It’s sad how such close friends can lose touch over the years and even with the extraordinary level of communications we have at our disposal, continue to stay lost. There are a few people I think about often and the common thread is that they were people I hung out with in my formative years (AKA teenage pot smoking days). While I’ve managed to reconnect with a few, there are others that I wonder about regularly.
In no particular order here they are.
Don Verplank – Las vegas
Don and I were really best buddies at High School in Las Vegas during the late 70′s. It’s funny how songs take you back and there are a few that I can’t hear without thinking of a person, place or thing from that time. For Don it’s “Hold the Line” by Toto and “Running with the Devil” by Van Halen. We would sit in my car smoking weed and screaming along with the radio. Our purpose in life was to A) chase girls and B) have fun (hopefully while chasing girls). We did pretty well for ourselves and managed to stay out of trouble because we were into having fun and hung around nice, cool people who didn’t judge us and weren’t trouble makers themselves.
We did some crazy stuff like hike to the top of a desert mountain with (2) joints and a lighter as our only supplies. That’s right, we brought pot but no water. We also hiked pretty deeply into abandoned silver mines for fun and almost never had a spare flashlight or batteries. We would play air guitar at parties for friends and would put on a serious show. I’m talking about jumping up and down, head banging, windmill right arms and all. Funny thing was we didn’t give a crap who was watching or what they thought, we were just (2) friends having a blast and enjoying ourselves. One year it snowed (6) inches in Vegas and we were driving on a (4) lane road and I just looked over at him, cranked the wheel all the way to the left and smashed on the brakes (there were no cars around) and we spun like an Indy car for at least 12 circles and a quarter mile until we slid to a stop on that snowy road. Once we took my car into a mud soaked field and did donuts for about (15) minutes until the car was 100% covered in mud and we finally got stuck. We had to hike around (in the mud) looking for a plank to put under the wheel and about an hour later we finally got unstuck. We went to a desert party that got busted by the cops as they came in with multiple helicopters and had also setup up a roadblock on the only road back to Vegas. We were the first car out and as we tore down the highway we quickly became first car to reach the road block, with no less than (200) cars behind us. Well the cops searched every car starting from the last one which meant we were in for a long wait. Nearly (2) hours had passed by the time they got to us and they were past ready to go home themselves. The cop shined his light inside the cabin of the car and we had forgotten to hide the pipe that dangled from the sun shade. He asked if it was ours and in two part harmony we both blurted out “nooooooo”. He laughed, took our pipe and sent us on our way. Good thing he didn’t check under the floor mats.
Fred Lane – Houston
Fred was a good friend that I made while living in Houston. Living at the same apartment complex made it easy for us to hang out in the evenings and since I played guitar and he played keyboards (he could tear up the Maple Leaf Rag) we had plenty to entertain ourselves with. Fred had a job working as a bartender at a strip club and while I never really got into that scene (it was too hard for me to pretend that I didn’t know that the stripper really only wanted my money) I enjoyed visiting him at work from time to time. Fred was a quick friend because he moved away but we became very close and shared a ton of fun times during that probably (6) month friendship. Mostly evolving around his stripper friends and playing music.
Chaz Moreland – Las Vegas
Chaz was a blast and we hit it off right away because he was funny as hell and I appreciated a good sense of humor, especially if I had to hang out with that person. Seems like all Chaz and I did was get dressed up and go to parties. That probably sounded gay but trust me, we were not. What I meant was that we would wear nice clothes, fix our hair, chow down on breath mints and anything else we could do to gain favor with the ladies. We were both dorks (sort of) so we needed all the help we could get. Also his car was an AMC something. It was like a Pacer station wagon but with a broken AC, saggy headliner and rusty side panels. That car sucked so hard that we actually had to turn on the heat during the day time, in the Summer, in Las Vegas to keep the car from overheating. It even had dual AC units, they were called windows, one on the left and one on the right. Imagine pulling duct tape off the hood off a black car during August in the middle of the desert. That’s what it felt like pulling your nut sack off your thighs when you got out of that POS. We still had fun and that car took us to the promise land on more than one occasion. I sure wonder what he is up to now.
Hank Townsend – Houston
My surfing buddy and a great singer too. This was in Houston and we would go surfing in Galveston which is quite hard to do. The water is murky, the waves are flat and if you’re lucky you might get to ride (1) good wave every (30) minutes. We usually went during the Winter because the swell was bigger (not by much) but anything helped. One night we drove to Galveston so we could wake up at the crack of dawn (AKA feeding time for the sharks) and get the best waves. Let me preface this by saying that I really dislike lions. Any animal that will start eating you before you die has front row seating on my shit list and the lion sits front and center. So we decide to sleep on the seawall because the car is too small and right at dawn I feel something poking my face. When I opened my eyes I literally thought I was dreaming because a full grown lion was sniffing my face. Some dumbass had a full grown lion on a leash walking down the seawall of a public beach and he let it size me up while I lay sleeping. My initial reaction was bowel busting panic followed by a 300bpm mini heart attack. I’m talking the kind of shock when your legs gets separated from your torso but you feel no pain because you’re in that kind of shock. As I started to regain my senses, the dumbass pulled the lion off my face and started strolling down the seawall like it was no big deal. That was a rough morning. This might sound odd but the water would get so cold that we would drink as much hot chocolate as we could stand and chase that with a few glasses of water. The purpose was to make yourself have to pee.. a bunch. We wore full body wetsuits with booties and yes we pee’d in our wetsuits to stay warm. Sure it might sound disgusting (OK, actually it is) but everyone did it and you knew when someone was letting go because you would hear that familiar moan of ecstasy echo across the water. Hank and I would play music all the time as he was a guitarist as well as a talented singer. We both shared an affinity for Journey and he could actually sing that stuff pretty well. Hank had a great family and I think he went on to UNT and I would assume he has done well for himself.
It would be easy to go on and on but enough for now. If you guys see this, look me up.
Remembering Old Friends
It’s sad how such close friends can lose touch over the years and even with the extraordinary level of communications we have at our disposal, continue to stay lost. There are a few people I think about often and the common thread is that they were people I hung out with in my formative years (AKA teenage pot smoking days). While I’ve managed to reconnect with a few, there are others that I wonder about regularly.
In no particular order here they are.
Don Verplank – Las vegas
Don and I were really best buddies at High School in Las Vegas during the late 70′s. It’s funny how songs take you back and there are a few that I can’t hear without thinking of a person, place or thing from that time. For Don it’s “Hold the Line” by Toto and “Running with the Devil” by Van Halen. We would sit in my car smoking weed and screaming along with the radio. Our purpose in life was to A) chase girls and B) have fun (hopefully while chasing girls). We did pretty well for ourselves and managed to stay out of trouble because we were into having fun and hung around nice, cool people who didn’t judge us and weren’t trouble makers themselves.
We did some crazy stuff like hike to the top of a desert mountain with (2) joints and a lighter as our only supplies. That’s right, we brought pot but no water. We also hiked pretty deeply into abandoned silver mines for fun and almost never had a spare flashlight or batteries. We would play air guitar at parties for friends and would put on a serious show. I’m talking about jumping up and down, head banging, windmill right arms and all. Funny thing was we didn’t give a crap who was watching or what they thought, we were just (2) friends having a blast and enjoying ourselves. One year it snowed (6) inches in Vegas and we were driving on a (4) lane road and I just looked over at him, cranked the wheel all the way to the left and smashed on the brakes (there were no cars around) and we spun like an Indy car for at least 12 circles and a quarter mile until we slid to a stop on that snowy road. Once we took my car into a mud soaked field and did donuts for about (15) minutes until the car was 100% covered in mud and we finally got stuck. We had to hike around (in the mud) looking for a plank to put under the wheel and about an hour later we finally got unstuck. We went to a desert party that got busted by the cops as they came in with multiple helicopters and had also setup up a roadblock on the only road back to Vegas. We were the first car out and as we tore down the highway we quickly became first car to reach the road block, with no less than (200) cars behind us. Well the cops searched every car starting from the last one which meant we were in for a long wait. Nearly (2) hours had passed by the time they got to us and they were past ready to go home themselves. The cop shined his light inside the cabin of the car and we had forgotten to hide the pipe that dangled from the sun shade. He asked if it was ours and in two part harmony we both blurted out “nooooooo”. He laughed, took our pipe and sent us on our way. Good thing he didn’t check under the floor mats.
Fred Lane – Houston
Fred was a good friend that I made while living in Houston. Living at the same apartment complex made it easy for us to hang out in the evenings and since I played guitar and he played keyboards (he could tear up the Maple Leaf Rag) we had plenty to entertain ourselves with. Fred had a job working as a bartender at a strip club and while I never really got into that scene (it was too hard for me to pretend that I didn’t know that the stripper really only wanted my money) I enjoyed visiting him at work from time to time. Fred was a quick friend because he moved away but we became very close and shared a ton of fun times during that probably (6) month friendship. Mostly evolving around his stripper friends and playing music.
Chaz Moreland – Las Vegas
Chaz was a blast and we hit it off right away because he was funny as hell and I appreciated a good sense of humor, especially if I had to hang out with that person. Seems like all Chaz and I did was get dressed up and go to parties. That probably sounded gay but trust me, we were not. What I meant was that we would wear nice clothes, fix our hair, chow down on breath mints and anything else we could do to gain favor with the ladies. We were both dorks (sort of) so we needed all the help we could get. Also his car was an AMC something. It was like a Pacer station wagon but with a broken AC, saggy headliner and rusty side panels. That car sucked so hard that we actually had to turn on the heat during the day time, in the Summer, in Las Vegas to keep the car from overheating. It even had dual AC units, they were called windows, one on the left and one on the right. Imagine pulling duct tape off the hood off a black car during August in the middle of the desert. That’s what it felt like pulling your nut sack off your thighs when you got out of that POS. We still had fun and that car took us to the promise land on more than one occasion. I sure wonder what he is up to now.
Hank Townsend – Houston
My surfing buddy and a great singer too. This was in Houston and we would go surfing in Galveston which is quite hard to do. The water is murky, the waves are flat and if you’re lucky you might get to ride (1) good wave every (30) minutes. We usually went during the Winter because the swell was bigger (not by much) but anything helped. One night we drove to Galveston so we could wake up at the crack of dawn (AKA feeding time for the sharks) and get the best waves. Let me preface this by saying that I really dislike lions. Any animal that will start eating you before you die has front row seating on my shit list and the lion sits front and center. So we decide to sleep on the seawall because the car is too small and right at dawn I feel something poking my face. When I opened my eyes I literally thought I was dreaming because a full grown lion was sniffing my face. Some dumbass had a full grown lion on a leash walking down the seawall of a public beach and he let it size me up while I lay sleeping. My initial reaction was bowel busting panic followed by a 300bpm mini heart attack. I’m talking the kind of shock when your legs gets separated from your torso but you feel no pain because you’re in that kind of shock. As I started to regain my senses, the dumbass pulled the lion off my face and started strolling down the seawall like it was no big deal. That was a rough morning. This might sound odd but the water would get so cold that we would drink as much hot chocolate as we could stand and chase that with a few glasses of water. The purpose was to make yourself have to pee.. a bunch. We wore full body wetsuits with booties and yes we pee’d in our wetsuits to stay warm. Sure it might sound disgusting (OK, actually it is) but everyone did it and you knew when someone was letting go because you would hear that familiar moan of ecstasy echo across the water. Hank and I would play music all the time as he was a guitarist as well as a talented singer. We both shared an affinity for Journey and he could actually sing that stuff pretty well. Hank had a great family and I think he went on to UNT and I would assume he has done well for himself.
It would be easy to go on and on but enough for now. If you guys see this, look me up.