Chapter 10

	After six months in Marfil, Sharon's and my relationship began to cool down.  We 

discussed taking a sabbatical from each other for a few months.  She wanted to live in 

Santa Cruz and I would, after making sure she and Lee were set up in a comfortable home, 

return to Mexico.  We still got along, there were no quarrels, it was very civilized.  We 

intended for the separation to be only temporary.  The idea was to rekindle the flame.  We 

drove back to Santa Cruz and found a charming cottage just across the street from the 

ocean.  You could hear the surf from the bedroom.  It was idyllic, lots of windows and 

some very attractive neighbors--a young couple and their three babies each a year apart.  

We got acquainted immediately.  Their names were Pat and Nancy Bisconti.  He was a 

surfer, an artist, a poet, a humorist, and a philosopher.  She was an artist, a poet, a calm 

and caring mother, and a woman who could make do with very little resources.  He was a 

handsome, lean, and surfing sculpted Italian American.  He drove a brightly painted 

Hudson.  It was completely covered with his artwork and philosophical sayings such as, 

"Faster to the Disaster!"  There was a chuckle on every fender.  The car was a real work of 

art.

	Nancy was of English heritage.  She was small, petite, good natured, and beautiful 

with long straight dark brown hair.  She was of a more serious nature, more matured than 

her years, and deeply dedicated to her role as wife and mother.  Her love and appreciation 

of Pat was an inspiration.  They lived in a beach house cottage just in front and a little to 

the side of Sharon's.  We all smoked pot and got along famously.  I should say all but 

Sharon, who only sometimes joined in to relieve her glaucoma.  She was always an 

enthusiastic social participant, ready with a laugh, joke, or comment.

	Not without some regret, I left to Mexico.  Soon after arriving, I received a letter 

from Phil Hefferton inviting me to perform in a concern in Los Angeles with him, Charlie 

Simon, now Charlie Nothing and our favorite drummer, Richard Scott.  Richard was from 

Staten Island and played at my New York studio with the above mentioned group on a 

regular basis.  The quartet was to open in a large, well known Los Angeles venue, for a 

popular soul, blues singer.  It seemed like it could be fun.  I didn't agree right away but the 

whole group was insistent and I finally signed on.

	There was enough lead time to drive up, play the concert, go to Santa Cruz for a 

short visit, and then return to Mexico.  I made all the necessary arrangements in 

preparation for the trip and then left with just enough time to arrive a couple of days 

before the concert date.  That meant only one night's stop over.

	On the way, in the middle of the Mexican desert, my car started to overheat.  I 

pulled into a gas station on the roadside and opened the hood.  Steam was coming from 

the radiator cap.  This was a problem the car never had before.  Not being mechanically 

inclined, I worried that the pressure of the boiling water might crack the radiator.  In my 

ignorance I thought removing the radiator cap would ease the pressure.  Little did I realize 

the consequences of such action.  I put on my gloves and leaned over to loosen the cap.  

It exploded out of my hand and a jet gush of boiling water shot up and scalded the right 

half of my face.  If I hadn't been wearing sunglasses I would have lost my right eye.  Of 

course the car cooled right down and I drove to a local village doctor who applied salve 

and told me to go to the hospital in Monterey.  My face was blistered and peeling and a 

strange color.  Looking in the mirror was frightening.  I decided to drive all the way to Los 

Angeles without stopping, and wait until then to seek medical attention.  The car smelled 

like a White Castle.  I was in severe pain.  I drove for eighteen hours straight and got to 

Los Angeles the next day.

	It was mid-morning when I arrived at my friend's residence.  They were shocked 

and distressed to see me in such bad shape.  The right side of my face was dripping off 

and my guts were burning from too much coffee.  I can't remember much about the place.  

We left immediately for a medical facility to get my burns treated.  I'm not sure if it was a 

burn clinic or a hospital, but the doctor took one look and told me it was a medical mistake 

to put grease on my burns.  He began peeling the dead skin off with a drill-like sander.  

After completing the skinning, he wrapped me up like Boris Karloff in "The Mummy," and 

sent me on my way.  I got back to the pad, unpacked, and fell asleep.  I slept until the next 

morning.  The concert was that afternoon.  We were a terrible bomb.  I played a penny 

whistle and my bass.  It was complete free style jazz and the audience wasn't in any way 

ready for it.  I performed with my face almost completely bandaged.  We were dressed in 

outrageous costumes--capes, tights, feathers, and sashes.  I wore my patched Levis.  Not 

much denim showed through the patches.  They looked like they were made out of a 

patchwork quilt.  To say we were completely unprepared for that concert is an 

understatement.  We ran around on stage and into the audience.  We did our best to 

interfere (albeit, unsuccessfully) with the featured artist, an up and coming young black 

pop singer.  The crowd loved him and his band, and fortunately they didn't boo us off the 

stage.  After the concert we all went back to the pad, ate, and I fell asleep again, catching 

up for the loss of sleep and stress from the trip and injury.  When I awoke, I packed up 

and drove to Santa Cruz, where I presented my damaged self to Sharon.  She took me in 

with great tenderness.  It was kind of traumatic to be transformed from a comely featured 

young man into a hideous ogre in a few seconds.  I must confess I had a problem with 

vanity, and probably still do, but it was brought to the surface by that unfortunate 

accident.  I had a breakdown for a few hours one afternoon.  It was after the bandages 

came off.  I couldn't stop weeping for a couple of hours.  Sharon was patient and kind, and 

I finally shamed myself into relaxing and getting control.  As it turned out the second 

doctor did a really good job and the scars gradually faded.  My beard may have covered 

the worst of them.  I don't know, I've never shaved since then.  I knew then I wasn't going 

to return to Mexico soon and I settled in with Sharon and Lee.  We were having a great 

time hanging with Pat and Nancy.

	After a while Sharon wanted to move up to the mountains above Santa Cruz.  She 

found a very homely little bungalow, two bedrooms, one bath, living room, dining room, 

kitchen, and a beautiful deck nestled into a redwood tree ring, right above the San Lorenzo 

River.  This tree ring was the leftover result of logging a giant redwood, perhaps fifteen to 

twenty feet wide, many years before.  The house had wooden casement windows all 

around the dining room.  It had French doors opening into the living room off the front 

porch and French doors in the dining room opening onto the deck.  Down by the road was 

a large two car garage built of solid heart redwood board and bat.  There was a spacious 

redwood deck leading to it from the house.  The road ran behind the garage to a one lane 

bridge over the river.  It snaked around off Highway 9 in a series of ninety degree curves 

that gave us only one neighbor who was very seldom there.  These homes were built as 

vacation cabins in the early part of the twentieth century.  The lady across the street still 

used her small cottage as a rural retreat, but most of the cabins and cottages were now 

being rented out as income for elderly couples who no longer used them.  In the front yard 

was a very large, incredibly beautiful pink flowering dogwood tree.  In the spring it 

blossomed radiant pink and perfumed the whole yard.

	Before moving in I did a bit of redecorating, painting the kitchen walls and cabinets 

and adding a few minor touches to enhance the bedrooms.  It was just a couple of days 

work, but I noticed that the only traffic going by was the school bus in the morning and 

afternoon and one or two cars crossing over the bridge on their various ways home.  

There was almost no traffic all day as I painted walls and cleaned up in preparation for 

moving in.

	It wasn't long after Sharon, Lee, and I moved in that Pat and Nancy found a house 

on the corner of our street and Highway Nine only a half block away.  Our merry band was 

together again.  I had been given an African thumb harp (Colimba) in New York and when 

I showed it to Pat and demonstrated how to play it he started making them.  We 

collaborated cutting windows in the side of the garage facing the house and a skylight in 

the roof to let enough light in to use as a studio for us to share.  Pat brought his welding 

equipment over and started work on a musical instrument he was fashioning out of an 

auxiliary airplane gas tank.  He cut a big hole in the tank and strung the hole with guitar 

strings.  The tank was about five feet long, rounded on one end, and tapered to a point on 

the other.  Pat flared out the narrow end in leaf like caps that he curled and attached 

several sleigh bells to each leaf.  He welded three feet on the round end which became the 

bottom when it was stood up.  Pat welded a tricycle wheel on the side of the bottom end.  

Then he installed two lengths of garden hose at the top and electrified it.  We hooked it up 

to an amp and the "Space Bass" was born.

	When you kicked the wheel it sounded just like a really good snare drum roll.  Two 

people could blow through the hoses at one time.  The guitar strings could be plucked and 

the tone varied by hugging the body of the instrument.  All told, some thirteen people 

could play the Space Bass at once.

	We installed used windows in the front wall of the garage.  We cut a hole for a 

stovepipe and collar going out.  Two windows opened for the summer and latched closed 

for the winter.  We built a desk top to hold my recording equipment and Pat donated a 

large round red Coca Cola sign, which when struck by homemade mallets was a wonderful 

gong.  We hung the Coke sign from the rafters on two wire cables in front of the sliding 

door once used for cars to enter.  We made the mallets out of two short pipes wrapped at 

the ends with rags and taped over with masking tape.  There was a long work bench on 

the short, river side of the garage and shelves made out of orange crates on either side of 

a small sliding window in that wall.  From somewhere came an antique mohair car seat on a 

raised wooden frame.  We put that in the middle of the garage in front of the Coke gong 

and there it was, a studio, a wonderful studio, where I could paint, practice the bass, have 

sessions, and record them.  We put a work table in front of the car seat.  We collected 

assorted chairs and made wooden benches and started having sessions.

	I photographed the "Space Bass" and we created a poster.  "The Space Bass, The 

First Bass in Inner Space."  Pat made a lot of calimbas out of flat tined metal rakes and 

quarter inch plywood with beads that rattled on a wire at the open end.  Soon there were 

enough calimbas to form a calimba section.  We amplified them.  The effect was stunning.  

Now we had enough instruments to supply quite a few people.  I had, by this time, grown 

tired of the elitism of the jazz scene which led me to experiment with musical instruments 

that anyone could play without much practice such as the calimba, simple bamboo flutes, 

and drums.  Thus started my twelve year "Perfect Music" experiment.