insisted he was with Jimmy asking every few
minutes: “Are we there” and Frank saying “not yet, Jim -- soon though.”
Jimmy of course then pressed Frank
to drive and Frank told him “no way.”
This restriction on Jimmy's driving came after two unfortunate
accidents which were not Jimmy's fault, but which Frank blamed on him.Both of these occurred in West Paterson and
both on the exit ramp off Route 46 and in both cases I was in the backseat when
the car was rear ended.
In both cases, Jimmy had stopped for a stop sign near Browertown Road and
the car behind wanted him to advance through the stop sign and did not stop.
Prior to these, Jimmy always insisted on driving partly because he
suspected Frank was always trying to get us lost in what frank called “A
Magical Mystery Tour.”
In some cases, Jimmy was right.Frank ache for the carefree days the summer of 1972 when we all eligible
bachelors rejected by the women we loved and wandered around the landscape
enjoying each other's misery.
Jimmy distrusted Frank's driving as much as I did.
Frank and I had been in at least three accidents together one of which
left Frank with a broken neck and me with a mashed-up face.
Frank was the only person I ever knew that while learning to drive
managed to get involved in a multiple car accident with six parked cars and
managed to nearly knock down his own front porch.
Jimmy's minor fender-benders we're nowhere near as serious but had
dented the bumper of Frank's relatively new car.
After the first accident Frank was cautious but allowed to drive again
after the second heat put a ban on it and insisted on becoming Jimmy's
chauffeur.
Such was the case this time but as in all of these trips that Jimmy
insisted Frank take Frank went his own way.
“Are we there yet?” Jimmy would ask.
“Not yet, Jim,” Frank replied, “but soon.”
After a particular long stretch
of trees Jimmy glanced back at me in the back seat inside then looked at Frank
then looked out the window and said, “This is very scenic but I've scenic all before.”
We eventually did arrive at both meetings and relatively on time. The
real frustration came when it was time for Frank to drive Jimmy home.
Jimmy wanted to be dropped off first even though he lived Jimmy wanted
to be dropped off first even though he lived in Passaic at the time and I lived
in Montclair and we were coming from the direction of Verona.
Frank said it was easier for him to get home from Passaic then to have
to come all the way back to Montclair to drop me off second.
So, Frank did with Frank always does and went where he wanted which in
this case was to my house in Montclair.
When we pulled up to the curb Jimmy looked over the seat at me nodded
said goodbye then looked at Frank and said: “ I am going to go call up your
mother to have her pray to St Jude so that St Jude can talk to God to have the
bird of paradise fly over here and shit on your head.”
Jimmy was still fuming when they
pulled away Frank nearly burst his gut laughing which only pissed off Jimmy
more.
