Morning Thoughts: December 29, 2017

I knew this fellow once. His name was Ralph, and he was of a melancholy nature. We were in the Navy. Neither of us particularly wanted to be. But we were stationed in Monterey, California on temporary duty whether it pleased us or not. He was from Berkeley and had a car, so we spent weekends in the bay area, or exploring Highway One. I enjoyed his company a good bit.

He looked like one of those dark Italian actors, say a young Andy Garcia. He had a girlfriend in Berkeley who seemed to love him dearly. She was beautiful, resembling a petite Joan Baez with hints of freckles about her nose. She was attending UC Berkeley. He had a master’s degree from there.

That wasn’t unusual in those days: enlisted men with college degrees or even advanced degrees. Unless one was rich, sickly, prone to criminal behavior, or all three, you had to serve your country somewhere. A stint in the Navy seemed to offer a safer berth than a platoon leader in Vietnam. Ralph had enlisted and was waiting his time in Monterey, making the best of it, as we all were. I was in my “lost and wandering” phase, glad for any show of friendship. Ralph was a good shipmate and a fine companion. He was generous and kind, never passing up a hitchhiker, of whom there were many along the coast in those days.

He was also slowly going insane.

The world sort of did that to a person in those days. He explained his viewpoint as follows. “You see, when you are born, they give you a bucket. From than day forward, you have to carry it with you at all times. As you go through life, they fill it with shit. It never goes away and the bucket never gets full, just heavier. Finished school? Here’s a spoonful. No jobs? Here’s another. A nice little war? Have one on us. It goes on and on. And we carry our buckets without complaint.”

I didn’t agree, at least  not fully. Nonetheless, in those days it made a little sense. To me, it was a cautionary tale. To Ralph, it was as true and inevitable as the sun going down each evening over Monterey Bay.

During successive trips to Berkeley, I watched Ralph’s girlfriend trying her best to free him from his demons. Nothing worked. I was only an observer, but would have given up everything to sail into a Pacific sunset with someone like her. Ralph looked through her and saw nothing but the walls of his self-made prison beyond. It was my first introduction to mental illness.

He got worse. We would take walks through Cannery Row, then a deserted avenue of empty buildings covered with every imaginable material. We would sit on the curb in front of the very building that had housed the “Pacific Biological Laboratories,” once operated by Ed Ricketts, John Steinbeck’s friend and inspiration for the character “Doc” in Cannery Row.

Contemplating Cannery Row only strengthened Ralph’s belief in the fickle cruelties of life. “This place once roared with life,” he said. Thousands of people lived or worked here, each— whether whore, boss, worker, or bum—carrying his own bucket, with it getting heavier each day.”

His moods became tiresome to me and debilitating to himself. Our excursions became rare, then stopped. We changed barracks and I saw him less and less.

My orders came for security duty in, of all places, the I-Corps area of Vietnam. That occupied my thoughts until one day I received a phone call in the graphics lab where I was temporarily assigned. I assumed it was some directive, maybe news that a horrible mistake had been made and that I would stay in Monterey for my entire enlistment, or maybe spend it at a small base in Key West.

Instead, I heard a voice that I recognized immediately. Yes, It was Ralph, sounding happier than I had heard him in ages. After mutual recognitions, I asked where he was. The answer shocked, but didn’t surprise me.

I’m in the ‘nut-ward’ at Treasure Island,” he said. “It’s great.”

“What did you do to get there?” I asked with some haste when I saw my supervisor giving me “the look” for taking a personal phone call on government time.”

“It was easy,” he said. “I just gave my bucket of shit to the Navy and said I didn’t want to carry it anymore.” I heard agitated voices and he was gone.

I never heard from him again. A lot of water has flowed back and forth through the Golden Gate since then, and many of life's tides have risen and fallen. Life has gone on. I have survived, but I still think of Ralph from time to time.

Happier days in front of "Doc's Lab"

Morning Thoughts: November 24, 2017

There was this man in our extended neighborhood back home. I can’t remember his name. Folks mainly called him “Good Boy.”

They called him that because he would start every greeting with, “I’m a good boy, ain’t I?” He was of indeterminate age, maybe somewhere just short of his sixties. He wandered the county in the company of two or more dogs who had an uncanny ability to determine whether one was greeting, teasing, or threatening harm to their master. They enjoyed the first, tolerated the second, and you didn’t want to fall into the third.

It’s scarcely an exaggeration to say you could smell him coming before you actually saw him, and you might see him anywhere, at anytime of day or night. You could buy a smile and harmless chatter, along with a day’s tolerance from his dogs, with no more than a cigarette and a friendly ear.

I don’t know his full history. According to my mother, he was from one of those pioneer families of the county whom a stranger would have classified as lower-middle class but whom locals knew as possessors of significant wealth. In the land where I grew up, the highest and most honored classifier of “class” was to be secretly wealthy while giving all appearances of a modest existence. A family who, particularly if it had inherited wealth, displayed opulence of any sort were so far beneath contempt as to be socially invisible.

So, it probably was true that "Good Boy" had been eligible for an education and a comfortable life, but something went wrong. My mother explained it in the common language of the day. “When he grew up, they just couldn’t do anything with him.” That was the local euphemism for “he went crazy.”

I subscribe to theory of his being educated for one reason. The man was some sort of musical savant. I know. I’ve heard him, from having worked at the swimming pool of a local country club for four summers while attending college. It wasn’t uncommon for the subject of this post and his dogs to wander onto the club grounds to watch the excitement and chat with old acquaintances.

Sometimes, when the club guardians failed to notice him, he would ease into an empty ball room, sit with his dogs beside him, and launch the club’s grand piano into sounds of breathtaking beauty. The most educated and knowledgeable person associated with the club was a head waiter who had previously taught English at our city’s African-American high school. He would identify the day’s music as Mozart, Schubert, Beethoven, or the likes from the brief snatches played ere the authorities chased the performer and his dogs away.

I’ve heard that churches in the county, particularly those with powerful church-organs, locked their doors at night to keep "Good Boy" from terrifying nearby residents with midnight serenades. I can’t swear to that, but it’s too good a story to omit.

Don’t know what ever became of him. I fled Arkansas and Orval Faubus while the man, his dogs, and his music were still wandering the county. I thought of him this morning after I located a particularly exquisite rendition of a Chopin nocturne. I do an exercise I call “The YouTube Thread Predictor.” I simply count the thread of comments related to a particularly sublime piece of music and count the entries before one appears that involves either the “F-word” or an ad hominem attack on the previous commenter. It stands at about five on some pieces now, down from about ten at the end of last year. As with the so-called “Doomsday Clock,” a further rise may signal the end of civilization as we know it.

In the meantime, I’ll try to remember that one should never presume to predict from where pure beauty—or a pure lack of class—may emerge.