Random Notes on This and That

I know what I know,
I’ll sing what I said,
We come and we go,
It’s a thing that I keep
In the back of my head
--Paul Simon

The kind of man that lived his own life.

We first met John Ross, Suzanne and I, when we bought our house in Sonoma in 1985, and John was one of a small group of contractors that worked on the place with us. It was an older house, probably a summer bungalow when it was built around 1945, so there was a lot of remodeling, basically a make-over, and over time everyone who worked on it got to know each other fairly well. It was at this time we were introduced to John’s sense of humor: quick, erudite, far ranging and hilarious. There were always laughs when I was with John, no matter how serious the conversation got. And they got pretty serious, about serious matters, as we are (or were) both very political and very opinionated.

Suzanne’s favorite John Ross story is when we were all working on the house one time and my friend, Coop, another contractor asked if we, John, Suzanne and I were going to watch the “big game” that night. I can’t remember if it was a football or baseball game. And John said without skipping a beat, “No, I think I’ll just drop acid and listen to it on the radio.” That was my official introduction to the mind of John Ross.

So we’ve known John for 24,25 years now, my family and I. He was a friend when my daughter was born and adopted, and when she graduated high school and went to college. We’ve been friends since our country started wars and started killing people in the Middle East, and locally we fought battles to keep developers from sticking resorts on our immediate hillsides. We’ve gossiped about people we know and what they’re up to and traded some pretty juicy stories. John was a great storyteller and a treasure trove of classified information, all heavily redacted.

There’s no way to sum up a man’s life, especially a man as complex and in-depth as John: a master gardener and grower of exquisite tasting vegetables in the patch adjacent to his house; an accomplished musician and music collector; an extraordinarily well read person and book collector; electrician; builder and community minded man. And as another friend recently pointed out – a gentle soul.

I knew John in times of adversity – a break-up with a long-time girlfriend, the death of his dog, Tommy, his aborted trip to Romania and a violent encounter and illness there, and the dark night of American politics after 9/11. I felt privileged to share his grief over these things and I did my fair bit of unloading on him when I came apart at the seams.

The happiest times with John were when he, Ken Brown and I got together at his place, ate the always excellent dinner he’d prepare, drink the wines we brought, smoked the best grass we’d gotten a hold of and talked and laughed into the night. I don’t know how I drove down Ghericke Road those nights, bagged and toasted to the gills, but completely in control of things. I knew what I was doing and what I’m capable of or not. Ask Ken. We did this maybe 3 or 4 times a year for a bunch of years. I’ll miss those times until the day I die.

Even though I didn’t see or hang out with John all that often he was one of those handful of friends I could count on in a pinch, as I had to do once. Some years back I had an operation and afterward it didn’t go so well, and because Suzanne was out of town I needed to call on a few friends over a few nights to stay the night in case I started bleeding and needed to get to the ER. Turned out I didn’t, but John was one of the people I could count on. That meant more to me than I can ever say. I hope I told him that. I think I did.

It’s funny how we rarely get to really say good-bye to people when they’re alive; we wind up doing it after they’ve died. Death should have taught us that every time we’re with people we like, and especially people we love; we might hold the thought that we might never see that person. I thought I’d learned that lesson, but I haven’t. I usually end my conversations with, “See ya” and take that for granted. But it ain’t so. Every moment with someone who really means something to you one should hold the thought, somewhere, this might be the last time I’ll ‘see ya.’ It needn’t be said, and then maybe these last good-byes wouldn’t be necessary. It would have been conveyed in life.

So I’ll say good-bye to my friend John Ross, who honored me with his friendship. If there’s a life after this one, I’ll see ya pal.