WHEN in the course of human Events, it becomes necessary….
First Love and Other Sorrows
byVanderleunonApril 1, 2022
They’d come every year. And every year they’d take me back to that summer in the light. This year they didn’t come and I felt as it something had left my life; that she had left life. Her. My first love. The love you never forget the beginning of even when you are glad to erase the ending.
It began, as so many adolescent loves begin, in a car in a cornfield at sunset. It was her car and she had, as a drama major might, a dramatic streak that made her name things with a Shakespearian rag; in this case, her car yclept “Sir Francis Quoint.” I didn’t care about her eccentricities, I was mesmerized by her body and her beauty and her long, long hair hanging down, and her scent, “Shalimar.”
I was just 18 and I was living in a dormitory at UC Davis and ready to work my job at the library through the long summer. She chose me because my roommate was her current love and she loved, more than young men, drama. I’d just left virginity behind me when she had me take a ride with her into the cornfield next to the pasture where they were breeding dwarf cattle. I didn’t care about cows standing three feet high. Knocked off my feet and kidnapped into the alien corn, I didn’t care about anything other than her. You could have cut off my legs and I would still crawl towards her. Young men are foolish in that regard. Always have been.
She was a “Drama Major.” That fact should have told me to “Back away from the vehicle,” but that sort of wisdom was decades away. It may well elude me today. I haven’t checked lately.
All that was 58 years ago and I wasn’t interested in wisdom. I was enthralled by passion and love and a strikingly beautiful young woman who, mysteriously, seemed to love me. At least for the present and the present was more than good enough for me.
Soon after the sunset cornfield we moved into a very small bungalow at the back of a compound of houses taken over by drama students aka “Show People in Training.” We had barbeques and picnics on the shared lawn and then retired to playing musical bedrooms. It was 1964 and this situation shocked and upset my parents since “living together” was “living in sin” and decent people simply did not do such a thing.
Her parents? They simply didn’t give a damn. Her father was divorced and lived in a large San Francisco Victorian. He’d turned over the entire attic of five or six rooms in which his two daughters carried on whatever life they chose while he carried on his life downstairs. I met him once when I stumbled into the kitchen looking for coffee and toast to export to our bedroom in the attic with the small window that looked out on the bay and the fogs during the long night when the foghorn symphonette sounded it seemed for us and us alone.
The father? Oh yes… Distinguished, gruff, and uncaring about me as if he’d seen his daughters’ playthings before and was resigned to seeing them again.
In San Francisco she began, as all women must, to “improve me.” There was a lot of work to be done. During our first “sophisticated” dinner where they served me wine without asking for our IDs, she had to tell me that I was supposed to sip and approve the splash of wine the waiter had put into my glass. It was the beginning of a long process of renovation by women that continues to this day.
Other lessons revealing the customs of the wider world and female mysteries followed. In our bungalow was a small table she covered with a red and white checked tablecloth and one of those raffia-wrapped bottles of Chianti with the candle stuck in the neck and the wax dripping down. It was all very romantic. We’d cook on a gas ring with a cast-iron skillet. We had two wine glasses, two plates, two sets of silverware, and one bed facing a wall to wall window that had a sweeping view of the alley. It was all essentially one room. Poor and very romantic. There were other items of furniture but I don’t remember them. There was a front door and even, I think, a short and white fence (perhaps picket) that led to the shared lawn where the drama students were emoting over their hamburgers while changing partners. It was the sixties and it was all very romantic.
And so that summer unfolded traveling between “playing house” and her father’s house until, at last, she tired of me and her demons took her back to her previous boyfriend leaving me cast out of her love and her house.
And so I left, broken-hearted as all boys must be when their first love leaves.
The next year the Free Speech Movement began at Berkeley. I joined the movement in Davis but by the next September I’d transferred to Berkeley “to be where the action was and she was not”.
And then the years and the decades came and went and I learned how to shut her and that summer away. I went on to other lives and other rooms. I went, I suppose, far away to New York and to Europe. I had, perhaps, more than my share of women, a number of whom I loved. Went on and married. Came back to the US. Had a child. Had a divorce that left life in shambles. I went on and had a second life, a second marriage. For a couple of years at least. In that, I was no different from many other men. It is the way we live now.
Traveling for the magazine I returned to San Francisco more than twenty-five years back and found her working at a bar in North Beach in an alley across from City Lights. There she was still setting them up for the broken-hearted. I ordered a double and we talked for a while, I forget about what. She was or had been married. She’d stayed in the bay area. Her father had passed and she had another place somewhere on the slopes of the hills around North Beach. We went there for, I think, one night. Then I left.
I’ve never seen her again.
More years passed and I was beyond marriage and living in Seattle. She’d found me there and got my address. Then the birthday cards began.
Every year for nearly 20 years I would get a birthday card from her. Always in an envelope addressed in her curving printed letters always using my middle name. And it was always simply a sentiment wishing me well. In time I came to look forward to this last link to my first love; this semaphore sent across the decades from eroding cliffs.
Last December the card did not come. Noting its absence I did not dare to inquire as to why. I left that thought untouched much as we tend not to touch thoughts that we fear will bring pain; that will reveal the rust beneath the painted-over surface of our life.
In my soul I wanted that bungalow to remain alive in another’s memory, to live always in the light. I knew that the bungalow was still where it had been. Checking, I drove past it in the alley about ten years ago. Absent the Tibetan prayer flags around its door I saw it was intact even if the checkered tablecloth was long gone to a landfill, and the drama students’ picnic ground was replaced by a charmless apartment building.
We don’t want our first loves to leave for a second time, but in time they do, as do we all. Still, I did not want to be “resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts into the hard ground,” and put my darker thoughts back into shadow.
And then, this week, in a reprieve an envelope appeared in my Mangrove mailbox with her slightly loopy printing on it.
Inside that envelope was another envelope marked Return to Sender with a Post-It on the outside in her loopy printing reading “3rd time’s the charm?”
Inside that envelope was this card, a postcard:
On the back, in her slightly loopy hand, it said “It’s your birthday and all you got was this Crumbly card.” On the front, she’d taken some whiteout to one of Crumb’s thought bubbles and written, in her slightly loopy hand, above the long-haired hippie, “Gerard Birthday Hmmm…” It was a light pat, a love tap.
All of which brought back the car and the cornfield and the cattle and the sunsets in California where all of the West had at last been won. My personal West at least. For now.
Would we see each other again today? Not I think at this point. Not in this life. The light touch of the birthday card is enough for now. It should, I think, remain what it has become, a signal sent out from another headland about a time when, for that long ago Summer of 64, I lived in the light of first love.
“Now you’re telling me You’re not nostalgic Then give me another word for it”
Yes we all remember our first love(s). Mostly the girls were very kind to me when I was young. They shared things only they could share. It was exquisite and I didn’t know then that one day it would end. I remember three women: one that I loved dearly. One that I loved to fuck (sorry it would be the same if I used a different word). And one that loved to fuck me (same sorry). You all are thinking but “I” loved to have sex with all of them. Not the same thing. One pleased my ego and she couldn’t get enough of me and I was eager to keep trying. The other pleased my in ways I have never before or since been pleased and I blown away.
JoeApril 1, 2022, 12:24 PM
Last Friday a blog I follow published a love story that was quite good. It is a little long but well worth the read. A lost love found then lost.
Kenny is a good guy and writes well, although from most of the stuff he posts you would not know it.
Enjoy https://ogdaa.blogspot.com/2022/03/help-me-rhonda-help-help-me-rhonda.html
Joe
TerryApril 1, 2022, 10:15 PM
Joe !!! You just exploded my head with this story link. I just started part 2 and the author is talking about Angels Camp, Columbia, Sonora and etc. I was born in Sonora, raised in Columbia (two miles north of Sonora) and attended the ‘Frog Jump’ in Angles Camp. Mark Twain wrote about the Frog Jump.
On top of this, Gerard’s life story of love is a parallel to mine. I cannot believe what I have read this evening. And, Gerard was raised about 70 miles north of me in Paradise !!! I attended SF State while Gerard was at Berkeley.
And, Knuckledraggin My Life Away is a blog I read every week. Especially Fridays. Wink, wink.
I have to get back to part 2.
DeNihilistApril 2, 2022, 9:14 AM
Joe, I too read Ken’s blog, everyday but Saturday. As with this wonderous memory from our gracious host, the time reading these first love stories was a well spent time of my life.
Thank-you Gerard for making my day and my life a bit more poignant.
timApril 1, 2022, 12:48 PM
Nice way to end the work week, thinking about first loves…
I’m glad her message made its way to your door once more. May they continue to be delivered for many years yet to come.
gwbnycApril 1, 2022, 1:48 PM
-mine was the back seat of a robin’s egg blue ’54 Pontiac, a year younger than I, nicknamed “June Carter”. I was seated in one of those wicker clamshell kind of moderne patio chairs that had lost its legs and was so emplaced.
The whole situated in my parents driveway, after a summer-long pursuit by her until I had the nerve to pull my drawers down. Some months of unanesthetized heart removal followed. After years I contacted her and have so kept an interruptable correspondence going through her depressions, etc.
Willingly.
-aside, that hotel mentioned above would have been the “Earle”, IIRC.
ArtyApril 1, 2022, 2:08 PM
Nicely written Gerard. Brings back memories of my own first love and the wreckage that took me many years to fix. Nice that I can look back and laugh now.
Awesome write up! married my high school gal, took seven years and I wore that bitch out. She was to this day the nastiest girl I’ve ever met, I’ve met some very nasty ladies, perhaps uninhibited is more accurate.
Pretty sure the entire seventh fleet banged here, at first I thought it was a “ guy “ issue, then I realized she was just addicted to Cock!. Life goes on.
JackApril 1, 2022, 2:56 PM
I couldn’t take Baez when I was young and I cannot take her now, not even in miniscule doses and I think of her and Jane Fonda about the same way.
But I had a true love once. I was a notorious player and I chased it from one coast to the next, often with spectacular success. I broke a couple of hearts but it was by mistake because my intentions, though thoroughly dishonorable, were always out in the open. No commitment and no promises.
But when I was around 31 I met a most extraordinary woman who was from up-state New York and although I wasn’t initially attracted to her, I became so and it was fast and furious. After a couple of months we moved in together and life was great but I came home one evening after work and she had vamoosed, all without a heads up, a word or a warning.
I didn’t hear anything from her for a couple of months and then for some reason she contacted me to tell me, as if i were headless and could have never guessed, that she had found another. And then she came by for a couple of hours to visit which at the time I thought would be better than not doing so, so, anyway we talked and I think we might have made some of of amends but what ever occurred didn’t seem to matter. She was gone and not returning.
That wasn’t the bad part. I endured a few couch sessions with a shrink which did absolutely no good and even though I moved on, married and had a family, then divorced and then remarried happily, I still think of her. Forty years have passed and I haven’t heard from her but I still think of her. The only thing I learned from that experience was that it is fine to love and trust but always keep a guard on your heart and do not ever permit yourself to go in so deep that you cannot recover from the loss, regardless of what causes it. One way or another, it will occur and you need your own legs when it does.
I wish I had known then what I know now but I do believe that my head was so far into the clouds or up my own butt, that I didn’t even consider that I might have actually had a heart and feelings. Boy did I catch on!
VanderleunApril 1, 2022, 3:23 PM
Well, Jack, all I can say is that you shouldn’t confuse the singer with the song.
JackApril 2, 2022, 11:26 AM
I can relate to the feelings of the Chairman of the Board but I don’t understand the meaning of ‘you shouldn’t confuse the singer with the song’. I’ve never heard that before. So, what do you mean?
VanderleunApril 2, 2022, 1:58 PM
I mean that the song or music or art or novel or poem that the artist made is separate from the foolishness and political stupidity of the person that creates or performs it. I despise Baez and she is a person that in my youth I knew on an up close and personal basis at Ira Sandpearl’s peace school with her sister Mimi in Carmel Valley.
JackApril 2, 2022, 3:26 PM
I see now and I agree. Thanks for clearing that up for me, that’s a great way to put it. As for Baez I didn’t like her or her music and I never thought her voice was much more than a slightly flat warble.
At this point in the conversation I believe one of us is legally obligated to mention this: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2yc2r8
The only version I could find, and unfortunately it’s riddled with ads. But even after all these years it brings a smile to this timeworn face. “So many grievous wrongs for me to right with tedious songs/But I know you’ll always be there to fall back on.”
TrangBang68April 3, 2022, 1:16 PM
Gerard, I guess you must have known Richard Farina. I loved (and recently re-read) “I’ve Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me”
VanderleunApril 3, 2022, 1:33 PM
Yes I did. The basic wisdom to be gained from “Been Down So Long” is that “No one is immune from a bust.”
TrangBang68April 3, 2022, 7:22 PM
A whole lot of talk about paregoric also.
gwbnycApril 1, 2022, 3:27 PM
Baez…
I wonder WTF ever happened to David.
JackApril 3, 2022, 8:06 AM
Poor bastard, probably fell in and couldn’t get out.
AnonymousApril 1, 2022, 3:55 PM
Diamonds and Rust. We may all have that.
ghostsniperApril 1, 2022, 7:34 PM
Very well done, and the only thing I could ever tolerate from her.
ThisIsNotNutellaApril 1, 2022, 4:32 PM
To all you magnificently filthy reminiscing Boomers in the comments: at least you had the luxury of getting started out in capacious comfortable land yacht sized Detroit Iron and didn’t have your extremities flailing around out the doors and windows of a 1975-ish Datsun 120Y.
Gerard: Did you ever bump into that Miserable English Git Jonathan Raban in Seattle? Time, place, heartbreak, regret, America.. there’s gotta be a book in you yet. Lay that egg!
ArtyApril 1, 2022, 5:08 PM
The back seat of my 67 Chevy Impala SS was big enough to fit your Datsun in. Eat your heart out. You probably get leg cramps every time you think about girls.
Gus GeswinderApril 1, 2022, 8:10 PM
Millennial here, drove a 1980s Oldsmobile station wagon.
Just sayin’.
MarkInKansasApril 1, 2022, 10:48 PM
My first car was a used 4-door powder blue 1961 Chevrolet Belair with huge bench seats. We had in the county, an irrigation project with canal roads criss-crossing the cornfields, creating lots of places to explore the mysteries.
I have fond memories of my first girlfriend but we were not on the same time schedule. I wished to finish the degree first, she wanted to make a family first. We each accomplished our goals.
I still hear from her, and she always asks why I didn’t marry her. I suppose I could have found a way to support a family without a degree, but at the tender young age of twenty, I had no clue.
I’m nearly certain she, even 45 years later, would accept a proposal, but something holds me back, some feeling tells me it would not be a good idea. I’m satisfied to still be her friend.
JackApril 2, 2022, 8:45 AM
Nutty, people have been going at it in automobiles since the things first appeared and you have no one to blame except yourself if your tiny Datsun wasn’t large enough for you and your extremities. Most people would manage fine as long as the thing was in park; maybe you just didn’t know how.
gwbnycApril 2, 2022, 5:09 PM
the got you away from home, parents, and pryin’ eyes.
revolutionary.
OneGuyApril 2, 2022, 10:49 AM
A 48 Buick a friend owned. Identical 16 YO twins who were slightly over weight in the right places. Me and one naked in the back, my friend and the other naked in the front. One time I noticed the twin in the front she was sitting on my friends lap and she was facing to the back watching me and her sister. Her sister knew it and made sure she had a show. Next night I think the twins switched on us, equipment was the same but the attitude and aggressiveness was different. They loved showing off their body and pleasing cock. I think they were competing to see who could be more aggressive with their lovers. Summer finally came to an end and they went somewhere, I don’t know where.
mmackApril 3, 2022, 6:37 AM
Gen Xer here.
My first ride was a beat to Hell 1976 Cadillac Coupe de Ville. The back seat was large enough to be an impromptu couch or bed when my college roommate brought his drunken friends over and they passed out on my bed.
Great car, even if it guzzled gasoline like a wino guzzling Night Train.
SoylentGreenApril 1, 2022, 4:41 PM
Gerard, I think I have something in my eye…
TJApril 2, 2022, 5:51 AM
Broke my heart – oh so tenderly. Quite the nostalgic rush. Poor boomers!
MarkApril 1, 2022, 7:09 PM
Summer of Falling Stars
Alpine meadow dances and laughing we join.
Flowers riot and tyrant clouds deny
Shadow-sun-shadow upon their pleading faces.
So little time, so little time,
Then the snowy kiss of death.
A brook chuckles by, joining our mirth,
Burbling to ocean anonymity.
Birds look in, curious and indignant,
Hunger-proud and leery, unaware of human desire,
And their own southward urging.
Long shadows march and die to alpenglow,
Herald of another day, another summer gone,
And the rose-tinged prophet of our parting.
Tonight, one last darkness, midsummer-brief.
Distant suns close age-long journeys in our eyes,
And falling stars, the showy suicide of dust.
Long past now,
That summer lingers –
A star-white trail across
The dark expanse of memory.
ChaucerApril 1, 2022, 8:17 PM
Every generation thinks it is the first to discover sex and nostalgia is a quote somewhere.
A bonnie lass with blonde hair and green eyes that chose me by the school locker with a call me later slip of paper.
Several months later I learned about the birds and the bees and it was thunderbolts and lightning!
JackApril 3, 2022, 8:10 AM
Every lesson I had in that subject brought the sweet fury of a raging storm. What a marvelous invention.
AnonymousApril 1, 2022, 8:18 PM
Eloquently written.
25 years she’s been alive and well in my memory. Yes, an art major, same “here today, gone tomorrow” love tempest.
The woman of my memory no longer exists. Finding her in real life would be not even a shell of the woman who dances through my head like leaves in the autumn light.
It’s a strange thing to love something that is very real yet no more than a phantom.
Wild, wild westApril 1, 2022, 8:43 PM
I often think of this when it comes to lost loves, one in particular.
The Road Not Taken
BY ROBERT FROST
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
And, in my case, it turned out the road taken was named Wrong Way and then became Dead End. C’est la Guerre.
gwbnycApril 2, 2022, 5:14 PM
if you chose “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” you coud have sung it to the tune of “Hernando’s Hideaway”.
Made the very destructive mistake of marrying her. Not officially a drama major, but yeah. Should have backed away from the vehicle. At the time that was just not an option.
HossApril 2, 2022, 5:37 AM
A Ghia? I owned one for a while and never attempted it. Though I must say they are the perfect height for some outside the car action.
gwbnycApril 2, 2022, 5:13 PM
hope to buy one this year.
A. FriendApril 1, 2022, 9:24 PM
My high school friend counselled me after my bemoaning a love long lost by saying “you’re in love with a memory.” Well, after experience, memory is all we’ve got.
Thanks for capturing and sharing this so well, Gerard.
After attending a Christian concert tonight, “Ryan Stevenson”, turns out he was raised in Bonanza, a few miles outside KF. A lot of wisdom, really good music, not Bible thumping, lots of 456789101112, graders present. If they heed Stevensons advise rendered, they will be fine. Our grand daughters had a ball.
We’re home I’ve reread the above, I laughed, I cried, but mostly reminisced abound my 67 Chevy impala 2 Dr, baby blue. Last seen east bound of interstate 80, at the Nyack store and grill. 283 headers and a big carb.
Had to park her, after she shit a rod, ol girl just wouldn’t pull the long long up hills. Awww the memories.
Boys are slick, if theirs “ Trim” involved, they’ll get it done on a razors edge. It’s the nature of the beast.
UC Davis — the land of dangerous women. Met Mrs. CW there.
You two traded, unwittingly, a bit of your souls too each other, and the two pieces, not knowing the boundary of time or distance, still call to each other in soft but unmistakable voices.
VanderleunApril 2, 2022, 7:42 AM
Beautifully said, CW. Thanks.
anonymousApril 3, 2022, 10:47 AM
Geez Louise–How perfect is that ?!
Snakepit KansasApril 2, 2022, 6:22 AM
Gerard certainly has his gift of writing. If I tried to tell that story it would come across as clumsy passion in the corn rows amongst midget cows.
DennyApril 2, 2022, 10:20 AM
I agree with Snakepit. There’s always someone around who can pretty much tell the same story better than myself. For me it wasn’t so much the coming together put the departing that caused most of the (bad) memories. Why is it that the only way we learn anything about our own pride and arrogance, it seems, is by way of real living nightmares?
I thought her iron promise
would never break or bow
How can precious bonds of love
Simply turn and go
I think Dylan put the experience best for me in his song – Tom Thumb’s Blues.
“And my best friend, my doctor, won’t even tell me what it is I got”
I’ll never forget my first love. Unless they find a cure for PTSD.
JackApril 3, 2022, 8:14 AM
I keep a side log of quotes and commentary I find along the way and I just added that to my long list. It is a classic!
AnonymousApril 2, 2022, 12:47 PM
Early loves are like sub-acute infections. You learn to live with them.
billrlaApril 2, 2022, 12:48 PM
Whoops! That was my comment. I would not want such genius to go unrecognized.
Richard BergerApril 2, 2022, 1:49 PM
Well, I’ll never forget R. Crumb.
TerryApril 2, 2022, 9:03 PM
Gerard, that story is so close to my past, that I am inclined to put mine on paper and read it when I am down in the doldrums of old age. I will re-read yours as well. A true treasure.
I do not receive the birthday cards in the mail anymore. She passed a little over three years ago. Approximately forty-five birthday cards are in safe keeping. There is a giant hole in my being now.
Sherry is now looking down on the waves she rode at Santa Cruz in awe . . . with her gorgeous smile-
ghostsniperApril 3, 2022, 4:31 AM
Who doesn’t have an ancient memory of their first luh? Mine was a girl named Rita when she was 15 and I was 16 in the summer of 71. We learned from each other and come fall we parted never to see each other again. Her choice. I wondered about her many times over the years and about 3 years ago I looked her up and found her. An obituary in Texas, where she died at age 58. The story finally ends.
Roderick ReillyApril 3, 2022, 8:02 AM
That was beautiful.
AnneApril 3, 2022, 11:09 AM
For reasons of publicity purposes and my place of employment, I was once invited to bring my daughter to a musical performance. The group who had invited me were a well known folk group. It was San Francisco–1977.
When we arrived at the theater I naively stepped up to the main ticket window to pick up my two free tickets. I was told to move down the building to a smaller window, which I did. There were several people standing in line before us. Each person before me had to give their name and the window person would search through a box of small white envelopes, each containing a certain number of tickets. The woman in line in front of me was a couple of years older, well dressed with neatly trimmed short black hair. She gave her name as Joan Baez and I recognized immediately that she was genuine. The ticket lady looked through the box and could not find a little white envelope with her name on it. MZ. Baez insisted there was a mistake, but the ticket lady was adamant. After several searches through the box and a conversation with someone behind the ticket booth, the answer was still the same:”Sorry, Ms. Baez, there are not tickets here for you.” As MZ Baez turned to walk away from the window I was stunned and worried that there would not be any tickets for us. My voice was hesitant when I announced my name. I was surprised and confused when the little white envelope with two tickets lay in my hand. 1977 San Francisco.
Mike SeyleApril 3, 2022, 4:38 PM
I had an MG Midget, thus was celibate for a long time. My knees are bad anyway.
VanderleunApril 3, 2022, 5:27 PM
I was actually successful with a very petite cheerleader in an MG Midget. I didn’t give a damn about what it did to my knees.
Mike SeyleApril 3, 2022, 5:37 PM
I can visualize your success. Your girl was about 5 feet tall, 110 pounds, and a contortionist. My girl wasn’t. I sold the MG and got another girl.
ghostsniperApril 3, 2022, 5:41 PM
Hold my beer while I show you my carpet burned knees.
ahemApril 5, 2022, 8:32 AM
You made me cry.
RigelDogApril 7, 2022, 7:24 PM
You’re telling me
You’re not nostalgic
Then give me another word for it—
You who’re so good with words—
And at keeping things vague…..
Real World Address for Donations, Mash Notes and Hate Mail
Gerard Van der Leun
1692 MANGROVE AVE
APT 379
Chico, Ca 95926
Green Pants Interior by Klahn
Who Am I? by Carl Sandburg
My head knocks against the stars.
My feet are on the hilltops.
My finger-tips are in the valleys and shores of universal life.
Down in the sounding foam of primal things I reach my hands and play with pebbles of destiny.
I have been to hell and back many times.
I know all about heaven, for I have talked with God.
I dabble in the blood and guts of the terrible.
I know the passionate seizure of beauty
And the marvelous rebellion of man at all signs reading “Keep Off.”
My name is Truth and I am the most elusive captive in the universe.
Duty, Beauty, Liberty, Country, Honor, Family, Faith — Plus a few simple easy to follow rules for guys
Men saw the stars at the edge of the sea
They thought great thoughts about liberty
Poets wrote down words that did fit
Writers wrote books
Thinkers thought about it
Take it where you find it
Can’t leave it alone
You will find a purpose
To carry it on
Mainly when you find it
Your heart will be strong
About it
Many’s the road I have walked upon
Many’s the hour between dusk and dawn
Many’s the time
Many’s the mile
I see it all now
Through the eyes of a child
Take it where you find it
Can’t leave it alone
You will find a purpose
To carry it on
Mainly when you find it
Your heart will be strong
About it
[Chorus]
Lost dreams and found dreams
In America
In America
In America
Lost dreams and found dreams
In America
In America
In America
And close your eyes
Leave it all for a while
Leave the world
And your worries behind
You will build on whatever is real
And wake up each day
To a new waking dream
Take it where you find it
Can’t leave it alone
You will find a purpose
To carry it on
Mainly when you find it
Your heart will be strong
About it
[Chorus]
Change, change come over
Change come over
Talkin’ about a change
Change, change
Change come over, now
Change, change, change come over
I’m gonna walk down the street
Until I see
My shining light
I’m gonna walk down the street
Until I see
My shining light
I’m gonna walk down the street
Until I see
My shining light
I’m gonna walk down the street
Until I see
My shining light
I see my light
See my light
See my shining light
I see my light
See my light
See my shining light
Gerard Van der Leun
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Yes we all remember our first love(s). Mostly the girls were very kind to me when I was young. They shared things only they could share. It was exquisite and I didn’t know then that one day it would end. I remember three women: one that I loved dearly. One that I loved to fuck (sorry it would be the same if I used a different word). And one that loved to fuck me (same sorry). You all are thinking but “I” loved to have sex with all of them. Not the same thing. One pleased my ego and she couldn’t get enough of me and I was eager to keep trying. The other pleased my in ways I have never before or since been pleased and I blown away.
Last Friday a blog I follow published a love story that was quite good. It is a little long but well worth the read. A lost love found then lost.
Kenny is a good guy and writes well, although from most of the stuff he posts you would not know it.
Enjoy
https://ogdaa.blogspot.com/2022/03/help-me-rhonda-help-help-me-rhonda.html
Joe
Joe !!! You just exploded my head with this story link. I just started part 2 and the author is talking about Angels Camp, Columbia, Sonora and etc. I was born in Sonora, raised in Columbia (two miles north of Sonora) and attended the ‘Frog Jump’ in Angles Camp. Mark Twain wrote about the Frog Jump.
On top of this, Gerard’s life story of love is a parallel to mine. I cannot believe what I have read this evening. And, Gerard was raised about 70 miles north of me in Paradise !!! I attended SF State while Gerard was at Berkeley.
And, Knuckledraggin My Life Away is a blog I read every week. Especially Fridays. Wink, wink.
I have to get back to part 2.
Joe, I too read Ken’s blog, everyday but Saturday. As with this wonderous memory from our gracious host, the time reading these first love stories was a well spent time of my life.
Thank-you Gerard for making my day and my life a bit more poignant.
Nice way to end the work week, thinking about first loves…
I’m glad her message made its way to your door once more. May they continue to be delivered for many years yet to come.
-mine was the back seat of a robin’s egg blue ’54 Pontiac, a year younger than I, nicknamed “June Carter”. I was seated in one of those wicker clamshell kind of moderne patio chairs that had lost its legs and was so emplaced.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/a75088b6873f30e717b0b6f4752da1e7977062318c2ec44dd79cd812da6aeeca.jpg
The whole situated in my parents driveway, after a summer-long pursuit by her until I had the nerve to pull my drawers down. Some months of unanesthetized heart removal followed. After years I contacted her and have so kept an interruptable correspondence going through her depressions, etc.
Willingly.
-aside, that hotel mentioned above would have been the “Earle”, IIRC.
Nicely written Gerard. Brings back memories of my own first love and the wreckage that took me many years to fix. Nice that I can look back and laugh now.
Tall trees in Georgia
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbQst5HZj6E
Awesome write up! married my high school gal, took seven years and I wore that bitch out. She was to this day the nastiest girl I’ve ever met, I’ve met some very nasty ladies, perhaps uninhibited is more accurate.
Pretty sure the entire seventh fleet banged here, at first I thought it was a “ guy “ issue, then I realized she was just addicted to Cock!. Life goes on.
I couldn’t take Baez when I was young and I cannot take her now, not even in miniscule doses and I think of her and Jane Fonda about the same way.
But I had a true love once. I was a notorious player and I chased it from one coast to the next, often with spectacular success. I broke a couple of hearts but it was by mistake because my intentions, though thoroughly dishonorable, were always out in the open. No commitment and no promises.
But when I was around 31 I met a most extraordinary woman who was from up-state New York and although I wasn’t initially attracted to her, I became so and it was fast and furious. After a couple of months we moved in together and life was great but I came home one evening after work and she had vamoosed, all without a heads up, a word or a warning.
I didn’t hear anything from her for a couple of months and then for some reason she contacted me to tell me, as if i were headless and could have never guessed, that she had found another. And then she came by for a couple of hours to visit which at the time I thought would be better than not doing so, so, anyway we talked and I think we might have made some of of amends but what ever occurred didn’t seem to matter. She was gone and not returning.
That wasn’t the bad part. I endured a few couch sessions with a shrink which did absolutely no good and even though I moved on, married and had a family, then divorced and then remarried happily, I still think of her. Forty years have passed and I haven’t heard from her but I still think of her. The only thing I learned from that experience was that it is fine to love and trust but always keep a guard on your heart and do not ever permit yourself to go in so deep that you cannot recover from the loss, regardless of what causes it. One way or another, it will occur and you need your own legs when it does.
I wish I had known then what I know now but I do believe that my head was so far into the clouds or up my own butt, that I didn’t even consider that I might have actually had a heart and feelings. Boy did I catch on!
Well, Jack, all I can say is that you shouldn’t confuse the singer with the song.
I can relate to the feelings of the Chairman of the Board but I don’t understand the meaning of ‘you shouldn’t confuse the singer with the song’. I’ve never heard that before. So, what do you mean?
I mean that the song or music or art or novel or poem that the artist made is separate from the foolishness and political stupidity of the person that creates or performs it. I despise Baez and she is a person that in my youth I knew on an up close and personal basis at Ira Sandpearl’s peace school with her sister Mimi in Carmel Valley.
I see now and I agree. Thanks for clearing that up for me, that’s a great way to put it. As for Baez I didn’t like her or her music and I never thought her voice was much more than a slightly flat warble.
At this point in the conversation I believe one of us is legally obligated to mention this:
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2yc2r8
The only version I could find, and unfortunately it’s riddled with ads. But even after all these years it brings a smile to this timeworn face. “So many grievous wrongs for me to right with tedious songs/But I know you’ll always be there to fall back on.”
Gerard, I guess you must have known Richard Farina. I loved (and recently re-read) “I’ve Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me”
Yes I did. The basic wisdom to be gained from “Been Down So Long” is that “No one is immune from a bust.”
A whole lot of talk about paregoric also.
Baez…
I wonder WTF ever happened to David.
Poor bastard, probably fell in and couldn’t get out.
Diamonds and Rust. We may all have that.
Very well done, and the only thing I could ever tolerate from her.
To all you magnificently filthy reminiscing Boomers in the comments: at least you had the luxury of getting started out in capacious comfortable land yacht sized Detroit Iron and didn’t have your extremities flailing around out the doors and windows of a 1975-ish Datsun 120Y.
Gerard: Did you ever bump into that Miserable English Git Jonathan Raban in Seattle? Time, place, heartbreak, regret, America.. there’s gotta be a book in you yet. Lay that egg!
The back seat of my 67 Chevy Impala SS was big enough to fit your Datsun in. Eat your heart out. You probably get leg cramps every time you think about girls.
Millennial here, drove a 1980s Oldsmobile station wagon.
Just sayin’.
My first car was a used 4-door powder blue 1961 Chevrolet Belair with huge bench seats. We had in the county, an irrigation project with canal roads criss-crossing the cornfields, creating lots of places to explore the mysteries.
I have fond memories of my first girlfriend but we were not on the same time schedule. I wished to finish the degree first, she wanted to make a family first. We each accomplished our goals.
I still hear from her, and she always asks why I didn’t marry her. I suppose I could have found a way to support a family without a degree, but at the tender young age of twenty, I had no clue.
I’m nearly certain she, even 45 years later, would accept a proposal, but something holds me back, some feeling tells me it would not be a good idea. I’m satisfied to still be her friend.
Nutty, people have been going at it in automobiles since the things first appeared and you have no one to blame except yourself if your tiny Datsun wasn’t large enough for you and your extremities. Most people would manage fine as long as the thing was in park; maybe you just didn’t know how.
the got you away from home, parents, and pryin’ eyes.
revolutionary.
A 48 Buick a friend owned. Identical 16 YO twins who were slightly over weight in the right places. Me and one naked in the back, my friend and the other naked in the front. One time I noticed the twin in the front she was sitting on my friends lap and she was facing to the back watching me and her sister. Her sister knew it and made sure she had a show. Next night I think the twins switched on us, equipment was the same but the attitude and aggressiveness was different. They loved showing off their body and pleasing cock. I think they were competing to see who could be more aggressive with their lovers. Summer finally came to an end and they went somewhere, I don’t know where.
Gen Xer here.
My first ride was a beat to Hell 1976 Cadillac Coupe de Ville. The back seat was large enough to be an impromptu couch or bed when my college roommate brought his drunken friends over and they passed out on my bed.
Great car, even if it guzzled gasoline like a wino guzzling Night Train.
Gerard, I think I have something in my eye…
Broke my heart – oh so tenderly. Quite the nostalgic rush. Poor boomers!
Summer of Falling Stars
Alpine meadow dances and laughing we join.
Flowers riot and tyrant clouds deny
Shadow-sun-shadow upon their pleading faces.
So little time, so little time,
Then the snowy kiss of death.
A brook chuckles by, joining our mirth,
Burbling to ocean anonymity.
Birds look in, curious and indignant,
Hunger-proud and leery, unaware of human desire,
And their own southward urging.
Long shadows march and die to alpenglow,
Herald of another day, another summer gone,
And the rose-tinged prophet of our parting.
Tonight, one last darkness, midsummer-brief.
Distant suns close age-long journeys in our eyes,
And falling stars, the showy suicide of dust.
Long past now,
That summer lingers –
A star-white trail across
The dark expanse of memory.
Every generation thinks it is the first to discover sex and nostalgia is a quote somewhere.
A bonnie lass with blonde hair and green eyes that chose me by the school locker with a call me later slip of paper.
Several months later I learned about the birds and the bees and it was thunderbolts and lightning!
Every lesson I had in that subject brought the sweet fury of a raging storm. What a marvelous invention.
Eloquently written.
25 years she’s been alive and well in my memory. Yes, an art major, same “here today, gone tomorrow” love tempest.
The woman of my memory no longer exists. Finding her in real life would be not even a shell of the woman who dances through my head like leaves in the autumn light.
It’s a strange thing to love something that is very real yet no more than a phantom.
I often think of this when it comes to lost loves, one in particular.
The Road Not Taken
BY ROBERT FROST
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
And, in my case, it turned out the road taken was named Wrong Way and then became Dead End. C’est la Guerre.
if you chose “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” you coud have sung it to the tune of “Hernando’s Hideaway”.
’69 VW Karmann Ghia. Try it some time.
Made the very destructive mistake of marrying her. Not officially a drama major, but yeah. Should have backed away from the vehicle. At the time that was just not an option.
A Ghia? I owned one for a while and never attempted it. Though I must say they are the perfect height for some outside the car action.
hope to buy one this year.
My high school friend counselled me after my bemoaning a love long lost by saying “you’re in love with a memory.” Well, after experience, memory is all we’ve got.
Thanks for capturing and sharing this so well, Gerard.
After attending a Christian concert tonight, “Ryan Stevenson”, turns out he was raised in Bonanza, a few miles outside KF. A lot of wisdom, really good music, not Bible thumping, lots of 456789101112, graders present. If they heed Stevensons advise rendered, they will be fine. Our grand daughters had a ball.
We’re home I’ve reread the above, I laughed, I cried, but mostly reminisced abound my 67 Chevy impala 2 Dr, baby blue. Last seen east bound of interstate 80, at the Nyack store and grill. 283 headers and a big carb.
Had to park her, after she shit a rod, ol girl just wouldn’t pull the long long up hills. Awww the memories.
Boys are slick, if theirs “ Trim” involved, they’ll get it done on a razors edge. It’s the nature of the beast.
Reminiscing …. reminds me of the Waterboys’ A Bang on the Ear
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmyPHfu9c0c
“Tangled up in blue”…thanks Gerard
Elegaic, again.
You still got it, G.
UC Davis — the land of dangerous women. Met Mrs. CW there.
You two traded, unwittingly, a bit of your souls too each other, and the two pieces, not knowing the boundary of time or distance, still call to each other in soft but unmistakable voices.
Beautifully said, CW. Thanks.
Geez Louise–How perfect is that ?!
Gerard certainly has his gift of writing. If I tried to tell that story it would come across as clumsy passion in the corn rows amongst midget cows.
I agree with Snakepit. There’s always someone around who can pretty much tell the same story better than myself. For me it wasn’t so much the coming together put the departing that caused most of the (bad) memories. Why is it that the only way we learn anything about our own pride and arrogance, it seems, is by way of real living nightmares?
I thought her iron promise
would never break or bow
How can precious bonds of love
Simply turn and go
I think Dylan put the experience best for me in his song – Tom Thumb’s Blues.
“And my best friend, my doctor, won’t even tell me what it is I got”
I’ll never forget my first love. Unless they find a cure for PTSD.
I keep a side log of quotes and commentary I find along the way and I just added that to my long list. It is a classic!
Early loves are like sub-acute infections. You learn to live with them.
Whoops! That was my comment. I would not want such genius to go unrecognized.
Well, I’ll never forget R. Crumb.
Gerard, that story is so close to my past, that I am inclined to put mine on paper and read it when I am down in the doldrums of old age. I will re-read yours as well. A true treasure.
I do not receive the birthday cards in the mail anymore. She passed a little over three years ago. Approximately forty-five birthday cards are in safe keeping. There is a giant hole in my being now.
Sherry is now looking down on the waves she rode at Santa Cruz in awe . . . with her gorgeous smile-
Who doesn’t have an ancient memory of their first luh? Mine was a girl named Rita when she was 15 and I was 16 in the summer of 71. We learned from each other and come fall we parted never to see each other again. Her choice. I wondered about her many times over the years and about 3 years ago I looked her up and found her. An obituary in Texas, where she died at age 58. The story finally ends.
That was beautiful.
For reasons of publicity purposes and my place of employment, I was once invited to bring my daughter to a musical performance. The group who had invited me were a well known folk group. It was San Francisco–1977.
When we arrived at the theater I naively stepped up to the main ticket window to pick up my two free tickets. I was told to move down the building to a smaller window, which I did. There were several people standing in line before us. Each person before me had to give their name and the window person would search through a box of small white envelopes, each containing a certain number of tickets. The woman in line in front of me was a couple of years older, well dressed with neatly trimmed short black hair. She gave her name as Joan Baez and I recognized immediately that she was genuine. The ticket lady looked through the box and could not find a little white envelope with her name on it. MZ. Baez insisted there was a mistake, but the ticket lady was adamant. After several searches through the box and a conversation with someone behind the ticket booth, the answer was still the same:”Sorry, Ms. Baez, there are not tickets here for you.” As MZ Baez turned to walk away from the window I was stunned and worried that there would not be any tickets for us. My voice was hesitant when I announced my name. I was surprised and confused when the little white envelope with two tickets lay in my hand. 1977 San Francisco.
I had an MG Midget, thus was celibate for a long time. My knees are bad anyway.
I was actually successful with a very petite cheerleader in an MG Midget. I didn’t give a damn about what it did to my knees.
I can visualize your success. Your girl was about 5 feet tall, 110 pounds, and a contortionist. My girl wasn’t. I sold the MG and got another girl.
Hold my beer while I show you my carpet burned knees.
You made me cry.
You’re telling me
You’re not nostalgic
Then give me another word for it—
You who’re so good with words—
And at keeping things vague…..