1. Debbie called me earlier in the day than usual and she had a lot on her mind. It was awesome. We had some money talk. Once we dispensed with that, Debbie told me all about the movies she's been watching, movies directed by Spike Lee, Quentin Tarantino, and the Coen Brothers. It was exhilarating. She hadn't seen movies like Do the Right Thing or Reservoir Dogs and others when they were released and she's excited about getting back to them now. Her movie watching parallels another way Debbie is going back in time. She's been listening to the Classic Vinyl station on Sirius/XM radio, listening to music from our youth that she wasn't interested in back then. It's working for her now.
As scintillating as it was to listen to Debbie talk about movies and music, the best was yet to come.
Debbie told me that on Tuesday night, she drove down to one of our favorite taprooms, Growler and Gill.
She told me she'd had one of the best beers she'd ever tasted, but couldn't remember the name of it. She was pretty sure it was number 9 on their tap list.
I put the phone on speaker and jumped on the taproom's website while we continued to talk and clicked on the tap list.
Suddenly I was back at the EatBar on 8th Street SE in Washington, D.C.
It was a glorious sunny early February day in Washington, D. C. I had been to Eastern Market and the Capitol Hill Bookstore and been generally wandering around this part of the city.
I wandered into EatBar and ordered a beer I'd never heard of, but thought I'd try.
The beer was a Double IPA from Astoria, Queens brewed at SingleCut Beersmiths.
Its name: Softly Spoken Magic Spells.
Every once in a while, I drink a beer that is so transcendently delicious that I can remember where I was, what I was doing, and, because I record it in my blog, I can look back and nail down the date.
Softly Spoken Magic Spells was one of those beers, possibly the epitome.
And guess what -- the beer that Debbie couldn't remember the name of, the beer that she told me, before I'd said a word, was one of the best beers (ridiculously good I think she said) was, in fact, SingleCut's Softly Spoken Magic Spells.
I've only drunk the one glass of Softly Spoken Magic Spells, the one than made me audibly groan with pleasure as I drank it back on February 4, 2017.
To be honest, I have thought in the four and half years since that maybe my romanticizing mind had, over time, exaggerated how good that beer is.
But, no more.
As Debbie told me how much she loved the two pours of Softly Spoken Magic Spells she drank Tuesday, I nearly came out of my chair here in Kellogg and could barely stop myself from rhapsodizing non-stop about how much I loved that beer and how I'd never forget it.
What kept me from endlessly rhapsodizing?
Debbie's own copious praise of this great Double IPA!
2. Early this afternoon, after I completed an acrostic puzzle I started last night, I spent many hours, until after 1 a.m. (with a few breaks), returning, via the World Wide Web, to Eugene, Oregon, mostly in the 1980s but on into the 1990s as well.
It all started when I somehow stumbled onto a Facebook site called "Long Live Lenny's Nosh Bar".
Right off the top, I have to say that I was not by any stretch of the imagination a regular at Lenny's Nosh Bar -- not, as I learned some regulars were called, a Noshraelite. As I write this, I'm disappointed that I wasn't, but during Lenny's Nosh Bar's years of operation, 1979-1985, I was, first of all, a frightened graduate student who tried to overcome my fears and deep academic insecurities by working on my schoolwork way too much -- not quite all the time -- but a lot. This was especially true from 1979-1982. In August of 1982, I left Eugene to teach for two school years at Whitworth College. I returned in June, 1984 and resumed many of my old habits of panic studying, always compensating for my fear of failure -- failure which I ultimately realized by not writing a dissertation after about seven years of sheer panic.
Okay. So until Sacred Heart Hospital expanded around 1986, a collection of businesses occupied The Courtyard, an area on the north side of E. 13th Street between Hilyard and Patterson. These establishments were housed in older buildings and included some very popular spots like Poppi's, a Greek restaurant, Koobdooga, a bookstore, and some I don't remember but read about, including a record shop, bicycle shop, and at least one vintage clothes shop.
I think, for the moment, I'll just say that looking at pictures from Lenny's Nosh Bar, recognizing people I either didn't know but knew of (Joe Lewis, Curt Hopkins), met later (Dan Schmid), or, in one case, had in a WR 121 section (Scott Taylor), reading about people's experiences, and seeing pictures of the bands they were listening to in Eugene, all made me realize that I paid a lot of attention to people just a few years younger than I was whom I actually longed to be like. I wanted to spend more time drinking coffee at the Allann Brothers coffee shop on E. 14th. Now that I know who some of the Noshraelites were, I know that many of them hung out at Allann Bros on E 14th. I would be grabbing a cup of coffee to avoid my studies and these people always seemed engrossed in conversation about books, music, and Eugene gossip that I wished I could be a part of.
I'm glad I pursued graduate studies. I'm especially happy that these studies led to the years and years of superb experiences I had teaching, especially at Lane Community College.
But, at the same time, when I went on a little detour last night and went to the Lane County Music History website, I realized how infrequently I went out to hear live music. I missed out on some great shows at BJ Kelly's, Beiderbeck's, Jo Feds, The Place, Barney Cable's, the EMU Ballroom, the Vet's Club, and the Hult Center, not to mention the shows I'd sometimes hear about happening in basements and other pop-up venues.
So, once I again, I found myself longing to do again what I had never (or rarely) done before.
But, when I was in graduate school, living in Eugene, I always liked living where I knew these things were going on. Looking at the pictures from "Long Live Lenny's Nosh Bar", watching a mid-seventies video about the early days of Whitebird Clinic, cruising through pictures on Steve Ibach's Facebook page of him performing at Taylor's and Mulligan's Pub and other venues and seeing pictures of him with bands, like the Soulsations (whom I never heard), he played in, I really enjoyed myself.
There's a parallel here between my experience growing up in the Silver Valley and my experience going to grad school in Eugene.
When certain of my Kellogg friends get together, they can tell great stories about wild things they did. Goose jumped off a bridge into the chocolate spring runoff waters of the Clark Fork River, a handful of my friends floated the Lead Creek, some of these same guys went on road trips to Montana or Canada or elsewhere after the Kellogg bars closed, went to keg parties up the river, and experienced a host of other things that I never did. I was never wild.
But I love hearing their stories.
Likewise, I was not a Noshraelite.
Last month, a bunch of Noshraelites had a reunion party in the outdoor seating area behind Sam Bond's Garage.
I would have loved to have gone, not because I was anything other than a very marginal presence at Lenny's Nosh Bar.
I would have loved to hear the stories.
3. So, back to Scott Taylor.
Over the more than thirty years I taught English at the college level, I worked with a few students who stood out to me because they were just looking at the world, thinking about it, and expressing themselves in it in unique ways.
I encountered the first such student back in the fall of 1977, in the first composition course I ever taught.
It was Bill Davie.
And now, forty-four years later, Bill and I are Westminster Basementeers together, building upon a friendship that began when he was first my student. We've had awesome times with each other and Diane at Bridgit's parents' former residence, in Ashland, Oregon, and in La Push, OR. Back in the 90s, Bill stayed with me several times when performing in and around Eugene and I once took a trip to Seattle, stayed with him, and heard him in concert open for Peter Himmelman.
The next (not the last) memorable student was Scott Taylor.
Scott and I are not friends and I have no idea if he remembers taking WR 121 from me in either the winter or spring of 1982. It doesn't really matter if he remembers me.
I, however, have never forgotten him as a student who was intellectually and creatively gifted. Sometimes I had students in class whom I thought ought to be excused from the institution's course objectives, should be left alone to write, and whom I really hoped never to impede with a course syllabus and institutional objectives to meet.
Scott Taylor's name popped up in the country of Lenny's Nosh Bar on Facebook, as did a picture of him with Dan Schmid, Curt Hopkins, and others presenting a petition to the powers at Sacred Heart to spare the demolition of Lenny's Nosh Bar (and possibly The Courtyard) in their plans to expand.
With very little effort, I soon discovered that Scott is active online. He has a podcast. He publishes poems, stories, and essays. He is a graphic designer and he has posted examples of his work online. Scott made a video of himself reading an essay about Columbus Day, accompanied by music and terrific graphics, and I recognized his speaking voice.
I'm not really going anywhere with this, except to say that over the last thirty-nine years, from time to time, Scott Taylor's work in my class, conversations I had with him in Eugene, and a night I saw him involved in a group performance art show at the Honors College pop into my mind.
When that happens, I wonder how he's been doing.
Thanks to Long Live Lenny's Nosh Bar on Facebook and a little clicking around, I now know more and am very happy to know where I can go to enjoy his work and that he is churning out so much good stuff.
No comments:
Post a Comment