Jerry Garcia Lives

My friend Bob is Jerry Garcia. He looks exactly like the departed leader of the Grateful Dead, and has the same laid back mannerisms. He’s a good musician as well, which leads me to think that maybe Garcia, like Jim Morrison and Elvis faked his death too, and is living in relative anonymity on South Padre Island.

Bob’s the only person I’ve ever known who has run with the Bulls in Spain, and I have a great amount of admiration, and derive a certain sense of inspiration from him. Retrospective vicarious living can be a good thing. He was the quintessential world traveler gypsy vagabond who would probably still be studying flamenco guitar or folkloreco dance in Guadalajara Mexico…except that he inherited beau coup from his late father. His late father was a doctor, who married many wealthy women and subsequently purchased some prime real estate here on the island, and in other places, including a three room condo on the bayside and a fourplex over by Boomerang Billy’s club on the beach. Bob and his wife Stell own and manage these properties, dividing their time between Edinburg and here. His fathers ashes, and those of his final wife reside on Bobs piano at his house in Edinburg, one in a cardboard box, and the other in a four hundred dollar plastic urn that the funeral home soaked him for.

I’ve known Bob about ten years or so, ever since we met at a TPWD safe boating instructors course. We’ve conspired on about a dozen or so projects which have never taken off, but remain the best of friends. Projects ranging from offshore funerals involving mixing the ashes of the dearly departed with cement, then depositing them over the same location to eventually create an artificial reef to eco tourism adventures and the latest, bally-hooing. Ballyhoo are a prime bait species that are best collected at night using a small skiff, nets and a powerful spotlight. The bait shops pay about a buck and a quarter apiece for them. We’re supposed to go out for them over at Thompkins Channel this evening. We’ll see, Stell keeps a pretty tight grip on Bob, and he isn’t often allowed to play with folks like me.

Bob’s a sailor too. He’s sailed everything from windboards to pretty large craft, and tells a story of sailing a Sunfish out on the bay one afternoon, when he was struck by the divine notion to do a bit of tacking to windward au natural. So he tied the mainsheet off, and kicked back, sans speedo. As luck would have it, a side chop knocked him off of the boat, which kept sailing along. Trying to be helpful, a head boat pulled up alongside Bob who was frantically swimming towards the rapidly departing Sunfish. Assessing his condition, the captain swung to starboard and kept going with the fishermen now pointing and laughing on the stern. He said that hurt more than trying to catch up with the pilotless boat. The Sunfish eventually struck a shallow bar, and turned over on its side, Bob finally reaching it, naked, gasping and out of breath. I didn’t ask the final outcome.

But I did ask Bob what he was going to do with the ashes on his piano. He told me he was going to take Dorothy (His fathers’ final spouse) up to Kentucky where she has family. I suggested that we make a pilgrimage via motorcycle, just put the urn in a saddlebag and go, a la the great European motorcycle trip that he once took, but he said nah, he’d probably just go in a Winnebago. Then he briefly mused about going on a moped, for the sheer artistic bent of it, a trip that would be akin to sailing, but the Winnebago thing just finally won out. Creature comforts become important when we get old.

His fathers ashes were a different story. Bob said he once asked his father what he wanted done with his final remains, and he told him; “just do whatever you want”. So, Bob thinks that maybe he wants to spread part of him in the Pacific Ocean, out near Point Loma California where his Dad practiced medicine for many years as a hotel doctor, swimming in the ocean every night, and spread the rest of them at the top of a mountain peak in Montana where his father once stole a poem which resided at the summit, later lamenting the fact, and admonishing Bob to replace it. Bob says his father loved those places and deserves to be there, but Stell nixes the idea, concerned that if the ashes aren't in the same geographic location, then the eventual resurrection of the body might be a bit, problematic. She says it's unethical.

Hell, I’m too dumb to know anything about that, but judging from the stories that Bob tells, I’ll bet his dad wouldn’t mind his legs and arms stroking out in the night, in the cold Pacific water, and his heart and eyes looking down from a high vantage point in the northern Rocky Mountains, giving his blessing to all of this madness.