Jack Brummet writes:
How moving. . .and loving. . .and your remembering is of such great clarity and depth and warmth. If you don't mind, I want to throw this on the Phil blog, and maybe this too.
Maybe this is perfect to set things in motion.
I knew Phil in high school--we were slight friends. But when I started coming to Bellingham, it was maybe after only one or two trips that I became fast friends with both Phil and Jerry. You and I were at that point old friends, and knew each other's families, and by then had a pretty long history (well, four years, say). Not surprisingly, Phil and I became friends sooner than Jerry and I did. In most ways, Phil was much more ebullient, and more open. Mel, as you remember, could also retract into toxic silence. Especially in the morning.
One other connection with Phil was books, Shakespeare, and poetry. Somehow you guys sucked me in to the point where I've been writing poems for like, what...35 years?
I agree with you on Phil's poem on the blog (See Sept. 7, on this blog). Startlingly mature. As Phil himself was easily the most mature of all of us. And yet he mostly always forgave our knucklehead ways. I think what Phil liked were my jokes, you know...my schtick...not jokes, but bent stories. I remember how much I liked telling him jokes, and stories of my hillbilly upbringing. He would just get the crazed look and howl and nearly fall to the floor. I can't remember his laugh exactly, but it was infectious and Falstaffian. It was such a great laugh that I always felt compelled to summon it up.
We got to know each other pretty quickly, and it wasn't very long before we were hooking up in Seattle too, even when you weren't around. And then, one day, something totally clicked between me and Mel. Or many things. One of us must have said or done something so funny and warped that it endeared us to each other forever.
So now, all of a sudden I had three brothers I loved in Bellingham, while I was stuck in Kent, at the Crisis Center. It was good work and important work, but at some moment in early 1973, I knew I had to go to college, and hang and create and party with you guys full time. This was not exactly easy for a poor hillbilly kid to do. In my entire family, only my mother had even graduated from high school. And my widowed mom had nary a nickel to contribute. Obviously schiolarships were out. And my high school records screamed UNDERACHIEVER and rabble-rouser. It's another long story, but I was able to wheedle a letter of recommendation from both the Governor and the Mayor of Kent, and I was provisionally admitted to college in the fall (I was rid of the provisional part after my first successful quarter).
In the interim, the focus of my life became to hang with you [Kevin], Phil, and Jerry. I charged up to Bellingham every chance I got to drink it in. One of my favorite and most vibrant memories of those days were road trips to Seattle.
I especially remember the first road trip the four of us took after we were all living together. That car had a fog like Jeff Spiccoli's van as it rolled up to the prom. We were racing down to Seattle in Mel's still gleaming Pontiac, blasting the Stones' brand new Sticky Fingers, and rounding those looping I-5 turns, wending our way through the mountains with their sporadic clear-cuts, and digging "Can't You Hear Me Knockin."
And we played all our current favorites: The Dead's Europe 72; the Kinks Celluloid Heroes; Deep Purple; and Humble Pie's Rockin' The Fillmore. I don't know what we even did in Seattle, where we stayed, or anything. I do however most explicitly remember all four of us digging life to the max, and actually saying "this is the life. Whatever happens from here on, it won't get any better than this." We knew it for a fact. It was stew of friendship, being in college, being 20, and being free. And at that moment, on that road trip, we achieved a shimmering moment of eternal friendship.
As for Bleak House...it was a rathole, but I had so much fun and was so happy there that it shimmers in my memory. And that fun was all based on proximity to you, Phil and Mel. It became bleak later, I think, for outside reasons and the fact that Mel recruited a new roommate who was certifiably insane (and who, I heard later, would pick up the wedding cake at his brother's wedding and lob it at the bride and groom!). More about Bleak House next time. Maybe next time, we should delve into the pizza trick heist.
---o0o---
