pyroguysr's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Getting Older GETTING OLDER I was a junior in high school when this new, curly-headed kid of Italian descent came into the band room. He was a drummer and his name was Joe. His mom, Pat, had just divorced his dad and she moved herself and her three kids to my home town from one of "those" troubled cities in Illinois - one of the many filling slowly with gangs and violence. But this guy, Joe, always had a smile and had a positive attitude. I took an immediate liking to him. It just so happened that the band I was auditioning drummers and none of the previous three had worked out. "So, you got a trap-set?" I asked him after introducing myself. "Yeah, I do!" "Can you bring it by my house on Saturday? We'd like to see how you fit in the band." "Sounds cool. I'll be there!" And he was. His mom drove him there and she hit it off with my folks and they became close friends. Joe and his mom were what my Dad called "honest people." In other words, what you saw was what you got; no pretentiousness, no airs. Joe fit. The rest of us liked him. He was a "no-frills" drummer and with his addition, "Snow" was born... billed as "THE loudest rock band in NW Indiana!" And damned if we weren't! We played cutting-edge stuff for back then; Black Sabbath, Jimi, Grand Funk, Blind Faith, Santana, Cream... We did blues, we did heavy metal and we even wrote our own stuff. We fuckin' rocked! We spent more on renting equipment than we made on gigs, but everyone loved us, even if their ears bled after two-and-a-half hours of screaming guitar. Hell, we had four other guys come to our gigs to provide a horn section just so that they could meet the girls we had hanging around us! Joe was one hell of a nice guy and one of my best friends in high school. Hell, he even ended up with my old girl friend when we parted ways. (There have only been two ladies in my life with whom I've not parted with on an amicable basis). He didn't really have much ambition beyond being a drummer in a rock band - at least not from what I saw. I graduated from school and was in the Navy two weeks later. By the time I got through boot camp and school for my rating, it was my 18th birthday. My old band came out and I think I had the first party in town that A.) started on time and B.) actually had more girls there than guys. (Usually, we'd go to a party and there would be forty guys and three girlfriends). Two weeks later, I went overseas for two tours of duty and got the parochial dust knocked off me but good. I saw 7 different countries and 11 different cultures while I was in SE Asia and learned to speak three different languages. That was 30 years ago. Since then, I saw Joe maybe a dozen times, three or four of those at various gigs and I ran into him once at a fireworks show I was shooting when he tried to drive into an area with live shells still in the guns. He hadn't changed much - he was heavier, having put on maybe 120 lbs, but he'd never married, had no serious girlfriends and didn't seem to care. He had his circle of friends - the same friends he'd had since high school. Joe was still unwaveringly smiling and optimistic. He was genuinely glad to see me when he realized who it was that was chewing his ass out for driving into a dangerous area. No, he hadn't changed much at all. I was the one that had changed. My ex didn't like him. She thought he was a bit of a low-life, as were the rest of my former friends in her eyes. Maybe she was right. Or maybe it was because he was content with being who he was, with being "honest folk." I think I saw Joe last at a funeral about 7 years ago - the husband of a mutual friend. I hadn't really kept up with him and didn't know where he was or what he was doing. Frankly, I was too busy in my own life (and with it falling apart) to really give him much thought. My brothers kept up with him, though. My brother, Mike, called me on Saturday afternoon to tell me he'd been reading our local paper "online." Joe had passed away. Died suddenly at age 51, probably of a heart attack. I went and read the obit and found out he was President of the local VFW Auxillary where I would stop in for a drink. He was popular there. I didn't even know he was known in that place. He'd probably been in there at the same time I was and neither of us knew it. There was only a three hour wake and the funeral was private, so I didn't get to pay my respects... So close, and yet, so far apart. You know what the sad part is about getting older? More people you know tend to start dying. 9:49 p.m. - 2007-10-23 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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