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Showing posts from October, 2007

Radar

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Tim O’Reilly, my buddy from the 1976 season at Dirty Jack’s theater, came to Denver on business last week and we were able to hook up for dinner and a long visit. It was the first time we’d seen each other since ’76, so we had a lot to talk about. Good thing, too, because we spent most of the time driving rather aimlessly around Denver, since my place is rather spare with no place for guests to sit. We talked and talked for hours as we wandered lost on the streets of the city. Tim and I were members of the band at Dirty Jack’s in 1976, an eclectic (if not oddball) set of musicians that gelled magically to produce a kick-ass high-energy score for the show Paint Your Wagon. It was some of the best music I ever made. Tim is still at it, composing, playing, and recording great music. He is embarking on a venture with his son – a student at the Berklee College of Music – to market their creations. I think that is wonderful in so many ways. An odd thing… Tim and I did not talk much about Di

The Life

I caught only the merest glance of her as she walked by the batwing doors of the lobby, heading south toward the town square on the wooden plank sidewalk that fronted the theater. She was past the door, really, and from inside the lobby it was only a three-quarters glimpse of her back. But I knew it was her. It was early in the summer of 1979, and I had not seen or thought of her for three years, since the spring three years earlier just before my first stint at the theater. She had been a classmate of my girlfriend back then, Lynda, in their horse training curriculum at Northwest College in Powell, Wyoming. I stepped out onto the boardwalk and called her name. She was tall and slender, with short sandy hair held by a small barrette. I had not really known her at all in college. I had seen her around. But at that moment in front of the theater I turned on all the oily charm I had learned in three years of honkytonk nights. Lynda and I did not last long after the 1976 season at Dirty Ja