Local Man Remembered

Photo by Renee, fooled with by me

I've variously called him Mudhead, Zigzag, Zigfield, "Pa Kettle". He's the father of eleventeen kids, most of them still under the age of ten, and he's raised them on a farmstead with donkeys and goats. He works like the devil, and is locally famous for leading a couple of specialty bands over the last twenty years.

Had a radio show for a number of years, playing obscure blues, blue hillbilly music, Ukelele Ike-type discoveries.

Goes to school now, finds he can do chinese algebra or something like that, but plans to open a resturarant someday (maybe to put the kids to work?)

See, I moved down here to write his biography.

Instead I got drunk and he had to lead me around for almost a year.

again,Renee. Visit! Great photographer.

Ah, that was embarasking. I oughta explain about me someday. Find some venue, hmmm...

We met the day I got fed up with my high school debate team partners, and walked over to our high school's Freak corner. He wouldn't score me any drugs but was amused that I asked, and asked what was I up to anyway, over here.

I was going to skip classes too. Walk down to the mall and buy some music tapes at the Licorice Pudding. In the middle of the school day!

Maybe some Grateful Dead, I said.

"Oh man you can do better than that."

So we walked and he kept asking me about life on the debate team and laughing while I was being unintentionally funny, complaining. He probably supposed I'd be back on the straight and narrow soon, and this was a rare opportunity to interview a nerd. But then I let on more and more about my politics (anarchist) and my interest in scoring some pot, lsd, 'shrooms. I'd been crazy about Sgt. Pepper since I was ten, and now I was what, 17, so it was time for me to take a "trip", don't you know.

On the way back, he'd decided he was the boss of me. I was way wrong about just about everything, but I was wrong in a way that he thought was laugh-out-loud. I remember looking at him and thinking he'd better be respectful.

Just in those couple of hours, this lifelong relation was established. I'd warn him not to insult me, tell him to fuck off; he'd say chill out, or something like that, I forget 1979 slang.

He got me in with the freaks, sort of. I didn't fit, but it didn't matter, they liked him. And we weren't so sure about them for good reason.

He was great on guitar already, and had a well-researched, committed to memory repertoire. Knew more than R.Crumb, I think, while Crumb was still writing that book about the forgotten blues men. But I'd make him sing Neil Young. Also I ignored all his specialty albums to listen to Dylan's "Street Legal", and "The Basement Tapes".

I think our project was to find me a girlfriend. Still is.

Also, to just fuckin' relax, man. What good is this school. So you didn't attend gym class for three years, you won't graduate, hahaha, that's funny if you think about it.

So get a GED, go to community college half a year, and you'll be at the University before your debate team pals.

We hung out at school though, for some reason. The sport. They hired the first professional hall monitors during our years there, and learned to lock the doors when there was a Pep Rally (Nuremberg-like, to us). We'd always get out somehow. Walk through the cafeteria, into the kitchen, jump off the loading dock...

I kept getting kicked out for smoking on campus.

Zigfield and I were on the bus concourse one day, after I'd been at home after a three day suspension. I absently lit up a ciggie.

A substitute teacher came along and said come with me to the office. I said no, I couldn't.

Zigfield stepped back two steps and waited.

The substitute teacher said what do you mean you can't?

I began to negotiate. I told her I'd just been kicked out for smoking and it was too early for me to be kicked out again.

She was stubborn. Then he finally lost his patience and said, look man, either run away or go with her, awright??

So, I decided on the latter, but I wanted to apologize to her first and explain why I wasn't going to come along. Mudhead started doing 180s, looking back, doing 360's, getting exasperated. "Man! One or the other, good god awmighty. GO!"

I decided he was right, and started walking away. And then I kind of picked it up to a jog or a trot, as that seemed more apropos. I don't know. But that incident settled something in his mind about me, I think. I don't know what, because I have never really understood myself.

Then he turned 18, and his family was traditional/sensible and promptly showed him the door. (Shocked the hell out of me. My folks were spoilers.) I remember he slept in my dad's boat for awhile. Maybe just a night. Dad didn't care. They were friends.

I'm not a very good biographer, this does all seem to be about me doesn't it.

We went to the Post Office one day to protest the new law requiring we register for Selective Service. Hooked up with the Catholic Worker anarchists then, and at the same time the State Fair ("Our state fair is a great state fair")was on. He got a little employment watching over the Methodist Church's tent after midnight, and making apple pies.

He and our new friends, including this fellow, my second best friend
(photographer unknown)
Jerry, the poet, and I would sit outside the tent while he played guitar. Someone was probably passing a joint around.

Then Zigzag moved into one of the CW houses and became a staff member. I went to the University. The CW gave Zig an opportunity to run a homeless shelter here where we are now. That's when he started having kids. And did I like that. I was like Wow.

I moved down here my first time just to marvel at that. A baby (first of the Kettle Kids, born in 1984). I worked a little at the CW, but eventually resigned or was given the boot, to become "Jeeves" at the newly-weds house.

For a few years that's all I did, except for some school and a bookstore job that lasted one summer.

Now he worked all the time, usually as a cook (a great cook) and I drank and read and wrote in spiral notebooks. His first wife (Frae' I call her) and I took long drives, listening to Mozart. We put crystals in the windows so there were rainbows in the living room. (She is still one of my best friends too, neccesarily a little strict with me since, well, she knows me.)

It wasn't right.

They moved to California for awhile and I went back to school again, to write a f'ing novella about our lives here, and about my few months running the shelter house. And my first committment, and just generally, ME.

I couldn't stand that they were gone. When they returned to Ioway, a little girl was expected! Once again, I became Jeeves, and he worked at a downtown Hotel as a Chef. This is when he finally started to lead a band and making money, too. Something like "The Comatose Blues Band".

My drinking started catching up with me again, though. I think he kicked me out. He otter have, if he didn't. But he didn't without feeding me first.

Then I moved to Nashville for four years.
Made infrequent visits while more and more babies came into the world, and the first ones were learning to read, and skate-board, and jump rope.

Lost years, and it was pre-email. We wrote infrequently and talked every couple months while my dad was sick. He moved the clan to a farm house. There was a new band, something crawfish.


unknown photographer

That's Ma Kettle, who tricked me and got me committed last summer and saved my life.

He and the first-born (21 years old now!) came and saved all my things from being put on the street. For months, everything I owned was stored at his and Renee's house. Nothing was asked of me for this.

So, I'm thinking of my original project. Because this is not his bio, and no eulogy (he's just asleep, in fact. Renee wrote me.) Just a sketch, this unemployed weekday.
I think we're meeting at a coffee house this afternoon maybe. Catch up.

Anyway, I just like to boast about having such cool friends, you know...