Jazz Record Found after long search

Last June 2012, I went to the Jazz Record Mart: 27 East Illinois Ave., in downtown, Chicago. It was filled wall to wall with vintage jazz and blues vinyl records and posters. I just happened to find the store while visiting Chicago. I spent two hours in there looking at albums and listening to a few cuts. This was the funnest thing I did on my whole trip to Chicago. This was on the same day I ate an Italian Beef Sandwich which was very delicious.  I found an album in there that I have been looking for for a long time; that I once owned on an 8 track tape which broke long ago.  The album is called Powerhouse by the Jazz Crusaders, recorded in 1968.  This was probably the first jazz album that I ever owned and I have not heard it for over thirty years.  I played it when I got back home to Houston and it sounds as good as it ever did. It is incredible that I had to travel so far to make this discovery. I have over the years purchased a few other Jazz Crusader albums, but Powerhouse is by far the best of their early work. I love old record stores; may they never completely disappear.

The Street Van Man (Part 3) "Vantastic Voyage"

My 1975 Dodge Tradesman-100 was still a new vehicle, just two years old and sturdy.    I remember saying goodbye to my mother right in front of our house in Orange, New Jersey and driving off at around 3:00 p.m. on a weekday. There is a reason why we left so late, but that is another story. We made our way to Interstate 80 near Teaneck, New Jersey -where the Isley Brothers supposedly lived and our journey began. Our destination was Los Angeles, California so we headed west on I-80. There were just three of us trucking out of town: my friend Larry age 25, my brother Martin 24 and yours truly age 23.  This road trip out to the west coast would be the furthest either of us had ever driven –Two thousand, eight hundred (2,800) miles one way – and this was our first road trip in a 'Street Van.'

A street van is unlike an ordinary car or station wagon. It gave us awesome flexibility with plenty of elbow room to move about inside; two small beds; a small table and privacy to change clothes in and to sleep in overnight. It was very comfortable inside of my van even in some of the hottest parts of the country. The windows were tinted, we had AC and most of the windows could be opened. In a van like mine you also ride higher up than in a car and the front windshield was very large which gave us a great almost panoramic view. We could even change drivers without stopping! Okay, I tried that driver switching thing only once while moving and definitely not on the highway.

The California trip wasn't originally my idea.  It was my friend Larry who first proposed we take a road trip out to California to transport a guitar amplifier to his brother Romeo who had moved out to LA to make music.  The plan seemed feasible to me and as I was listening to Larry talk, I was thinking furiously, ‘I have the wheels, I love the road, I have vacation time off from work at INA, why not, why the hell not!?’ The three of us caught  road fever right then and there and I didn't hesitate to say ‘let’s go’ and that was the birth of our dream road trip to California.

The very next day, I started prepping my van for the voyage. The first thing I needed to do was to replace the horn. The Dodge Tradesman van had a very puny sounding factory horn that was a little bit embarrassing to blow. The solution was to install two used Cadillac horns I found in a junkyard. I attached the horns under the hood then wired them to a large push button I installed on my van’s dashboard. The new horn button was just to the left of the steering wheel column and within easy reach of my left hand. Now I had a much louder, manlier horn for my van that I thought sounded pretty cool.  Maybe not as cool as those air horns I'd seen mounted on the roofs of some other vans; but I had to save my money for the trip.

Next, I got together some cross country maps to plan with and my dad  helped us with some of the more technical aspects of our route.  My two travel companions and I wanted to make a few brief stops along the way to see some well-known sights -Chicago, The Great Salt Lake, The Grand Canyon and Las Vegas. Once we reached the west coast we would be touring and spending at least a week in both southern and northern California. Last but not least on my list, was to record some riding music. You just can’t have a great adventure without also having a great soundtrack, right? ‘Right on to the Max!’ After all we were going to be doing some Hollywood Swinging- and driving clear across the country.  I got right down to recording our cruising music on audio cassette tapes and this proved to be one of my best decisions. To this day whenever I hear a tune from that playlist my mind and my emotions can’t help but travel back to one of our finest hours; our California road trip adventure. This was the seventies so I had cassette tapes the long (120) minute ones loaded with music from The Commodores (blue album), Johnny Guitar Watson's A Real Mother for you, and mixed tapes of cuts like, Float On -The Floaters, Coco - Joe Thomas, Sassafras Girl - Pleasure, Free As the Wind - The Crusaders, some Fleetwood Mac - Dreams, Steely Dan - Royal Scam and Aja, Lowdown - Boz Scaggs, some Earth Wind and Fire cuts and so much more. Of course the music helped us to stay awake over long and lonely stretches of road as we traveled day and night to get to the coast without any overnight stops.  My companions and I would each take a four hour shift of driving while the guy riding shot gun also stayed mostly awake, to help the driver to stay awake. The third guy was lucky, he was able to get four hours of uninterrupted sack time if he wanted to.

To the right is an early photo of my Dodge van while being customized in 1976. You can see  in the photo that there was a day bed platform in the rear of the van and a side couch platform with enough room to stretch out on. The spare and jack were underneath the rear day bed platform which also left room for other things no taller than twelve inches tall. There was additional storage under the side couch and even more storage room for bulky luggage, coolers and whatever else we wanted to bring in the trunk space behind the rear day bed.  You could get to the trunk space either from the inside or through the outside rear doors.

All of that storage space in my van would come in handy on our long road trip.  We would need to bring along sleeping bags, towels to wash up with and lots of clothes of course.  We were going to need our clothes to go hang out in California discos and to make the right impression in diverse situations. We were even prepared for going on job interviews so my brother and I brought along a suit and tie just in case. As for food provisions we didn't store up any food in the van because we were going to live off the land and eat fast food. What did we care, we were young.  Food however, latter proved to be a major drain on our money. 

Our road trip westbound out of New Jersey had a few notable brief stops. The first was a  thirty minute stop in Chicago Illinois. We arrived very early in the morning around five a.m. just when the city was waking up. We got off the interstate in downtown which kind of reminded me of New York City but with fewer people. After spotting an open diner we headed over to it and went inside to order just coffee. We sat in the van with our coffee watching  a checkered hatted policeman directing traffic. The cop seemed like he had been doing this for a long time and looked old enough to retire. We drove back on to the elevated freeway and continued on our journey West on I-80. That was my time and my first impression of Chicago, Illinois. After that would come a twenty four hour stretch of non-stop driving broken up into four hour shifts between the three of us. After Illinois we drove through the Iowa prairies in which we saw a lot of corn fields and then Nebraska which looked the same as Iowa, then on through Wyoming but at night so we couldn't see much. Mostly I just remember the Wyoming Bucking Horse and Rider image on the license plates of the cars on the road although the terrain was much higher then Nebraska and getting mountainous.  Early the next morning we passed through a high mountain range and arrived in Salt Lake City, Utah. I mentioned that three of us rode out to Los Angeles. Larry, Martin and me. However Larry flew back to New Jersey from LA and it was just Martin and I that continued on up the coast to San Francisco and Oakland and stayed for a couple more weeks before returning to New Jersey.  It was during this Northern California segment of the journey where we had the most fun and experienced the most interesting situations.  We met people and made friends in Oakland and at UC Berkeley. We truly lived off the land in my van, parked it overnight on streets to sleep in, hung out in Oakland parks for fun during the day and there were kind hearted people who took care of us two brothers from New Jersey. Some  showed us around and some even brought us food. Still others let us wash our clothes at their apartments and let us take showers. 

More about our finances. I remember that my brother and I had to hit my dad up for some additional funds not twice but three times before we made it back home to New Jersey. The first Western Union cash received from my dad was while we were in Los Angeles California. A week later we were in Oakland CA and needed more money because we wanted to stay out there a little longer. The third and last time we hit our dad up was while we were finally on our way home. We ran out of money on the way and  had to stop in Omaha, Nebraska and asked him to wire us some more money. I think he felt sorry for us and did not complain. He just wired us some more money since as he put it; we were right dab in the middle of the country without a dime to get home. Thank you dad I know you loved us and wanted us to get back home safely. 

After leaving Omaha we made it all the way to Scranton, Pennsylvania where our cousin Lin Marie and her husband Chester Horn lived. We arrived there early in the morning and they fed us breakfast. Chester asked us how we were doing for money and we admitted that we were dry so he gave us enough gas money to fill our gas  tank one last time. At this point in time we were only 107 miles away from home. We got going after that but we faced one more unplanned obstacle. There was a one dollar toll on the Delaware Water Gap Bridge on (I-80) between PA and NJ but unfortunately we were literally broke as we approached the bridge! As Lady Luck would have it, I had one Silver Dollar coin that I had won from a slot machine in Las Vegas. We had made a quick stop in Vegas on our trip out to California. We got there after midnight and checked out one of the casinos and I won a silver dollar coin. I flipped my lucky coin over to the toll booth attendant and we crossed over the border and kept going. We only had two more hours to go before we reached our home in Orange NJ some time around 1:30 PM. I think it was was either on a Saturday or a Sunday. 

My brother Martin and I were really inspired by our road trip and we would never be the same. We were wiser and fearless and also learned that we had to be much more responsible with money. Also we had seen the whole country from coast to coast and we loved the land and we had become California Dreamers. Now that we had seen more of what this country has to offer, there was no question in our minds that we would leave New Jersey to go back out there to meet our destinies. That is what we did the very next year however we detoured to Houston, Texas instead of going to California. Years later we are still living in Houston but I have no regrets. I found love head over heels, in Texas and got married to my soulmate and we had two children and put down roots. Martin did too and neither one of us has moved to California.  I have been back there to visit many times over the years and that is enough. Each time I've been back it has been fun; but as the words in the Sade song say; "It's never as good as the first time."

That's me in the dark glasses having fun in my van just days before my Cali road trip in 1977.

Here I am posing with my van cigarette in hand while doing some sight seeing in the Los Angeles foot hills, travel bug screen still installed on my grill, New Jersey plates.   

Pacific Coast view out my window

Oakland California friend admiring the inside of my van

Two Oakland friends with the Street Van man

 (The Street Van Man will return.)

The Substitute Teacher (Part 1.)

I am not a real teacher at all, my real job has nothing to do with education, I am just a substitute teacher. Today I am a substitute teacher at Springhill High School, a local high school in a suburb of Houston, Texas.  At this very moment twenty-six boys and girls are under my supervision in an Advisory period which lasts from 9:40 a.m. till 11:15 a.m. An Advisory period is not a class for learning at all. It is like a study hall period where you park students for awhile ostensibly to give them study time for tests or to do homework. Naturally none of this gang of twenty-six is doing anything like studying. So in essence I am just an Advisory Policeman. Here just to keep order and to prevent them from hurting each other. 

The demographic make up of this school is 90% African American and 10% white or Hispanic. Springhill High it is not an inner city school in a slum or ghetto sometimes known as Soulsville. I have only heard of a ghetto referred to as “Soulsville” one time, and that was on an Isaac Hayes album.  The album was called “Theme from Shaft” and there is a song on the album called “Soulsville” that I like very much.

The kids may talk here in this Advisory Period and so they talk, drum on their desks, rap (sing) and joke around a lot because they have been given an inch of freedom and so they take a yard. The TV is on showing a largely ignored historical program about Malcolm, Martin and Meredith. I glance at it some while my eyes rove up and down the aisles of desks observing my charges. Just before the black history program came on there was a student produced music program on. The student program featured students from this high school singing popular songs. They sounded quite good for lip singers and the class gave them their rapt attention and even required me to turn the volume way up. It is nice to see these sons and daughters of people my age at school albeit at play. They are young, energetic, social, enthusiastic and striving to be fly.  Was I ever like that, fly? Or was I always reserved, serious, studious, pragmatic, stoic and intensely boring all of my life.

So far I have had to speak to three boys and one girl in the classroom about their over social behavior. One girl I had been warned about by another teacher. I was warned to not give her a hall pass under any circumstances and to not let her outside of the classroom without an escort. The other teacher didn’t mention the reason why.

The Patience of Solomon

Alright so your waiting in line at the grocery store and the customer two places ahead of you is holding up the line because of a price check.  You on other hand have just three items to pay for and you are annoyed at the clown holding up the line. Never mind that it’s not their fault the price is missing,  you still think it’s their fault so your impatience remains.

Or you are in a clothing store call it Ross (Dress for Less) and this time there is a lady ahead of you in line just taking her sweet time talking away about her granddaughters with the checkout clerk.  Any minute now you are expecting her to pull out the photos and just destroy the rest of your day.  You feel a seething anger building up inside you but if only you could see your face it would not be pretty.

Both of these situations and others like these or driving situations require you to control yourself right? The following is a simple memory jog to nudge you into the right kind of thinking.  When I am losing my patience, it helps me to lightheartedly tell myself “I shall have the patience of Solomon!”



You know the biblical king, son of King David. Almost instantly afterwards I can be well and patient again and feel kingly for being so patient.

“What are you talking about?” You’ll ask me in a scornful tone that suggests  that I’m an idiot. “Everybody knows that King Solomon was renowned for his wisdom, not for his patience. He may have been a very impatient guy in his day!” To this I shall calmly reply, “I know, right? But perhaps, you have forgotten what the bible  says. Look into it, you’ll see for yourself that patience is wisdom and wisdom is patience.”  

“No!  It doesn't say that." By now you'll be raising your voice and waiving your arms in the air like you just don’t care.  In a patient reply to your rant I’ll say further, "Read 1 Kings 3:1-28 and Proverbs1:1 and what follows. Then, maybe the next time you're inconvenienced to wait you can tell  yourself with a smile that, "I shall have the patience of Solomon!"   Then you will be able to act wisely and feel kingly by doing so." May this be a whole new start for you.

Have a blessed day

People often say to me “have a blessed day” as a nice social Christian thing to say in parting. I completely agree that we are blessed in more ways than we even know of on a daily basis. On some days however we can have an exceptionally blessed day.  I remember a particular blessed day that happened during Mardi Gras, in New Orleans in 1981. This was the day our daughter was conceived.  My wife and I had loose plans for having our first child after law school but our daughter was born during my second year of law school. We jokingly said that she was an accident but that was not true.  It was only our ignorance of the spiritual truths in the bible speaking.  Now we know that God incredibly blessed our day by ordaining our daughter’s birth date; Psalm 139:13-16 and Jeremiah 1:5. We also know that God determined the very time for our daughter to be born and where she would live; Acts17:26. 

We rejoiced and have loved our baby from the very beginning even before she was born. We are such lucky people to have been blessed with our daughter and also with our son who was born a few years later. It is my hope and prayer that people everywhere will be strong enough to handle the blessing of parenthood. But should you lack the strength God will generously provide all the strength you need. Thank you and  have a blessed day.

Overcoming adversity -Part 1

Okay we are born, we have a childhood, go to school, get older and then it becomes time for us to make choices. Could a mistake made in high school keep you from reaching your goals in life? Yes it can. Suppose you were arrested for shoplifting or some other petty criminal offense. The arrest record and the court record can become a black mark against your future. Anyone’s past criminal record can affect their ability to get a job, rent an apartment, gain credit, obtain student loans and prevent them from obtaining a professional license.  Not all types of criminal records are eligible so you should talk to a lawyer to see if you qualify for what we call in Texas an expungement (your record is erased) or  a non-disclosure (your record is sealed). It is a wise thing to do and it will feel great to finally get your record cleared.

Just So That You Know

• Just so that you know we are happy being empty nesters but we’re also glad we have children. 

• JSTYK after you turned twelve we didn’t get any dumber but hopefully you got smarter.
• JSTYK we were always cheesy but in a cool way.
• JSTYK your old rooms are no longer your old rooms, they are ours now.
• JSTYK we cried at your wedding because we were happy to hand you over to someone else’s care.
• JSTYK we want grand children NOW but we will try to be patient.
• JSTYK we have years of experience and will be happy to give advice sometimes without being asked.
• JSTYK we really do want you to stay in touch.
•  JSTYK we want you to visit us often.
• JSTYK bring the kids when you visit; but your pets you can leave at home.
• JSTYK we love you just as much today as when you were little.