Ronnie's Pie Story

Ronnie’s ‘Pie Story’

     A friend of mine died earlier this year (2005)… Ron Nakamrua… great guitarist, a man of great generosity and humor…
He and I went ‘way back’ as they say.  He figures largely in my ‘Reflections On The Garcia’  http://normaly.blogspot.com/2005/08/reflections-on-garciaan-essay_19.html
     This bit of business  was one of his favorite stories and he often begged me to recount it, and at one time we even made it into a song like a talking blues… Got to thinking about him and that story so I thought I’d share it because I know he’d like me to tell it one more time…

     Once upon a time Ronnie, I, Jimmie (Jimbo) Carmichael and Dan Swetlik were in a little almost-jug band called ‘Polecat’.  We played Grateful Dead stuff, a little Eagles, things like that…
Ronnie played lead guitar on his marvelous Martin D-35, Jim handled most of the vocals and Dan played bass and sang harmony.  I was playing Dobro for the group and we were several cuts above a garage band, making little gigs here and there and getting together for rehearsals, alternating between Dan or at Jimbo’s house.  We had a lot of stories to tell…  One day I’ll tell about the time Jim lost the band truck in San Francisco but today I’ll tell you Ronnie’s Pie Story.

     Now it happened that my thirty fifth birthday was drawing nigh and being born on April first, as I was, tends to instill a certain amount of caution in a body.  ‘Getting through a birthday’ has a little more meaning for me than it does for most mortals.
     Little did I know my thirty fifth would have a special ‘sweetness’ to it.

     We had gathered at Jimmie’s on this occasion for a rehearsal and were taking a break.  It was about eight thirty or so… dark out.
     Jim said “Anyone want to smoke one?” …the times being what they were, folks were known to take  a little smoke of cannabis on occasion (only for the camaraderie, of course.)
     I knew I was up for it but Jim said, “We have to do it outside so’s not to smell up the house.”  I should have seen this as an omen, a portend, of mischief  because this had never been a concern before but it was a reasonable request.

     So we went outside on a moonless night illuminated only by the back porch light.
We passed the doobie around in good fellowship, Ronnie only lightly because pot made him sleepy.
     Ron then asked me if I wanted to hear a joke.
     Now folks, having Ron tell you a joke was sometimes a challenge to comprehension because he would usually go into fits of laughter during the telling and be incapable of finishing the damn thing coherently.  Often by the time he gasped out the punch line the joke will have lost its momentum and the punch line would go flat…

     So, in spite of my protests, he starts this long rambling tale, commencing to crack up in the telling as usual but he finally seemed to be bringing it to a merciful end.  There he stands, laughing his head off, while I’m waiting for the punch line.  Finally, I get impatient and say:
“Let me have it.”
Ronnie looks at me in mid laugh, almost unbelievingly, and says “What?”
“I said…Let me have it.!”
“Okay!” said Ron with a grin of sheer delight…”You asked for it”…
And I saw, almost in stop motion, his hand come from behind his back holding a coconut cream pie which he plants firmly in my face.

There is no experience quite like it, folks…  You can watch all the old slapstick movies you want that feature such shenanigans but there is no substitute for the real event.

     I remember reacting with a stunned growl, momentarily immobile but not for long.  I was looking over my glasses for someone to grab and punish when the next surprise was unloaded… a bucket of water splashed on me amidships.   Ice water…

     Cold!  That slowed me down and a second bucket of water at groin level stopped me gave the vandals ample time to flee.  I saw one scurry over a fence and Dan virtually flew over the gate.
  I was half blind and wet and cold and about as disoriented as one could be.

     After a beat or two, one of the guys asked if it was safe to approach me and I said it was because I was of two minds… outraged that such had been done to my person and at the same time the realization had started to sink in  that not many people had undergone such an experience. and could see it was every bit as ludicrous as it seemed when done in the movies.

     The boys had planned well.  They had the setup planned weeks in advance, even to the point of having a dry jumpsuit set aside so I could shower and change (and cool off a bit) allowing us to all have a great laugh, not at my expense, but at the whole project and its brilliant execution.  Ronnie had thoughtfully provided some ‘sip of the day’ (Peach Brandy) to assist in the warming up process…

     That is the essence of ‘Ronnie’s Pie Tale’ and it achieved the status of near myth over the years.

     It did have some negative side effects however…
     We were scheduled to play at a now defunct beer and wine joint called “The Rhinoceros’ that once existed across from the legendary Gelb Music store.  It was early in the evening.  The place was empty and the boys were back in the main showroom getting set up.  I was in the bar drinking coffee.
     Alan, one of the bartenders, brought in a familiar looking box… a pie box!  I rose to my most threatening height and put on my War Face but Alan said… ”No, wait… we thought you should have a pie to eat for your  birthday.”
     Well, that was an altogether different matter so I picked up the pie and took it into the main showroom intending to share it with the boys but they all scattered like mercury dropped on a linoleum floor when they saw that pie in my hands.

     Right around then we went to play a gather at a rented hall at the San Mateo YMCA, when the line between fun surprise and malice blurred and started to spoil the effect.
     That very night someone hit Ronnie with a chocolate cream pie.  He didn’t take it well but the poor guy had no recourse to get it all off him until he got home and I’ll tell you from experience it takes a couple of showers to get the sugary-ness off.

     It became dangerous to have a birthday for about a year after that.  They tried to pie Dan the bass player, whose birthday was near mine by a couple of days but he avoided the pie assassins.  Jimbo got blindsided at a joint called ‘The Rusty Pelican’.  Ed Donnelan, a frequent band mate, reminded me that “…the 'pie tradition' that year, cost me a bloody nose and a loose tooth as the perpetrator's of my 'pieing' neglected to dethaw the frozen banana cream prior to my molestation by dessert.”
Finally one of our number from our fan base, Rick Chatfield, got slightly injured which illustrated to the masses that your standard surprise party was a much safer and saner mode of operation.  They know what they were talking about when they say ‘Kids, Don’t Try This At Home.’… and the pie in the face routine faded into the realm of legends told…

     The thing I remember most about it isn’t the pie in the face as much as it was listening to Ronnie laugh because he knew what was about to happen… he loved to laugh…

Uncle Josh...

Josh Graves

Burkett “Buck” Graves a/k/a ‘Uncle Josh’ was for years the Dobro player for Flatt and Scruggs Foggy Mt. Boys. To me and many others he was the definitive Dobro player. Showed the world what it was ‘s’posed to be….

Wayne Dye was a guy who talked like Foghorn J. Leghorn, the deep-voiced, southern- talking rooster in Warner Brothers cartoons. He liked his bourbon at the time (as did I) and something of a Bull Thrower and had a habit of using off-color language when he talked. He wore a red western style suit and pointy-toed cowboy boots. The guys in the band called him ‘Cowboy Wayne’. He was about 5’ 10” of a fleshy build with a black mustache, and thick black eyebrows and black hair.
He liked me and he loved country music.

He decided he was going to be a promoter and tied in with some people who sponsored the first Northern CA Grass Valley Bluegrass festival. He lined up the headliner...Josh Graves.
He put together a pickup band featuring Jack Mace on five-string, Tony Tichnor on bass, Richard Somers on mandolin, Tommy Mayfield on guitar and me on Dobro. Wayne played rhythm guitar and sang.

The idea was that we would open for Josh and the band, minus me, would back him and his singer, Bobby Smith.
Bobby Smith was a good, but not well known bluegrass and old country style singer with a sly grin and a sharp wit. Josh, since his young manhood, always had a devils’ grin and a gentle, charming, style of relating to people.

We were to play four dates with these men. The Palomino Club in L.A., the (now defunct) Boarding House in SF and some club in Berkeley, and The first annual Grass Valley Bluegrass Festival.

Both of these men had a warm, gentle sense of humor and were very careful not to say anything bad or negative about our musicianship. Very supportive to work with.

We were very surprised to find out that these guys Did Not Rehearse. Their stated reason was that they did it for a living which puts a whole different light on ‘playing’.
To be honest, I think we cured those guys of using local pickup bands. Tony chose that time to get pushy and argumentative. End result was some discord among us.
Wayne, I, Josh and Bobby were heavy drinkers, Tony, Richard, Jack and I smoked Pot and Tony, for certain and maybe Dick, were into “sniffables”… it was the late sixties, early seventies, a lot of things were going on then. The worse result of this was the Boarding House engagement when Tony and Richard were so wired that they started our first song in something like F-sharp instead of its normal key of A or whatever. Not a way to make a good crowd impression. The critics were kind. (Merciful might be a better word)
The Palomino Club’s advertising was off by a day which hurt the venue there. Grass Valley was OK. The turnout was not what it would later become but it was OK for a new venue.

Josh, when he played, was riveting. He has a true aura of authority and excitement of a true artist as they play their instrument. To see him get all those "Uncle Josh" shots so effortlessly was a real treat. Bobby had a really good voice, very reminiscent of Lester Flatt but still His Own.
Josh was a generous, sharing, man. One of my best memories of Grass Valley was seeing him and Sally Van Meter (who later gained a good national reputation as a Dobroist) sitting cross legged in the grass, him showing her some techniques. Truly wished, at the time, that I’d had a camera…
The other fun thing was me playing and singing Poppa Played The Dobro with Buck Graves. He played the backup and one lead break and I played one lead break. HOT! Did the tune at every gig. Josh ‘n’ Bobby both loved it
The Berkeley booking was a fiasco because it was a Stupid Booking. Too close to Grass Valley and the Boardinghouse Booking. Only two people showed up.
Wayne took a bath on that one. He had to borrow money to pay Josh and Bobby’s airfare home. They were kind enough to let him off the hook about not getting paid (contracts, y’know?) for the Berkeley engagement.

We learned what the difference playing for a living does for your musical technique. Those two guys, no matter what they may have imbibed, were in tune and meticulous in their timing. Absolutely No Errors.
We were definitely outclassed
However I also learned a Basic Truth about myself playing with these men.
It was at the Boarding House, essentially ‘our turf’. I was getting ready, behind the curtain, to make my contribution with the band.
It suddenly occurred to me.. ”What am I doing here? I’m standing here wearing a Dobro opening for one of the best Dobro players alive?!”
And I answered myself…: ”I play, too!” I never forgot that answer…

We managed to talk Bobby into letting us put in a new bridge saddle on his Martin. The original bridge had chipped and kept cutting strings. That was a magnificent pre-war D-28. Hard to play past the third fret but the tone on that thing was awesome.

Josh was using Cliff Carlisle’s model 60 Dobro at the time. I got it away from him so I could replace thelittle sleeves that go around the string posts so I got to play it a little but I couldn’t make it sound the way Josh did. I took me a couple of years to figure out why. Has to do with learning how to play an acoustic instrument firmly (as opposed to hard or softly) to get the most out of them.
It looked like he had been using the same Stevens Steel he had as a kid. For a third of the bar’s length the nickel plating had worn down to the basic brass. And his thumbpick was so worn it almost had sawteeth on its edge. Both men cautioned me to not clean or polish the instruments in any way. Bobby was particularly adamant about this. They were very concerned about disturbing the patina of years and possibly affecting the tone.

Here’s Josh’s tale of how he came by the Carlisle guitar…
Cliff Carlisle was a very well known instrumentalist in his day. He was one of the early steel guitarists (on Dobro’s and National’s). He played on several Jimmie Rogers recordings to give you an idea of his time period. Cliff Carlisle was one of Josh’s idols.
Cliff got tired of the road and making no money so he retired from the music scene. He thought, however, that the guitar should still be played so he let it be known that it was for sale but only to a player, a musician, not a collector or speculator.. Josh couldn’t afford it and it finally went to some guy who showed up with a bandaged hand. Told Cliff he could play but couldn’t demonstrate because of the ‘hurt’ hand. He paid Cliff a good price and kept the guitar for years.
Finally, for whatever reason, the guy either gave or sold at a very reasonable price, the guitar to Josh. He confessed that he really couldn’t play it and thought that Josh deserved to have and use the guitar.

Josh now plays one of the State Of The Art 'Signature' Dobros and Cliff’s guitar is in the Country Music Hall of Fame museum in Nashville.

Josh seemed to truly love the sound of my RegalDobro and kept teasing me about buying it. His best ‘offer’ was 400.00 but I think he’s glad I didn’t take him up on it.
He told me never to sell it, but if I ever really wanted to sell it to let him know and he’d see what he could do.
While we were in L.A. Josh did a track dubbing recording. Two tunes. Used my Dobro on one of them. Nice feeling. He wrapped up the session in about an hour. He don’t fool around….
Buck Graves told me about the time right after he’d joined Flatt and Scruggs and they’d recorded Randy Lynn Rag, Shuckin’ the Corn, etc. which had all those hot Graves Dobro solos in what was then the hottest Bluegrass group around. Apparently, according to him, Oswald Kirby offered him the opportunity to visit him so he (Oz) could give him (Buck) some tips on playing the Dobro.
Nice of him.

Buck Graves told me about being on the road in the fifties with Flatt and Scruggs and being accosted in a parking lot by a rural sort who had a Dobro to sell. Buck played on it and allowed how it sounded pretty good how much did the man want?
“Two fifty.”
Well, the most Buck ever made with Earl was 250.00 a week, so he said to the man: “I can’t afford no two hundred and fifty dollars for that guitar”
“Oh no,” says the man, “I’m only askin’ two dollars fifty cents.”
I believe Buck paid him 25 or thirty dollars which was what I’d seen them going for second hand in a store back home in those days.

Buck Graves is another one who implied that the road in those days was a rough row sometimes and that he often carried his steel in his fist if things were tense. As a matter of fact, when I had my ten day tour with him he would never go into a mensroom alone. He always asked one of us to go in with him because he claimed he’d been mugged once in a mensroom while on the road. .

Josh Graves traveled with his Cliff Carlisle Dobro in a case with his name painted on the side (crudely by one of his grandkids) as baggage. When I asked him about the risks involved he told me you couldn’t get carried away worrying about such things. “You just slack the strings and always have a couple of extra bridge saddles just in case..”
Josh tells about having his 14 fret Dobro stolen. (These instruments have a brighter sound to them.) Same instrument he recorded the Randy Lynn Rag etc sessions on.
Some years later a woman called him and told him to come get his guitar. Her boyfriend had stolen it and now that she was splitting up with him she thought she’d give Josh the opportunity to get his guitar back.

Josh claims that Lester Flatt always made him (Josh) carry his (Lester’s) guitar.
There is a famous photo of the band lined up by the side of The Bus as if about to board, each with his instrument case in his hand. After the shot, Lester put down his guitar and said “Pick it up, Josh” and climbed onto the bus…. Eventually Josh got it straightened out but that went on for years.
While he was out here Josh got tipsy and gathered us around the phone while he called Earl Scruggs… at about 4:00 in the morning where Earl was.
Told Earl he was in jail in San Francisco and would Earl please wire him some money for bail.
Poor Earl.
To his credit, though, he was willing to go do it
Sadly, Josh has had some misfortunes. He was diagnosed with Diabetes and had to have both legs amputated. He still does shows plays, however, laying his instrument on a table…

I got to work with Wayne Dye and Bobby Smith on one more occasion.
Wayne booked Bobby to play a ‘Day on the Green’ at Bay Meadows racetrack. Bobby very kindly requested that I play Dobro for him.
He taught me a couple of valuable lessons.
First, he told me: “I play rhythm. If we don’t mesh and play together in time you best believe it ain’t because of me!”
Next, he took me through Little Rosewood Casket. Sang it through for a verse then asked me to play it.
“Nope, No, No, yer playin’ it wrong.”
“How so?” I asked.
So he showed me. He made me play the melody as he sang it. He would pause until I got it right, then go on. Only when I was able to actually play the melody line perfectly all the way through would he allow me to back him up on the song.
“You were playin’ at the song …now you kin actually play the song. Without being able to play the song proper you just can’t do it justice in a band situation.”
Bobby’s dead now. Alcoholism, I hear. Too bad. He was a warm, but firm musician and a gentleman. I can still hear him walking me through that song…
“Thar’s a leetle Rose-wood Caskit…Settin’ on a mar-ble stand…”

Le budoir...

Not much to add...

reclining blonde

One of my better ones...
These are watercolor you know...

The Water Witch... a curiosity...

It was probably in 1957 when my dad came home with a tale about a ‘Water Witch’ or Dowser. His boss at work had told him about this old man named Kon Muttrick who lived in a town called New Era who went beyond the Forked Stick method of seeking water that most so-called ‘Water Witches” used.
I told my high school buddy Harley about this guy and we found it difficult to believe that such an event could happen as described. We decided to make a Day of it and go up and see this guy….tell him we were making a science project and report on the Dowsing Phenomenon.

So, off we went. Drove to New Era and inquired (as we were told to ) at a certain small store for directions to Kon Muttrick’s farm.
We pulled into the barnyard and, sure enough, here was this old man, probably in his sixties…bib overalls…gray hair…had that look of The Land that a lifetime of farming brings onto a man. Looked a lot like Walter Brennan’s character “Amos McCoy”
We told him our fabrication and asked him for a demonstration of his abilities.

“Well, y’know…I know where all th’ water is on my proppity is…won’t be a real test.”
“Yes, sir, we know, but our teacher says that dowsing can’t be done and we hear you have a most unusual way to do it.”

What I relate to you now is quite impossible. But I saw it with my own eyes, in broad daylight…
He gave Harley a pocketknife and told him to cut a Sassafras sapling that was about 12 feet high, about 1.5” thick at the base.. Sassafras saplings grow like weeds in western MI and grow really straight. After cutting this treeling very close to the ground he was instructed to trim all the branches off it except for “the brush” at the top. It was at this point about ten feet long I’d say.

The old man then waved in the general direction that he said an underground stream ran and took the trimmed sapling in his hands. He held it vertically with the ‘brush’ touching the ground. Without any visible movement on his part the cut, sky-pointing, tip started gently whipping back and forth. When he went in the direction he’d said the water was the whipping action started to resemble a fishing pole with a fish on it, i.e. it was starting to lean in the direction of where he’d said the water lay... move in the opposite direction and the bending would lessen.
“Now, watch this, boys” and he moved in the direction of the alleged under-ground stream and the sapling bent over into a ‘U’ until it snapped above his hands!!!

We, of course, were dumbfounded. Oh, to have had a video camera in those days.
Old Kon claimed he could tell which sparkplug was mis-firing on a car by touch-ing them with his left hand. If he were to touch them with his right hand he’d get shocked like anyone else.
He claimed it was a Gift from God and would not charge you if you wanted him to ‘witch’ your land for water. He did require that you, as an act of faith, have a drilling rig hired and ready on the site. His hardest find he said was a place so barren that the only live wood (a necessity) he could find was a small live bit of brush less than a foot long. It worked, however.
Curiously he “wouldn’t work it fer niggers or injuns…”
Strange, strange man…

Snake tale

As a small boy in Michigan I used to catch and keep hog-nosed snakes, a small, absolutely harmless local snake that was plentiful in the area. I kept them in aquariums in the basement. (I hope God forgives small boys who restrict the freedom of His wild creatures).
In any case, I usually had one or two of these critters at all times year round. I kept them in an empty aquarium in the basement.
Now it so happens that I was fascinated with Taxidermy and had taken a Mail Or-der ‘correspondence course’ that was offered in those days.
Let’s move ahead to my high school years now…Biology class, Bob Dorsch presiding. He’d heard of my Taxidermy interest and the school some years back had purchased a six foot Texas Diamondback rattlesnake in a can, pickled in formaldehyde.
Would I want to try to mount this creature? With all the non-thinking overconfi-dence of youth I said yes, of course, and took the thing home and proceeded to try to mount this animal.
Mounting reptiles according to the procedure in the book involves wire, excelsior (fine wood fiber used in packing in those days) to fill out the body form and clay. I struggled with this thing and got it into a coil and put it in the basement to set up and dry.

The laundry facilities were in the basement also and, like most basements, it was lit in a utilitarian fashion, that is to say, dimly….
My mother was deathly afraid of snakes. Every time she went downstairs she dreaded the thought that one of my slithering prisoners might have escaped.

Somehow I’d neglected to mention that there was a coiled six foot diamondback rattlesnake in the basement in a dimly lit corner….
…one day my mother went downstairs to do the laundry…
...she happens to glance over in the corner...


…let us now draw a merciful curtain over the rest of this sad tale….

goldie

This was my first sale (and my hardest because I really liked her) but she bought me a camera...

The theory and practice of "Paper Dolls by Vann... One picture...etc.

himself with favorite toy...

Being me and my country gentleman circa 1961

Is he weird or is he eccentric?

There is a certain amount of power in being mildly eccentric.
Not flagrantly so… no no, just eccentric enough to make people curious about you.

In my case it has to do with the hat I wear. To me, it is a practical application. It keeps the sun out of my eyes and the rain off my glasses. I’m summat hard of hearing and for that reason it acts as a sound deflector and in that way it helps me hear a little better.

It also gives one an idea of what to expect of those around you by the way they react to it.

Little kids think you’re an event!

It really puts some people off, I’ll admit, but I kinda feel sorry for those kind of folks because they tend to carry a long list of things they dislike and are checking and re-checking that list often. It's only a hat, after all.

In my hat is the tail feather of a blue and gold macaw, a large, obnoxious, South American parrot. I like tail feathers because they're longer as a rule. The feather is blue on one side and yellowish on the other (How do birds do that?).
FAQ’s are:
“Is that a pheasant feather?” Having never seen a blue pheasant I think the safe answer would be ‘no’.
“Is that a peacock feather?” I suppose that’s fair since few people have actually ever seen a peacock.
“Where did you get that feather?” I often wonder why they ask that. Are they going to go buy one?
For a long time I got them from a pretty blonde who asked me to wear her feathers, retrieved from her pet’s molt on the condition that those be the only ones I wear. But people really don’t want an answer to a question if it takes more than five words which makes you wonder why they asked you to begin with.
The blonde has since escaped into marriage so now I tell them “I get ‘em on E.Bay.” which is currently the truth and much easier to tell.

And from hats we go to my walking stick often erroneously called a ‘cane’.
Well, a ‘cane’ is an aid to walking if one has balance problems. I can still maneuver unaided so my affected encumberance is a walking stick.

I started carrying a walking stick when I got lightly nipped by an undisciplined dog. No dog has confronted me since so the idea appears to have had merit.
At the time I was involved in the management of a saloon and I found that the walking stick contributed to an aura of nuanced authority there and made some belligerents less so and contributed to maintaining order although I never had to raise it in anger.
I finally figured it out while watching, of all things, a Discovery program about animals on the Serengeti Plain.
Predatory animals do not go after the robust, the ones who might fight or injure them. They go for them that look like an easy grab. The weak ones.
I think the walking stick has served me in this manner since I walk more than I drive. Predatory humans are less likely to trifle with a 200+ pound male carrying a stick in much the same manner that one might carry an unsheathed sword…
I am definitely not a fighter or a violent type but BadGuys seem content to not test the waters.
It seems to work well that way...