warrin with an i

  Dan Hicks & His Hot Licks   - Now Playing in Valparaiso In '71 or '72 I visited my friend Bill in Valparaiso (Valpo) and it was during that visit when I first heard the music of Dan Hicks. Bill and I were at his friend Duke's place and Duke was playing a Dan Hicks & His Hot Licks album on his stereo. Dan Hicks' first album with his Hot Licks was released back in 1969. Prior to that he had been a drummer in a group called “The Charlatans” out of the Bay Area. I was not aware of that group at the time either. When we walked into Duke's I immediately noticed the music (Dan Hicks) and liked it. After a couple of songs I asked Duke about it and made a mental note to purchase some Dan Hicks albums when I returned home. That was one of the highlights of that trip for me but that trip turned into a very odd visit. This was my first visit back to Valpo since I was there on leave to marry Donna back in '69 and really the first trip back where I was th...

  Checkers with Andre M y mom heard someone talking about the NYC Fresh Air Child Program on the radio one day. It was a program that finds host families for children from inner city under served communities. A host family takes in a child from a poor family for a week or two over the summer essentially providing a child a sort of summer vacation with a family in the suburbs or the country. Mom inquired about the program and she and my father decided to host. The organization asked my mom what kind of child she was interested in and she asked for a boy near my younger brother's age. My brother was probably around 9 and being 9 and a half years older that would put me at 18 or 19. I was a freshman in college at the time. They asked her if she had any preferences in regards to race or ethnicity. My Mom asked which kids they had the most trouble placing. The answer, not surprisingly, was black children so my Mom said she would like a black child. S o that summer Andre f...

The US Festival Part II - 1983 M y brother Pete and I attended the first US Festival on Labor Day Weekend in 1982. The festival was put on by Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and he lost a bundle on it. Of course he still had plenty of money and now experienced, he decided to do it again and planned a second US Festival for the Memorial Day Weekend in 1983 just a little less than nine months after the initial US Festival. This time he enlisted a promoter (Barry Fey) right from the start with the intention of not duplicating the loss he suffered in '82. O f course there was a new lineup of acts with just 3 acts held over from the previous festival, The English Beat, Oingo Boingo and Stevie Nicks, this time solo but had previously performed as part of Fleetwood Mac the first time around. Tickets were sold for both the full event as well as for a single day right from the get-go. As I recall the first one only sold full festival tickets until just before the festival date. In ...

The US Festival Part I - 1982 A lthough I love music and I was the right age at the time, I was unable to attend the Woodstock Music Festival in August of 1969. I really wanted to but instead I, along with a few thousand lucky others, was stuck at Keesler AFB in Biloxi, Mississippi spending that weekend cloistered in a cement cinder block building riding out the brutal attack of Hurricane Camille. Camille still ranks as the 2 nd most intense hurricane to strike the continental U.S. The hurricane actually destroyed the area's wind recording instruments so the maximum sustained wind speed is unknown but from the information that they do have the top reading is estimated to be at least 150 knots (about 175 MPH). Woodstock had to go on without me. F ast forward to 1982. A big music festival was being planned in San Bernadino California by Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, The US Festival. (For those of you not familiar with this music festival the US in the name is a pronoun n...

The Bobs Me moving in for a Kiss with Kevin "The Jerk" much to his girlfriends disgust... L ike most of us, I had a group of friends I hung out with in grade school, junior high, and senior high school, as well as my initial attempt at college, Valparaiso University. Born a boy, that group was male although since my teens I have always had female friends as well. The members of the group changed along the way but there were always a group of guys around that I did things with. Once I hooked up with Donna and dropped out of college I never really had a regular group of male friends again. I tended to only have a friend or two at any one time. The exception was when my brother came out to California to live with me. A fter my break up with Kathy I moved out of the Sunnyvale house to my own place in Los Gatos. Pete and Frank continued to live there and they found a new roommate, Laura. Although Laura was close to Pete and Frank's age, she was a bit of a throw ba...

Softball with Leon and the Scheffleras - Part 2 Me in my Schefflera jersey B ill James is an American baseball writer, historian, and statistician. He is the father of the saber-metrics revolution that subsequently took the baseball world by storm. He is well known for his Baseball Abstract books that he first published in 1977. He also served time as a senior advisor for the Boston Red Sox during the period when they finally broke “The Curse of the Bambino” and won 4 World Series Championships. He is a part of a whole sabermetric community that developed a new set of baseball statistics, commonly referred to as “analytics”, that old time baseball people and fans eschew and mock. I learned about Bill James in the early 80's and began faithfully reading his annual baseball abstracts. Today, every sports team in every sport uses analytical statistics to evaluate players. Some depend on it more than others and some do it better. However, most think of or blame the Oakland A...

Je Ne Sais Pas I think of myself as fairly easy going and I've even been told that a time or two. Perhaps you don't quite agree. After all, I am a native New Yorker, although I have lived in the West most of my adult life. I do have a bit of an edge that comes out at times and it tends to stick out more here in California. It is a mild one by New York standards but what I do have is that strong east coast “Yankee” independence. When there is something or a situation I feel strongly about I can react strongly. I also can quickly get stubborn upon being told what to do or how I should behave and I am quick to react. This did not help me during my years in the Air Force and it is often not helpful in my marriage. A s far back as I can remember I have always wanted to make my own decisions and I can be very persistent. I had something like a six year running argument with my father about the color of my dress pants. I'm not sure when it started but I think I...

Nyshia: A Few Last Memories Playing with Nyshia at the Selo House E very dog owner has lots of stories about their dog. After my last story I felt the need, at least for myself, to recall a few of mine about Nyshia. I had Nyshia for almost 7 years. I got her when I was a college student at the University of Oregon in Eugene. After graduation we moved down to San Francisco, then later up to Sacramento and then back to the Bay Area, Sunnyvale, and finally the last few months, Los Gatos. She'd seen me through girlfriend breakups and my divorce with Kathy. She had been the constant in my life. Losing a dog is always hard. Heck, I am still getting over losing our dog Fudge but losing Nyshia the way that I did is the worst. While it was a rough ending, I have many fond memories of our time together and I still think of her frequently. So, given my last story ended on such a down note I decided to do one final follow up with some of my memories of Nyshia. N yshia was friendl...

The Cats, a Dog, and a Regret: Me and Nyshia C ats and Dogs are the most common household pets and they are both used in a number of our idioms. The literal English translation for Los Gatos is “The Cats”. That name may make you think of the animal but for me because I read it as “The Cats” and not just plain “Cats” I think of the expression “The Cats” that Barney Fife, from the Andy Griffith show, used to describe his girlfriend Thelma Lou. “The Cats” is a sort of 50's truncated version of the “Cat's Pajamas” from the '20's or possibly from another like kind expression like “The Cat's Meow”. I had always liked Los Gatos and thought of it as being a pretty “cool” place. Tucked up against the east side of the Santa Cruz Mountains next to the highway that heads over to Santa Cruz it has a bit of a Bohemian vibe. Maybe not compared to places like Boulder Creek or Ben Lomond, but there's a clear difference when compared to the nearby Silicon Valley towns Ca...