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Pat's Blog

My Life of Crime Chapter 2

It was a summer night. I was about 16. My brother Mike was 18. We were coming home from somewhere, crossing the lawn at the Minnie St. house. Suddenly we hear a voice. It's coming from the bush across the street. "Fitz...Fitz!" Then we see a head peak out. It's Mike's old friend "Frankie" (not his real name). Frankie was a bad kid if ever you saw one. Hell bent for nowhere. Mike ran across the street to talk to him for a second then looked up and down the street. They both ran across the street and headed around the back. As they ran I could see that Frankie's hands were handcuffed. I followed them around the back, through the back door and downstairs to our room. Frankie had been in jail for something and had apparently slipped through the bars that where across a window. We got tools. We started hammering, chiseling, filing his handcuffs and eventually snapped the chain. Mike went upstairs and made a few phone calls and eventually someone arrived and took Frankie away. End of story.

Not so fast. We later heard he holed up in a cabin somewhere outside of town and was apprehended there the next day. Cue the cops. Have them pull up in our driveway. Cue Dad, have him spend a considerable amount of time in the cop car talking them out of charging us with aiding and abetting a criminal.

20 years or so later, I met one of Frankie's sisters at the Howling Dog Saloon. I got around to asking what happened to her brother. "Oh, haven't you heard? He did some time in prison then got religion and became a priest!" Amazing. Doing time was certainly where he was headed if any kid was but what a miraculous turnaround! A bit later I met someone that knew him and I mentioned this. He laughed and said, "A priest? Are you kidding? Where did you hear that? Hell no! He died in prison. Syphilus I think."

Never did find someone else to break his chains I guess.

.: Monday, September 15, 2008

As inscribed in the Annual Convention Congress of the Hoboes of America held on August 8, 1894 at the Hotel Alden, 917 Market St., Chicago Illinois;

1.-Decide your own life, don't let another person run or rule you.

2.-When in town, always respect the local law and officials, and try to be a gentleman at all times.

3.-Don't take advantage of someone who is in a vulnerable situation, locals or other hobos.

4.-Always try to find work, even if temporary, and always seek out jobs nobody wants. By doing so you not only help a business along, but insure employment should you return to that town again.

5.-When no employment is available, make your own work by using your added talents at crafts.

6.-Do not allow yourself to become a stupid drunk and set a bad example for locals treatment of other hobos.

7.-When jungling in town, respect handouts, do not wear them out, another hobo will be coming along who will need them as bad, if not worse than you.

8.-Always respect nature, do not leave garbage where you are jungling.

9.-If in a community jungle, always pitch in and help.

10.-Try to stay clean, and boil up wherever possible.

11.-When traveling, ride your train respectfully, take no personal chances, cause no problems with the operating crew or host railroad, act like an extra crew member.

12.-Do not cause problems in a train yard, Another hobo will be coming along who will need passage thru that yard.

13.-Do not allow other hobos to molest children, expose to authorities all molesters, they are the worst garbage to infest any society.

14.-Help all runaway children, and try to induce them to return home.

15.-Help your fellow hobos whenever and wherever needed, you may need their help someday.

16.-If present at a hobo court and you have testimony, give it, whether for or against the accused, your voice counts!

.: Friday, September 12, 2008

My Life Of Crime Chapter 1

My dad had a job for us. He wanted me and my brother Mike to paint the store. I'm, oh, say, twelve. Mike's 14. The store is the 26th Market, infamous all night store at 26th and Cushman in the days before 7-11s. Infamous for, among other things, getting robbed more than any other business in town in the late '50s and 60's. It took me a long time as a kid to realize that my folks owned the building but not the business. (They later took over the business too when the other couple that ran it took off with the money and left the debt.) At this time they still just owned the building. And the building needed a paint job. Dad got us a ladder or two and some paint and brushes and we laid into it. Dispatched the lower floor of the building pretty quickly. The second floor was only half of the first floor so we could stand on the 1st floor roof and paint. That's when the trouble started. On the second floor we could look through a couple windows into the second story which was a storage room for the liquor store. As soon as my brother saw the cases of whiskey he knew what we had to do. We pried open the window and lifted out a case of Canadian Club. Got it down the ladder and into the bushes. That's all I knew about it at the time. What I later found out was that Mike took the case of whiskey to a party in Slaterville. By this act he was king...for a while. And all his teen-aged subjects at the party proceeded to get very, very soused. So much so that they must have made a bit of a ruckus. Cops were called. And multiple drunk kids were more than happy to answer the cop's question,"Where did you get the booze?" with a resounding greek chorus of "Mike Fitzgerald!"

So a couple days later, no doubt after my dad had what was to become a all-too-commom confab with the police that endeared him to them and got us off the hook, my brother informed me that sometime during our painting workday, an officer would be coming to talk to us separately. And we'd better have our stories straight. No problem. When the officer arrived we each went to the squad car and told our story:

"Well, officer, we were painting and it was real hot and we got tired and we came down to rest over there and Mike saw an old empty box in the bushes and he kicked it and we found out it wasn't emptyl."

Well it was iron clad. Them coppers had nothing on the Fitzgerald boys and they knew it. All they could do was write it up and say goodbye. Thus began our life of crime.

.: Monday, July 14, 2008

One of the beats I teach all my drum students early on in our lessons is what's known as the Bo Diddley beat. It introduces syncopation to them. In other words, soul. Soul was what Bo Diddley was all about. Primitive, coveralls-and-a-mule, get-down soul. He played his guitar like a drum and it's only right that the infectious beat of "Willie and the Hand Jive" (Johnny Otis) and "Not Fade Away" (Buddy Holly) to say nothing of the countless early songs of the Diddley Daddy himself should be named after him. Robin & I saw him in Tucson once. He was playing with a local pickup band of white boys, just like Chuck Berry was know to do (Springsteen was in one of those pickup bands as a youngster). They were doing a serviceable job. It's ain't easy, believe it or not, for most rock musicians to play one chord for a long time and Bo is all about one chord when one chord is all you need. Finally, late in the show, he must have gotten tired of the drummer just keeping the beat and not pushing it and he set down his guitar mid-song, went back to the drums, took the sticks from the surprised drummer, sat down and, at the same tempo, pushed that song into overdrive.

That same show, Robin and our pal, Mojo, went backstage to meet the man hisself. They found him in with his paw in a bucket of KFC. He took that same greasy hand out and greeted Robin with it, taking her hand and not wanting to let it go. After a courtesy minute or so, Robin, well, slipped out of his grasp.

Our friend Lindy Raines relates that Anchorage legend Gary Sloan once told this story: Years ago Bo came to Anchorage to play at a big hall there. Before the show, they went to find Bo and discovered smoke in the backstage hallways. They made it to his dressing room and opened the door and more smoke poured out of the room. There stood Diddley with a little electric burner frying chicken! The man loved his fried chicken.

Speaking of Mojo, here's a quote from him:

"My favorite recorded Bo moment: in the middle of "Can't Judge a Book," Bo shouts out, "How am I doin', baby? You've got your radio turned too low. Turn it UP!" Only case I've ever heard where the artist reaches out to directly address and instruct the listener on how to operate the sound system."

Bo Diddley came to Fairbanks a few years ago, playing outside at the Blue Loon. Good crowd. Bo played his funky jams for more than an hour before finally the band started into the Bo Diddley beat. They hit that beat for the longest time before Bo stepped up to the mic. The 70 year old sang: "I'm gonna steal your girlfriend."

And once more from Mojo: "Bo never sold out and he never stopped. He was my hero. He was one of my gods. Bo Diddley will never die".

Amen.

.: Tuesday, June 3, 2008

The hot DJ in town in my pre-teen days was Leapin' Lee Russell. He played the hits and was young enough to talk to kids and relate to them in roughly their own language. He also had a show broadcast from the Tik Tok Drive-in which stood on the corner of Minnie St. and the (old) Steese Highway. (Curiously, it's now a residence near the end of the pavement on Gilmore Trail, stylish stlanted windows and all.) They built a DJ booth on top of the "flattop" roof and cars parked around and turned up their radios while the shakes and burgers (and probably a bottle or two) flew. Sometimes bands would play on the same roof next to the booth. But when I was teenager a new disc jockey was coming up. Jumpin' Jack Foley took over the late show and also spun the hits and took dedications too. My association with him began when I won a name-that-tune segment of his show, correctly identifying "Five O'clock World" by the Vogues. (This great ode to the workingaday world later became a staple of The Flyers' repetoire at the Howling Dog Saloon.) I still have that 45 with my name on it written in Jack's handwriting. A while later some kid said, "Hey, let's go up to KFAR and see Jack Foley. They don't mind if you visit." So up we go. I don't remember why I hit it off with Jack but I did and he was a bit unhappy with the kid who took dedications for him. A bit slow and with bad handwriting. Jack ask me to try it out and my printing was legible so I got the job. No money but what perks! I got to talk to all the kids in town. I got to talk to all the girls in town. Plus regularly got a load of 45's that the rather conservative Wee Willy Wally, program manager, would not allow to be played. Right...some of the best stuff from the time like "Keep On Runnin'" by the Spencer Davis Group and "Sha La La La Lee" by the Small Faces. So at 14 I was plugged in. And I was beginning to play drums in bands. Jack and I drove around town in his big ol' car ('cause he was a big guy --about 300 lbs.) and discussed music constantly. I got to introduce songs on the air and even took the test and got my radio license, though I decided, much like my experience with television later at KUAC, that the politics & egos were over the top and I would much rather deal with musicians and rock and roll music. Go figure: musicians with less ego that broadcasters. I later wrote a song called "Jack Foley" after he left town for the sunny pastures of Anchorage. "The radio died when you left here Jack. Tell me when in the hell are you comin' back..."

.: Sunday, May 18, 2008

Rest In Peace Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. One helluva salesman. I first became aware of the Maharishi, and Transcendental Meditation like many others at the time-- through the Beatles. Figured if it was good enough for them... So I paid my money when the circus came to town and went through a lecture or two and graduated to the mantra ceremony. One by one each of us was taken into a back room behind a lecture hall at the UAF into a room with candles and incense (no stranger to that was I) and framed photographs of the Maharishi and some other long haired, long bearded fellow whose picture was bigger. I figured it was the Maharishi's teacher, the big magilla magic salesmen of them all. I was told, gently, to kneel and the Mantra (the Mantra!) was whispered in my ear. We had been told in the lectures of the great power of the Mantra and that it was personalized for each of us and to never, never utter it to another or it would lose it's magic power. Armed with my Mantra I was now ready to transcend. I went home to my parent's house where I was still living in the basement and began meditating. The only catch was that I could hear all the walking around and banging and talking upstairs. I went up and asked my folks and my sisters and brother if I could just have 20 minutes of quiet, pulleeze! No good. I could hear them whisper and walking with stocking feet. I felt myself becoming very un-transcendental. Back I go for the checkup lecture and to make sure we had our our personal Mantra correct. It was then that I found that external sounds should not bother us and that we should just go back to the mantra when we found our minds wandering. That was going to make everything a lot easier. Then one by one we were beckoned to the left or right side of the stage where one of the teachers sat on a chair. Quietly (don't let anyone else hear!) each meditator spoke their Mantra to the teacher. It was then that I noticed something very curious. It appeared that, as I read their lips, each students Mantra was actually the same as mine! Here I will say that the Mantra and it's meditative use, and calming effect, works wonderfully and has served me for decades. But it was at that moment that I realized that, just as Norman Vincent Peale's "Power of Positive Thinking" is constantly repackaged in self-help books under a new name, TM was repackaging meditation in a new hip version with just enough mysticism to appeal to American hippies and searchers. Years later, I had occasion several times to speak to someone who had also gone through TM and I would tell this story. And when I'd get to the end and say, "I'll bet our Mantras are the same...", they'd fall over themselves to stop me, to save me from losing the Mantra's power. And each time their mouth would drop open when they'd hear their own personal mantra come out of my mouth. So rest in peace Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. One helluva salesmen. And by the way, let me close by saying to one and all, loudly and proudly: "I-ing!"

.: Tuesday, April 15, 2008

It's almost time for the Ice Carving competition. A beautiful contest and exhibit. I love it not only for the incredible sculptures but for the fact that it's a winter thing., But they don't talk much now about how it came about back in the 1980's. There had been ice thrones and some rudimentary carvings associated with the great ice festivals in the 40' sand 50's and some folks were trying to kickstart the festival again. Trouble was, someone associated with the organization said that the ice up here was bad for carving and proposed to spend $27,000 dollars trucking ice up from Illinois. Can you imagine the son of an iceman getting wind of that in an editorial in the New Miner(1/29/88) that read, in part:

"At first blush, the plan to ship 200 blocks of ice from Chicago to Fairbanks to build ice scultures for the Ice Festival may seem a bit outlandish. Why would anyone want to ship ice to Fairbanks?

(The) special event director for the Greater Fairbanks Chamber of Commerce, (who) is organizing the Ice Festival has some good reasons. She convinced us that the idea not only makes sense but is well worth the $27,000 (about $48, 500 today-Pat) the project will cost."

************

"The ice available locally apperently is too oxygenated to serve as good material for ice sculptures."

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"The $27.000 would also pay the cost of bringing special teams of skilled ice carvers from China and Chicago to sculpt the ice."
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And I wrote a letter to the editor saying:

To the editor:

My father, Bill Fitzgerald, owned City Ice Service, now closed, that provided ice for many winter festivals in Fairbanks during the '50s and early '60s. Through the years, both in person and in photographs, I've seen many intriguing ice sculpture from those festivals done by local amateurs with local ice. I'm sure the Ice Festival Committee means well. I'm sure they want to put on a festival to top all festivals but $27,000 to import ice and pro sculptors? Folks, keep your donations in your pockets and we'll also save ourselves a hearty laugh from the rest of the country when they find out about this one.

Sincerely, Pat Fitzgerald

The next day, Problem Corner, that stalwart of interactive radio on what was then KFAR manned by the inimitable Wee Willie Wally, was bombarded with phone calls from old timers saying, in effect, "What the hell kinda crazy business is this?" The ice carnival organization seemed to get the message and called my dad, then 87, to ask how he cut ice all those years. He showed them his saw (a one of a kind device with a small engine and a 4' rotary blade), they got it running and headed out to a local gravel pit and he showed them how it was done. They used the saw for a while (I wish I could find it now) and lo and behold, they eventually found that the ice we have here is some of the best in the world for ice carving. Who knows how much money would have been spent importing ice before they found that out. But you know, they should have known that when you need some help concerning Alaskan things like ice, snow, & getting gold out of the ground and such, first get the old timers riled up and then look out: The ice man cometh.

.: Tuesday, March 11, 2008

I'm thinking today about those things you might have seen or experienced when you were a kid that seem so long ago and unreal that you wonder if you made them up. Like the kid who used to come by our place at 26th & Cushman to swing on our swing. A helluva swing too. A big thick board between two buildings. Seems like it was about 15 feet up in the air (but then I was only 4 ft. tall at the time). But the kid said he could go in a complete circle on the swing and damned if one day he didn't. At least that's how I remember it. He swung and he swung and he swung and went over the top of the board and back around. The only other thing I remember, and I don't know if it happened on our swing or elswhere, is that he exited the swing like we always did, by letting go and flying into the air. Only he came down on a board with a nail in it and it went right through his foot. He perfomed a spectacular feat but got it in the end. So like life.
Then there was the incident at the swimming hole in Indiana. All of my relatives live in Fort Wayne, Indiana. I was visiting and about 12. Several families had cabins at Long Lake north of town and nearby was a gravel pit that we swam in. On the other side of the pit from the regular beach were several tall trees and a rope hooked to some branches so that you could swing out and drop into the deep water. We were having a lot of fun one day when we heard a racket on top of the high,steep bank that rose steeply from the trees and water, maybe 30 feet vertically. Looking up we saw the front of an automobile just over the edge and a whole lot of banging of metal. In a short while, the car came diving down the cliff with the driver side door open and a twenty something with his shirt off riding it down. It came to a stop on the shoreline and several more men and woman came down the cliff. The men proceeded to take sledgehammers to the doors and windows and while this was happening a woman in a swimsuit top and shorts played with a large boa constrictor, letting it weave around her neck and arms. After about 10 or 15 minutes of this, no doubt with me and the rest of the kids standing there with our mouths open, they pushed the car into the gravel pit and as it bubbled out of sight they climbed back up the cliff and disappeared. Silence. Silence for a long time. Then someone said "Holy Shit!" We weren't sure ourselves that we actually saw it but one of the kids told the cops and we got to go back to the pit and watch a scuba diver go in, come back up and say, "There's a car down there alright." Nowadays I know what had happened that day because not long after I saw something like it in a film they showed us in school: Yep, it had to be Wild Eyed Hippies on LSD!

.: Wednesday, February 20, 2008

When the temperature drops to 40 or 50 below mechanical things give up the ghost. They squeal and complain and that little piece of wire with a small fracture in it separates and something stops. It was a cold miserable winter long ago. I was driving from somewhere to somewhere, down first avenue to Cowles. Lucky for me the truck was running. A 1968 Ford F250 4-wheel drive I called it Ol' Blue that was my Dad's but that he gave me in a trade for my car (don't remember what that was but as always he gave me the better deal.) Ol' Blue had a problem that plagued me all the time I had it. The main gear in the transmission had a tooth missing and that caused the Bendix spring in the starter to eventually go out. I became an expert at the cheaper repair. I changed the Bendix spring. Because the truck was so big I could easily get under it and take out the starter, replace the Bendix and I'd be good to go for a time. Trouble was I wound up doing it at 30, 40, 50 below alot. Loosen a bolt, go in and warm up, loosen another bolt, warm up. Take it out, replace the Bendix, put it back in one bolt at a time only with the weight against me.

This is only to introduce you to Ol' Blue. On the night in question it was running well. Except for the radio. The radio hadn't worked for a long time and I had no other music in the truck so I was left to the silence and the ice fog and the loud sound of frigid metal creaking and rubber moving over ice. That night though, as I turned onto Cowles, suddenly the radio came to life. Not only did sound come out of the dash but it was actually set on a station and the song that was playing went "Once upon a time you dressed so fine, you threw the bums a dime in your prime, didn't you?" Don't say I'm lying but the song played in it's entirety then the radio went dead. The cold and ice fog are powerful things. Ghosts walk the town and hills around Fairbanks and the power is such that, once in a while, even inanimate things are given life.

.: Friday, February 8, 2008

When I was a kid the family would take drives out of town on a Sunday to any destination, just to go somewhere, and if there was a roadhouse or store we'd get some some kind of treat and head back to town. A couple times we went to Ester. No Parks Highway, just a two-lane dirt road winding past the University to the little old mining town. We'd get some candy at a store that stood on main street (now the parking lot of the Golden Eagle Saloon). You walked up a stair case to get to the store because of the root cellar that was a street level. Years later, January or February of '73 I had just finished practicing with the band we had started earlier that winter called the Glass Bead Game (after the Hermann Hesse novel). Someone said, "Hey let's go out to the Howling Dog." I hadn't heard the name before but they said it was in Ester and everyone assured me that I'd like it. We piled into a small car, seven of us in a car made for four, and drove out in the -40F night. A short time later we arrived and fell out of the car. We walk up to the same store that I had gone to as a little kid but there were no front steps. Instead we walk up to a thick homemade door of the root cellar and pulled it open. That was when my world changed. Inside was dancing and drinking and a band playing fiddles and banjos dressed like the 1930's. The music "rocked" as much as any rock and roll I had ever heard. Say hello to old time string band music and say hello to the mighty Sidewinders. That night, I'm pretty sure the band consisted of Thom Hart, Danny Consenstein, Kent Setzer, Bobo Brom & Orrin Musser. And one tune I remember was "Fox On The Run" a tune written and performed originally by Manfred Mann but embraced by the Old Timey and Bluegrass communities. With the addition a short time later of Robin Dale Ford on bass and banjo (and the exit of Orrin) it became the classic band that rocked the Ester Howling Dog and, later, the Fox Howling Dog after Joe Nyquist bought the name and built the present-day structure.

.: Monday, January 28, 2008

If you've ever attended Halloween at the Howling Dog Saloon in Fox, Alaska you know the craziness of that night. Since Robin and I played in a band called the Flyers that was the house band there for 10 years, we know Halloween all too well. We always played the night in costume and it was always the night that we "fell back" to Daylight Savings Time. Also the bars were allowed to stay open until 5 A.M. at that time. So at 2 A.M. it was suddenly 1A.M. Usually we played from 10pm until 3:30 or 4:00 but on Halloween, closing weekend after a long summer, instead of 5 or 6 hours, we played 7! One year we had a band theme: Instead of the Flyers we were the Fryers. Brothers and sisters, do you know what that means? Seven hours in a chicken suit! But we got paid well so, in the spirit of Vaudeville, we did what it took. About 6 or 7 years into this "engagement", we had a Halloween so crowded that the Fire Inspector showed up and told the owner that he would be back in an hour and if half the people in the building weren't gone, he'd shut down the bar. The Howling Dog was a real money-maker back then and Halloween was the biggest night of the season after which the owner retreated to his estate in Buffalo, N.Y. for the winter. So there was no way he was going to let the bar be closed down. Instead, we announced the situation from the stage and begged people to leave, take a walk, take a drive and come back in a hour. And it worked! We had to ask people to leave to keep the night going. The Fire Inspector came back and gave us all the go-ahead. Shortly the bar became as packed as before and we rocked on into the wee wee hours...

.: Thursday, January 3, 2008

When I was about 14 or 15 there was a 2nd hand store across from my Dad's little grocery story at 26th and Cushman. It was owned by a black woman whose name I don't recall. I found some treasures in the form of blues 78s in that store. Unfortunately, only one of those is still intact but it was my favorite, a Memphis Slim record. It lead to a lifelong love of Memphis Slim's music. The woman knew my dad, and I must have had some reputation as a drummer having played in blues bands around town.

When I was 16 this woman owned a bar on Chena Hot Springs Road. People today may notice the strange building just past Steele Creek Road heading east. Up until the winter of '89 and its huge snow fall, this was a bar, known as the Bullseye Club and before that, the Hillside Club, and at that time, The Ebony Inn. That winter the roof caved in and the owner must have said "Hell with it!"

Back when I was 16 it was known as the Ebony Inn (later theHillside Club and lastlythe Bullseye Club). It was a black club at the time, a strange thing so far out of town. At that time most of the African-American population of Fairbanks lived either on the south side of town or on Ladd Air Force Base (Now Fort Wainwright.) Through channels the woman let me know that she had a band coming from out of town and they needed a drummer. According to law at that time she had to take guardianship of me to allow me to play in a bar. She did. The band was called Freddie King & The Kingsmen (not that Freddy King, not those Kingsmen) and they sent along a playlist of songs for me to learn.

I can't remember how I got the records nor the names of the songs except one: "The Horse" by Cliff Nobles. Other songs were hits of the same time period and a few blues numbers like "Kansas City." The band finally arrived and I showed up at the Ebony with my drum set. We rehearsed and all was well. I was intimidated to be playing with adults, black adults, from Chicago. By that time I had a brief but passionate education in playing black music, and the musicians I played with talked with reverence about different players, records, cities. I must have done a decent job because I sensed that they were relieved.

The next night was Friday. I must have been a sight to the patrons, a pimply teenage white kid, but they treated me well and we played a long first set. It was break time but Freddy leaned over to me and said, "Before we go on break we're gonna play 'Kansas City,' but slow and slinky." He kicked it off on the guitar. The rest of us, bass, organ, drums came in. Suddenly out of the woman's bathroom came an absolutely gorgeous young woman 18 or 19 years old (the drinking age was 18 at the time) who I would later learn was the owner's daughter. She had on a one piece sparkling swimsuit and Freddy announced "Ladies and gentleman, put your hands together for the lovely Twinkles the Contortionist."

Twinkles came out onto the dance floor and proceeded to do things that shouldn't be done in front of a 16-year-old boy trying to keep time. She stood on her head, split her legs, rotated them, came up backwards, did the splits. Come to think of it, her moves weren't that spectacular but she made up for it in, uh, "twinkles"? I got to thinking I liked this gig and I was more her age than anyone else in the bar. I'm sure I had visions of after gig parties, Twinkles and me in the corner counting the sequins on her suit. But as these things go, we finished the first weekend of what was to be a 6-week gig and I got a call from the owner in the middle of the next week telling me I might as well come and get my drums: Freddy had absconded with the band's pay including mine, the band used the other half of their round trip ticket and split the Northland, and try as I might, I never saw the lovely Twinkles again.