Editor’s Note: In keeping with the gentle and respectful media storm surrounding the election cyclone, I will avoid comment on the VP debate last night. or now, anyway. Our pal Point Loma felt the same way, and wrote an account that is both real and surreal. It seems to be about a place- a country- that once existed on the land between shores.

– Vic

Author’s Note: As I promised at the advent of the last installment, I am going to try to stay away from politics since it is an unhealthy business, best left to the professionals like Arrias –and you have to admire how adroitly I just handed him that piece of shit task. I have often been accused of being a man obsessed with living in the past, and as a Midway sailor I have always thought I was born 40 years too late. I’ve done what I could to drag the lessons of those times forward with me into the present, and maybe aiming it all at a future that we still can’t see or even comprehend. Given the chaotic nature of today’s headlines, I will always go back to things that are tried and true – tested by the passage of time. It is an intellectually safe place to be unless you can imagine and dare to sally forth to do better in shaping the present and thereby through your actions, the future.

Once Upon a Time

Old Blue Eyes

“Once upon a time
The world was sweeter than we knew
Everything was ours
How happy we were then
But somehow once upon a time
Never comes again”[1]

Twenty years ago or so, I was involved in an extended project out at the Naval Post-Graduate School in Monterey, California. I was staying at the BOQ – which was the former Del Monte Hotel since the Navy had taken it over in 1942 – commuting out there for weeks at a time. We worked out a deal so they gave me a dedicated room where I could leave my gear, so it made it easy to go back to DC for weekend conjugal visits. My semi-permanent BOQ room was on the top floor, but it wasn’t a suite – more like a garret apartment in Paris. I had a twin bed, a standup wardrobe for my clothes and uniforms, a kitchenette with a two-burner stove and boiled water coffee maker, a small fridge, a cramped head with a stand-up hand-held shower, and a balcony where I could go outside and smoke. On good, clear days I enjoyed a southward view of the mountains that were the precursor primordial stepping stones to Big Sur – I felt like fucking Hemingway. However, I was not as obsessed with writing like I am now, since there was no Wi-Fi or ready Internet access back then – you still had to think. I was not without friends out there and a had a few fellow liberty risks, like Fred, who I hope is reading this now. But the smoldering red ember of a Marlboro was always my main muse. I used a keyboard as my medium, but instead of writing I was more into composing music, like Duke Ellington, whose style I had studied at MIT.

The Hotel Del Monte

My first extended weekend out there was more than interesting. On a fine hungover Saturday morning I sought out the communal laundry room to clean my skivvies, and then while waiting for the coin-operated washer to stop and my turn at the small bank of dryers, I decided to go exploring. I went back to the room, cracked open a beer for breakfast, and found the fire escape. It took me steeply down a few boring floors, and then there was the choice of the normal exit, or a mysterious sharp left turn – which led to a spiral staircase that invited me to descend to the relatively unused ballroom. What I found there rendered and left me forever gobsmacked; and for a Duke Ellington wannabe, it was exciting beyond category:

Steinway Concert Grand

I emerged into what was the backstage of the big ball room; seemingly full of all of the seasonal props and accumulated detritus from when the Del Monte first opened to the public in 1880, waiting to be dusted off and trotted out for whatever was the event of the season. The piano itself was covered with scum, but not locked. I took off the coverlet and raised the top, opened up the keyboard, and started to tinkle the ivories – and of all miracles, it was pretty much in tune, which was good enough for my purposes. I felt transposed back to a now far distant past when that grand ballroom hosted the likes of Count Basie, the Duke, and Frank Sinatra – I had music playing in my head that I hadn’t heard since when I first walked into the jeu de paume in Paris almost 30 years before. Back then, it was Debussy but now, I could hear Frank crooning his heartfelt tunes in that ornate setting that once echoed with the grandeur of days and heroic feats that with time are now sadly long gone by.

I went to find the housekeeper’s hooch, purloined a vacuum cleaner and some furniture polish, sucked out all of the accumulated years of dust and neglect off the strings and hammers, and cleaned her up nice. Fuck, I couldn’t help myself. And then when I dove into the rich timbre of the keys, I felt like George fucking Gershwin – I knew then what I was going to be doing for the next couple of months or so until that TDY gig ended. Since the ballroom was little if never used except maybe for New Year’s Eve or Navy Balls, I had it pretty much all to myself for that magic Spring. Every once in a while when I was playing, the Mexican immigrant housekeepers would peek in to see what was going on – I assured them that it was all okay. I had by then brought out from DC all of my Ellington books, music scores, and blank composer and arranger charts – it was hard to tear away from it, and my talent if it not taking off, was on the launch pad, or at least standing on the precipice of that platform in a mythological Harlem, waiting for the “A Train” to whisk me away for my debut at the Apollo.

Duke Ellington – Beyond Category

Then one Sunday in late-April, I was returning from a week’s trip home to DC; nearing the end of what had become a months-long project (I might have had a hand in extending that timing). I unloaded my bags in my temporary West Coast bohemian apartment home for the final time, poured myself a glass of what Vic would call cold Happy Hour White, and lit up a Marlboro to unwind; all the while thinking about what I was going to play once I got downstairs to the ball room – my fingertips were tingling in anticipation of the ivory and ebony tickling to come…
With great expectations, I decamped from the fire escape and took the familiar left three floors down onto that spiral star case to see my sweet gleaming ebony baby – and she was gone. WTF? I charged straight to the front desk to find out from the BOQ OOD or whomever in charge what had happened. It turns out that they sold it. It seemed that someone had heard someone playing the ball room piano that had been long forgotten. After looking into what it could sell for, the powers to be (the infamous “they”) took the first offer that made financial sense; and now it was gone, just like that. If you have never had your fucking guts ripped out like that and totally crushed by fate, then you cannot even begin to understand how empty and angry I felt at heart, and the awful realization that it was all my fault.

I have buried this one for a long while, but as time is running out on us all, I thought maybe I should share it. The memory of betrayal still pisses me the fuck off. But in retrospect, for a few weeks it was magic, in a time and place and in circumstances that only come around once upon a time.
I remain your faithful servant.

Copyright 2020 Point Loma
www.vicsocotra.com

[1] Music by Charles Strouse, lyrics by Lee Adams. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Once_Upon_a_Time_(Charles_Strouse_and_Lee_Adams_song)#:~:text=Composer%20%28s%29%20Charles%20Strouse.%20Lyricist%20%28s%29%20Lee%20Adams.,their%20version%20appears%20on%20the%20Broadway%20Cast%20recording.