Bubble Champ

San Diego Hilton, 1984: I had learned it a few years earlier, from Polaris the Magnificent, who was a performing magician.

Polaris, dressed in a longish purple robe and a tall, conical hat, stood upon the flat stage at the Ghiradelli Chocolate Factory mall, outside on a warm Spring day, and there he mystified young children, and the rest of us.

I set my helmet down on the bench, and watched the show. The motorcycle was safe enough, chained to a parking meter nearby. I figured that if somebody was strong enough to lift the moto above the parking meter, they deserved to steal it, so I relaxed and that Polaris was really great.

And afterward somehow we struck up a conversation, as he was packing up his magicabelia, and later we met some buddy of his at a Mission Street tacqueria, and while sitting around the table over beers, the buddy said "Show him the bubbles."

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A Moment in Time

Wichita Falls, 1961: I was the head of the drum section, and in my senior year of high school I was voted "Band King", and had a large picture in our yearbook, The Bearcat. Last summer, I'd spent two weeks at a drumming camp in Arlington, Texas, led by two older guys and Emmory Whipple, who was three times state Rudimental Champion.

The military style of playing a snare drum, very crisply, is called "Rudimental" drumming, because there are 26 drum rudiments. They have fanciful names, such as five-stroke roll, double paradiddle, flamaque. Combined, you can play any rhythmic pattern that can be written.

Playing the rudiments cleanly and quickly came easily to me. I encountered a space where I was just looking at the music, hearing in my mind what it should sound like, and my hands creating that sound. All the while, I sat back, like an engineer in a control booth, adjusting this, regulating that.

I was pretty good. That's why it was so upsetting.

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Don't Cook Christmas!

Fernwood Street, Hollywood, 1970: Bell-bottom pants were big, see-through shirts were the ticket. I went to buy some.

In the little shop, a saleswoman slightly older than myself correctly identified me as a rube, and coerced me into black and white. (I look lousy in black, and I look lousy in white, but I didn't know it then.) I tried on these odd garments, wasn't sure.

She spied a loose thread on the pants, dangling from the area of the zipper.

"Let me get that off," she said. In the middle of the store, kneeling on the carpet, she bit it off.

Both flattered, and embarassed to the core, I hurredly gave her my last dollars, and left quickly.

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Ruru the Guru -- What's Fun?

San Francisco Yellow Pages, 1986: In the Yellow Pages that year you'd find listed "Third Ear Telepathic Answering Service" at 221-3333. If you called it you might hear this --

"Hello and thank you for calling Third Ear Telepathic Answering Service, the modern telepathic answering service that can help you move your merchandise!

"I am your Host and Operator Ruru the Guru, speaking to you direct from the Himalaya Hideaway.

"Earlier today somebody asked me, 'Ruru, what do you like to do for fun?'

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Wierd and Wonderful World of Will Stone

South of Market, San Francisco, 1975: Back in my Simple Simon days, I got a call from a fellow one day who said his name was Will Stone. His voice was precise and somber; I pictured him tall and thin, something perhaps like the House of Usher.

Thin he was, as it turned out, though no taller than myself. He'd started an art gallery in a warehouse cum arty-mall, and he needed a bookkeeper. Somehow he felt that Simple Simon was the guy.

He hired me. I grew to enjoy him tremendously as a friend, perhaps partly because he was as strange as the artwork.

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Defending Her Honor

Henrietta, Texas, 1961: It was a problem. I was a high-school senior, and the Code of the West said I had to do something. Here is the problem in your nutcase:

Robert Bell, a year my junior, had insulted my girlfriend Carolyn, publicly in the hall, stating that she was just a bitch. People had heard him.

"What are you going to do?" asked Molly Gill.

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The Minstrel Show

Henrietta, Texas, 1955: The Kiwanis Minstrel Show was coming to town, or at least to the high-school gymnasium. The basketball floor was covered with row on row of folding chairs, and ticket-sellers encamped at the rear doors.

I had an important job, operating the spotlight, and sat alone in the high bleachers. During rehearsals, I watched as a young schoolmate, Robert Bell, stuck a nail into the electrical circuit, so as to feel the jolt. Nobody stopped him. Who cared if he fried?

Just as the television show "Amos & Andy" has disappeared, and never emerges among the late-night reruns, so has the Minstrel Show disappeared. Of course the original ones toured the South once apon a time, and Lenny Sloan resurrected the "Three Black and Three White Minstrel Show" in San Francisco during my early answering service days. In fact, Lenny was my client, and now that I think about it, if I recall right, he still owes me money!

But back then, in my home town, this was the Kiwanis Club, masters of disguise.

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Dennis's Kitten

Marina Green, San Francisco, 1976: My friend Dennis, who invented the Taxicab Theory of Life, had got himself a kitty. It was small and gray, with wide-open eyes, and it bounced and bounded around the tables and the chairs.

Dennis always lived better than I did. I thought it was because he got free money, but it may have just been that he had better taste. His father had created a metal-fabricating and manufacturing business back in Chicago, and after Dennis emerged from the Peace Corps he received checks, which I envied, though of course I'd already had my turn.

He drove an older BMW, and he had a small apartment, kept as neat as himself, right at the end of a short street that pointed straight at the Marina Green, giving him a view of the Bay, a block away.

We fell out, for several years. It was because of his cat.

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