Didja miss me ?

[DFW]

28. What part of the Big Island are you on? We always stayed out at Waikoloa.

But that was because our daughter's school was in Waimea, and we wanted to be close by. When she graduated (HPA), our whole family went out there for a week. It cost me a goddam fortune, but, hey it was her high school graduation. Even her (then-)76 year old grandmother from Germany came, and it was only her second time in an airplane. I rented a house from a German family near the Mauna Lani. It was expensive, but a damned sight cheaper than 4 hotel rooms at the Mauna Lani for a week!

Perry Miller, a singer-songwriter from New York, renamed himself Jesse Colin Young in the 1960s and led a soft-rock group named the Youngbloods for a while. My local DC band even opened for them one time, and that was a real highlight. They were just fabulous live. I saw Jesse again in 1973 when he had his own band, although I really went to the show because God (otherwise known as Leo Kottke) was the opening act. I noticed even Jesse watching spellbound from the edge of the stage. Leo's playing does that to people.

It was 44 years before I saw Jesse again, this time in Truro, Massachusetts on Cape Cod (of all places!) with another band he had composed of one of his sons and a group of students from Boston's Berklee Music School. Again, just fabulous. He must be approaching 80 by now. But I did find out that he had moved to the Big Island some years ago and was growing Kona Coffee. Unless he has found something else to do, I guess he must still be there.