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As
of the initial posting of this
website (Jan 2010), its been almost 35 years since I entered the
service. Seems like
just a few years ago, but in
reality, a good portion of a lifetime has passed.
My life has been good, quite good actually,
but I still have to say that some of my best memories are from those
years. Can’t
really explain it. I was in
post-Vietnam (Carter was president), so a lot of guys I knew had been
there, but I didn’t personally do any time overseas.
As a result, I didn’t have any
“wartime” experience that would really
cause men (boys then) to bond; nevertheless, I guess the whole idea of entering the service right
after high school,
becoming a paratrooper, and an occasional “alert”
on the flight line was
still enough to bring a few men closer to God (hence, closer to
one-another) than
would otherwise occur.
I
spent 2 ½ years in Ft Bragg, North
Carolina.
A
paratrooper/medic from New Jersey. Wasn’t
interested in making a career out of
it, but I must say that I learned more in those three years than any
other
three years of my life. Didn’t
even
intend to be a paratrooper originally, went in to help pay for college. Jumped (no pun intended)
in the line for
paratrooper school as a result of hearing that there was an extra
$55.00 per
month for “hazardous duty” pay.
Sounded
good to me.
After
basic training in Ft Dix
(NJ), medic training at Ft Sam Houston (Texas),
and paratrooper school in Ft Benning (Georgia),
I was stationed in Ft
Bragg, NC from Dec 1975 through June 1978.
I ended up on the first floor of my barracks with
just a
duffle bag filled with
what I had built up from the last 6 months of training, not to mention
a very,
very short haircut. Don’t
remember how
or exactly when, but at some point shortly after arrival there I became
acquainted
with the Fayetteville pawn shops, bought a stereo and a guitar and
settled in. Somewhere
along the way I
met the other
medics in my troop, along with the other men in my barracks and as time
passed
the friendships grew.
Don’t
really wanna mention any
names here, only because if I ever left someone’s out
(gettin’ old now and
already starting to forget a lot) unintentionally I’d regret
that. Suffice it to
say that on duty we did PT
every morning, guard duty occasionally, jumped several times from a
jet, prop, Huey
or a Chinook, and certainly spent a good amount of time at the motor
pool. Off
duty was Tuesday’s
and Pedro’s, played
all-night pool many times, spent time
playing racquetball, running and wrestling, and
hit Myrtle Beach more than once.
Then there was the stairwell…
Ahh
the acoustics! No
furniture, no carpet, no pillows or heat; just cement walls and
steel-pipe
railings. I think we
spent more time there
than any other single place. Many
a North Carolina night consisted of two acoustic
guitars, a few other guys hanging out drinking
coke
(yea, really, just coke!), and Dave harmonizing to anything I threw at
him. As Dave and I
got to know each other’s style, the songs kept
coming… Beatles, America,
CSNY, Eagles, etc… If we were compared to a comedy team, I
was
the “straight guy”
and Dave got all the laughs. He
had a
style that I would put right up there with Taylor and Simon. Excellent guitar player
and vocals to
match. I
played/sang well enough to keep
up with him and we managed to provide ourselves (and many fellow
soldiers) with a perfect mix of music, friendship and memories. Occasionally we would set
up a cassette recorder (back in
the day when
just having Dolby NR was a big deal) and two microphones. Dave recently
commented…
…the
way our
voices and guitars came together seemed instinctive and natural, pure
and
simple, and were not complex in any way yet when they did come
together, these
very sounds meshed and intertwined in an inexplicable way and
that made
them something much more than they were by themselves, this created a
beautiful
sound that was very special…
It
wasn’t just the music and the
acoustics; however, music does have a way of maintaining and/or
creating
memories. It was
the time spent
communicating, learning and having a really good time, just keeping it
simple.
So,
how did this all come about
if its been almost 35 years since then?
Funny you should ask…
The
story starts with the
experiences already mentioned above.
Soon after that most of us got out of the military
and
returned to
civilian life. Time
went on, and before
you knew it 10-15 years passed. At
some
point I decided to get the cassettes out and transfer them to an audio
CD (back
in the day when they were still kinda new).
I transferred the crude audio to crude CD with no
cleanup. Didn’t
really
know what to do then, just made
the transfer and enjoyed listening to the memories.
Sent a copy of the CDs to Dave and that was
that (this was probably around 1995).
The CDs all had paper-labels glued to them with
pictures
of some of our
“stairwell times”.
So, another 10 (or
so) years go by, and I decide to get out the CDs only to find that they
had all
been “devoured” by the glue on the paper label. Bummer!
Didn’t
do much at the
time, but you know how it is, as soon as you realize you
don’t have something,
you immediately crave it. Anyway,
I
tried to transfer “anything” I could get off the
CD, but very little came
off. Just a snippet
of one song. So
there it sat (on my PC) for another few
years; until the other night…
I
was scanning my disk drive and
noticed the music file that was from that unsuccessful attempt to
retrieve the
music from the no-longer-readable CD.
I
clicked on it and listened to about a minute of cassette-hiss-filled
“stairwell” music.
Note, by the way,
that I had lost touch with Dave by this time.
Had an address, but no email or facebook or any such
contact. I had;
however, managed to get in touch with
a few other guys from that time, so I emailed the musical snippet to
Frank
saying “hey remember this?”, and “have
you ever heard from Dave?”.
Within 24 hours I got a reply from Frank
stating that he had found a
blog that appeared to be written by Dave’s daughter. And, strangely enough,
Frank added that she
indirectly mentioned me in that blog. HUH? Obviously
that got my attention. Long
story short, in the blog (that did in fact turn out
to be written by Dave’s
daughter Erika), she was logging the events of a recent trip to her
friend’s house in Vermont. Along the way they hit Boston
traffic and, well here’s the text
(taken from http://endoftheblock.wordpress.com/category/blogged-by-e
)…
For two hours, RJ and I sat in
traffic. Yes. Two
hours. In traffic…
At least we had the mix tapes.
Thank god for mix
tapes. One should never underestimate the power of a badly bootlegged
copy of
the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ concert in Providence
from back in 2000; or an MTV BUZZ Bin cassette; or the recording of my
dad when
he was younger than me with his service friends playing acoustic
guitars in the
bowels of the barrack stairwells in Fort Bragg, NC.
My dad sounded like a boy when he
spoke. He was a
few years younger than I am now. He wasn’t anymore than 21 or
22 and he sounded
so much different than he does now; but I say this only in reference to
the
sound of his voice and not who he is deep down. His sense of humor and
his
faulty ability to remember lyrics gave him away. Then, of course, there
were
the Beatles’ songs: “Dear Prudence,”
“Black Bird,” “Yesterday” and
such. Crosby
Stills Nash and Young, “Muskrat Love,” and a slice
of Dylan too. Lastly, though, there was the harmony.
“Wow,” RJ
said, “Harmony is really good. Close
harmony like that is so hard to do. It’s so easy to lose your
note when the note
of the lead and the backup’s are so close to be being the
same.”
I knew my dad would be pleased. He
loves harmony.
If you knew my dad, you wouldn’t be surprised.
She was writing about US!!! How
amazing is that! We
created those tapes over 30
years ago. I made
the original set of
CDs about 15 years ago, then just the other night I stumble on the only remnant I had from
the original CD
set, pass that on to Frank and ask if he’s heard from Dave. Meanwhile on Dec
29,
2009 (just three weeks
earlier) Dave's daughter posts this blog talking about the CDs. As I said in one of my
first emails to Dave
in 30 years…
Just
a twist of
fate?
Yea
maybe, but
I'd rather think there's a reason for this somewhere out there...
Whatever
the reason, it
seemed appropriate to spend some
time re-mixing the old cassettes.
Afterwards I figured a few web pages would be good
too,
just to share
with friends. Dave
replied when I sent
him a copy of the link..
…It’s
like a
musical snapshot of a part of our Life ... who knows ... maybe someone
...
somewhere will give it a listen and enjoy what we did all those years
ago. In consideration of where we were in our lives (The 82nd
Airborne
Division), where we were in reality (an empty stairwell) and the high
tech
recording gear we had on hand (a cassette player/recorder) it was I
think a
most unlikely place to have created something that sounds so good even
to this
very day... I hope that if anyone ever does listen to our music they
feel this
way too and in doing so "we" may brighten their day a bit and if they
so choose to sing along ... all the better ... now that would something
wouldn't it?
If
nothing else, the last few dozen hours I spent putting this
together has momentarily brought me back to a very good place.
Enjoy & God
Bless!
Ed
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