Up the Grapevine and into the Lake
Musician will play for money (beginning)
“You’re all fucked!” announced the singer to a nearly empty room. One of the guitarists, Ray, thought, “So it has come to this.” In the days when bands were hired to play 5 or 6 nights a week in the same bar, things nearly always degenerated in several ways. One important one was just getting tired of playing the same cover songs. Then there were the tourists with their snide heckling. One night, when no one clapped for a song that the band thought was worthy, the singer said “Don’t you cheer at the races?” and someone in at a table of about 10 said “Yeah, for the winners!” But the crowd, or lack of one, which was the case this night, wasn’t the biggest problem. There were also the girls. Current girlfriend meets ex-wife was already happening for the bass player and one of the guitarists. In fact, the guys wrote a song about this, called Girls, Please, Girls. Later the title was mistaken for a lesbian thing.
The nightly drama would usually unfold at the beginning of the second set. The ex-husbands would be searching the crowd for their two female friends, hoping they’d be in different areas of the room. Played over many months in that Orange County bar, it eventually got to Ray, who was single. One day, a piano player told him about a gig they had, playing original material 6 nights a week in Fresno. That night, Ray gave his notice to the Costa Mesa guys. Two weeks later, he found himself driving over the Grapevine from greater Los Angeles into the unknown San Joaquin Valley.
Stopping near Fort Tejon for some food, he felt relief from the dense population of Orange County and L.A., where he’d lived for a few years. When asked, John, the pianist who got him the gig, said Fresno would be “more Northern” than Southern California. It sounded very good. In those days, young men often moved out on their own in the early twenties. Some then moved to the coast, like Ray. He was still enjoying the huge contrast between his Midwestern home town and California, and these mountains sent a little thrill of adventure through him. Once over the pass, you could see for miles, taking Highway 99 towards Bakersfield and eventually Fresno.
After Bakersfield, it kept getting hotter on that highway, the air blasting in via the wing window was like a furnace. Ray could feel a cold coming on due to the violent change of temperature and humidity and like a switch being flipped, his mood darkened. Arriving in Fresno itself, the series of dingy motels along 99 — now known as the “Golden State Highway” — wasn’t inspiring. He was feeling lousy and needed a rest after 5 hours on the road alone. Coughing and sneezing, he pulled into a place that offered rooms at less than $15. He checked in and after a brief look at Fresno Zoo’s brochure, the only reading material other than the Bible, he tried to get some rest.
The next day, not feeling any better, but still having no place to stay, he moved into a better motel, this one had TV, air conditioning and a more comfortable bathroom. In a few days he’d hopefully feel better and by then, John should have rented a small house they would share.
The house was going to cost $80 a month. It was very near the train tracks, and at night the loud sounds of the train cars being coupled eventually no longer woke them up. John had a girlfriend who sometimes stayed over, but Ray was on his own, until the band started playing nights, which happened soon enough.
How different was this Fresno bar, owned by an “odd couple” of partners, one Armenian, the other Irish. In this room, rather than the Newport Beach tourists, much of the audience consisted of people buying and selling drugs. It was convenient, because it had both comfortable bar chairs and tables, and four hours of music to cover the deals being made. That made Ray remember, with a silent chuckle, that the waitresses in Newport Beach often ran little scams. They bought pitchers of beer cheap, set them on a friendly table and proceeded to pour out mugs, serving them to customers at the regular price. At the end of the night, that brought in the equivalent of a very generous tip on its own. One of them, Tracy, also sold acid to Marines at Camp Pendleton, the base towards San Diego. What the jarheads didn’t know is that the pills she sold them were her birth control pills. Tracy died young, a few years after that period.
All of these different layers of society made a reasonable introduction to the adult world for a guy in his twenties. He hadn’t been exposed to much criminality or hardship and was fortunate enough to have found work he enjoyed, playing music. These were good times for Ray, but he also was a part of a scene that involved serious drugs, armed robbery and burglary, gang bangs, and even murder. A few years earlier, when he rubbed shoulders with other airmen in Texas, the experience was mostly the discovery of other races and cultures. This time it was heroin, hookers and worse. Now, instead of a drill sergeant, there was an undercover cop at the door of the club, telling people who staggered a little towards the parking lot to “Be careful out there, there’s a lotta new guys on the force.”
Years later, Ray’s ex-girlfriend was tending bar when the Armenian partner would be murdered by hired gunmen in the bar’s pool room. Some wondered if it wasn’t the Irish partner that hired them. Like Tracy, she died young from AIDS. And Ray? He’s still going strong, still playing, although not in bars.
This story is a part of the series “99” which collects various anecdotes and adventures that happened on or near Highway 99.
