The Day The Music Died

by Jesse Gloyd

There’s something warm about Avalon. I’ve only been there once; crossing the sea and landing in the bay of the Channel Islands’ only town. It was Easter weekend; we stayed for day and a night in a hotel that backed up to the water. We came in on a boat that set out from San Pedro and landed at a dock where calico bass and sheephead floated just below the warbled clear blue surface of the pilings and docked boats.

Benny Goodman discovered Lionel Hampton playing on the island. He had been working in a club or something of the sort. There was a song Benny’d play that was called Avalon and I imagine had something to do with their time spent there. I watched The Benny Goodman Story several times as a kid. Steve Allen, who starred as Goodman, personified the hip to be square mentality with his dark rimmed glasses and dry demeanor. He was also a pretty good jazz piano player and accompanied Jack Kerouac on some recordings.

I started playing clarinet in the sixth grade because of Benny Goodman. I was always hovering near last chair of the best band. I was never very good. I would go to a jazz player’s house every Tuesday and practice. My mom had him teach me to play Stranger On The Shore, a nice warm song written by British clarinetist, Acker Bilk. The man’s house was kept nice; with tasteful posters of Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, DNC stickers, and thousands of records and CDs.

We went to watch him play in a tribute to Goodman at Pepperdine University. I sat in the balcony that night and looked down on the piano player and vowed to spend more time practicing. The band cooked; each solo the struggling studio musicians blew or pounded shot across the auditorium and bounced off the once modern art deco fixtures, filling the place with lines of sound and shockwaves of energy.

The piano player worked with the jazz band at my middle school. We’d practice every Monday and Wednesday after school. It was a time that I dreaded; skipping out occasionally to eat Charleston Chews and drink ginger beer in abandoned lot behind Mandell’s Liquor. I played piano with the band and the piano player usually filled in my parts, so there really wasn’t any need for me.

The last I heard of the piano player, he was living in Juno Alaska working for a jazz quartet. He would work during the summer on a fishing boat and play jazz in the evening to all the alcoholic Eskimos.


“Hey,” I said. “Come here.”

“What?” said Noah.

He walked over to me as I lifted up a board. Two small green frogs about the size of the nail of my pinky finger hopped out from under. Noah lived on five acres of land off a canyon back road between Ojai and Santa Barbara. His dad, a German who’d pack his lower lip with tobacco the second he’d step outside their house, had dug a pit that he’d later fill to make a pond. The pond was going to be used to irrigate the dozen or so greenhouses that held rows and rows of brilliant red Poinsettias. He’d started letting the small tree frogs loose on the property to eat bugs off the flowers.

Noah’s mom called us in for dinner. I’d stay the night out there every so often. His dad had bought a satellite dish and would have people over to watch Canadian Football. His neighbor, Alan Thicke, was a frequent visitor. We’d spend the night in the living room, many a morning waking up to watch Throw Mamma From The Train while wrapped in a pile of unzipped sleeping bags and pillows.

We got to go to Alan Thicke’s house one time. It was a barbecue. We walked down a road that was covered in overgrown ferns, over a bridge, and up a path; he lived that close. Noah and I hung out near the stables where the miniature horses were kept. I’m not sure how it happened, but Noah ended up running a rusty nail through the bottom of his shoe. It crushed through the sole and broke the skin about a quarter inch deep. The horses stood calm and held their own while a crowd formed and gawked. Alan Thicke was drunk and concerned. He kept asking Noah’s mom if he needed to call an ambulance and kept apologizing for “leaving junk all around.” Noah’s mom was cool and composed, holding Noah to her, while crouching up to him. I didn’t see him much after that and wondered if he ever had to get a tetanus shot in his stomach.


Poppo bought me a Benny Goodman cassette when I was twelve. I liked Sing, Sing, Sing a lot; I think it was in a cookie commercial at the time. Glenn Miller was interesting too. I was standing ankle deep in the ocean a few weeks ago and String of Pearls got caught in my head. Not the song, rather the song’s title; it ran through my mind like a cool breeze in a dark hot void, black except for pearls like rain drops falling down, bursting, smashing into each other and bursting again, creating more, doubling, blasting, exploding with hot white light. In a flash, it ends like a Super 8 home movie being burned up from the inside out.

The official word on Glenn, was that his plane went down over the English Channel during World War II. There’s another report that has him dying of a heart attack while sleeping with a French prostitute in a Paris brothel. He was a heavy drinker and probably didn’t take care of himself too well, so it’s plausible. The cover up, they say, was to keep the troops’ morale high. When you’ve wiped the blood and guts from your best friend’s head off of your face, the death of an alcoholic trombone player would seem pretty insignificant, I think. They also say he could’ve been a spy; though I assume he could’ve been a spy who died in a brothel.

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“Hey, don’t I know you from somewhere?” said the bartender as he wiped the spot of condensation from the counter and threw away the bottle.

“Sure, I suppose,” said the man. He was about forty with dark horned rimmed glasses and dark hair held down with a thick dose of Vitalis. “How ‘bout another beer?”

“Sure thing,” said the bartender, reaching under the counter and popping off the cap. “What’s in the case, a tuba or somethin’?

“Or something,” said the man. He had his arm resting on the rounded top of a black trombone case. “You’re not Harry James or some guy like that, are you?” said the bartender wiping his hands on his pants.

“Nope.”

“Ted Williams stopped in about a month ago.”

“Is that right?” The man turned around on the barstool and leaned against the counter. “That guy can hit a baseball.”

“Sure can,” said the bartender. “It’d be a shame if he were to take a hit over here.”

“Yeah,” said the man, preoccupied with a woman with blonde hair that spun down her face like Veronica Lake before she cut it all off. He lit a cigarette and let the smoke blow straight from his nose. She brushed her hair back and cut him through with a glare that would burn up the heart of even the lousiest fascist son of a bitch.

He got up and walked towards her. “Hello,” he said. “Hello” she said with a smooth French accent. She cut into a piece of steak. Her fork pierced the flesh and let out the juices onto the plate.

“I haven’t seen a piece of meat that juicy since Kalamazoo?”

“It’s camel.”

“How’s it taste?”

“Warm and tender.” she said. “Want a bite?”




He held a cigarette between his lips and leaned up against the headboard. She nestled her head against his stomach and hummed Mood Indigo. He shifted his cigarette to his right hand and picked up a warm glass of scotch. Her hair smelled clean to him. It reminded him of a Cherokee girl he’d see whenever he was in Wichita.

“Do you have anymore cigarettes,” she asked.

“This is my last,” he said, sniffing his drink. He held it down to her and she took a drag.

“How long are you here?” she said.

“A few more nights.”

“Are you going to stay with me?”

“I assume,” he said. He took a sip and set the glass on the bedside table. She reached across him and rubbed the cigarette out in the ashtray.

“What’s in the case?” she said, looking across the room.

“A trombone.”

“Can you get it out and play something for me?”

“Sure,” he said stoically, sliding out of the bed and walking naked across the room. He laid the instrument on its side and unlatched the metallic hinges.

“What would you like to hear?” he said crouching with his back to her. He reached into the hollow end and slowly pulled out a Lugar he’d taken off the rotting body of a Nazi officer he’d stumbled across in an alley in St. Lo.

“String of Pearls,” she said. He turned and fired two shots that hit above her head and sent plaster falling down on her. “I heard you were a better shot,” she said, sliding out of bed. The gun dropped from his hand and sweat began to run from his face.

“Before your tongue swells up and your heart explodes, I wanted to tell you that it brings me great pain to see you go.” She leaned over him and caressed his face as he shook violently, foaming from the mouth and turning a sickly pale white.

When he was still, she covered him with a sheet and went to his overcoat. Rifling through his pockets, she took his wallet and a half-pack of cigarettes. “He lied to me,” she thought. “He lied to me, but I killed him.” And with that, she pulled one out, lit it, and leaned out the window to smoke over the streets of Paris, with a relief and a sense of accomplishment.

Branson

by Jesse Gloyd
(as edited by Andrew J. Hamilton)

I went to Branson for the second time when I was twelve years old. It was the childhood home of my grandfather, who we called, Poppo. Aaron Hoholik, a friend who later graduated from UC Santa Cruz with a degree in film studies, came along. While at Santa Cruz he took a class that studied the work of Stanley Kubrick for half a semester and Robert Altman for the other half. During the Altman portion of the class, they were blessed with the opportunity to view an original print of Nashville. As the story goes, the morning after the screening, one of the students stripped naked, wrapped himself in an American flag, and hung himself dead from the rafters of the theater. Santa Cruz is a big school and I do not know if Aaron knew him.

We flew in to Kansas City. I can't recall if the airport is on the Kansas side of the city or the Missouri, but I do remember the sweet, thick smell of car exhaust and cigarette smoke that held stagnant in the humid summer air as we waited curbside for my dad to come back with the rental van.

From the airport, we drove to Prairie Village to stay with Poppo’s brother Bob. It was on the Kansas side of the city. Bob was Poppo's youngest brother. He had a stroke and passed away recently. He was a funny guy. We spent the first few nights eating cheese sandwiches and brisket and talking about the Royals. Wally Joyner had just signed for about $4 million and was supposed to be a lot better than he was. History says that he probably was, but it didn't matter much because the Royals were no good and would continue to be no good until 2003 gave way to luck and circumstance. Bob didn't get to see 2003. His wife Gene and his son Mike did though, and I would imagine it was fun for them. They had a dog who coughed and wheezed a lot. They think he had emphysema, and he probably did.

We stopped off at the Precious Moments factory about four hours down the road from Kansas City. I don't think we bought anything.

Poppo had a sister named Thelma who was born in 1906. She was still alive and living with her husband Carl in Republic, Missouri when we came down to visit. They had a large place on the corner. We bought a red truck from Carl a few years later. It was supposed to be my first car, but I took more to the my dad’s Trooper and the truck went to my mom. Thelma's granddaughter, who may have been older than my dad, lived in a house on the same property. The house smelled like Carmex and anytime spent outside the yellowed, wafer thin curtains was welcome.

In Republic, I caught fireflies but didn't know what to do with them. Two cousins of mine introduced me to bottle rockets, which were something of a revelation. Pure, powerful, dangerous; the crack, the quick whoosh they made when released. I started by lighting them on the ground but would perfect, later in the trip, the art of releasing them by hand.
Springfield is about thirty miles away from Republic and about an hour or so from Branson. We stopped in Springfield for a coffee, McDonald's, and a spin through the Bass Pro Shop. Those were my glory days of fishing. The Bass Pro Shop, though not purely dedicated to fly-fishing, was a vision to the twelve year old me. Hats, houseboats, lures, motor homes, rods, reels, restaurants, sunglasses, and a forty-pound bass named Bertha called it home. I bought a hat and a t-shirt and some wet flies that we'd heard would work in Lake Taneycomo.

We stayed at Allendale's Resort in Branson, right on the Lake of the Ozarks. Poppo had worked there a few years before World War II. We fished for croppy and dodged falling water moccasins in the inlets of the lake. Small huts, probably seventy or more years old, circled a pool. A billiards room came off the lobby. Poppo used to work in the restaurant. The last time we saw it, they were tearing it down.

Branson is a small town, no matter what people told you. You can walk from Allendale's to the downtown in about ten minutes, and drive from the downtown to the Shepard of the Hills outdoor theater in about another ten.

Fireworks were everywhere. A man in a boat would buzz up and down the lake shooting bottle rockets at us. He was dressed as a pirate and had some type of bottle rocket gun that slung the rockets at a blinding speed. It was a bit of a battle for the docks, I suppose.

For the most part, I managed to eat gravy three meals a day. Breakfast was biscuits and gravy, eggs and bacon; lunch included some form of either fried chicken, chicken fried chicken, or chicken friend steak, mashed potatoes, gravy, and sweet iced tea from a fruit jar; and much of the same for supper, with the possibility of blackberry cobbler a la mode.

A lot happened in Branson. It was my This Boy's Life summer without the gay stuff, abuse, and single motherness. For better or worse, it was where I discovered both the Imax and Ray Stevens. I lean more towards better. Part of an Imax movie was being shot at my great-uncle's farm while we were there. His name is Everett, but for some reason we call him Uncle Fudge. He was a shriner (complete with wacky small car and fez) and had a wife named Becky who used to be a fantastic golfer, from what I hear.

The beginning stages of Alzheimer's were setting in for Becky on this trip. She would bring us drinks three and four times, sandwiches too. She's in a home now, barely able to breathe. We went out to eat one night and she yelled at the waiter for bringing out the food twice.

Everett was a storyteller and a great fiddle player. A lot of the session musicians from the shows would come over and play occasionally. He'd been mayor in the seventies and was really tied in to the history of the region, the vigilantes of the post-Civil War era, the backwoods life of hollers and Brier Rabbit and such. It was as foreign and new and fresh and real as if it happened yesterday, though most of the characters were long dead. The river that ran through town had been part of the Mason Dixon line. The ghosts of back then seemed to lurk clear and vivid in the morning mist of that water.

When Everett was a child, about thirteen or so, his mom came down with some form of nose cancer. A traveling medicine man came through town one day and she bought some lye soap from him. The stuff shriveled up her nose and turned it into a thin flap of black skin. One morning, when the pain became unbearable, she came to Everett with scissors and told him to cut it off. He was scared, I suppose, but he obeyed.

There are many stories floating around down there. I found a baseball program in an old shop in Joplin. I bought it for twelve dollars. There's a picture of Mickey Mantle in it that became mildly famous, an original. The shop was next to a restaurant that served the crispiest, juiciest chicken fried chicken I've ever had in my life. We went back to find the restaurant a few years ago, but it had become a Waffle House.

What We Talk About When We Talk About Baseball

by Jesse Gloyd

When I was ten years old, my grandparents moved from their house on Francis St. to a condo in mid-town Ventura. A large blue wraparound couch with a built-in recliner filled the living room. On the wall above the main section of the couch hung framed labels from orange crates; and to their left, an autographed picture of the Gashouse Gang. It’s not the complete 1934 Cardinal team; rather, single photos of Dizzy and Paul Dean, Frankie Frisch, Leo Durocher, Joe Medwick, and Pepper Martin with autographs gathered at various times and places scribbled on business card sized pieces of paper.

My Grandpa; we called him Poppo, grew up in Southern Missouri and played on some of the same fields as Mickey Mantle would a few years later. He wasn’t much of a baseball player; however, and wouldn’t follow it much in his life, aside from glancing at the occasional story in the paper or in phone conversations with his brother Bob. Whenever we’d visit their Prairie Village home in Kansas we’d sit on the back porch, sip Pepsi, eat potato chips, and talk through the damp summer air about the Royals. We’d try to one up each other with the baseball encyclopedia that was our collective memory; usually getting the facts wrong, however assured we were in what we were saying.

Later in the same year that my grandparents moved into the condo in mid-town, my Dad took me to a barbecue in Santa Maria. Santa Maria’s not of too much note, aside from it being the town that made tri-tip famous. Anyhow, the barbecue was a fundraiser put together by Tsuneo “Cappy” Harada, a Japanese baseball man, who’d managed in Japan, been a scout for the Giants, and eventually ended up as the athletic commissioner for Washington state. For several years in a row, he invited people like Joe DiMaggio, Willie Mays, Durocher, Pete Rose and several other old players who smelled like cigarettes and cocktails to sign autographs for charity at the barbecue. The event was a relatively good deal, as twenty dollars or so, if I remember correct, would get a tri-tip dinner, with garlic bread, beans, salad, and an autograph from any of the mentioned Hall of Famers.

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“Jesse, I’d like you to meet someone,” said my Dad as he pulled me away from a group of kids who were trying to get the autograph of Santa Maria local, Robin Ventura.

“Okay,” I said. Walking to the far side of the room, I was stopped by an older man who was wearing a brown tweed sport coat and having a drink. “Where’d you get that hat?” he asked.

“For my Birthday,” I said.

“Can I see it?” I took it off and handed it too him. It was a late thirties Brooklyn Dodger hat; the white one with the blue stripes. “I didn’t know they still made these,” he said. “Where’d you get it?”

“I don’t know, I got it for my Birthday.”

“You should have him sign it,” said my dad. I handed it to him with a black Sharpie. He signed it just below the “B.”

“Thanks,” said my dad as I put it back on my head.

We walked through the rows of tables and chairs as workers in stained white dress shirts cleared Styrofoam plates and plastic forks. “Who was that?” I asked. “Al Gionfriddo,” he said. “He made a famous catch off Joe DiMaggio in the World Series.” “Oh,” I said as we came up to an old man who, upon recollection, didn’t look too much different than Al Gionfriddo.

“Excuse me, Mr. Cobb?” asked my dad. “Yes,” said Mr. Cobb. “I wanted you to meet my son, Jesse.” He looked surprised and happy in the way that old people do. I shook his wrinkled and leathery hand. “Hello, Jesse. I’m Jim Cobb.” “Hi,” I said. “Do you know who my father was?” I nodded my head in assumption. He went on to spend the evening recounting stories of his father and baseball and the people he met. He smelled like cigarettes and alcohol and bore the blood of arguably the best and most vicious player from the first part of the century.

I don’t remember much of what he had to say, other than that I should do well in school. One story sticks out; though, that was later recounted in the Ken Burns documentary. Mr. Cobb told of a trip he took with his dad to a liquor store in South Carolina. The documentary gave a real dramatic vocal reenactment of the meeting between the two greats; though Jim recalled it as a simple introduction of Joe Jackson to himself by his dad, as “the greatest hitter that ever lived.” I guess it seemed like a nice thing to say; however much Cobb actually believed it, seeing as I’m hard pressed to believe Ty Cobb saw anyone as being better than himself.

The meeting between Jackson and Cobb seemed sad to me in a sense. Both were looked upon as two of the great hitters from the “Dead Ball Era;” both implicated in separate gambling scandals in 1919; Cobb is acquitted, Jackson banned from baseball for life; Cobb enters the Hall of Fame on his first try; Jackson publicly disgraced. I’m not really sure how much it all matters. I assume Joe Jackson didn’t kill anyone, which is something he has on Ty, but I’m only going on assumption. They’re both long gone; same as the players on the wall at Poppo’s house.

I sat and had a cup of coffee last Saturday morning with Poppo. His wife, my Grandma, had died the day earlier and he was having a hard time keeping it together. “Time keeps moving and it’s taking me with it and there’s nothing I can do about it,” he said to me. All I could do was nod my head.

Later that afternoon, I sat by the pool next to my fiancé, and read a book. It was a good book about the summer of a young man who’s just graduated from college. It takes place in Pittsburgh, a town I’m not too familiar with, but felt like moving to when I graduated from college. Pittsburgh seemed isolated and different at the time. I’ve never been there, so it seemed like a good place to start, a good place to rent a small apartment, and a good place to listen to Duke Ellington play Blue Skies on a big grand piano while lying on my back on scattered leaves and unmowed grass.

The season starts today for the Dodgers. After heated arguments with my dad last year regarding Dodger personnel moves, my mom invoked a rule around the house that we weren't aloud to talk baseball. It was like something of a canyon had grown between our respective ideologies. Some might say that baseball doesn't matter in the long run, that it's not something that should be taken so seriously. I guess it's true, but the memory of telling stories about the Royals in Prairie Village means a hell of a lot more to me than any political or philosophical discussion of the past year. Baseball digs deep into the fabric of this country. It is the thing that dulls the pain of winter for many of us. It softens the blow of reality in a way.

This last weekend, Poppo took down pictures of my Grandma that were around the condo. It's understandable that he would do such a thing. The picture of the Gashouse Gang is still up, though. It's been moved into the den and sits above his computer. In 1934 nobody had walked on the moon, Poppo was nine, Jimmie Rodgers was king of the radio, and Dizzy Dean, with thirty wins, was more popular than the President.