412: In the early 60s, Jerry White has a folk music show on WJRZ, New Jersey. One stormy night in 1964, Jerry plays Another Side of Bob Dylan in its entirety before its release. I can barely make out the lyrics through static, but one line sings through: “For every hung-up person in the whole-wide universe.” On Sundays in the summer, Jerry White broadcasts live from the band shell in Palisades Amusement Park (home of the largest salt water swimming pool in the world). A bunch of us go as often as we can, cheering in the car whenever WJRZ runs the commercial for “Dennison’s, a men’s clothier, located near The Flagship, where money talks nobody walks, open 8 a.m. until 5 the next morning.” We keep swearing we’ll go some night at 3 a.m. but we never do.
Many of the Palisades performers will go on to mainstream fame, such as Judy Collins, John Sebastian, Jose Feliciano (accompanied on stage at Palisades with his seeing-eye dog), and Jesse Colin Young (years later before a Youngbloods concert I will ask him about Jerry White and he will take a step backward with his mouth open and say “Wow”). Others will never transcend the folk scene, like Patrick Sky (whom Jerry White saw getting off the Crazy Mouse with Buffy St. Marie); Mel Lyman (who wailed a hypnotic “Amazing Grace” on his harmonica and went on to head the Lyman Family cult in Boston); and Peter LaFarge (whose “Ballad of Ira Hayes” would be covered by the likes of Johnny Cash and Kinky Friedman).
On the radio, Jerry White sometimes plays Peter LaFarge’s protest song “Coyote,” sung chant-style with each line ascending into falsetto, which provokes us to end sentences in falsetto, resulting in contagious, spasmodic giggles. Driving to Palisades on a night Peter LaFarge is scheduled to appear, we consider not taking our usual front-and-center table, afraid we’ll start laughing if he sings “Coyote.” But we do take our regular seats, hoping either that LaFarge won’t sing “Coyote” or that we will be able to behave ourselves. He sings “Ira Hayes” and “As Long As the Grass Shall Grow” (which refers to the length of time the white man’s land treaty was supposed to be in effect), finishing to thunderous applause, much of it coming from our relieved table.
Jerry White invites an encore and Peter asks for a request. Now, if one of us requested “Sing Coyote!” it could be explained as a deviant outburst, leading to peer repudiation. But we all yell “Coyote, Coyote.”
413: Unreasonable Facsimiles
414: The barber leans against the shoulder of his fifth customer on a Tuesday afternoon. He pretends the contact is a byproduct of maneuvering into the optimal snipping angle, but artistry is not the issue, he is snipping as much air as hair. He is bone weary. The barber promises never to cut another hair if he can somehow get through this day without crumbling to the floor or being berated by a customer looking through the hand-held rearview mirror. He imagines fleeing the shop to some distant shore where his soul could reincarnate. But the barber rallies off the shoulder, rhythm blessedly resumes, and he instinctively clips and snips in all the right places. At the end of the day, the barber sweeps the village of hair into one pile, which he scoops into his arms and carries to his room attached to his shop. He adds today’s harvest to the blanket of hair on his bed, hair that never gets grayer or thinner than the day it was shorn. He sleeps the sleep of a man at one with his life’s work.
415: Last minute, best minute.
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