by Harvey Harrison
As they fade forever from the Scene, I ask you, as if for spare change, to give me a moment to pay my respects to those noble pilgrims, the Winos.
Oh, they are out there still, and they always will be: so long as their Mission calls, there will be those Brothers who will answer, offering up their very lives for we who seek their goal but wrap ourselves instead in shiny new comforts future and past.
Yet, when my fingertips tenderly seek the carotids of these Brothers, I find no human flesh. I learned as a child among Them, you can always find a throbbing rhythm in the flesh through decades of grime and the crust of life fluids. For example …
As The Fireballs sang, “Bottle of wine, fruit of the vine, when you gonna let me get sober?/Leave me alone, let me go home … let me go home and start over …”
You see, it is not just the many Wino Dynasties I squired nor the festive spirit of their buoyancy that I celebrate. It is the gifts greater than any academic honor or military decoration awarded by the powerful to we who merely strive to be warm.
It is the gifts both haunting and formative of my weary soul that I have received from Them, and I am called upon now by some distant voice to honor.
I find no human flesh as I seek a pulse. I find only a silicon chip for a heart and a body of plastic, wires, and stupid light bulbs. Even the metastatic malignant organism is alive, as you will see when I tell you about Councilman Bob, the Last Wino of the Ocean Front Walk. The other is the animated dead: chip, plastic, wire, bulbs. Still, that Deadness brings the distant voice of iTunes and through iTunes the anthem of the Fireballs.
The pulse is gone, but my memory is alive vividly. My surf Tribe was exalted only decades later as the Dogtown Locals. Before even the Dogtown Locals, though, the Society of the Grape was in full glory when I was a boy among them, and I was just another cut off child who the powerful would call now “undersupervised in the extreme”. I apologize for the whiplashes of Time, and, beyond that, I apologize for every harm and offense you have experienced, and I do so on behalf and in memory of the Winos who, had they the voice, would have done so as well.
That distant voice gave me the whole song “Bottle of Wine” by the Fireballs for $.99 (iTunes), about the price back then for a full-sized bottle of Ex-cello White Port. Gawdamighty what a World it was. No short dog for a buck, a whole damn bottle, maybe even enough for some pineapple juice too. It was their Era and, eerily, mine.
It is a matter of MapQuest Reality that Davy Jones’ Liquor Locker occupies the NorthWest intersection of Pacific and Navy, a noble misplaced antiquity even at that. However, I swear that DJ’s was a block closer to the Ocean at the corner of Speedway and Navy throughout the Glory Days. My deal with destiny somehow keeps it vivid in my memory: the Church of the Brotherhood where you paid for Communion up front.
The Brothers were not so durable as my memory, but they had staying power, even Councilman Bob. Some Business-suited Zombie told me that the cheap wine had lots of calories and some vitamins in the sugar, so as it pickled so too did it sustain. This is still too weird for me to understand.
And, there, outside the Original DJ, Church of the Fruit of the Vine, I recall as if I am in this very scenario again a jolly Wino holding the parking sign pole with outstretched arm shoulder-height, feet at the pole’s base, merry-go-rounding like a kid, singing loud “Bottle of Wine …” or some fumed mash up of it, and I beheld in the pure awe of a child this Gospel solo performance.
So here I am, and there is no renegotiating this deal. Mostly I figure if I were hit by a car, the effect of scraping the road kill, boxing, and burying it would be an invisible but measurable brightening however small in the power grid. Yet that’s not the deal, and I have no right to counsel.
Today, the Wino would be called a “homeless substance addicted user of social service resources.” Makes me wish for that car. Ultimately, Dr. Hunter S. Thompson used his beloved hand gun, reportedly leaving his last words, “I hope this doesn’t hurt.” When my Exile Boys made me go on the weekend Thrill Ride with the Good Doctor almost four decades ago, a lot of the unexpected happened.
I want to say here and now that I found him to be an enjoyable and illuminating companion if a bit impulsive. He also demonstrated a gunslinger’s shoot read aim reflex against Authority. He was the fastest I ever saw. Anyway, I had no beef with him, and, still, I found us arguing over Wino Dynasties. I remain shamelessly proud of my heritage, as you can see. I mean the price of this heritage was to have my child’s soul gutted like a fish. I believed that such a sacrifice counted for something.
Please know I now understand that it counted for nothing, and this makes me miss more keenly the chivalry of the Order of the Night Train Express. So, I told him about that Wino with the Dog, who I know I better tell you about later, and some of the others. He shoved me out of the boat with his story of living with the Brothers in the dark and dusty flats of Napa where the powerful had erected fences to exclude them. “Why?” I asked.
“Because …” the Winos would climb the fences to get to the grapes left on the vine to rot and, better, ferment. He said that they’d make it over the fence into the vineyard to lush up what they could but were too drunk to get back out, so next morning the Strong Men of the powerful would kick and smack around the Brothers huddled together inside and against the fence. He said it was bad for the Brothers because drunk, hungover, lost, and empty they were truffles for the sadistic. And, then, when they finally (he said “finally” to shove me by the throat against the Wall) got free, they went over the fence again the next night.
I read that he once was in a limo with Richard Nixon, and they talked football. He started as a sports writer. So, he was competitive. I confess I still don’t understand that kind of physical culture. As an original Dogtown Local, I’ve been trying to ride waves since I could crawl. As that sweet Hawaiian singer-guitarist in the three-man-choir of the church service at the Federal Prison in Lompoc whispered to my then fifteen-year-old son, “You’re father is a wave-rider …” The inmates didn’t talk, so this was big and, to me, very big. At the heart, competition is not me.
So, I let the Good Doctor win.
Fine. I have made my Witness for the Singing Wino at the Old DJ’s. Now that we’re both here, I better keep going. I mean, by thirteen, I knew how to drink off the top of a bottle of Ex-cello White Port, take the shudder, puncture the lid on a small pineapple juice can, and cut the edge off the Ex-cello like snipping the suck hole on an elegant cigar. In short, if I don’t do it, nobody else in this room will, right? But, let me ask you a question. You don’t see the boot on my neck, but let’s just agree that the nerves of my cervical vertebrae hurt all the time from this Era. Do you think for a moment that by pushing on I am going to gain any relief from the pain? Do you? If you do, I doubt you can understand a word I’m saying here. You will never even peek into this, and you wonder why I glide on sorrow?
Where’s Walt Whitman when you really need him, right? Or, Sam Clemens, fercryinoutloud?
Yeah, you heard the sigh. For them, trash was treasure, and treasure was trash. On that alone, I’m taking the rest of the walk. I dare not leave out the Green House. It was an abandoned burnedout motel of some lost origin and some green external color. Inside was the sacristy/rectory of the Brothers, and I was alter boy in this barely dim residence, calf high in shag carpet of empties and Brothers unconscious all around. I cannot even imagine why I would be inside this place, but, try as I might and I have tried mightily, I cannot make it go away.
If you are alive today, you probably have noticed that, among other ways, I refer to the gentlemen as the Brothers. In those days, it was an Order of men. Any woman could join Our Community, and one would do so on rare occasion. Sadly, as I recall: she was ablaze too brightly somehow and never lasted.
I wish to make very clear that not all of this account from the long-ago Bohemian squalor of Venice Beach was child play. There was the Great One who I loved from the day I met him (I was nineteen; he, early sixties) until he died. Rewind: until now and forever. When he ended up at the End in Harbor General by way of Hollywood, the Place on Ocean Front Walk the hospital called said to call me. I was asked to deliver his eulogy. I’ll call him “Tom” because that was his name.
The day I met Tom is as vivid as this moment. More. I was drinking a quart of Coors outback of the cellar and reading a book, all surfed out for the day. He approachethed and inquired what I was reading, and I saw what I thought was a dapper hobo so I said a book by a Greek man called Zorba. He took off from there.
I pray to God for mercy, mercy, mercy. Once a day I usually fall asleep. After I wake up, I pray to God for mercy, mercy, mercy. Now that I mention Tom, I pray that my deal does not require me to tell his story. I figure I’m barely going to make it out of this one, and in no way am I able to capture any living justification for this World like Tom or anyone else for that matter.
So, I’ll just say I pray to God with fear and trembling for mercy.
On that day about an hour into our first encounter, I offered Tom my beer. He said with a smile, “I’m one Irishman who doesn’t care for the Drink, but I’d appreciate a glass of water if you have one.” From that day until he died, he was my best friend for a dozen years at least, and he never imbibed.
However, among the many exotic lodgings he graced, he lived with a Band (like a sub-Dynasty) of Winos under the Dogtown Pier (now long, long gone and only legend). No finer folklorist than he, I asked Tom what it was like living with the Winos. He said, “They were like children.
I pressed.
He did not use the word “fragile”. He just told me this story. There was a woman, and she liked to read. (Tom was as well-read as any Ivy-league literature professor.) So, I found her a copy of Thorton Wilder’s The Bridge at San Luis Rey, and she was enjoying it. We had a common interest, and we became friends. This gave me the chance to urge her not to go to the Bars on Windward. (This was back when Windward was still the Touch of Evil.)
Or, Tom said, if she did go because her boyfriend wanted to do so, she’d be back home (under the Pier) by nine. As spontaneous and colorful as he was, he was very paternally protective. A solid man on every level.
One night she went with the boyfriend to Windward, and when her companion excused himself to use the Men’s Room, another man asked her to dance, and she declined. This Man did not respond well to the answer. He asked her again, and again she declined. Then, he pulled a knife and slit her throat from ear to ear. Before her boyfriend even came back, she was dead in a pool on the floor.
So, I do not mean to be disrespectful here to the ladies nor do I disregard the current conventions of gender equity. It was just men.
The Brothers would laugh heartily at me, I know that. Here I am singing all alone, and not a nickel or dime for the performance. They would cheerily declare, “We are performance artists! We are professionals! That means we must be paid!” Then, they would look again at me and laugh and laugh and laugh.
Sure, I feel stupid. That’s chronic for me, and I ain’t got no ointment to make it better, so I guess there’s only one way out and that’s further. At least I know of one case of Wino whimsy that backfired. Yeah that would be Councilman Bob. Destiny doesn’t negotiate, but how about Bob and the Wino with the Dog and then let me go? Please? With pleas of fear for mercy?
Anyone who knows me knows the answer to this question. Who is the greatest man I have known? Answer: my father. Don’t ask. Before you get to him, you have to go through Tom first, and I ain’t seeing nickels or dimes.
I once asked my dad back when the Winos were fading fast, and I was crossing that bridge to adulthood, what was it they sought? He said, “Euphoria.”
What I did not ask puzzles me more and more as my own two children settle into admirable adulthood. Where were the grownups when all this I share here was happening? When I tell people stories from my early years, I introduce the stories by saying I was “undersupervised”. “Why?” I wonder what my father would have said.
It was a time when the Wino Dynasties were over and Venice was tilting ever-so-slightly toward getrification, and Bob was a white bearded, toothless, skinny, funster solo soul-singer of a Wino. May God bless him. He set up on the benches Mid-Way between Navy and Windward, which was South of the now gone Dynasties and the now gone legendary Pier.
I too had tilted. I was a citizen, and I went to work indoors among the business-suited Zombies in tall rectangles. The quiver of surfboards gathered dust, and I “jogged” so I could try to remember what it meant to breathe. Man, that’s sad. At least Tom was still with us. Anyway, I “jogged” South along the Ocean Front Walk early morning. Bob was a morning person, especially by Wino social norms. So, I saw him twice a morning up and at it, in repose seated on his bench, bottle in crinkled paper bag at the foot of the bench.
As I ran past, he shouted confidently, “I’m running too!”
I called out, “Good for you!”
He shouted, “I mean for City Council!”
I called out as I went past, “I’ll vote for you!” And, he seemed pleased to feel what our pundits now call the “Momentum”.
Ah, but his joy was short-lived. Within an hour, I returned on my “jog”, and I shouted “Councilman Bob!” when I saw him in precisely the same pose. He fumbled and mumbled some confused response, and I went on my way to the indoor Zombies.
We repeated this latter exchange on a daily basis, and, over time, Councilman Bob’s fumble mumble response grew clearer and more emphatic. I shouted in cheerful greeting, “Councilman Bob!”
He responded apprehensively, “No. No no. I might just get elected …”
I shouted, “Yes!!!”
I had earned it.
When I saw it actually troubled him, and our skit was not part of his performance, I pulled over, and we talked. He told me about his terminal cancer, and that he would not want to undertake the job in his uncertain condition. I assured him I understood and, though disappointed, supported his decision. He seemed greatly relieved.
This makes me too sad. I can’t do the Wino and the Dog. Bob was around for quite a while longer, making me hope he had fibbed. Then, one day, like all of us, he was gone forever.