This is not something new, I've been like this a long time. I was in the middle of a discussion about this with some friends, we were talking about how the guy running JetBlue handled the recent fiasco and how, because he got out in front and admitted that mistakes had been made, he didn't look like a jerk, but that Bush and Cheney and Rice all look like jerks every time they make a speech and stick to the same old unreality, that's when I remembered the first time I ever saw reality come down hard on blind authority.
It's the story of George and the Porch Musicians and it goes like this:
In 1970, a bunch of us were stationed at Goodfellow Air Force Base in San Angelo, Texas. It's easy enough to find on a map, you look for the X in Texas, San Angelo will be nearby, just East of the edge of the middle of nowhere. Our military duties were mostly about crypto-stuff, radio crackles and practicing for the practice exercises, so some of the bunch of us turned to consuming large pitchers of beer and huge quantities of pepperoni at the Pizza Hut while others began playing music. I was torn for a long time between those two good choices but I finally succumbed to the music. We had a little place called Thee Coffe House behind the First Christian Church where most nights a person could get up behind a couple of microphones and sing something or recite a poem or both. If Bob Dylan had stuck his head in the door for fifteen minutes he would have written "Bob Dylan's Dream" about Thee Coffe House--
I dreamed a dream that made me sad,
Concerning myself and the first few friends I had.
With half-damp eyes I stared to the room
Where my friends and I spent many an afternoon,
Where we together weathered many a storm,
Laughin' and singin' till the early hours of the morn.
So anyway, enough of that, just know that it was a good place to be. Good friends, good music and cold Cokes, there just wasn't any place to practice. Then, Jerry rented a house.
Jerry was a big guy with a big head of black semi-curlie hair and a big laugh and he rented a big house with a big porch. We would all land there to practice or listen or just to pet the dog. The neighborhood was a little run-down with parts of it looking like they had been run over. The house's back and sideyard backed up to a park, I forget the name, near the river. Across the street was the backsides of some warehouses, a grocery chain's loading dock that usually had a semi sitting at it with it's refrigerator humming and, just to their left, a couple of shuttered stores. The building next door to the house had a big RENT ME sign that looked several years old.
The house seemed huge at the time. There were three bedrooms and a large living room and folks flowed in and out at all hours, locals as well as the guys from the base. There were many women, I'm sure they were curious to see what kind of man was grown in the faroff reaches of New England or California. At any one time, something was going on in every room, sometimes it involved the music of the soul, of anti-war, of protest, sometimes it involved the music made by two people in the dark.
Whenever the weather was good, as it often was, or when the music of the dark became a little uncomfortable to listen to, as it often did, we would move some chairs out onto the porch and tune up and play. Everyone had guitars, acoustic guitars, there wasn't ever an electric guitar, and I only remember one guy having a banjo and he got shipped out about as soon he discovered the house. We would sit and listen to someone try to pick out the notes to "Fire and Rain" or do the run behind Cohen's Susanne. Once Jerry got all excited when he discovered that he got to play the harmonic notes in his part of "Find the Cost of Freedom". It was a sweet time.
Then the police car came cruising by. Don't get me wrong, I know if I was a policeman I'd be a little curious about the house with all those cars coming and going and the occasional sleeping person seen on the busted out sofa on the porch. So I know they were doing their job, they were just so, so dumb about it. They could have talked to us. They could have spent some time seeing, instead of being suspicious. What they did do was decide that we were up to no good and that they were going to stop us.
First they just drove by, then they started driving by r-e-a-l slow with the guy in the passenger seat giving us the big stare. We waved. We knew the proper Texas response to persons going by was to wave. That did not satisfy them. One Sunday night, they stopped and got out of the cruiser and walked up the front walk. I forget who else was on the porch with me, Jim and Jerry, I'm pretty sure, maybe Rick, and a couple of the girls. The two cops stopped at the bottom of the stairs. They were middle aged guys, a little paunchy, the shorter one was still struggling to get his nightstick in the holder on his belt when the other said "Ya'll are going to have to keep it down."
Now, just then, right as the word "Ya'll" hit the air, George drove up. Okay, now I have to explain a few things. First of all, George was a woman, she was the mother of Rick, one of the local guys who hung around with us at Thee Coffe House and George was one of those people who knows everybody in a town like San Angelo and everybody knows them. So, as soon as the cops saw her stop, they stopped. George got out of her car and motioned to them.
There are two kinds of women in Texas. There are the fluffy, girlie-girl kind, those that look like they are in some kind of pageant at every hour of the day. They try to look as much like Miss Texas, or at least Miss Wool Capital of the World, even if they are only standing in the softdrink aisle of the IGA FoodMart. They are Southern belles, they smile a lot, sometimes in very surprising circumstances, like when they are completely unsure of what to say. The other kind of Texas woman is not like that at all. I believe this other kind of woman is a direct descendant of the pioneers, the kind who could drive an oxdrawn wagon down from the Ohio, cook on a wood stove, work all day to bring the crops in from the field or butcher up a hog. Think Ann Richards or Molly Ivins. These woman never smile when they are unsure of what to say because they are never unsure of what to say.
George was one of the pioneer types. I liked her the moment I met her over at Thee Coffe House, you could tell she was having a look-see to see just who her kid was hanging out with but, once she decided that we were okay you could also tell that she would not only be watching us but watching out for us. Which bring us back to the two cops and George and the porch musicians.
This was a long time ago but I think I remember it this way: I think I remember George calling the taller cop by name as she leaned back against her car. Earl? maybe. Anyway, they ambled down closer to her car and she asked him what the trouble was and he got kind of puffed up and asked her if she knew the folks at this house. She might have said "Shoot, yes." or "Heck, yes." then I missed a couple of sentences as the shorter cop tried to stick his two cents in,. He was pointing at the porch and making a face. She glared at him and he stopped pointing.
Then this I heard clearly, Earl said,
"I just through telling them that they are going to have to keep it down."
"Keep it down." said George.
"Yeah, they are playing music on the porch and they are going to have to keep it down."
George paused for a second or two.
"How come?" she asked. She wasn't smiling.
"How come?" said Earl, "How come because we are getting complaints."
"You are?" said George. Now she did make a little smile. "From who?"
"Don't have to say from who" the shorter cop jumped in, "Just from the neighbors."
He started pointing again.
"Yeah, the neighbors, "said Earl" and they're going to have to stop."
He looked up at us on the porch, we had not said a thing. He gave us that same glare he had from the passenger side window.
I almost waved.
George waited a little, just for the right timing it seems to me now.
"What neighbors?" she said.
The cops took a step back and looked to the left at the park, they looked to the right at the big empty building. They looked across the street at the vacant warehouse parking lot and down the street at the shuttered stores.
"Good night, fellows." George said, "you don't have to worry about the folks here."
The two cops stomped off across the dead grass, got in the cruiser and drove off.
Up on the porch we were stunned. An adult person had never stood up for any of us before, I felt we had witnessed something and we had.
Now if only someone had asked the other George, George Bush, if he knew the neighborhood before he started pointing his finger we might be in a different world.
We need less men like George of Pennsylvania Avenue and more women like George of San Angelo, Texas.
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