And Then Death Took Steve

Among my Cargo of Despair band mate Steve's arsenal of laughter, giggles, snickers, and guffaws was the yuk yuk yuk of Popeye the sailor. He let it go most often at the arc of good humored digs between two people. I can hear it clearly at our practice space when our musical cohorts Huls and Scott turned from debating a point to playfully jabbing one another with damning charges that each other was mired in stubbornness. But the verbal conflicts were not just between those two. They were in fact rife among all four of us. A heated contention would occur in the midst of an evening given to jamming and practicing songs. Words would be exchanged over some trifle, and they would heat and escalate to the point where you thought it was a matter of honor to protest and that there was some point to be won. Frequently it was Steve who was on one side of the divide. One time for instance he and Huls were at loggerheads over whether Coca Cola would be almost solid if in fact it was 90% sugar. But it did not matter which of the four of us was verbally battling. Steve would still let go at the argument's height with a yuk yuk yuk.

Steve grew up in a neighborhood not far from mine but I did not meet him until I was in Jr high school and our two circles of friends overlapped. He marched as Thoreau put it to a different drummer than most of those I knew. His clothes were more outlandish and his taste in music was beyond our kind. There was a story too among us spoken in a kind of reverence heralded by laughter that he had taken his bike one day up on to the top of his parent's house and rode it off the roof, crashing to the ground. Years later while skiing at Mount Tom I encountered Steve in the lift line. He pulled me aside and whispered that he had jumped a ramp and landed on another skier. Ten minutes later as I rode the lift up there was the skier still splayed upon the snow.

In a simple way Cargo of Despair was the circular progeny of Steve. For it was through the influence of his two man group the Larry Mondello Band that our foundering member Carl B. enlisted Huls to start a band. A year later upon seeing Cargo of Despair's first performance Steve asked to join our band. Thus was a circle completed.

A couple of years later Huls and Scott and I went to see Steve's mainstay the Larry Mondello Band at Mather Hall on the campus of Trinity College. The music that night was maniacal and oozing with dread.

Such were not the qualities however that he brought to Cargo of Despair. With us he had a lighter and more buoyant touch. He exuded enthusiasm and passion for what we were doing and was always up for whatever direction whim might take us. Be it drums, guitar, bass, or vocals he gave it his unschooled all. And when we performed before an audience he had no qualms about appearing in a diaper if that was what the song called for. Thus over the years I saw him donning a Hitler moustache, laid out on a gurney, dressed as a caveman, and inside the skin of a soft-shoe dancing six foot tall plastic godzilla.

He was always a drinker. I can't remember him not having a six pack with him when meeting at our practice space. It did not strike me then as excessive. He seldom appeared drunk. Sure there were those times when he fumbled with things. But that seemed born of his nature rather than the results of too much drink. There was one time however when I rode home with him after a practice and we parked in the driveway of my parent's home. He spoke in a way I could not completely follow but knew he was in his way unburdening himself. The night was cool and I could smell the beer on his breath and he spoke at length. But I was unsure of the point he was trying to make. I only know that afterwards we shook on it and his grip was warm and firm.

Some years later after our band had folded and we'd all gone our seprate ways I would hear third or fourth hand that while carrying on with his duties delivering mail as a U.S. postal employee he was suddenly surrounded by gun bearing authorities who ordered him to get on the ground and spread 'em. The story goes that a disgruntled debtor to Steve had phoned in a lie that Steve had threatened to go postal with a gun. He was suspended without pay and in his collapsed world he took steadily to drink and later on suffered the ravages of crack.

I also heard it told that some months later while Steve was on his deathbed at the hospital his superior appeared at his side to tell him his name had been cleared and he could have his job back. But it was too late. Steve died a day or two later.

Now here we are some ten years hence and I find myself almost bereft of words to describe the bond we wove together while making music with each other. But try I will. It was it strikes me now in a spiritual state of blissful awe that we wrestled at times out of dissonance and feedback compelling melody. We would look at each other in that altered place derived from sound and nod our heads knowing that we had in those moments out-shined our limited means. And there would be Steve his face lit up with a beaming smile.