GONE ARE THE GODS - 2011

This afternoon at the diamond exchange my co-worker Ava was reading scripture, while listening to god music on her computer. This good woman is worried about my soul. I told her that I was content with the threat of hell, because my best friend had drowned in Sebago Lake at age eight. No one saw him over his head. He died alone. Over fifty years ago I decided that no god could have permitted such a death and I told Ava, “I am happy with my spirituality.”

“But I don’t want you to burn in hell.” This single mom had a heart of gold. Only Jesus could bring me to the promised eternity.

“Believe me. I will not burn in hell.” I’ve never done anything so bad in this lifetime to deserve an endless torment from the devils of Satan. “I’m a good man. Most of the time.”

“But you don’t believe in God.”

“When I was young, hippies believed that a guitar player was God.” ERIC IS GOD was spray painted across walls in the UK and America. Clapton’s searing performance with Cream had earned that accolade.

“No man is God.”

“Jesus was a man.” Earlier Christianity argued the duality of his natures. Half-God. Half-man. Every variation on that theme.

“He was a God.” Ava sucked in her breath. In her mind my words were straight from Satan. Her lips moved with prayer. “You are going to Hell.”

"I'll have good company."

Mostly sinners, non-believers and heretics, but also those devotees to Eric Clapton, for their rock god was a false idol. There is only one and true guitar god.

Jimi Hendrix.

The Jesse James of rock burst onto the screen with his staggering performance at the 1967 Monterrey Pop Festival. A long way from his first gig at Seattle’s Temple De Hirsch. At the end of covering the Troggs hit WILD THING he set his Fender Stratocaster on fire. From that moment to his final appearance in Germany Hendrix was the mountain.

I saw him at Boston Garden in 1970 with my good friend Wayne Shepard. The opening bands were Illusion and Cactus. Their sets were short. No one had come to see either band. We were waiting for the Jimi Hendrix Experience Part 2. Jimi took the stage with Mitch Mitchell on drums and Billy Cox on bass.

The set consisted of Fire, Lover Man, Hear My Train A Comin’, Foxy Lady, Room Full of Mirrors, Red House, Freedom, Ezy Ryder, Machine Gun, The Star-Spangled Banner, Purple Haze, and Voodoo Child (Slight Return).

I kept shouting out THE WIND CRIED MARY. Wayne worshiped Jim. He elbowed me to shut up. I stopped after the LSD hit my brain. I don’t remember much after that other than singing “Cuse me while I touch the sky.”

Jimi didn’t burn his guitar with lighter fluid that night.

Only with his fingers.

40 years ago.

When I was young.

And listening to him tonight broughtme back to those days.

18.

Jimi lives on.

Forever.

One day maybe Ava, my co-worker will understand my worship of the Left-Handed Guitar. He was human. Like the rest of us.

Chaney - Sebago Lake - June 1960

My best friends as a child were my older brother and Chaney

We lived in Falmouth Foresides, Maine.

We did everything together.

School, hockey, eating stolen strawberries from the nearby farm, hang at the docks at the end of our street, and swim at Sebago Lake.

My family moved to the South Shore of Boston in June of 1960.

This excerpt from GAYBOY relates the last time we saw each other. --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Chaney stood on edge of the lawn. My father had mowed it this morning.

“I guess I’m going.”

“Have a good summer.” Chaney kicked a clump of cut grass with his sneaker. His jeans were torn at the knee. This summer was supposed to have belonged to us. A snorkel and diving mask hung in his hand. They were a gift from his Czech grandmother.

“My father says we’ll return in July for vacation.” The week on Watchic Pond couldn’t come soon enough.

“Don’t go swimming without me.” Chaney lowered his head. Boys weren't supposed to cry in public.

“I won’t.”

I eyed his mask, wishing I had one.

I reached into my shirt pocket and pulled out my Pete Runnel’s baseball card. The infielder was our favorite Red Sox player. I offered it to him.

“Here.”

“No, you keep it, but if you go to a game at Fenway Park, have him autograph it for me.” Chaney smiled with the prospective of having the .300 hitter’s signature as well as not having to hand over his mask in trade.

“Everyone in the car,” shouted my father.

“See you.” I slipped the playing card back into my shirt pocket.

“Not if I see you first.”

___________________________________________________________________________________

I recently recorded a piece about what happens to Chaney.

Please go to this url

Chaney

HEAVY METAL ACCORDION by Peter Nolan Smith

Every boy has a best friend in his youth.

In 1959 I was lucky enough to have two; my older brother Frunk and a neighbor.

Chaney and I attended the same kindergarten class at Pinewood Elementary in Falmouth Maine and we did almost everything together boys were supposed to do that far north.

In the winter we played hockey in the small backyard rink my father built from 2 by 10s and also sledded down a gully to a tidal ice pool. During the summer we swam in the shallow waters beyond the marsh grass and bicycled to the forbidden bridge crossing the salt flats to Macklowe Island.

That August in 1959 the two of us crawled under the fence into a strawberry field and ate ripening fruit on our backs. The farmer caught us and my father paid him for four quarts. They were worth his angry words and ten whacks of the wooden spoon from my mother.

Partners in crime, but Cheney and I were in love with the same girl. Kathy Burns was sweet on Chaney. He played the accordion. I had no musical skills, even though my mother was famed for a voice capable of silencing the Portland Cathedral choir.

Chaney was a protege on the squeezebox. He mastered SINK THE BISMARCK and DAVY CROCKETT as well as the standard songs learned from his music teacher; YELLOW BIRD and MACK THE KNIFE. I envied his virtuosity as well as Kathy's admiration of his talent.

That autumn our brunette schoolmate held a birthday party to which I was not invited. Chaney brought me a piece of chocolate cake and told me how he had kissed Cathy in her basement. The cake tasted like chalk, but I congratulated Chaney's success. We were best friends.

Thw next summer my family moved south from Maine to a suburb south of Boston. Chaney and I vowed never to go swimming, unless we were together. His parents had a place on Lake Sebago and my grandmother's cabin was on nearby Watchic Pond.

"Wait for me."

"You and me only swimming together."

"And take care of Kathy Burns."

"I will, because one day I'm going to marry her."

I bid him good-bye and my father drove us south in our Ford station wagon. It had wood paneling and he liked to go fast.

That summer was warm in New England and my parents took us to Nantasket Beach for Memorial Weekend. My mother considered the wide strand of sand to be the best beach in the world and she had been to Bermuda for her honeymoon. My brothers and sisters ran in the eddies of the surf. My father swam past the waves. i sat on the blanket and my mother asked, "Why aren't you in the water?"

"Because I told Chaney I wouldn't go swimming without him.

"We won't be in Maine for another two weeks."

"I can wait."

"Seems a waste." She reached out her hand. "Come with me."

I was a good boy and obeyed my mother.

The Atlantic was cold, but not to the young.

Upon our return to our suburban development my father hosed off the sand and salt off his boys outside, while my mother showered my two younger sisters inside. We dried off in the warm summer sun.

The phone rang in the living room. My mother answered it and came out a minute later with wet hair.

"Go sit in the car."

"What I do wrong?"

"Nothing. Just do as I say." She was on the verge of tears.

"Yes, ma'am." I went to the station wagon and sat in the front.

To the West the setting sun shadowed the silhouette of Great Blue Hill.

Several minutes passed before my mother came to the car. She leaned on the open window with a pained weariness and said, "Chaney drowned this afternoon."

"Drowned how?"I already knew how.

"In Sebago Lake. Everyone had gone waterskiing and left him with his grandmother. He swam out too deep and struggled in the water. The grandmother couldn't swim and he drowned. Say a prayer for him."

"What time?"

"I don't know. This afternoon."

My mother walked back into our house.

I sat in the car and looked at the sky seeing only the sky.

Chaney had broken our vow, as had I at Nantasket Beach.

One of us paid the price.

Chaney.

Not me.

Two weeks later my family headed north for a vacation on Watchic Pond.

My father drove first at Falmouth Foresides. New people were living in our old house. We stopped at the Noyes. I hung out with his brothers. None of us spoke of Chaney. As we prepared to leave, I saw Cathy Burns across the street. i walked up to her and she said, "I know what you did and so did Chaney."

"I swan."

"You were wrong."

"I was. I miss him."

"Me too. Chaney could play accordion."

Yes, he could."

My father hour later I was swimming in the tannin-tainted waters of Watchic Pond. It was wide enough, but short by a mile to make a lake.

That night my parents sat around the campfire and my mother sang 'YELLOW BIRD'

I wished Cheny was there to play accordion.and since that sad day every time I see an accordion I think of Chaney and any time I see a street accordionist I ask them to play SINK THE BISMARCK. None of them know the Johnny Horton tune and I request IN-A-GADDA-DA-VITA.

None of the accordion players can play that 60s hit either, however I'm sure that Chaney would have liked Iron Butterfly.

Cathy Burns too.

After all we were all best friends.

To hear Rene Sevieri's cover of IN A GADDA DA VIDA, please go to the following URL

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ugt9pZVkgtg

Si Drole 1961

France waged a long and bloody war of repression in their Algerian colony from 1954 to 1962 against the FLN or National Liberation Front. The French army outnumbered their adversaries, but the NLF had the support of the populace from Algiers to the Magreb. There were few pitched battles and every street was considered a front line by the antagonists. Both sides participated in massacres, reprisals, and torture, although the French Foreign Legion specialized in 'scorched earth' policy throughout the country without gaining an upper hand over the maquisards.

After De Gaulle became president, the old general sought to end the conflict, which had spread into France dividing the Fifth Republic into opposing camps. To curtail the bombing campaign the prefecture of police introduced a 8:30 PM to 5:30 AM curfew barring Algerians from being on the street of Paris. A huge demonstration on October 17, 1961 was quashed by the Police, who arrested 10,000 and then threw scores of Algerians off the St. Michel Bridge into the Seine River under the order of Minister Papon.

Over 200 demonstrators died in the reprisals and the 'flics' hung a sign with the words 'Ici on noie les Algerians' off the bridge.

The cops laughed about this.

The families mourned the dead and the massacre was never recognized by the French Government.

'Ici on noie les Algerians' means 'Here we drown Algerians."

It was meant to be drole or funny.

I don't see any humor in this punchline, but then the irony in the freedom of speech is that not everyone has to find 'racism' or Jerry Lewis funny,

Not What It Seems

Last Thanksgiving a West Chester University student vanished after a night drinking with friends. This Saturday his body was found in the Schuylkill River, less than half a mile downstream from where he was last seen. The police declared the cause of death as drowning by misadventure, however there is more to this story than a simple drunk and drowned young man.

Over the last years a series of similar incidents have occurred in New York. My friend was one of them. Michael Savoia had gone out with friends. The high-end tailor had left a nightclub without his driver. No one saw him leave.

The next day he was found in the Hudson not far from his houseboat.

There were no sign of foul play other than another man dead in the water no less after a night on the town.

This is about the 5th or 6th case with similar circumstances.

A man disappears after a night on the town.

His body is found in water.

No one saw anything.

The police shut the book on each case without too much investigation. The bare facts help them write the cause of death as misadventure. I pray not more young men are lost before someone asks why no one is connecting the dots between these deaths.

My friend Michael Savoia.