Last night, I dreamed of Europe, teetering on the brink of war, reminiscent of those haunting days of the 1940s. It was not a nightmare but rather a sepia-toned memory, grainy like an old newsreel flickering in a rundown theater, the air thick with the scent of buttered popcorn and sticky sodas clinging to the soles of my worn Tom McCann wingtips. Beside me, my wife, Momo, sat elegantly in her gabardine dress, her silk scarf accentuating her perfect neck. A picture of quiet strength amidst the storm brewing outside. Somehow, as if a magical spell, we knew of war, maybe because our fathers had participated, not reluctantly like some, but dutiful, knowing their presence would make a difference in the outcome.
We found ourselves seated amid a crowd, the air thick with the scent of Old Spice, a memory of times past. Momo leaned forward; her senses caught Chanel No. 5 drifting languidly alongside us while cigarette smoke curled upwards, smothering the flickering images that danced on the screen. An army advanced in unyielding formation, each soldier a cog in an unfeeling machine ready to unleash mayhem upon a peaceful country. A lone figure stood poised for inspection; within his eyes, a cold emptiness lingered, reminiscent of a predator—those soulless eyes of a waiting shark. At first, I thought he might be Hitler, a returned demon from the depths of Hell. I was wrong. A Russian, short in stature, long on evil, intent on destruction. The shark now has legs and walks among us. I awakened, sweating and gasping. Momo sleeping peacefully, unaware of the dream we shared. We left without seeing the movie.
Foreword: Usually by anotherwriter or friend. Excuse the breaking of tradition. These chapters reveal my struggle with the truths of my family. As a child and later as an adult, I saw the darkness of alcoholism and how it grips every soul within a household. I wished for families like those in a Norman Rockwell painting, gathered at the table with Grandfather carving the turkey, but life shattered that image. AA was just beginning to rise, and the word “enabler” had not yet marked the shadow of alcoholism. Bleeding in a public arena is not pretty.
The island of Hawaii held its charm, still untouched by the war. A year after the conflict with Japan, a few tourists arrived by boat, drawn to its beaches and emerald water. The men and women in uniform returned home, demobilized from the military. Johnny chose differently. He stayed, nurturing the holdings he had acquired over two years. Luck had favored him; he owned land in downtown Honolulu, not the best area, but one that would grow over the years and be worth hundreds of times what he paid. California held no interest, Texas even less. He would again be under the veil of his mother’s demands and secrets. The more time away he had, the more he saw that the extended family of her sisters and cousins was more toxic than nurturing. The arrangement with the old Korean had soured; there would be no marriage to his granddaughter, a relief to Johnny. He would take his chances to either flourish or fail in Hawaii.
Near the end of his first year after leaving the Navy, once again, the missives from home arrived almost daily. They were often the same—repetitive and sharp. Nothing had changed; Sister Aimee’s cures were lost like smoke in the wind. His father did not write, making Johnny feel like he was not there or had no strength to fight. The family had returned to Fort Worth. He now knew that something dire had transpired.
A letter from his sister Norma came with bad news. His beloved dog, Lady, had passed peacefully in her sleep at the age of eighteen. John Henry was not doing well; a depression had set upon him soon after they returned to Texas from California. His leaving a prestigious job and salary and returning to the furniture shop, working for a pittance of his former wage, caused him great stress. He would go days without speaking to anyone, lost in his sadness, reluctantly accepting the fact that he was now an older man and he had left his best life out west. PTSD was not yet diagnosed, but his behavior had all the signs of the illness. Killing another human, even in the ugliness of war, will take a piece of a man, leaving him un-whole and susceptible to the whispers of the Demons that await. John Henry had many to fight.
Johnny’s mother had become a mean, spiteful woman full of hatred for anyone other than her precious sisters in arms; they were all swimming in alcohol for the better part of each day. The reality of life was a concept they didn’t grasp; the party came first, and to hell with the rest of it.
Norma was planning to leave and join her brother in Hawaii but was reluctant to leave their father in his fragile state. Guilt washed over Johnny for not being there for his dog, Lady; she had been his faithful companion for his entire life. He was ashamed that he was more broken up over her death than the tribulations of his parents; they were adults who occupied their own prison. They could deal with it themselves. He wanted nothing to do with any part of their perils. Still, the missives came daily, now more frantic and cruel than ever. He was teetering, trying to stay positive and not give in to the dark web woven by his mother’s disease. It was impossible to fight. In anguish, he gave into her cruelty, hating himself for his weakness. Arriving in Hawaii, a boy, then becoming his own man, now again, a boy dragged across the Pacific Ocean by a three thousand-mile umbilical cord.
I wrote this story in 2012 after a visit to Threadgill’s on Barton Springs Road. During the Armadillo Headquarters days, I often went in and out of Austin and knew many of the musicians responsible for its progressive music scene. No one can remember who, what, or how it started, so why not make it an Armadillo?
A. Dillo influenced a generation of Texas musicians and tunesmiths. On a scorching Saturday in September 1970, a group of dazed and confused hippies found this precocious little Armadillo digging for grubs on the lawn of the state capitol. They were lounging on the grass, sunning themselves, drinking Lone Star beer, and smoking pot, recuperating from a busy week of doing absolutely nothing, which was what they did best.
He was a sad Armadillo, lost and searching for his family unit after being separated from them in Zilker Park a few days earlier during a vicious thunderstorm and a frog-floating flood. A happy reunion was not to be. His mother and father were tits-up on Congress, and his siblings had been lunch for a pack of wild dogs. He was an orphan.
The dazed but kindly hippies were drawn to the friendly little tank. They took him back to their pad just off Congress and raised him as one of their own. He was christened A. Dillo.
One of the more studious hippie chicks in the house was majoring in animal behavior and journalism at the University of Texas and saw a spark of something in the wee critter. Wading into uncharted territory, the twinkle in his tiny red eyes caused the two of them to connect magically. After a few weeks of sputtering starts and misses, she was soon tutoring the ardent little critter in reading and writing.
Within six months, A. Dillo had mastered penmanship and was writing prose. Within a year, he wrote short stories and speeches for the university’s professors and a host of prolific student protesters who hung around the house.
He experimented with strange illicit substances and began hanging out with artist types and deep thinkers, writing about current events, political science, theology, and music with the best of them. He was, in a sense, humanized.
A. Dillo’s popularity grew, and he was invited to give readings of his work at weekend hootenannies, parties, and student gatherings. He was the critter version of Alan Ginsburg.
Being an Armadillo, he had no clothing, only his armored shell, so he employed an artist friend to decorate his tough covering to resemble a fashionable tie-dye t-shirt. He then wore round rose-colored sunglasses and various pins and peace symbols. He was beyond incredibly cool and a perfect fit for Austin. A problem arose within the house. A few of his adopted Bohemian family members harbored a bone of jealousy. Though quietly envious of the little fellow, they accused him of selling out to “the man.” Perplexed and hurt, he asked his tutor who this “man” he sold out to was. She shushed him, explaining it was anyone who did anything better than themselves.
The bad vibes from his former adoring family were a downer, so unable to create and win back their adoration, he packed his few belongings in a Piggly Wiggly grocery bag and returned to Barton Springs and Zilker Park for peace and tranquility among the Oak trees and dancing waters.
While shuffling down Barton Springs Road, he happened upon a recently opened venue called The Armadillo World Headquarters. Delighted to find a place that openly celebrated his kind, he scurried through a hole in the fence and took up residence beneath the beer garden stage, enjoying the clamorous musical atmosphere and the continual supply of spilled Lone Star beer that flowed through the cracks of the wood floor.
A group of guitar-picking musicians who frequented the club’s beer garden befriended A.Dillo, and soon, he was anointed as the “official mascot” of the headquarters. He was cool again but didn’t understand this new scene where long-haired Hippie types wore cowboy hats and listened to country music. He kept copious notes, sensing that a reversal of attitudes was happening. Cowboys and Hippies learning to fraternize in a peaceful manner.
The little poet was inspired by his energizing surroundings and began putting his thoughts and prose to paper. In a moment of trusting innocence, he exposed his talent and shared his library of work with a few of the beer garden musicians, hoping for a morsel of recognition.
The coterie of musicians was so impressed with his talent that, without asking permission, they confiscated his poems and lyrics and made them their own. That this library of written work came from an Armadillo seemed utterly reasonable. After all, it was Austin in the early 70s, and it’s a well-documented fact that if you remember that time, you weren’t really there.
Within a few months, the musicians and wailers at the headquarters were singing songs about Austin and everything Texas. A handful of local artists were drawing A. Dillo’s likeness on their concert posters to promote the rapidly changing musical landscape. The times were a-changing.
Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings took up residence at the headquarters and became the shaggy royal ambassadors of Austin music. It was a heady time for Texas music.
A. Dillo was heartbroken. He had been bamboozled by the “love your brother and sister” preaching musicians, who were scoundrels, thieves, and false profits. His trust had been violated. The soaring soliloquies, his enlightening prose, his ramblings about Texas, all stolen and plagiarized with no hope of recovery. One cruel musician blatantly took his favorite poem and made a song about “Going Home With The Armadillo.” That was the deepest cut of all. He was a broken critter. ” Oh, the pain of it all,” he wailed.
He soon left the headquarters, again packing his Piggly Wiggly bag and stealing away into the night.
A. Dillo returned to his home burrow in Zilker Park. He reconnected with the inhabitants, giving nightly readings of his new poetry to an enthusiastic and adoring crowd. He was elevated to Homeric status among the park’s animal population, and his name was known to all creatures. He was at peace with himself and his life.
A. Dillo was the unappreciated spark of inspiration for Austin’s progressive music scene of the 1970s. Without his influence and the spread of his stolen words, tunesmiths, musicians, and vocalist all over Austin would still be writing and singing those dreary Three-chord hillbilly songs or tripping out to psychedelic brain fuzz. Jerry Jeff, Willie, Waylon, and the boys would have needed to seek inspiration elsewhere, and the city would not have evolved into Austin as we know it today.
Tall tales have it that some years later, on a stormy night similar to the one that started his journey, A. Dillo was hit by a vehicle while attempting to cross Barton Springs Road.
An elderly lady living in the Shady Grove trailer park scooped up his remains and fed them to her two Chihuahuas. She used the decorated shell as a planter, adorning the steps of her Air-Stream trailer.
The small shell’s bright colors faded over time and sat on the steps of that old trailer for decades. Couples with gray hair walking to one of the many restaurants on the street, grandchildren and dogs in tow, would sometimes notice the shell full of colorful flowers and pause to take a photo. Austinites who had known the little poet or knew the legend would approach the unassuming shrine and pay homage, explaining to their grandchildren the true story of the “real father” of Austin music.
Marfa, Texas, is one leg of the infamous Texas Triangle. Alpine, Fort Davis, and Marfa make up the redneck Bermuda Triangle and all the oddities that spring from its lands.
Momo and I have visited the quirky town a few times and plan another trip, perhaps in December. On our last trip, sitting in Planet Marfa, sipping a Lone Star beer and listening to the locals spin yarns and tall tales about the goings-on around the Chihuahuan Desert. We learned of nuclear-crazed killer Chihuahua dogs, strange lights in the mountains, the ghosts of James Dean and Liz Taylor at the Piasano Hotel, and enchanted horned toads that grant wishes. The young’uns that have relocated from Austin only add to the weirdness of the place.
The one story that folks were reluctant to rattle about was the young girl who vanished from her family’s desert home in 1965. She strolled into the desert behind their home to collect grasshoppers and other insects for a science project and never returned, and not a smidgen of evidence was ever found. A few days later, the parents noticed her prized acoustic guitar was missing from her bedroom, and their pet Longhorn steer, Little Bill, was missing from his stall. The girl often led him out into the desert to graze on the clumps of tasty grasses and plants. Lawman worked to solve the case for two decades, but no leads or culprits were found. Word around town was that space aliens had abducted her and the steer for scientific purposes or worse. No one thought much about the theory since Marfa loved that nonsense.
Sagebrush Sonny Toluse, the Grand Pooh-Bah of all things Marfa, tells the best version of the story. He said to a group around the bar,
“ I was walking my old doggy for his nighttime constitution. I live just outside of town, nearly in the desert, and that’s how I like it. The moon was full, so Rufus and I walked a little farther than usual. I hear guitar music from somewhere. It’s not a loud electric guitar but a soft one, like a Mexican guitar. It’s getting closer, and now I hear singing, the floating voice of a young girl. I stop, turn around, and passing by me; no more than ten feet is this little girl riding a Longhorn steer, playing the guitar, and singing an odd song I didn’t know, something about a Kay Serra or something like that. Behind her, sitting on the steer, is a giant grasshopper about half the size of the girl. I know we have big bugs here in Texas, but this critter was massive, about the size of old Rufus, my dog. The trio rode past me into the fading desert, never paying any attention to us. I was troubled by the encounter, so I went and asked the older sister, who is now an old woman, about the young girl who vanished so long ago. I told her about the ghostly encounter in the desert. She said her sister often rode the Longhorn steer like a horse and would play her favorite tune while sitting atop the beast. It was a Doris Day song, and she sang a bit. “Que Sera Sera, whatever will be, the future’s not ours to see, Que Sera Sera. “
I am not pretending to be a sports writer. No, sir, my knowledge of football and the NFL is as sparse as a Teralingua lawn. I possess the cutting humor—or maybe it’s cutting-edge angst—that allows me to see the man behind the green curtain and pay attention to what he does and doesn’t do.
It’s been almost thirty years since America’s team has been to a Super Bowl game. Still, I would bet the owner, Jerry “Smiley” Jones, has attended more than a few super bowl parties in his ostentatious Dallas neighborhood of Highland Park. The day that smirking hillbilly with a gold card bought my team, the Dallas Cowboys, and fired the legendary Tom Landry was a low point for that shining turd on the hill, known as Dallas, Texas. Landry was almost a saint, a winged Arch Angel in a grey fedora that stalked the sidelines like a lion, pushing his team to victory with a blend of tough love and radar-melting glares. If Landry didn’t like you, no one would. The man should have been allowed to resign instead of a quick meeting and a handful of traveling papers. Smiley Jones, the new owner of the team and the son of Jed Clampett and Ma Kettle drove into Dallas with furniture tied to his Mercedes and grandma strapped to the roof. It’s been a shavit show since.
Jimmy Johnson clashed with Jones from day one. Johnson was a football man, a brilliant coach, and had the best hairstyle in the NFL. Jones was a wannabe coach who knew nothing about football, so the mating was bound to go sour, and it did, but only after a few Super Bowls. Barry Switzer took over and coasted across the finish line for another shiny trophy. Then Jones took over, and the team has been complete crap since. The Cowgirls are on track to deliver their worst season after paying a mediocre, nice guy quarterback 60 million a year for life. Prescott is a has-been; the money has taken over his brain, and he doesn’t care; he’s got the money, and Smiley doesn’t have shavit to show for it. The days of wine and roses are over for the Jones family. What is sad is that after Jerry is laid to rest, there are two more sons, a daughter, and a surgically enhanced wife to take the helm, which should put the city out of its misery.
Don’t misunderstand me; Momo and I are happy with the election result. I feel bad for all the self-serving celebrities who publically promised to move from this country because of the election. Where will they go? Canada or Europe may be their only hope for survival. If they were smart, and there are plenty of them that are not, they would seek to find the magical land of Nirvana. You know, the elusive country hidden in the Tibetan Mountains, a stone’s throw from Xanadu, which would also offer a safe harbor.
Of course, there would be drawbacks. The Monks who run these places don’t care much for Hollywood folks. There wouldn’t be movie studios, movie houses, fancy restaurants, Mercedes dealerships, or elections. In fact, there would be no work for them at all except for pruning the bushes and flowers. They might find true inner peace and illumination by spending the rest of their days there, wearing a flowing white robe as they stroll the mystical gardens accompanied by a mystical grasshopper.
Momo and I gave it some serious thought. Moving to Nirvana or Xanadu sounds warm and fuzzy, like new Christmas pajamas. After many nights of kicking the idea around, she announced that there is no way she can move to a place that doesn’t show “The Wheel of Fortune” and doesn’t have her H-E-B.
My father, Harold Johnny Strawn, Pearl Harbor 1942. When war comes and our country is set upon, young men and women will sacrifice themselves to stop evil.
I came into this world in 1949, a mere flicker of life amidst the portal to the West, Fort Worth. The good nuns who ran the hospital, those stern guardians of order, chose an unconventional method to usher me into my first cries, with a 12-inch wooden ruler upon my fragile backside rather than the customary spank from a soft hand. From that day forward, I held a quiet disdain for nuns, a sentiment my mother echoed with an understanding heart. I emerged into stark confusion—bright lights glaring above, towering figures in black robes scuttling about. A tiny stranger in a bewildering land devoid of any plan, I only wanted to know what the hell just happened and where I was.
I was a happy kid, or so I’m told. My routine was breakfast, playing until lunch, eating a baloney sandwich, washing it down with Kool-Aid, playing some more, eating fresh-baked cookies from Mrs. Mister’s kitchen, watching afternoon cartoons, taking a bath after supper, and going lights out—pretty mundane stuff.
My family rallied behind Roosevelt in the 1930s, their hearts giddy with hope for a better tomorrow. They believed with every fiber of their being that Franklin Delano Roosevelt pulled this nation from the dark abyss of despair during the Great Depression, and perhaps he did in many ways. Pushing the buttons that led the country into World War Two with the Nazis and giving the checkered flag to spank the Japs. The Works Progress Administration sprang forth from his dream, and thousands of men and women found temporary refuge in constructing parks and carving streets in Fort Worth; each brick laid a testament to earning a paycheck. My father had a lovely singing voice, so he filled our home with a constant tempest of musical disdain aimed at Dwight Eisenhower from the first light of dawn until the sun sank low and I was fast under my covers. Eisenhower was a gentle figure, a soft old soul cradling a golf club like a weary king holding his lost crown tightly. Later in life, when I took to the sport, I learned he was a 3 handicapped and was a certified bad-ass who commanded our troops on D-Day.
I was too young to grasp the significance then, but amidst the familiar shouts and wailing, I began carving my political identity. To belong to this raucous, somewhat heathen brood, I learned to hurl adult insults at Eisenhower and shake my tiny fist in solidarity with my kin. It is a truth held dear — a family that goes full bore batshit crazy together stays together. We were a close-knit brood, vowing to all enter the mental hospital together if need be to prop up the sickest of the clan. My father was the first. Politics and his alcoholic mother got the better of his mind, and he was tied down and shocked like Ready Killowwat. He came out of the procedure a Republican, which caused his extended family to shrink back in disgust and horror. The doctors had taken a witty lunatic Democrat and turned him into a pipe-smoking, tweed-jacketed professor of Ryan Street. His demeanor hadn’t changed much, but the burn marks on his temples never faded. I viewed him as a now sophisticated Frankenfather.
Thanks to my electrically converted Pop, I eventually forgot about old Dwight. I learned to read and write and took to my Big Cheif Tablet, hoping to make a mark, or at least a permanent stain, on this planet. Politics went by the wayside, and I lost interest in gnashing, wailing, and blaming fault. I was becoming a writer thanks to my favorite aunt, Norma, who diligently taught me to read and write before entering first grade. I was a bored child prone to fidgeting while daydreaming about Mark Twain and Micky Spillane while sitting at my tiny desk. I had no interest in the little people around me, uneducated booger eating feral children with no purpose.
When John Kennedy was elected president in 1961, I began reading Life Magazine, my mother’s favorite slick-paged rag. He was a nice-looking fellow with an elegant wife. My mother and her friends went limp, noodle-wobbly-legged when discussing Mr. and Mrs. Camalot. I didn’t get it until the Cuban missile crisis came about. He was willing to risk the population of America just to give Castro and Krushev a butt-whooping and the middle finger; “here Jackie, Hold my 80-year-old Scotch and soda and watch this shit”. JFK had some big ones, as attested by Marylin Monroe. All of us school kids knew we were about to be ashes to ashes and dust to dust. Teachers stepped up the nuclear drills, and we spent the better part of each school day hiding under our desks. Why? If the bomb incinerated our school building, then our tiny desk wasn’t going to protect us. That’s when I realized teachers were as stupid as the rest of us Neanderthal knuckle-dragging children.
When the lovely gentleman with the perfect hair took a headshot in downtown Dallas, Texas, I was like most of my kin and friends. We all felt terrible and mourned for a few days, but then it was “back to the basics of life;” Luckenbach, Texas, didn’t exist then, so we made do with Fort Worth.
My cousins and I were heavily into Brother Dave Gardner, the preacher turned comic. His albums were a bulging bag of witty, logical, and borderline racist comedy. America hadn’t learned quite yet to be so easily offended. Brother Dave’s favorite targets were Lyndon Baines Johnson and James Lewis, a fictional black character from the Deep South. LBJ was perhaps the most excellent Politicasterd crook in history, and by damn, he just had to be from the great state of Texas. We agreed; the lumbering goon from the hill country was as slimy as they come.
Around 1965, I began to form my own political beliefs. I was neither a lib nor a conservative, But a white flag on a long stick, wafting in the breeze. Heavily into surfing and playing rock music on my cheap Japanese guitar, I began to listen to the Beatles. I was told that some songs held mysterious political messages. When Sargent Pepper‘s Lonely Hearts Club Band debuted, My bandmates and I recorded the album on a Reel Reel tape machine and played it backward. After that, I was sure the four lads from Liverpool had been sent by Beelzebub to corrupt our nation’s youth. That’s around the same time our drummer, Little Spector, bought into the Hindu religion and found solace in Ravi Shankar and his melodious Sitar. It seemed I was the only one in the band with enough political knowledge to hold a riveting conversation with an adult.
The 1960s found me non-committal to a political party. The long hair and playing in a band were my disguise. Most of my friends and bandmates were in the bag for the liberal side of life; I was a relic, an uncommitted poof in the wind, although I dug Robert Kennedy and was just getting into his mantra when he followed his older brother to the Spirit In the Sky. Now, there was no choice, but “Little Richard” Nixon and his “Five O’clock World” beard shadow and sweaty upper lip creeped me out.
In 1976, I took a direct hit to the head from the mast while sailing my Hobie Cat 16-foot catamaran sailboat in the Gulf of Mexico off the island of Port Aransas. I was sailing by myself, which is not recommended, and was jibing downwind, which is also a no-no, when the mast caught the wind and reversed position, knocking me off the boat. I was wearing a diaper rig attached to the main mast, and that saved my life. What I do remember after the initial shock from that experience was that, like my father and his electrical conversion, I was now a Republican and have been ever since. I wonder if there is voting in Heaven?
After two months in Hawaii, homesickness crept in. Johnny missed his music and his string band, Blind Faith. His prized fiddle stayed behind, locked away in the hall closet. His father assured him that it would be well cared for.
Norma, his sister, wrote each week; her letters were either sharp with bitterness, primarily toward their mother, or filled with hilarity about life at home. His dog, Lady, lingered in his thoughts, her absence a weight; she is old and might not be alive when he returns.
Once again, in the clutch of her elixirs and perhaps something more potent, his mother continued her assault by missives. Johnny read a few, sensing something wrong. She sounded unsteady, lost. Her words were jagged, and he promised himself no more. He would not carry the burden of the guilt she heaped upon him. Her pen was poison.
A music store sold him a fiddle for ten dollars. The owner was an old Korean man who made a few adjustments, adding new strings and setting the bridge and sound post just right. It did not sound as sweet as his own, but now he had a fiddle, giving him a spring in his step. He needed musicians. His commanding officer, walking by the barrack, heard Johnny practicing. Whenever he had spare time, he sat on a wooden crate under the shade of a Koa tree behind the barracks, entertaining the birds perched in the tree. The officer from the South Texas town of Corpus Christi offered to connect him with musicians he knew. True to his word, two sailors came to Johnny’s Quonset Hut the next day. One was a guitar player named Jerry Elliot, a fellow Texan, and the other was Buzz Burnam, who played the doghouse bass fiddle. Buzz, a Western Swing musician from Albuquerque, knew a few other musicians who might be interested in jamming. They set a practice day and time to meet under the Koa tree. Johnny’s homesickness eased a bit.
A letter from Le’Petite Fromage gave Johnny another lift. She and her husband, Montrose, the trumpet player from Sister Aimee’s orchestra, had a baby child named Savon, an old Cajun family name. They planned to stay in Chigger Bayou, and she would sing in her father’s band if and when he returned from California. Her mother, Big Mamu, said life was better without him underfoot. She had told Johnny many times that girls in the Bayou are expected to be married with a child on each hip by the age of eighteen. Tradition got the best of her. Blind Faith was finished. It was a good run while it lasted.
Sunday was a day for rest, even amid the chaos of war. The sailors moved through the day with light duty on the Sabbath, their shoulders eased, and their spirits lifted after a good dose of religion found in the island’s many churches. After lunch, the two musicians arrived, bringing two more as promised, one bearing a saxophone, the other a snare drum with one cymbal. They played, and the music flowed—Western swing, big band, island tunes. It went on for hours. They were asked to play at the Officers Club in the Royal Hawaiian Hotel a few days later. The pay was meager, but they were musicians, and they knew the worth of their work was in the joy it brought, not the currency it earned.
A letter came from Sister Aimee McPherson. It told Johnny about Blind Jelly Roll. He had been hit by a car. The new seeing-eye dog, following barking directions from the nearly blind Pancho Villa, led them across a busy street. They walked straight into the path of a vehicle. Everyone survived, but Blind Jelly Roll broke his left arm. His hand was crushed under the tires. It seemed unlikely he would ever play the blues again. She would keep him on as the music director and spiritual advisor. She loved that old black man and his ill-tempered Chihuahua deeply.
Sometimes, good luck strikes like lightning hitting the same ground. Johnny felt it. His C.O. asked him to help with the weekly base paper. This led him to work at the Pearl City News when off duty. He became the leading writer. Two sailors he knew were on staff, too. The pay was little, but he saved every cent until he had a decent stack of bills. He rented a lot in downtown. Then, he bought two used cars from an officer. They sat there for sale. The drugstore next door took names for those who inquired, and Johnny made appointments to sell. Two cars turned to three, then five, then ten. Two young Hawaiian boys washed them twice a week. Johnny sat beneath a small canopy that served as his office. He sold cars, saved money, bought more, and eventually acquired the lot and four more on that block. In a year, he owned a few small buildings and all remaining vacant lots—almost an entire city block in east downtown Honolulu. After his Navy discharge, he rented a room in a house owned by the old Korean man who owned the music store. He was taken aback when he met the man’s young granddaughter, who was the same age as him. They both sported arrows in their backs, shot by the mythical fairy, Cupid. Returning to Los Angeles was now out of the question.
Notes From The Cactus Patch 