ELEVEN

    I had about $1500. worth of used records and maybe a couple hundred in cash. Florence didn’t really need a record store; the population then was about 2200. These days, it’s probably closer to 15,000 and a major publication called it the best place to retire in America. It’s still just as rainy, though, eighty plus inches average, and still windy, too. The Old Town area by the waterfront where my shop was is the classiest part of town today, but back then it was still the wrong side of the tracks. The turn-of-the-century opium dens and prostitutes were long gone, but parents still wouldn’t let their kids go there. Many of the buildings were boarded up and it did look a little scary when I first arrived. Actually, it turned out that I was the scariest thing there. It’s all bed & breakfasts and boutiques today, but 30-something years ago it was a nice little community of characters and good neighbors. I spent my cash on some new releases, rolling papers, pipes and bongs, set up my twin size waterbed behind a curtain, installed a shower, and I opened for business.

    A typical day for me in Florence was to eat a greasy breakfast at the Wharf or Oceanaire, run the store from 11 to 7, then start hitting the bars. When I had enough to drink, I’d head back and get out the guitar and write songs about how miserable I was without Debbie. I wrote about 100 of them, always amazed at how easily they came to me, seemingly out of the aether. Some of those songs are on the CD I’ve recorded. After years of believing that those songs were of the Devil, I began to realize that he doesn’t offer anything good, and the songs weren’t all that bad. Anyway, I couldn’t play the guitar very well at all, and as soon as I’d start playing I’d break a string and start cussing and it’d be downhill from there. Then I’d fall asleep and it’d all began again.

                                                       Hangin' out at Rainy Day Records

                                                 "The Slugs" at Don's Beachcomber 1980

          Singing Led Zeppelin's "Rock & Roll" at Don's 1979

    
    There were three bars to hop around to, the Wharf, Don the Beachcomber’s, and Duncan and Company. The latter hired the best bands, usually out of Eugene or Portland; I won a dance contest there once, with my ‘skinny-legged’ style of crazy hippie dancing. The Wharf was saved for last, after I was so drunk I didn’t mind the generic country bands that played there. Don’s was my main home away from home, though; it was the friendliest, had the best jukebox, and cold, cheap beer. I even worked for Don a short while, not at the bar but at his movie theatre next door. He fired me because I wouldn’t put the artificial yellow flavoring into the popcorn. That, plus I’d prop my stool in the doorway to watch the movies, and let the warm air out. I performed at Don’s a few times; once on my birthday singing Led Zeppelin’s “Rock & Roll” with whatever band was playing that night. Another time I put my own band together called the Slugs, named after Florence’s indigenous animal. We did the Ramones tune “He’s Gonna Kill That Girl”, but halfway through Don pulled the plug and kicked us off the stage. I also dee-jayed a few oldies nights there; these typically ended with me drinking a wee bit much and throwing up all over my records.

    One Sunday afternoon, a band just 'showed up' at Don’s called Servant, asking if they could play for free. Being from New York, I put two and two together (we New Yorkers are good at that; it’s hard to fool us), and told Don not to let them play because they’re Christians. But he just said, let’s give them a chance. So I started telling the people around me that the band was secretly Christian and we ought to leave in protest; but not a chance, everyone stayed except me. I couldn’t believe that all my fellow shickers (drinkers) were willing to listen to this propaganda. Afterwards some began to tell 'Jew jokes' about me, or mess up my hair looking for my horns. Was I drinking in a bar full of Christians or what? So I wrote my first punk rock song called “Killer Christians” about how these so-called people of G-d persecuted and murdered Jews and others through the ages, at the Crusades etc., and were no better today. I wanted to write Yiddish lyrics to the song as well, so it would be the first Yiddish punk song, but I just didn’t remember enough Yiddish to do it. Still, I thought I’d do it someday. Years later I’d follow this one with another punk tune, “Christmas Is The Most (expletive deleted) Time of the Year”, but that’s another story.

    I became quite bitter concerning finding a girlfriend in Florence. But one day another east-coaster, accent and all, drifted into town and was immediately hired at Don’s. He couldn’t wait for me to meet her, after all the best bartenders become intimately involved in our lives, and hopefully it would get my mind off of my married landlady, his daughter. She and I had a one night affair in which we drank and danced together, then 'made out' in her hallway. It was mainly kissing, but she woke up with the world’s largest and ugliest hickie on her neck that was impossible to hide. Of course, everyone in town assumed it was more than it was; I just felt pride at my handiwork. The entire community forbade me to go near her again, not just Don and her husband.

                             Marcia

    When I first laid eyes on Marcia (not her real name, although I use her real one in my song “Oh Bartender Please”, but you’re unlikely to buy my CD) I could tell she was exactly my type. I immediately fell in love with her but pretended not to notice her. I knew it would end in tears, at least for me. She was too perfect, short, slim, tough, pretty, tattoo of a butterfly on her shoulder, east coast attitude; I did all I could to avoid her, but that proved impossible. By the time I succumbed, however, she’d met someone else. She’d hang out on his boat until the wee hours, then come over to the shop and sleep with me. I’d leave my door unlocked and around one or two AM she’d slip in, but only to sleep, nothing more. It turned out she was engaged to a guy back home and was out west merely to sow some wild oats before they got married. Not wild enough to include me though. When she left I just grew more hardened. Oh, I’d have a couple more adventures before I’d meet the love of my life; I “cried in my beer” (not really, artistic license) when Don the Beachcomber informed me that Marcia had gotten married.

    That summer I’d sort of flirted with a cute 13 year-old girl from Washington that had been in the shop. I hadn’t attempted to be romantic with her, just filled her up with my hippie philosophy about how it was her life and she shouldn’t take any crap from her parents and she should do what she wanted, that sort of wonderful advice. A few months later, she showed up at the store, having run away from home to be with me! I asked her where she expected to sleep that night and she said, with me. Panic mode set in and I found her a place to stay with a woman friend of mine. We chipped in on her bus ticket the next day. Later on her grandmother thanked me for doing the right thing, but I could hardly take any credit. It was my fault she ran away after all. To be with the hippie sven-‘garlic’, Loony Lenny.

    Another gal that is remembered by a song on my CD (although I forget her name) was 18 or 19 and snuck into Duncan & Company on a couple of occasions. She was really cool, but it didn't lead anywhere. Her father was president of a bank in some small coast town. Then one day day she showed up at Rainy Day Records with her boyfriend, a brute of a young man with short hair. Probably a football guy or weight-lifter. Or maybe even a Christian! I was not about to challenge him. He wanted to know how I knew his girlfriend. Mum's the word. 

    I borrowed an old projector from the theater and started a local film society, showing a mixture of classic films and weird B-movies. Things can get dull in a small town, especially in winter, and you really have to make your own fun. I also did a radio program over in Eugene, when I could get there, “Cruisin’ with Lenny & Carl”, an oldies show that Carl & I had started in California and moved up north with us. I still have a recurring dream in which I’m trying to get to the studio, and when I get there we’re still doing the show, just like old times, but I’ve forgotten my records. It was on for about 15 years, on three stations at its peak. We had a 35^th anniversary program some months ago, and that pretty much got it out of my system and stopped those dreams.

    Finding women to date in Florence was a tricky thing. I either had to meet someone from Eugene on the weekends, when the live bands played, or actually go to Eugene, although the air would make me sick all over again if I did. Locally, there was the occasional divorcee, but you’d have to act fast before someone else snatched them up, and the naughtier high school girls who’d defy their parents and head 'downtown'. Of course I may have acted like I was 16 then, and looked like I was 20 tops, but I was already 27. The other choice was having an affair with someone else’s wife. I tried it all; I was desperately lonely, which of course is no excuse for my behavior, just a statement of fact. I also believed that the moon and stars revolved around me, and was still a good-looking young man under all that hippie hair. These affairs were few and far between, however, and some of the women I chased said ‘no’. Some chased me and I said ‘no’. If I’d been with someone the night before there’d be no doubt, my tell-tale calling card, the giant hickey, would show up for all the world to see. One night I left Don’s with two women. I felt like the king of the stoned world. I am utterly amazed that Jesus’ offer of forgiveness has extended even to the likes of me. If He saved me, He’ll save anyone who is willing to repent.

    Months earlier than the day Diana first showed up at Rainy Day Records, I had spotted her from afar working at the drug store in the strip mall at Florence’s main intersection. I had never been in that store, and was just peering through the door to get an idea what they sold, when I saw her behind the counter. I ached at the sight of this lovely vision, probably wasted on some idiot redneck, I thought, as I continued along my way. When she actually walked in my shop, my heart began pounding; Florence was not some nesting ground for Hollywood beauties, you understand. I suppose it was like most other towns, with a good-looking few that mainly disappeared after high school. In my months there I had chatted up any woman that was even remotely my type, which was basically thin and decent looking. Just two weeks earlier, I was “so low I was busted, that You could be trusted” as Paul Simon sang on the “Still Crazy” LP, and I actually collected my thoughts and requests and petitioned G-d.

    G-d and I had had a mighty stormy relationship over the years. At one point, while living at Wabasse, I was so frustrated with my mother’s illness, my father’s increasing annoyance at my immaturity and lack of responsibility, and my own general craziness that I looked up to Heaven and said, “G-d, if you exist, show me now. Do anything at all; make something fall off the wall, anything. Show me that You’re there, or I will cease to believe in You. I will become an atheist.” After a few minutes, when nothing happened I said “fine, that’s it; I’m an atheist”. I began to write 'atheist' any time a form asked my religion. Once at a doctor’s, the receptionist asked me if I really meant that. It seemed to just break her heart that anyone would deny the existence of G-d. I don’t remember how long I kept up that position, or what might have happened to convince me otherwise. But ten or so years later in Florence, while pining over Debbie, I wrote in a song, “I’ve tried to find strength in G-d, and it’s not impossible but it’s real hard”.

    I was ready to give G-d another chance. Big of me, huh; but this time there was a reply. I read off my shopping list to Him of what I was looking for in a woman; I detailed ages, body measurements, said I didn’t want another blonde as if blondes and cheating somehow went together, said I was willing to accept a divorced woman with one child. I don’t remember all of my specifications, but when Diana came into the shop a second time, I began to hope that something was up.