The times I had with Jim are part of that shield: Jim kicked the rear window out of my friend, Paul’s, truck (which I was borrowing)…..I think he was on acid or something. Its OK because we were able to put the windshield back in. That was the first night I met Jodi. Jim came up with the name Well Hung Priests….I changed “priests” to “monks”. Jim was always a sucker for a kiss on the cheek. Jim allowed me to make beer with him even though I kept repeating the mistake of setting a carboy of hot wurt into a bathtub full of cold water, which invariably caused the carboy to crack, thus spoiling the batch. I did this to Hal’s beer as well. I’m an idiot, but not a savante. Oh, I’m also an engineer. Did I mention that? Jim got me hungover drunk one night, showed up at my house hungover drunk himself early the next morning, and took me climbing when I was new to the Sacto scene. Jim took me climbing even though I was just a dilettante “boulderer” and even let me lead a couple of climbs. Jim and Hal stuck with and started a band with me even though I was a petulant prima donna. I whined about the equipment Jim and Keith were using in Sewer Trout and blundered my way into the punk scene while people viewed me askance as a poser and a geek. Jim and Hal allowed me to do unheard of crap like play fiddle tunes and rearrange Bach Concertos to fit the punk motif, and play my guitar too high, and generally, blithely dive head on into punkdom. Jim, Hal and a retinue of others supported me and attended my gig at the CSUS campus café while I played strange, obscure music, and taped sound-collages of my own making, which few understood. I passed around paper towels to collect comments, view points, ideas, etc. I will keep those paper towels all my life. Hal took pictures. They are a part of my personal shield. Jim and Hal saved me from a boring and forgettable college experience. My last chance to live the free life of a youngster was not squandered. I will never forget the times I had in Sacramento and will forever be much obliged to Jim for contributing in such a big way to those memories. Streetside beatings, nefarious murderess neighbors, unruly, voyeuristic mobs in the streets, crack dealers, prostitutes, hobos. Its all good because I share these experiences with people I love and respect. I laugh and they laugh with me. Life is an absurdly beautiful thing. Jim and Hal, Ground Chuck, Ken Beasley, Sophie, and I played hide and seek on “I” street. I fell off of the roof of 1901 “I” St. onto the top of a fence, on my ass. I had a scar on my ass for about a year after that. Jodi was there hiding with and laughing at me. Jim had an amazing party at 1901 “I” St., otherwise known as the “Bert” house. It was a sweltering summer night in Sacramento when, as the bands blazed away, there was a cloudburst of buckets of rain. Everyone just stood in the rain being quenched and rejoicing in being alive. It was a fantastic experience I will never forget. Jim and Hal never harassed or bothered me about turning my back on the Sacto punk scene to pursue my engineering career and be with my Main Squeeze in Washington. They have stayed my friends all of these years and have even visited me in this rainy, wet, dark-green-gray, frozen, bumpkin-hillbilly-logger, grunge-ass corner of the world. Jim went with me on a backpacking trip to the Sycan River, on a lark and a rumor about Southern Oregon being “nice” during Easter. He brought nothing with him but a bag full of Pemmican and Power Bars. We roamed the high dessert of Oregon. We froze our asses off after it snowed on us and we had to waterproof our boots with hot wax from some candles I brought with us. Finally I remembered to build a sweat lodge and we were able to restore our core body temperatures. We dove into the frozen Sycan River. On our way out, I got my truck stuck in the mud and we had to bushwack our way out of the countryside to get help. Truly one of the grand times of my life. I will never forget it and some pictures of Jim from this trip are in my personal shield. When Jim and Jodi broke up, Jim started his Flabbergasted thing. He was doing just fine. It was the summer of 1991 and I got laid off and was kind of lost, just looking for a job and hanging around the house doing stuff. I was kind of lonely because I hadn’t been up here that long and I had been working mostly, not making many new acquaintances to speak of. I would hang out in the workshop in back of my house building and fixing furniture. Jim sent me a tape of his stuff and I would play it day after day, again and again. It was great to hear his voice, it took the edge off my boredom Jim was living in Portland a few years later when, after being laid off for the 2nd time in my fledgling engineering career, having a kid, and fumbling through life, I took a job in Tigard, OR to work at Rogers Machinery as a designer. I would commute 2-1/2 hours to work and I stayed at Jim’s apartment a couple of times a week. I brought Sully there as a toddler when Sue (my wife) went on business trips. Jim was an anchor for me at a difficult time in my life. I had always hoped that Jim would move up here. I invited him up here a bajillion times. I think that we could have done some really cool shit, musically. I don’t think I had much allure. I was pretty vocal with my opinions on brilliance, fame, and the crap shoot of making it big. I’m kind of an a-hole, too. I took music theory and harmony when I was young, thinking that a music career would be my path. But I found I couldn’t be a musician whose sole job was to make music for pay. The process of making money from music would ruin my experience. I take music too seriously. I have a deep and abiding love of music. I still play a bevy of instruments with a paucity of talent. But that’s alright….music saved my soul. It has always been helpful to me, during my dark times, to know that Jim was somewhere on the planet, sharing the experiences of the sensible world. I have always drawn strength from the times I had with Jim. Knowing him has been a rare privilege. The camaraderie we shared helped to lighten the darkness of winter for me. It will be hard now to remember those times without also thinking of Jim’s pain and suffering. My memories are like dear friends to me. I will have to remember them differently now. I will have a harder time playing Jim’s songs on my banjo that I so love to play. I will most likely weep when I play them. Jim, I’ve stopped wondering why you did what you did. I think I understand that, in a brief moment of clarity and focus, you did what you thought was best for all of us who love you. We will never know how you suffered, we will never know your despair. It is too hard for us to understand that you saw this as the best possible solution to a worsening problem. You did what you thought best. You left no note. You made no excuses. You blamed no one. I’ll spend the rest of my days wishing I could have changed your mind. I hope that its alright that I’m keeping bits and pieces of you alive inside my head. They are images of a brilliant creative thinker, a talented musician, a crazy-ass M___r F___r, and the object of my perpetual admiration. You are, after all, part of my personal shield. I love you, E.B.