Memories of This, That, and the Grateful Dead

One thing I’ve learned over the years is that the world has a way of sending you little gifts on the sly, with no warning, rhyme or reason, usually when you least expect them. You might not even be aware of them when they worm their way into your life, at least consciously. If you’re lucky enough to take note of them, you might just move along without giving them a second thought. If you’re luckier still, you let them marinate in your brain for a little while, and wind up in a better place because of it.

I experienced this recently. The main elements included a college dorm I lived in long ago, a nightclub I used to haunt (also long ago), and the Grateful Dead.

Let’s begin with the what and the where.

The “what” is this: We recently took our annual family summer road trip to the South Carolina coast, which I’ve blogged about before.  

The “where” involved a long drive from our home in northern New Jersey to North Myrtle Beach, S.C., with stops in Virginia and Charlotte, N.C., along the way. All told, we were on the road for 10 days and nine nights. The drive covered roughly 1,320 miles round-trip, or 2,125 kilometers.

The main reason we went on the trip was to enjoy some family vacation time. But it also doubled as a way to let our oldest daughter visit a few college campuses. She’s a rising senior in high school, and will start university next year. She wants to go to college down South to escape the harsh Northeast winters, so we’ve visited campuses in Georgia, the Carolinas, Virginia, and Maryland.

And therein lies the genesis of this blog…..

After leaving North Myrtle Beach, we stopped by Columbia, S.C., for an hour or so on our way to Charlotte.

Columbia is where the University of South Carolina’s main campus is located. It’s also where I began my university life in the late 1970s.

The U. of South Carolina is a big college (about 40,000 students) on a big campus, located right beside Columbia’s downtown and spreading for blocks and blocks and blocks beyond. Walking around the whole campus is no easy task. Even when I went there, I had to get around on a bicycle.

When we showed our daughter around, we mainly hovered in the center of campus. We didn’t even bother trying to stroll the entire grounds. We were pressed for time, and it was hot. Columbia is the hottest city I’ve ever lived in, by a pretty fair margin — and I’ve lived in a lot of different cites. It’s especially hot in August.

But, I did want to drive around a little and see some of the places in Columbia that occupied a lot of my time as a college student those many decades ago. One of the places was Bates House, a dormitory on the far edges of campus that served as my home for part of my freshman year.

I don’t think I had seen Bates House since I left the U. of S.C. nearly 50 years ago. These days it’s surrounded by other buildings that didn’t exist when I lived there. But it’s still as ugly now as it was then.

The dorm itself is actually comprised of three high-rise buildings, all of which have that grayish, functional, institutional, nondescript mid-20^th century look. You take one look at it and the concrete facade glares back at you with an attitude. They have not prettied the place up in the decades since I lived there. Not one teeny, tiny little bit.

But a funny thing happened when I looked at that ugly gray structure for the first time since Jimmy Carter was U.S. president.

It didn’t glare back. Instead, it gave me a knowing wink, like it was happy to see me after all these damn years. Like it knew some special memories resided inside its cold, ugly-ass walls, and wanted to give me a welcoming embrace.

Well, shit. This, I did not expect. This hit me in a very tender place. I had an immediate visceral reaction that I kept to myself at the time, but have not quite gotten over, nearly a week later.

****

The few months I spent at Bates House had a profound impact on me that still resonates to this day. In fact, my freshman year of college represented a demarcation point in terms of my relationship with the world and how I would go about living in it.

That relationship was forged in part by the friendships I developed with a few of the guys I got to know at Bates House, and the experiences we shared. These young dudes opened my eyes to a whole new world of thoughts and possibilities. If I didn’t know this before, I was reminded of it when I laid eyes on Bates House during our recent trip.

I’ll briefly mention the guys here, confident that none will read this blog. I’m pretty sure they don’t even know this blog exists, and probably haven’t thought about me in a long, long time. The last time I spoke with any of them was 25 years ago.

One of the guys was my roommate Tommy, from Greenville, South Carolina. He was a kind soul with a countryish Southern accent, a skilled guitarist, a rocker, stoner, Jimi Hendrix fanatic, and latter-day hippie who introduced me to certain psychedelic experiences that opened new brain waves, as I recall. He and I engaged in many long and deep conversations, well into the night. I can remember pieces of those chats nearly word for word, even now, in the far distant future.

Tommy and I became fast friends, although we only lived together for a single semester. I was a groom in his wedding. We shared thoughts we might not have shared with anyone else. He called me out of the blue in the early 2000s, when I was living in Los Angeles, and he was living in Seattle. How he tracked me down, I know not. But I imagine the internet, still in its infancy, had something to do with it. We haven’t spoken since. I doubt we ever will again. But I’ll never forget the dude, just as millions of others will never forget their first college roommate.

There was Tony, from Blacksburg, South Carolina. He was a tall, skinny guy with a mellow mindset and a sneaky-dry wit. Like Tommy, he came from a modest background. Maybe not exactly working class, but certainly not anywhere close to rich and comfortable. Tony and I also shared a lot of deep thoughts deep into the night. He was a humble guy from a humble home, and unwittingly gave me a glimpse into the lives of people who are never quite sure they’ll ever have a fair shot at the American dream, but press on with the dream, nonetheless.

There was Mark, from Holmdel, New Jersey. He was a semi-preppy pretty boy who put up a wiseass, Jerseyish front, but deep down was just as lost and clueless as the rest of us freshmen. I’m only guessing here, but Mark probably did come from money. You could tell from the way he dressed, fussed over his hair, and never seemed to be broke – which is a dead giveaway, considering how broke most of us were. But no matter. He was a good guy, and we became pretty constant presences in each other’s lives for a short period of time.

Mark also hipped me to the Grateful Dead, along with other students from the Northeast, where the Dead were much more popular than they were in the suburban South that hatched me. The Dead became a major cultural force for me during my freshman year in college. I had no idea how devoted so many people were to the band and its music. It was a real eye-opener, let me tell you.

More on that later.

All of these lads played an important role during a very important period of life – my first year in college, my first year on my own (more or less), away from family and home. All have taken up residence in my memory.

Seeing the Bates House again, all these decades later, brought those memories and those friends into clearer focus. That’s one of the gifts the world gave me during our recent travels.

*****

While in Charlotte during those travels, bopping around town, we found ourselves in the southwestern part of the city, where my wife visited a cool little yarn store. She’s a very talented artisan, has taken up knitting in recent years, and seeks out yarn stores wherever and whenever she can.

This place was like manna from heaven for her because not only do they sell yarn – they also dye it on site. I knew she’d want to hang out for a while. Not being a yarn store devotee myself, I decided to take a drive around the area with my daughters while Mom/Wife shopped for yarn and took a tour of the premises.

During that short drive, we came upon a building that looked vaguely familiar.  I wasn’t exactly sure where we were, because these days I depend on the car’s GPS to get us around, and therefore never really know where I am while driving.

Then it hit me, in an instant: The place I saw was once a hotel, called the Royce, and used to house a nightclub, called Chelsea’s. That hotel and nightclub closed long ago. But the building is still there, in all its weathered, ragged glory. This was the first time I’d seen it in probably 35 years.

I frequented Chelsea’s many times in the late 1980s, when I was a bartender at a comedy club, and the staff would head out to late-night places after our shifts ended. So, this chance encounter conjured up even more distant memories.

The comedy club I worked at was called The Punch Line. I was a bartender there for six years or so. Most of the time I was a part-timer, supplementing my income while my main income came from day jobs as an accountant and/or newspaper reporter (yeah, I had a checkered career back in the day).

My experience tending bar at the comedy club had a similar life impact as my experience as a freshman at the Bates House dormitory at the University of South Carolina. It opened up new doors and possibilities during a period of life when I was pretty rudderless. We had a tight-knit crew at the Punch Line, with people from all walks of life, and spent many hours together at and away from work.

One of the people I worked with was Karen, a devoted fan of the Grateful Dead. A true Deadhead. Another was Julia, who would often accompany us on our trips to Chelsea’s.

Julia’s boyfriend at the time was another Deadhead. He traveled around to different Dead shows, and would often take Julia with him. She told me about their journeys following the Dead around, and I remember being fascinated by it, these privileged Charlotte suburbanites chasing a rock band around the country, just to be part of the experience.

More Grateful Dead memories on our recent trip. And not even the biggest one.

******

Here’s something really weird. After seeing Bates House and the former Royce Hotel for the first time in decades, one of the things that stuck out in my mind was the people I got to know when those experiences were still fresh and vibrant. Three of those people had a deep connection to the Grateful Dead, and in turn brought me closer to the Dead (figuratively speaking, ha ha).

Then one night, in one of the hotels we stayed at on our recent trip, after I’d already crawled into bed and turned off the lights, I started hunting for some light entertainment on the iPhone before falling asleep,

During the hunt, I opened the Amazon Prime Video app on my iPhone. This was unusual. I usually open the Netflix or YouTube app. I can’t remember the last time I watched Amazon Prime. Probably more than a year. I am not a huge fan of Amazon Prime Video. They make you suffer through ads at random places – even though you pay for Amazon Prime. If you want to go ad-free, you have to pay more. The greedy MFers…..

But on this night, I decided to open the Amazon Prime Video app. Why, I can’t say.

And what’s the first thing I see?

A Grateful Dead documentary, released in 2017 and produced by Martin Scorsese, called A Long Strange Trip. I had never seen it or even heard of it. So, I decided to give it a go. It’s a six-part film that documents the band’s rise from a little-known San Francisco hippie ensemble in the late 1960s to a global rock n’ roll powerhouse 20 years later.

If you don’t know much about the band or the film, read this 2017 review from The Guardian. This blog is not about the documentary, or even the Grateful Dead. I won’t go too deeply into all that, other than to say that when I was first exposed to the Grateful Dead in a meaningful way, during my freshman year in college, I found that I liked some of their music.

Okay, I’ll go a little further…..

The Dead made a few very good albums. They were legendary for their live performances. They developed a cult following of Deadheads who would travel with them all over the world to see their live shows. They became a cultural phenomenon, unique in the devotion they engendered, and at one point became one of the biggest rock bands in the world. My guess is that if you did a scorecard of Biggest Rock Bands of All Time, they would now rank behind only the Beatles and Rolling Stones (and maybe Led Zeppelin, I dunno).

I saw a couple of their shows. I once owned five or six of their albums. I liked them just fine, but was not convinced that their concerts were all that special. I liked plenty of other rock artists a lot better, and eventually got annoyed by the legions of gobsmacked true believers who could not bear the thought of some guy like me not worshiping at the Altar of the Dead.

But: I cannot deny that coming front-and-center with the Grateful Dead phenomenon as a college student, and then young adult, changed some of my perceptions of the world. I can’t explain how, or why. I just know that there was life before the Dead, and life after.

Anyway…..

This blog is mainly about the strange way that our recent family vacation tied so many disparate memories together from long, long ago. The Bates House dorm I hadn’t seen in forever, and my buddy Mark, who introduced me to the Dead. The Royce Hotel/Chelsea’s that I hadn’t seen in forever, and my workmates Karen and Julia, who gave me insights into the life of a traveling Deadhead.

The Amazon Prime Video app, which I hadn’t opened in forever, and seeing the Grateful Dead documentary immediately.

What I was left with were special memories of special people during special moments of my life. Memories I hadn’t conjured up in a long time, but was happy to rub elbows with, at least for a short while.

I’m blessed to have lived these memories, with these people. I’m grateful to have them re-enter my consciousness, if only temporarily.

Oh, and before I forget:

I just bought a used copy of the Grateful Dead’s classic Workingman’s Dead vinyl album off eBay. This used to be a favorite album of mine, back when I had 300-plus albums, and a high-end turntable/stereo system. After all the moves I’ve made in my life, I’m now down to less than 50 albums, and play them on a lo-fi Electrohome 7-in-1 record player.

Workingman’s Dead is not among the albums that survived my many moves. It must have gotten away somewhere along the line.

But for some reason, I really want a copy now. I want to drop the needle and hear it. I want to relive it. I want the grooves under the needle to play a memory of days gone by, when I didn’t know much, but knew I was heading on a long, strange trip of my own.

Image: The Dead performing live in the ‘60s, Bates House, and the back cover of Workingman’s Dead.