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And
Don't Come Back
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It is a fact that music, or the playing of it, changed my life completely. It gave me a great deal of confidence and much joy. One of the best things it did was to entice Donna's sister Beverly, to become a fan of my music and a close personal friend. She invited me to her parent's house for Thanksgiving one year and while there I met Donna Sue. At first, it was no big deal. I thought she was gorgeous, but obviously out of my league. Now, Beverly was a beauty too. About 5'6" with long blonde hair and big blue eyes, Donna was a copy of Beverly, only with hazel/green eyes and several inches taller than Bev.
At this time the two girls were not as close as they once were. Bev was two years older and one of the high school pop stars. Donna was thin and gangly in high school and quite shy. So Beverly pretty much ignored her, but Donna still adored Bev. Bev and I were more hippie types: jeans, long hair, smoked some pot, hung around the bars drinking beer, while Donna dressed very stylish and acted somewhat aloof. Beverly was engaged and I surmised that Donna was probably dating executives or Ivy League types. I obviously had no chance in the romance department around there, but they were very nice folks and I enjoyed their company. I saw Donna several more times that spring and one night I called Beverly to see what they were up to and Donna answered the phone. She told me that she was staying there for the night to keep an eye on Loy, Beverly's rabbit, as she and her husband, T, were gone for the night.
Beverly's nickname at the time was "Beaver." Everything was "T and Beaver." It just kind of flowed together. She got the name from Bev = Beav = Beaver and she had a big, white toothy smile. She dropped the nickname a year or so later, I believe after the divorce. Anyhow, they were out of town, and Donna asked if I wanted to come over. So I went over and Donna had loosened up considerably since our first meeting and we conversed easily. As I was preparing to leave, a thunderstorm brewed up and she asked me to stay awhile as she was afraid of storms, so I did and we talked for most of the night as thunder, rain and lightning raged. She was very sweet and I had mistakenly interpreted her shyness for aloofness, so I left with a new attitude toward her.
John Denver was coming to town for the second time and this time his popularity was at its peak. He was playing in Freedom Hall, the 20,000 seat arena at the fairgrounds. This was in the days before promoters bought up the first ten rows of seats, so I bought two tickets right away. I called Beaver and asked her if she thought Donna would go out with me and she wouldn't provide any information to help me. I implored her, but she remained adamant, so I said, "OK, I'll give it a go myself."
I didn't know that they weren't close at that time. Armed with second row center tickets for John Denver, I figured if she turned me down, I could give up any chance I would have with her, and I called. She readily accepted my invite and we had a great time. To my amazement, T and Beav turned up in the third row just a couple of seats down from us. John was right in front of us and sounded better than ever. Beaver was elated that Donna and I had gone out together and she and T invited me to go on a weekend trip with them and some of their friends to a wine festival in Vevay, Indiana the next week.
Well, that sounded pretty good to me, so I said, "Sure," and the following Saturday morning, off we went. We set up camp in Butler State Park and some of T's motorcycle buddies came up and we ate and drank for most of the afternoon before catching the ferry and going across the Ohio River to the festival.
T was pretty well stoned, so Beav and I started out together to explore the happenings. We were less than sober from the start, so T asked one of his pals, Big Harry, to follow us around and keep us safe from harm. Big Harry was an apt moniker as he was indeed big and broad. He was not particularly verbal, but a nice guy, so we headed out and drank some more beer,played a few games of chance and drank some more beer. We came upon a clearing with a band playing polka music. There was a little grandstand crowded with people, but no one was dancing.
I asked Beav if she knew how to polka and she said, "No," and I said, "Me neither."
So we grabbed each other and started jumping around and dancing in circles all around the clearing with the band oom-pahing and the crowd clapping. I guess they thought we were doing the polka.
We eventually got rip-snortin' drunk and lost Big Harry somewhere and ended up in a crowd of people singing and playing music. The details are pretty hazy about what happened next, but I was involved in something that happened to attract the police. All I remember is trying to bum some cigarettes and getting into an argument with somebody, and the cops showing up and shoving me into a camper parked there on the grounds. Beaver was gone, to where I had no idea and I was locked in the camper for what I understand was two hours, yelling at people passing by, that I had been kidnapped. A crowd had gathered around and when the police finally came back to let me out, they had Beaver in tow. They walked us down to the ferry landing with a crowd of folks following along, where we ran into T and some of our people. We were told to get off of the festival grounds and stay on the other side of the river, and "don't come back."
We were somehow reunited with our group (I think they had been looking for us) and undaunted, we piled into a pickup truck and returned to camp. I think somebody was slightly injured, but I'm not very clear on that. I took a nap for an hour or so and woke up hungry, so I ate a sandwich, drank another beer, then joined the others and started playing my banjo and singing until a rainstorm chased us inside the camper and finally, to sleep, after a long day.
The weekend was capped off with a bit of Karma. One of T's friends, Larry, came with his less-than-lovely-bride, who had been bitching about something or the other the entire time. We were sitting outside the camper, under a little, tarpaulin awning. The awning was drooping a bit, so Larry picked up the supporting pole for some reason and dumped a couple of gallons of last night's rainwater right on her head and lap. Accident or not, she was inconsolable. We stifled as much laughter as we could, for Larry's sake, but it was a hoot. We laughed all the way home, pondering poor Larry's plight on his long drive home with her yapping in his ear.
I called Donna when we got home and almost lost her before we even got anything going. She was more than a little angry with me for going to Vevay without her. I hadn't asked her to go because I knew it was going to be a wild time and I didn't yet know if she was quite that crazy.
As I said before, I didn't know it at the time but she and Beverly were still a bit estranged. When we started dating, the two of them began spending a lot more time together, as T and Bev haunted the same bars and clubs as me. We began doing a lot more things together and after Donna and I had become "steadies," or actually roommates, she was fired from her job for some silly reason and she was quite upset. She had never before been fired. I told her to forget it and take a year or so off before looking for another job.
She seemed to be stressed out and I thought it would do her some good. I was still at the Courier Journal and I was getting a lot of music gigs at the time, so I figured we could make it on my joint incomes and we did. Beverly was not working either, so the two of them spent a lot of time together and became best friends again, which warmed my heart, too. It also helped remove any lingering rancor about Vevay.
During the time Beverly and I were doing our run around Vevay, we came upon a guy I used to work with at the C-J. He was attending the festivities with his wife and her mother. He was having a miserable time so he started hanging with us for a while. He was obviously quite taken with Bev. We lost him somewhere during the evening and I didn't see him again for six or seven years. Then one night Donna and I were dining in a little place called The Prospector, when who should show up but that same little twerp, who began reminiscing about Vevay. He freaked out when he found out I was with the sister of the girl from Vevay.
So I went to the restroom a little while later and when I came back to the table, he was gone. I inquired about him and Donna said, "Oh, he just left."
I said, "How come?"
Donna said, "Because I wouldn't run away with him."
I chuckled and said, "What?"
Donna said, "Yeah, he tried to get me to get up and leave with him. Just run away right then."
She continued, "I told him to get a life. Like, he's seen too many movies or something and he got up and ran out the door."
I knew he was a loser from the old days at the Courier. He thought he was a hotshot because he had a girlfriend and got married when he was eighteen. He would make a big show out of making out their grocery list every week and he would always list the first item: 1/2 pint Old Joe. Old Joe, 1/2 pint. Really?
A few months later, I was doing a gig at a place in Indiana called The Key Lounge, and Donna and Beverly were with me. I ran into another guy I knew from the C-J who was a mirror image of the Old Joe guy. Apparently his youthful marriage didn't workout too well either.
He saw the girls and rushed up to greet me like an old pal. He hung around me while I was getting my gear set up on stage and kept pestering me to introduce him. I wanted no part of him and he finally slinked away.
We were in Indiana, but Beverly and I had kept our promise and never returned to Vevay.