The Man with the Van

I went in to Amazing Grace Music on Miracle Mile in San Anselmo for some guitar strings and a smartly dressed older woman with brassy permed hair and long red nails greeted me. She said she was minding the shop for a friend, they had their own music store in Fairfax.

We got to talking and she gave me tea and bikkies —Walker's shortbreads. Then she sat me down for a good natter, while her husband dressed in tweeds from another century, reclined in a chair reading the paper, holding his pipe reverently. 

She asked what I liked to play, I said Irish music. She was quick to tell me that she was Irish too. From the north, she said. I remember being shocked to learn she was from Northern Ireland, as our family was about as southern Irish as you can get, without falling into the Atlantic Ocean. 

I looked for horns, and found only the kindness of her blue-violet eyes, Violet Morrison was well named, I could see that she was once a beauty, with her red  hair and lacquered nails. She said she was once a cabaret singer in Belfast. I told her of my grandmother who raised me, from Bantry, and how she taught me the old Irish rebel songs.

When Violet found out that I had walked all the way from Drake High School to the store to buy strings for my precious Martin, and had no way home, she called up her son to give me a ride out to Forest Knolls as he was living in Inverness. 

I climbed into the battered white van hugging my precious guitar to my chest. I had no idea who he was, this man who was sullen and refused to speak to me the entire way home. Made me feel obliged. Like I was a real bother. I never spoke to him again. 

Later I found out it was Van Morrison. Though I very much like his music, I'm not a fan of Van the Man with the van.

Bio Notes for Brian Kervin

For all you North Bay folks, Neil O"Neill and Maureen Hurley will be on the air live reading poetry (and music) on The Learnin' Kirven Show April 6th, from 4-6 pm at KWMR West Marin Community Radio  at 90.5 FM Point Reyes Station, and 89.9 FM Bolinas kwmr.org (live stream). Maureen will be reading poems of place, growing up in West Marin, highlights of our upcoming CPITS' 50-year anniversary, West Marin kids to read their poems. Neil will talk about coming to Marin in the 1970s, Ross Valley Players, his 30-year gig with Bread & Roses, and play some music.

I began to write Brian some bio notes and it got out of hand. Bloggy material, it is.

Hitching in Marin during late 60s, early 70s

When I was a teenager, I bought my guitar stings from Van Morrison's mother at Caledonia Records in Fairfax.

It was worth the bother to get there as she'd make us a cuppa tea with shortbread. I was round-eyed—she sounded like my grannie but was from the north of Ireland. I looked for horns. We shared a name in common: Violet—but her fingernails and mouth were little scarlet wounds circling her cigarette.

Mr. Morrison, in his tweeds, was sitting on a stool, puffing away on his pipe, smiling at us from afar. Meanwhile one of Van's songs—maybe it was Gloria—was blaring on KFRC's Top Ten. I was learning Pastures of Plenty, and Cottenpicking—they chastizing me for not having a guitar case for such a valuable guitar.

One time she was shop-sitting for a friend at Amazing Grace Music, an old gas station cum music store on a tiny wedge of land between the Miracle Mile (Red Hill Ave.) and San Anselmo Avenue in San Anselmo. It was much farther out of the way for me so I rarely went there, but I had a Martin and I needed some Martin strings.

Mrs. Morrison made Van give me a ride home. Van the Man in the van was not pleased. He was seriously bent out of shape by the request so I was terrified to speak to him. And it was a long ride home held in utter silence. I lived far from town—way out in Forest Knolls, and he lived even farther out in Inverness.

Violet Morrison was a chanteuse in Northern Ireland

There was no bus service out to The Valley so it was either thumb, or shank's mare. Van the Man drove a van. I had no real idea who he was at the time... I was so fecking shy I couldn't talk to him even if I wanted to.

It seems that every rock musician from the 60s moved out to West Marin—sort of a fallout from the Haight. West Marin was invaded by the likes of the Sons of Champlin, Big Brother & the Holding Company, Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane—to name a few. 

They saw us kids hitching home every day—to us, it was merely an alternate bus service. We didn't think twice that these guys were famous. The road out to The Valley was long and winding, and in those days, people generally stopped for hitchikers.

---

Jesse Colin Young, who also lived in Inverness, was much easier to talk to than Van. He had cute little kids who took swimming lessons with ze French Mrs. Zettl who lived half way up Arroyo Road—so I got a ride almost all the way home from Jesse.

Carlos Santana was silent like Van—absolute mauna. He had a nice Mercedes with fawn leather seats though... One morning, I was still half-asleep, hitching into Drake High School (emphasis at that point was on getting high), Carlos pulled over to offer me a lift.

It was pretty early so Carlos might not have been awake either. He was pulling pretty hard on both his coffee mug and a joint. He looked half-dressed—like he just rolled out of bed. I remember being a little shocked that he wore those baggy string pants. Them string pants were riding dangerously low on Carlito's hips as I recall....

Carlos moved into my friend Lindy Young's place on Tamal Road (right up from Linda Gregg's place—where Jerry Garcia later died) and he had horses too—that was our common ground. I don't remember much else—other than I got to school on time.

Got a ride from decopage artists Larry Fuentes and Dickens Bascom too. Dickens' art car had an entire Remington typewriter that still worked glued to the trunk of his Fort Falcon. The sides and fins were lined with worn out sneaker bottoms—like fish scales. Poetic justice.

My College of Marin classmate David Best copied Dickens Bascom and Larry Fuentes' art-cars and came up with some amazing art-cars of his own—and made a career of it. I loved the flocked chia seed Cadillac punctuated with mirror shards and a water buffalo head hood ornament that he used to park at Micky McGowan's Unknown Museum in Mill Valley.

The Unknown Museum, (founded ca. 1974—but I think it was earlier than that) which closed its doors in 1989, was something to behold with all its repurposed Americana detritus as iconography—the ultimate recycler's wetdream.

David told me that at night the deer came down to graze on the car. Mickey the cobbler had a Fiat stuffed with Disney toys and Barbie dolls.The Fiat didn't run, but David's Caddy did—I sat in it with David and talked until the cows came home, but never got a real ride in it. So I guess it doesn't count. Somewhere I have the slides... fodder for another blog.

Inverness Fire

Yesterday I spent quite some time working on my obsessively long prose poem to my neighbor, Sonny Lowe, Obsession, after I returned from the Mendocino Woodlands. Like the Inverness fire, it's growing by leaps and bounds and shows no sign of ending.

I haven't had a chance to write in my journal since I came back from the Mendocino Woodlands. I came home to the big Inverness fire and to O.J. Simpson's acquittal. There was little news to be had in the deep woods, but on Tuesday we did get the news of O.J. Simpson. The woods couldn't filter that injustice out, it was so atrocious. 

Meanwhile 12,000 acres of Bishop Pine went up in smoke as the Pope gave mass in the pouring New Jersey rain, drenched believers filling the football field.

Last night I went to a party with Verona Seiter and Herman Berlandt at Zoravia Bettoil's flat in Pacific Heights, she is a Brazilian artist. Full moon over the San Francisco Bay took our breath away. A magical night.

We danced the samba, the lambada, with the Latin American ex-pats. Zoravia said I can move my hips like no other. I am flattered. I guess. She said that she thought that she could gyrate and flick her pelvis, until she saw me in action. She said every man's eyes were glued to my hips. I was wearing the ruffled tea dress from my 25th high school reunion, which helped. The Brazilian Consul wanted more than just a dance in the moonlight.

That complement coming from a Brazilian from São Paulo is a compliment indeed, but then I had reason to move like that. The more I hurt inside, the harder I danced, rejected by my neighbor Sonny and his latest skank, Pat. Because of them I am somewhat homeless, she is now living with him, invading my space with her negative energy. I can't be at my home anymore. This is why I danced so hard.

Herman and I snuck off to Bolinas on Sunday. And I tried to find out if my friends were burned out. At the American Red Cross in Point Reyes, I find Stephen Torre's name on the roster. The fire left his house standing, miraculously, since it stands atop Drakeview Estates Road, at the ridgeline. His neighbor, Van Morrison, lost everything. His place burned to the ground. Even the gold and platinum records. Bob Hamilton and I once almost bought the lot next to Van's place but there was no water.

Steve's house was listed as habitable but he did not show up for the Russian River Writers' Guild Monday night reading, nor did Kathy Evans. Oh well. I called her to see why she didn't show up for her reading, and she's having a hit histamine reaction to the world, and to the smoke. I give her the allergic saga, how works the immune system.

Meanwhile, Steve is in British Columbia thinking he has no home. I tell her it's still standing. Kathy can't believe it. Stress levels threaten to undo us all. No way to reach Steve.

Anyway, to catch up on things, last Sunday afternoon, Herman and I hiked from RCA Beach to Palomarin Beach. There were very few people on the trail. We didn't realize we had hiked so far north. 

Behind the roped off area, was the fire zone. The park rangers were quite surprised to see us, saying we'd hike to a fair distance. The park is closed as the trees are still sizzling. And looters have invaded, making their mark. There are cops everywhere. The rangers rifle, a symbol for martial law.

We can't see the fire, but my voice begins to hurt by nightfall. We hiked up one creek to a waterfall. Herman, for all his 72 years, is surprisingly agile. He continues to remind me of my grandmother. How odd. How we used to go on long hikes and adventures without any real preplanning. They just happen. 

Herman too likes this spontaneous approach to dailiness, we are invincible. We spend Sunday night in his cabin on the Mesa. A nice dinner of salmon and couscous. I always take it upon myself to cook most meals, treating Herman. I suspect Verona does the same, but I like to cook for him. Maybe it's the female thing. He purchases most of the food and does the dishes, so it's a decent exchange. 

I've been managing to keep away from home because of Sonny. Which means my life is changing. I don't have my home anchor anymore. Sonny's son Nathan hardly ever visits anymore and wonders why I'm never home. I explain, it's not forever. Yesterday Nathan's mother, Cindy, came to get him, leaving Sonny and Pat alone, and I growl. 

I've taken to flipping him off whenever they drive by. Safe within the walls of my tiny cabin, I'm living between two places—my cabin, and my truck, my bags are always packed. Bolinas is my refuge, it's becoming my new home, and I am on fire, raging against betrayal, and the injustice of it all.