1999 january 14

john flaherty

well, speak of the devil.

no sooner do i mention john flaherty's name than i get an email from him, telling me he finally has intermittent internet access and is in fact alive and well and living in northern california. he's spooky like that, always popping up when i have said something about him, or seen something that reminds me of him. the last time was when i noticed an old gold cigarette ad; no one i have ever known except john smoked or smokes old gold. the next day, there was a letter from the amazon.

as a self-avowed packrat, it is no surprise i save all my correspondence, but john has an entire box devoted to the letters and cards and postcards i receive from him. the man seems incapable of jotting off a three line postcard -- his are crammed with the tiniest writing possible, catching me up on months or even years of his life. his letters arrive in manila envelopes: pages and pages of letters started and never finished, yet saved to send eventually, clippings from magazines, old photographs, short stories and torrid confessions of a misspent youth, photocopies of kliban cartoons.

i have seen him but twice since he moved away; the first was at a grateful dead concert in the early nineties.

he sent a postcard, and stuck at the end of all the narrative was,

will be in Eugene on Aug 20....Common warning signs of trespassing on my sphere of misfortune are; 1) a large yellow school bus w/WA plates + 2 bikes on front + 666 on windshield 2)logo of 3 skeletons 3)an ancient cloudy eyed yellow dog w/tumors all over 4) vending from a galvanized horse trough 5) someone convulsing face down in the urine + vomit between vehicles while seeking enlightenment 6) the behavior of a crazy monkey 7) I'll be sitting on the Jerry side Love J the F

wouldn't you have picked up and hauled yourself to eugene?

after figuring out where eugene was, and making travel arrangements, i roped two friends into going with me. i was not, and am not, a fan of the dead, but i had heard the stories of their concerts and reckoned it would be good for me to take along some veterans, just in case i couldn't find john. good decision on my part. the parking lot was enormous, and to my amazement there were dozens and dozens of school buses. thank heavens for jerry and joy who managed to not only negotiate the town that had sprung up around the stadium, but sniff out mr flaherty in less than an hour.

i had a wonderful time and i didn't even go to the show. instead, i made a filthy, dreadlocked kid with his finger in the air very happy by handing over my ticket so i could spend the day with john and his wife daisy who had tickets for the next day's show. we walked all over the parking lot, exploring and eating veggie burritos bought here, drinking fresh squeezed juice from there and wearing the new beaded ankle bracelets we bought from an ancient chinese man wearing black pajamas. it was as though we had never been apart and we did indeed chatter all day long like crazy monkeys.

the moment when we said parted company is one that has stayed with me since. i can feel his skinny little body pressed against mine as we hugged goodbye, can smell daisy's patchouli oil perfume and the wet dog smell of the old yellow dog. if i had known it would be five years before we saw each other again, i would have held on a little longer, a little tighter.

truckin', claire