Cathy, Ron, Danny. Three loved friends. Their deaths. Two of them (Ron and Danny) died this past year. Cathy died some ten years ago, but the news did not reach me until now. Three losses. And three elements linking them: the place of our friendships (Northampton, Massachusetts), the time of our friendships (1970s), and lastly, automobiles. To that third and last element:
It is a cliché, I know, but Americans live in their cars in ways that others do not. We tend to romance our cars. Marry them. For better or worse, sickness and health, and all that. Most of us can recall one or two cars that reside at the heart of a personal drama - one we long to recapture or long to forget. I have already written of Cathy, cars, and photography (see Postcard #15). Certainly, with both Cathy and Ron, drives in and around Northampton and western Massachusetts provided key spaces for our early alliances. Not so with Danny. His was more of a friendship on foot. Yet, in the end, I cannot remember him without the intrusive thought of an unwanted automobile.
Ron
In contrast to Cathy, Ron’s life-in-the-car was loose, disorganized, surprising. More about the interior, its vinyl seats and floor littered with cigarette packets and candy wrappers. Unseat-belted, we moved around inside the car while Ron drove, shifting right or left on the long seats, climbing from back seat to front or vice versa. With Ron, destinations held little importance. We drove without planned routes. Around town or out to the Berkshires, collecting friends, strangers, and hitchhikers. Packing the car with people. With the top down on Ron’s old convertible, we shouted to be heard above the constant whoosh of air. Our words flew away with the cigarette papers. Hair and clothes snapped and mutinied. The radio, crackling in the wind, played Blondie and Elvis Costello. That was summer.
In winter, behind frosted windows with the heater at full strength, we lit cigarettes and talked about movies. The morning after the blizzard of 1978, Ron’s car had disappeared beneath a snowdrift outside his apartment. When we clambered onto the snowdrift to find the car, someone put a foot through the convertible roof. I’m not sure the roof was ever repaired, but the car lasted until Ron left Massachusetts for warmer climes. Ron lasted. His dog, Myshkin, lasted.
Without Ron, there are writers, musicians, bands, and filmmakers that I would likely never have encountered. His cultural passions were feverish and wide-ranging. We started a local film club, its projects drawn from Ron’s knowledge of avant-garde and indie cinema. Without him, I would not have met and learned about Jonas Mekas and Peter Kubelka. I would not have gone disco dancing at the Hadley Mall with Walk on the Wild Side’s Holly (who “came from Miami, F.L.A. / Hitch-hiked her way across the U.S.A.”)
And Ron would prove my first temptation away from Northampton and the East Coast. When he moved to Los Angeles, Ricardo and I followed later. We had plans to write a film script but instead went to parties and punk clubs. His apartment was filled with records, empty record sleeves, and books. We ate at Canter’s on Fairfax Avenue, or the small Korean place opposite Canter’s, or El Coyote, where (I would later learn) Sharon Tate had her last meal.
One day, I arrived for a writing session to find the phone ringing on the driveway outside Ron’s flat. In a temper about something, he had thrown the phone out the window. A neighbor put the receiver back so that he might still receive calls. Moody and easily angered, Ron was also affectionate, generous, and insanely smart. He was, you might say, a man of big brain. So, his bouts of silliness often came as a relief. As in this joke he liked to tell:
“Amy, you know that Sinatra song, One More for the Road?”
“Yes, I know that one, Ron.”
“Well, here are the real lyrics: it’s quarter to three, there’s no one in the place ‘cept you and me. So… stick ‘em up, Joe.”
If you were lucky enough to know Ron, your world was bigger, if sometimes chaotic. He always had someone you must meet, a book you must read, a band you must hear. His last gift to me was a volume of poetry by A.R. Ammons, arriving this past year, as his health declined further. We kept contact – on and off – throughout his illness. Finally, death grew impatient. Long in coming, but shocking when it came. We prepare for loss, and yet we don’t.
I like to think he is with Myshkin, the first dog I remember, and Tallulah, his last dog. He had vivid dreams about Tallulah during his final months and told me about them. In life, where Ron was, there was usually a dog nearby.
Danny
Apart from an outing to a maple sugar farm in the Berkshires, I recall almost no drives with Danny. I have no image or memory of his car. Danny was a friend on foot. Our meetings were on the street, in our apartments, over breakfast at Jake’s or a beer and a Celtics game at Joe’s or the Bay State Hotel. Northampton names and places.
Yet Dan’s story would become a cruel one of cars and roads. Hit by a drunk driver in 1991, he was in a coma for several days. When he finally left the hospital, he was wheelchair-bound. Danny worked long and hard to regain his physical mobility, and with some success. But in 2019, he fell backward in his wheelchair, damaging his cervical spine. This last setback impacted his ability to speak and left him permanently bedridden.
What the reader may now be told is that Dan had cerebral palsy. So, events that would have been a setback for any of us would prove worse for him.
My memories of Dan mostly precede his accident. I recall a physical person, slender and strong in his body, unwavering in his refusal to be stopped or defined by disability. He expected his friends to see it and not see it at the same time. He expected his friends to keep up when he talked.
Dan played sports. He studied and traveled. He spoke fluent Spanish, spent time in Central America, advocated for disability rights, embraced progressive politics, and ran for city council. He enjoyed hot weather. His skin was warm and his beard was full. He made lasting loves and friendships. He gave us all bear hugs.
When I last saw him (in 2014), these were my memories of him. But the self-reliance guarded so fiercely and for so long had grown harder. Dan flashed an anger I had not seen before.
It was a righteous anger. Not in the biblical sense. It was an anger that said – I am still here despite all that has happened to me.
Coming up: more about cars. More about Northampton, Massachusetts. And something about the history of obituary writing.