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Life in the Empire

Dan Folgelberg dies of prostrate cancer. 56 years old.

http://www.danfogelberg.com/news.html

I loved this guy--sappy music and all.

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That little video was hilarious 

Hey cal stonefruit and mouse! Miss y'all! And everyone!

Molly, a gardener's dog, has gone beyond.

https://youtu.be/nj9LuHOGoXI

A Sid-type dog.  He was my eyes and ears.  

Sir Roger Scruton has gone forth, beyond.

https://youtu.be/bHw4MMEnmpc

Recently riding on Munson trail south of Tallahassee, I started thinking of Cleve. I’ve often imagined this trail as a good introduction for Cleve to my enjoyment of mountain biking since he loved road cycling so much. He owned several bikes, including some custom ones he built.  I wonder if he ever finished the recombinant trike he was working on….

 

I don’t have many friends - by choice - when I choose to spend time with people I don’t want to have to work, to entertain, to be careful, to make an impression. Cleve Redmond was my friend, he was my homeboy even though he grew up on the other side of town.

 

We would hang out in the high school lunchroom during our free period, entertaining ourselves by sharing ideas and talking nonsense. Once we noted how the regulars at the table didn’t fit neatly into any of the established groups; we were athletes who didn’t hang with the jocks, musicians, dancers and actors who didn’t hang with the band and theatre kids, smart kids in the advanced placement and honors classes who weren’t excitedly showing off the just-released programmable HP 65 calculator. We were a non-group of over-lappers who gravitated together.

 

Cleve was smart - probably smarter than me though I would never admit it - and like me affected a disaffected bemusement over the whole high school experience.  Only Cleve didn’t really affect his disaffection, he seemed to come by it naturally. After a day of delivering the same campaign speeches to successive periods of students, Cleve berated me for betraying the parody campaign for student council co-president that Chris Perrin and I had started with our Reformed Apathy Party.  And, he was right, I had started to think that maybe I could do something significant if I were elected to office, I had stopped being truly apathetic. Cleve and Bill Rusk with the Beer Party campaign had instead stayed true to their vision, complete with a rented tiny downtown office to host campaign ‘events’, to have fun while poking the idea of student government as having any real importance. Many years later, after listing my many frustrations with the politics of academia, I said, "Cleve, you are more cynical than I am and yet you have managed to do well within academia. I don't get it." He responded, "It is exactly because I am more cynical than you are. I see what academia is and accept it. You are an idealist who sees academia for what it could be and try to change it."

 

The Pit was a dank, dark, horrid basement apartment that served as undergraduate housing for Cleve, Brett Ross, Chris Perrin and his brother Rick. The Pit was sort of an anti-fraternity and I was an honorary member who didn’t pay rent or sleep there but might as well have been on the lease. The Pit moved two times, to a basic apartment complex near the graveyard where we would spend hours in the street trying to set a record for frisbee throws without a drop (I unfortunately missed the streaking in the graveyard event) and Little Pit on the Prairie, an absurdly small house set in the middle of a large lot on the outskirts of town.

 

Cleve lived with me in my parents’ house when they went to Costa Rica. That is when we started our basement band. Brett set up his drum kit and guitar, Cleve had a bass and I used my pseudo-quadrophonic receiver and a mic to add vocals. Bill Rusk would sit-in on guitar. A couple times Doug Palmer or Curt Oliver brought their guitars but they just wanted to play songs that they had learned from the radio. What we really were interested in was making our own songs. The guys would jam for a while until some sort of repeatable riff developed and then I would improvise a melody over the top. These sessions were addictive. We would end the night with an early morning breakfast at Perkins, excitedly talking about the band and our ideas. 

 

We began writing lyrics, keeping them in a spiral notebook that I could flip through to find the right thing to sing on top of their groove. I even recorded a cassette of our songs. We debated a name and settled upon Cleve’s idea “Rigel 7”, because he had gotten really excited by the Astronomy class he had taken, though I felt that the name didn’t really fit what we were doing. Rick had begun telling people about the band, a couple times bringing girls to the rehearsals – it felt like we had groupies – he even booked a gig for us with the upcoming Iowa Democratic Party Convention, which we quickly turned down because we only had three songs we knew we could play. He said that he described us as “kind of a punk band”, which we angrily disagreed with at the time but - looking back - that is exactly what we were. Cleve said that he wanted us to disband once we actually learned how to play, which is such a punk thing to say.

 

My parents came back. We spent an entire day cleaning the house the day before they arrived and Cleve moved out. We would have gotten away with it but my sister had visited the week before and told my parents what a messy pig-sty we had made of their house. After that the band’s rehearsal became sporadic as rent-free space was only occasionally available, usually during breaks at ISU when most of the residents of members’ housing were gone. I think Bill recorded one of our sessions he hosted at the Farmhouse Fraternity, but the band was no longer a pursuit, rather it was a memory.

 

After graduation I moved to California and my visits back to Iowa to see my folks were infrequent so I spent most of my time with my family. A few times when I came back to Ames I would get together with Cleve. We both had short-lived first marriages to the wrong woman and finally got it right the second time. I was surprised when Cleve and Lisa got married because he had assured me that he was never going to get married again. I made a horrible first impression upon Lisa.  I was already at his house when Lisa came over, announced she had a migraine and went into the bedroom to lay down. He was showing me his extensive collection of whiskies and we decided to conduct a tasting of each of them – with rather large pours.  It took years for Lisa to lose her distrust of me as a bad influence upon Cleve.

 

When Jo & I were living in Decorah we accepted Tom Moldenhauer’s invite to come to the Bayfront Blues Festival in Duluth. Cleve and Denny Sweeney were sharing a hotel room on what, I found out, was an annual pilgrimage for them. A couple years later, when we had moved to Cape Girardeau, Missouri, we got a call from Cleve. He promised himself as a teen that he was going to buy a classic sports car when he turned 40 and he had flown down to Louisiana to buy a Thunderbird so he could stop and spend the night on his drive back up to Ames.

 

Lisa finally seemed to trust me a little more a few years later, when Jo and I were living in Idaho. Maybe it was when we had come back from Jo’s Fulbright in Riga for my Mom’s funeral. We sat out on Cleve and Lisa’s back deck and Lisa was using our many moves as an example for Cleve to consider his reticence to leaving Ames.

 

I took advantage of my 9 months living in Manhattan, Kansas to drive up to Ames to visit my father on weekends. Since Dad had sold his apartment to live in the assisted living section of Green Hills I had to find a place to stay and Cleve and Lisa were so generous in offering me a room in their home.  It was then that I began to appreciate their unique living arrangement with the upstairs being Lisa’s area and the basement for Cleve. This arrangement was reinforced by their cats who would engage in vicious fights if ever the door was left open between their realms. This arrangement also facilitated a nice solution to Cleve and Lisa’s sleeping pattern. They would go together to sleep in Lisa’s bedroom, Cleve would typically get up in an hour or two and rather than risk waking Lisa, who wouldn’t be able to return to sleep, he would retreat to the basement bedroom.

 

On one of my last visits Lisa showed me the handlebar GPS/computer she had given Cleve for his birthday.  It had all sorts of neat functions but the fact that the GPS allowed Lisa to track where Cleve was on his long road biking excursions on her phone was what she really liked about it.

 

Not that long ago I found out that Cleve had surprised me again and decided to move to the Salt Lake area. I was sad that they wouldn’t be in Ames anymore so there wasn’t the chance to visit on my rather rare returns to my hometown but was looking forward to the chance to visit when on vacation to the intermountain West.

 

During one of my visits to Ames from Kansas, Chris Perrin arranged a Pit reunion with Brett, Cleve, Chris, Rick and me. After my Dad’s memorial service Tom Moldenhauer gathered together my homeboys Doug Palmer, Denny Sweeney, Cleve, Tom and myself. I knew these gatherings were special and rare. I didn’t realize that they were the last times we would be able to all be together.

 

I mourn the loss of Cleve, who was one of the very few who I counted as a true, lifelong friend. I can’t imagine Lisa’s anguish as her deepest anxieties about Cleve’s cycling trips became such a painful reality. I try, however, to find solace that he died doing something he so passionately enjoyed.

 

I love you Cleve.  I will miss you.

 

This some good stuff, brother P.  I wuz about to post one of my own.  But yours is better.  

"I didn’t realize that they were the last times we would be able to all be together."  

I met Greg Scott outside Judo class at the downtown Y right before high school.  He aspired to be a poet, and I'd say he made it.  Between Billy Clubs and Barricades.  We never went ice fishing.  Godamn granpa.  Etc.  Greg was good.  But I was way better.  Heh heh.  You know what I'm saying, P.  And it didn't hit me nearly as close as you. Sorry for your loss, P.  Another honest platitude.  And my growing physical (and mental) incapacity is kinda freaky... and I was never a physically gifted guy like you... or my old friend Rob Ashe (gone beyont).  Good a time as any to get old.  If I have to.  I guess. 

 

Thank you Jeb.

Funny name, eh.  Been wearing it like a birthmark that won't wash off.  Since before I could talk.   Waldo was the handle given me by my Nam-crazy roommates who are all dead now.  Being Jeb form Indiana makes you a redneck by default. (ask my boy, Zeke)   

 

Waldo is how I first knew you - and it is the name I am most comfortable calling you.

In loving memory of Michael Brooks.  The "... don't be foolish..." guy.  I grew up in a Jewish neighborhood.  So naturally I loved the way he talked.  And loved his work.  I will miss him.  Such a mensch he was.  

John my building-mate   

Much more than neighbors if they live across the hall.  And that was his name.  John Hall.    

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