MENDING A YOUNG LIFE

I looked forward to the Eighties as an opportunity to make a new start.  To hopefully forget the pain and unfairness that dominated my life during the late 1970s and live on as the legacy of my parents.  As it would turn out, the Eighties were a lost time for me.  I was blossoming into adulthood and was primed and ready to go out into the world to accomplish something.  Unfortunately, I had no idea what it was I wanted to accomplish.  I spent the decade feeling my way through life and the world, finding what worked for me and what didn't, and left it eight years behind where I wanted to be, but finally ready to proceed and succeed.

January, 1980 found me just 4 months into my freshman year at Eisenhower High in Rialto, California.  I was allowed to re-enter school in the 9th grade even though I missed my previous year.  It was a small consolation for me, as I was completely across the country from anyone I knew and still quite emotionally unstable.  My freshman year was quite ordinary, mainly because I wanted it to be.  Eisenhower was a large school and it was easy to melt into the throng of students in the building.  I was generally thought of, if at all, as a quiet loner who did the minimum work necessary to get by.  Few teachers or students knew of my history and no one else really inquired.  So I went back and forth to school, going through the motions and spending my free time avoiding my aunt, uncle, and cousin.  When I wasn't outside or at the park practicing my baseball pitching alone, I began to fall back on my mother's old passion: music.  Months before, I dug her old acoustic guitar out of the keepsakes I brought with me and began, with the help of the Rialto library's music book section, teaching myself guitar.

I barely avoided failing the 9th grade, causing some added tension with my uncle Sal, and decided to commit a bit more attention to school from that point on.  Not so much because I felt that there was anything useful there, but because I didn't want any more conflict with what was essentially my adoptive family.  The remainder of my high school career, I was a non-descript solid C student, although my days of complete anonymity were soon to end.

I met my first close friend in California at the start of 10th grade.  Steve Enright and I shared an up-and-coming interest in guitar, which led to frequent loud and boisterous jam sessions in my uncle's garage, further turning them off to my musical inclinations.  But regardless, we kept playing together, often skipping school to hang out, chill, and learn a few new licks.  Steve had the electric guitar and introduced me to some mind-blowing guitar riffs, while I introduced him to the physical and mental challenges of baseball.  He had a natural athletic knack, and together we decided to go out for the varsity baseball team in the Spring of 1981.

Even though I had given up pitching seriously for years, I hadn't forgotten the fundamentals and things just came back naturally to me.  Within 10 minutes of working out, it was obvious I was going to make the team.  For Steve, it didn't go so well, but true to his nature, it didn't seem to bother him much.  We spent a lot less time together playing baseball though, and more time playing guitar.  While I may have had the greater of the baseball talent between us, Steve definitely had the guitar talent.  We quickly decided that if we were going to play together, I should back him up on bass.  Perhaps the most influential thing my uncle ever did for me was to get me an old electric bass and amp for my 16th birthday that spring.

For the rest of the next year, I walked a fine line between doing enough schoolwork to get by and cutting out of enough classes to jam with Steve and a couple of rotating "band" members we put together throughout late 1981 and 1982.  We never really played anywhere beyond a couple of basements, garages, and an occasional party, but we certainly felt like we were somebody.  I began to discover girls for the first time in my life, and although I was late getting started in the game, with my jock and rock star persona, I got the chance to learn pretty quickly.  Steve seemed to attract girls in flocks, and I was more than happy to pick some off the fringes of his entourage.

I really consider 1982 my maturing from adolescence into young adulthood.  Even though I had no car, even at 17, I found myself growing up fast:  attending tons of parties, experimenting with alcohol and drugs, making my own choices about classes and extra-curricular activities, and, of course, hanging with what would surely someday be the greatest rock band Rialto had ever seen.  Basically, I was plotting out my own life and running with it.  For the second time in my life, I had a dream laid out in front of me and I felt like I had a real chance to achieve it.

REBIRTH OF A DREAM

Meanwhile, as my bass playing got most of my attention, my pitching sort of improved on auto-pilot.  I failed to spend anywhere near the time I should have on baseball, yet I was able, on pure talent, to maintain a spot on our varsity team and, in fact, to be pretty much our top pitcher.  Unlike the success I had grown accustomed to in Little League, our team struggled continuously.  This gave me even less incentive to work on my game.  After all, I was going to be a rock star; why did I need to pitch well when the team was losing anyway?  My senior year, however, things started to cool down on the music front.  Steve and I, inseparable for most of the past two years, sort of drifted apart.  He wound up with a serious girlfriend and less time for music, and I sort of outgrew being "the backup guy" that set down the rhythm while he got the glory.  Like many professional musicians, I reacted by trying to get together my own band.  It failed miserably and sort of entered into a lost period that lasted most of the winter of 1982-3.

With my funk of having another "great dream" fall apart in front of me, I had no real plans for what would happen next.  I was due to graduate high school in 5 months; I had nowhere near the grades nor the money nor the inclination to go to college, even though my coach pretty much guaranteed me a baseball scholarship; I dreaded the thought of joining the retail or labor work force; and I knew that I wanted to get out of my aunt and uncle's house, which at this point had grown unbearable for me.  Fortunately, baseball season rolled around again just in time to focus me.  With nothing else to spend my time on, I found myself hitting new highs in a sport I'd long since given up on.  I was suddenly known, not just through the school, but throughout the city and the surrounding areas.  I finished the spring baseball season that year without losing a game, and giving up only 7 earned runs in over 80 innings pitched.  Every success for me seemed to drive me harder, and rebuild in me the love of the game and the dreams I had as a child.

Beyond the college scholarship offers, I was actually scouted by 2 major league teams before I even knew what was going on.  By the time the 3rd and 4th scouts came to watch, I was ready with one of my best performances.  The idea that these people -- who could breathe new life into my dead dream of pitching in the big leagues -- were here to see me was truly exhilarating for me.  The pressure made me perform even better.  When I graduated in May, I was assured by my coach (as well as several scouts to whom I'd talked) that I would be drafted somewhere in the upcoming amateur baseball draft.

As it turns out, that saved me.  My complete absence of plans for my future suddenly became no problem when, in June, I was drafted in the 33rd round and signed to a minor league baseball contract by the Los Angeles Dodgers.  When I left my uncle's house, I took everything.  I had no plans of coming back again, ever.  For me, it was a clean start.  I was throwing away all the bad things that had happened in my life and was moving forward into my dream with the same purity and focus I had when I first started playing baseball almost 10 years earlier.  As it would turn out, this was a mistake -- we must eventually deal with all of our demons in life and try our best to learn from them.  But in the summer of 1983, this seemed like the perfect solution.

THE MINOR LEAGUES

Within a few weeks, I found myself employed by the Dodgers organization and playing in the Montana Rookie league.  It seemed to me, as I'm sure it seems to most everyone, that the professional sports player is rich, living in luxury, and "working" a few hours a day during the game.  I quickly found out the truth.  Between the small shared apartment I was in, the meager (barely livable) wages, and the endless practices followed by bus trips followed by games, I asked myself what I was doing in the back recesses of Montana on more than one occasion.  Fortunately, after my summer of toil in the far north, I returned to Vero Beach, FL and the Florida League Single-A baseball club there for the 1984 season. Although it was an improvement, the living was still tough and the only things that really kept me going were my love of the game and my dream that I would work my way up to the big leagues some day.  What time I wasn't playing ball or on the road, I was either working a variety of second jobs (from bussing tables to security guard) or sitting out on the beach practicing bass riffs.

By the time the 1984 season had ended, my pitching had improved to the point that I was pretty certain I had a shot at being promoted to the Dodgers' AA team in San Antonio.  I was very excited about this, as I wintered in Vero Beach again, hanging out with a group of rookies and second year players who shared my interests in music, baseball, and South Florida women.  I still remember that winter and those times vividly, as they would be my last days of devil-may-care partying for years.  Sure enough, at the end of winter camp, I packed up my life and moved to San Antonio, TX to join the AA affiliate, the San Antonio Missions.  Although I was re-united with a few players I had played with the previous year, it was really culture shock for me to be more or less alone in a larger town that, unlike Vero Beach, was not one long Spring Break party.  I struggled to adjust early on and it was reflected in my pitching, which I was struggling with as mid-May rolled around.

Me unpacking my bags on a road trip in summer of 1985 in Texas
My life in the mid 80's as a minor league ballplayer: pack, unpack, on the bus, off the bus, check in, check out

It was in late May of 1985 that again, my life got a jump-start.  While loosening up in the bullpen during a game, I caught the eye of a stunning brunette nearby in the stands.  She approached me after the game, we went out for drinks, and so I began what would be the first genuinely long-term relationship of my life.  In the months after I began dating Carolyn Lenz, my partying ceased, my focus returned and I began to reach the both the goals that the organization had set and my own personal goals.  By the end of the season in September, I was on the fast track for promotion in the organization.  I had even gotten on the radar of some people high up in the Dodgers' front office.  It appeared again that my dream was within reach.  That my years of toiling in the low minor leagues would pay off in reaching my dream, a chance to play major league baseball.

The winter of 1985-86 was a time of total focus and commitment for me.  At 20 years old, I began to shoulder for the first time the responsibility of a career as well as a committed relationship.  Somehow, it all came easily to me.  The energy I fed into one seemed to provide me with even more energy for the other.  I remained in San Antonio and spent most of my time working on improving my stamina and a few select pitches.  Looking back, this was my first realization that I needed to specialize in life.  To pick one narrow area that I wanted to excel in and work directly on those things that would help me acheive excellence.  For me, to become a major league pitcher, I worked directly on my ability to pitch longer into games and on improving my two "go-to" pitches: my curveball and my sinker.  Without a dominating fastball, my chances of moving up to the majors really relied on my ability to fool batters with my offspeed pitches.  When I finally realized this, it allowed me to start fresh, without the machismo I'd carried for years of trying to overpower hitters.  By sticking to my strengths, I not only found myself more successful on the mound, but also drawing praise for using my head in situations where I'd previously relied strictly on power.

The spring of 1986 marked my first trip to major league spring training camp. I performed well, though not brilliantly, and the feedback I got from the organization made it clear that, with continued improvement, I would likely soon be promoted to the AAA team in Albuquerque.  While this thought elated me, it also caused a problem in my 10 month relationship with Carolyn.  I had run into the same dilemma that we all face at some point: a choice between my career and my relationship.  Carolyn was born and raised in San Antonio and did not seem open to the idea of following her ballplayer on the never-ending road trips of his career.  I even entertained the idea of leaving baseball, buying a house with the money in my trust fund, and settling into a normal, blue-collar life with a wife and children, but my dream wouldn't let me quit.  In June of 1986, two weeks after I pitched a two-hit shutout against Wichita, I received a call-up to the AAA Albuquerque Dukes.  Carolyn and I spent most of the next 48 hours discussing what we could do to make this work.  In the end, she simply realized that I had to leave or I would never forgive myself.  She agreed to follow me out to New Mexico after a month or two of putting her affairs in order, and I was ecstatic.  Eventually, I would realize that we doomed our relationship when she perceived my move as an ultimatum, but at that point I could see nothing but smooth sailing ahead for us.

I used the move to Albuquerque to basically start my life over again.  I turned 21 and finally received control over my trust fund.  I was pleasantly surprised to find that my uncle had managed it extremely well during the upswing of the 80's, more than tripling its value from what was initially left for me.  I was now a professional athlete, with a nest egg and a beautiful woman; what more could I want?  By late July, Carolyn and I had rented a house in Albuquerque and I was part of the Dukes' starting rotation.   Our team had foundered near the bottom of the standings for most of the year and I wasn't a lot of help as I struggled a bit pitching against the new level of competition.  I didn't let it get me down though.  I was beyond happy, and I thought I would complete my life by proposing to Carolyn in August.  She accepted and talked about buying a house in the area, but I had other plans.  I was going to be pitching in L.A. in a year anyway, so why tie myself down.  Albuquerque, for me, was just a stop along the way.

It was about this time that my cockiness began to overwhelm me.  I looked completely past my current task of pitching in AAA toward my dream of being in the major leagues.  Because of this, my mental focus -- the key to success in baseball -- began to deteriorate.  My pitching declined steadily after my promotion to AAA and by the last few weeks of the season, I found myself pitching out of the bullpen trying to recapture my form.  But sadly, even that demotion did not serve as a wake up call.  I swung back and forth between pushing myself too hard and just not trying at all.  While I had spent the previous off-season working out almost every day, this off-season I ignored baseball completely.  I found myself so immersed in my "real life", I turned down opportunity after opportunity (including an offer from the Dodgers to come to spring training a few weeks early and work out with Orel Hershiser, one of their top pitchers).   I had turned 180 degrees in that winter from being obsessed with work to completely neglecting my career.

TWIN FAILURES

While I refused to worry about baseball that off-season, I certainly kept my plate full of other things.  Carolyn and I were married in a small ceremony in San Antonio on November 15th, 1986.  Among the attendees were my manager at Albuquerque, Terry Collins, whom I had turned to almost as a father figure in my few months with the team; a handful of Dukes and Missions players; and my old high school friend, Steve Enright, who flew in to stand in as best man and bachelor party creator extraordinaire.  Sadly, I lost touch with Steve in the years both before and after my wedding, but in his brief one week re-appearance in my life, he re-kindled my interest in music, lost since I left Vero Beach almost two years before.  When Carolyn and I returned to Albuquerque as man and wife, I picked up my bass playing again, and by Christmas, I was playing with "Peacefrog", a local Doors cover band with a talented Jim Morrison look-alike and a few heavy drinking hangers-on.  Although I made next to nothing with our bar gigs, I found myself looking forward to them more and more as a much less stressful and relaxing pasttime than trying to throw a baseball past large well trained men with bats.

As the spring of 1987 rolled around, I became more and more involved with "Peacefrog" and our party lifestyle.  In retrospect, I suppose even if Carolyn could handle the life of a ballplayer -- the long road trips, the odd hours, the post-game partying -- the life of a band member just wasn't acceptable.  I began drinking heavily and smoking a lot of pot and, although I steered clear of the heavier drugs, it took its toll on my relationship as well as my "real job."  By the time baseball season started back up, I was out of shape, both physically and mentally, for the game.  I struggled with a series of minor injuries throughout spring training, most of which were directly related to being so out of shape.  it was only through sheer force of will that I managed to secure my spot on the AAA roster and avoid being sent back to San Antonio.  I quit the band and spent more time at home in an attempt to save my career and my marriage, but looking back, it was all half-hearted.  I still yearned for the freedom of being in a band, of staying out and partying all night, to just be a 21 year old, rather than a husband with a career.  I had started to view baseball as not a life-long dream, but as a burdensome job, and that would be the beginning of the end.

The 1987 Albuquerque Dukes (Dodgers' AAA farm team)
As close as I would come to the majors -- I'm third from the left in the last row (blown up in the inset)

We had a solid team in 1987, unlike the previous year, and were at or near the top of the standings most of the season.  Although I began the year pitching in relief, I was given a few chances to start some games.  This was the skipper's way of working me slowly back into my old pitching form.  It was to no avail.  In my first two starts of the '87 season, I never pitched more than 3 innings.  With an ERA of over 7.00, no wins, and poor performances coming out of the bullpen, I began to panic and push myself too much.  I altered my pitching delivery, started throwing too hard, and practiced way beyond what was safe for my arm.  The results were devastating.  As I was on the verge of being demoted to San Antonio to get some "less stressful" work, I felt a shooting pain in my right shoulder while I was warming up.  The diagnosis was about the worst thing possible: a torn rotator cuff.  I went home from the doctor absolutely distraught, seeking comfort and compassion from Carolyn, but there little to be found.  She had warned me about my changing attitude and my dangerous practice of letting myself go completely and then pushing myself beyond the limits.  The best prognosis for me would be surgery and 1-2 years of rehabilitation, and there was no guarantee at all that I would ever pitch again.  I had no idea what to do.  Although I had become disenchanted with baseball, this was the only career I had known.

The next week, I spent long hours with the organization discussing my future, and it was obvious that any rehabilitation after this season would be on my own.  My minor league contract would be honored through the rest of the year, but beyond that, it was highly unlikely that I would return to the Dodgers' organization.  I went into a tirade and threw my chair across the room, yelling at everyone in earshot that I quit the team effective immediately and to tear up my contract right then.  Without even fully realizing what I'd done, my dream of playing in the majors was officially over and I was among the ranks of the unemployed.

The rest of 1987 seemed to drag on forever.  I passed up surgery on my shoulder and opted for less intrusive treatments and therapy, at the cost of knowing I would never recover the strength to pitch professionally again.  I tried to get back with "Peacefrog", but they had replaced me (it's not difficult to find someone who can lay down the bass line to Light My Fire) and, worse, Carolyn threatened to divorce me if I went back to that lifestyle.  So basically I floated, working part time for a landscaping company, but mostly tapping into the money that came from my trust fund.  For a while, I entertained maybe getting the surgery after all, and working my way back playing independent or semi-pro ball somewhere.  But those choices involved a lot of pain and effort and usually a move... none of these were an option for me at that point in my life.  I got into investing, mainly through trying to find a good place to put my trust fund money now that it was under my control.  But mostly from this time in my life, I remember being unbelievably tired.  Tired from years of trying and trying for a dream and then realizing that all that time was wasted.  I had no energy to work or to put into my relationship, and even my brief flirt with investing ended with me turning it all over to an investment broker who could handle things better than I had.  I thought I had truly hit bottom, but I didn't realize that just having Carolyn should have been enough for me.

For whatever reasons, either hers or mine, Carolyn and I had never been able to rely on each other in any sort of really emotionally dependent way.  I think we were both too young to truly understand what a relationship was, and that we weren't as deeply committed as we thought.  As usual, you never find the cracks until you put on some serious stress; and that's exactly what the fall of 1987 was.  More than ever, I needed someone to lean on, to be there for me, but I didn't know it.  I realize now that if we were truly soulmates she should have known how much I needed her even before I did.  But she didn't and I didn't and all it did was to make me blame myself more.  I became more and more intolerable and she became more and more intolerant.  We talked about having a child, but really it was only to bring us back closer together.  The end for us finally came on Christmas day 1987, when a simple comment made while opening each other's presents turned into a quarrel, which became a fight, which became the last straw.  She left that day and drove back to her parents in San Antonio.  Two weeks later, she returned to Albuquerque and announced her intention to stay... just without me in the house.

I lived out of a cheap weekly motel for a little while, doing little but getting up, drinking, and occasionally showing up for work with the landscaping company -- where I had become persona non-grata by February.  With little to stick around Albuquerque for, I picked up and moved west, into the mountains of western New Mexico.  I bought a home that was nothing more than a 2 room shack in Crownpoint, NM just outside the Navajo Nation.  The house had been abandoned for almost 2 years and it became therapeutic for me to build it back up somewhat when I had the energy to work.  That spring and summer were basically a blur for me.  I had my broker in Albuquerque siphon off any earnings coming out of my account and that was basically what I allowed myself to live off of.  I refused to touch the principal... I guess some of my Dad's fiscal responsibility got ingrained into me at some point.  But more or less, I just skated by.  The folks that lived in Crownpoint saw me as the strange young hermit who bought that abandoned house on the south side of town -- the guy who they saw maybe once or twice a week when I headed into town to pick up some supplies for the house, or a fresh supply of food and liquor.  The first thing I restored was the front porch of the house, which is where I spent most afternoons and evenings listening to whatever radio station I could pick up, drinking, playing my mother's old acoustic guitar, and watching the sun set.  I was truly adrift in life with no plans, no one close to me, no idea where to go, and no desire to get there.

SEARCHING FOR SOMETHING

I wish I could say I had some grand inspiration that pulled me out of this pit -- some signal from above or some conversation with a long lost friend -- but it wasn't so.  As strange as it sounds, I think it was just boredom.  By September of 1988, I just plain got bored with dropping out of life and being nowhere with no one.  I contacted a few of the locals in Crownpoint to see if they had any interest in taking my semi-refurbished house off my hands for well below market price, but got no takers.  So I packed up a few things, left the remainder, boarded the place up and headed back to civilization.  Although I was pulled back towards Albuquerque, I knew that going back was not something I was ready for.  I couldn't yet deal with the site of my failures.  So I headed west... to Phoenix.

At 23 years old, I felt as if I had lived 2 lifetimes already, but I still looked and acted very much the young buck.  I settled into a small apartment in Tempe near the university and began slowly re-acclimating myself to a social life.  It was there that I met Paul Carver, who would lead me to yet another phase in my life.  Paul was 2 years younger than me, but had probably 10 times my net worth.  His came from the parents as well, although his were still alive and living in Florida.  He was attending Arizona State, at least in theory, but he had the same lost, unambitious malaise that I did.  Unlike my dropping out though, Paul's solution was just to go wild and "spend it while you have it."  Under Paul's "tutelage", I began quickly living further and further past my means -- dipping into the principal of my investments, rather than just taking what came off the top.  From October to mid-December, I drained nearly $20,000 out of what I had grown to call my "sponge fund."  We traveled nearly every weekend (and some weeks), everywhere from Manhattan to Cancun to San Diego to New Orleans.  Everywhere we went, partying was goal #1.  I had been without female companionship since the Christmas when Carolyn left, but we made up for that and then some on our wild trips.  As much as I spent, Paul seemed challenged to spend more, and it was always the finest accommodations, five star restaurants, and 12 year old scotch for the house.

Mercifully for my future, that all came to an end as Paul was called back home to Boca Raton at the end of the semester and was not to return.  Left with no one to spend endlessly and travel with, I sort of teetered on whether to stay in Phoenix or pack up and move -- perhaps back to Albuquerque for some closure.  In the midst of things, in mid January 1989, Paul invited me to move out to Boca and rejoin him in the party lifestyle.  It seemed his parents didn't mind that he blew money left and right as long... as he didn't use the pretense of gaining a higher education.  I declined the invitation, looking instead to actually get my life back on track.  It turned out that had he called two weeks later with that offer, I probably would have run in a heartbeat -- and my life would be vastly different than it is now.

I hadn't heard from Carolyn in over a year until a knock at my door on January 23rd.  It wasn't Carolyn however, but a man serving me with divorce papers.  Suddenly, everything I had blocked out of my mind came rushing back.  It was as if I had a relapse to those gray days almost a year before in the hotel in Albuquerque -- just one more reminder of my own acute failures.  It took me two days to be able to contact a lawyer of my own and determine what I needed to do next.  At the time, it seemed Carolyn was being quite kind in the proceedings, asking for a no-fault divorce and for no support or alimony of any kind.  That is, until I found out she was dating a chiropractor back in New Mexico who had no problem with cash flow.  I suppose I thought I was over her by that point, but that news just hit me with a knockout blow.  I authorized my attorney in Phoenix to go along with whatever she wanted and just get it over with quickly, and once again, I ran away.

By the first week of February 1989, I had loaded up my Chrysler LeBaron with the essentials I needed to live on the road and headed west again.  When I reached the coast in San Diego, I turned south, looking to lose myself in that border town pit of sin, Tijuana.  Once I was across the border, I settled into a motel that was decent for Tijuana standards, but was obviously not a place I wanted to stay for any period of time.  It was only a matter of days before the filth, noise, and general ugliness got to me and forced me to move on.  Not really planning on anywhere in particular, I headed south along the coast, finally arriving in Cabo San Lucas at the tip of the Baja peninsula.  The minute I entered town, I knew this would be my stopping point, but I didn't realize how my time there would profoundly change me and bring closure to my entire decade of wandering.

After only a few days in Cabo, I went looking for longer term accommodations and was able to rent one unit of a duplex in town by the month.  It was February and I could sit out on my balcony in 80 degree weather and overlook San Lucas Bay, walk to the beach or the bar, and not have to learn more than twenty words of Spanish. I was far from alone there as an "expatriate" fleeing the States.  There were hundreds of retirees and younger folks who just enjoyed Baja living, not to mention the parade of tourists that filed in and out of town for their week-long getaways.  It was exactly the recovery I needed, but before I could completely relax, I had one last trip to take back to the States.

In mid March, I returned to the U.S. for what I thought would be my last time.  As far as I was concerned, I would gladly live the rest of my life in the somewhat sleepy resort town of Cabo San Lucas (which in 1989 had not yet entered the throes of its future tourist overgrowth).  My whirlwind one week tour took me back to Phoenix to finalize the termination of my marriage.  From there I moved on to Crownpoint to pick up what I could carry in a U-haul trailer and arrange the sale of my home to the owner of the town's two gas stations.  I hesitate to call it a sale, as it was more like legalized larceny, but Crownpoint was certainly no seller's market and the $7,500 I received for the house was better than abandoning it for nothing.  Finally, I drove back through Phoenix to set up a new investment account for my inheritance, with a stipend transferred to the Bank of Mexico each month for my living expenses.  When I crossed the border again at Tijuana, I waved goodbye to the good old U.S. of A as if by leaving I could wash all my problems away.

THE GREAT INSPIRATIONS

Obviously, this was not the long-term solution I'd hoped it would be, but for the spring and summer of 1989, I certainly did my best to forget all the trials and tribulations of the past 3 years and just be young and carefree.  I fell in with a group of American expatriates in their mid to late 20s and we spent week after week losing ourselves, drunk on Corona and high on pot, on the beaches, in the surf, or down at "The Giggling Marlin", a local bar where we spent most every night.  By the summer, I was a fixture on the Playa El Medano or along "the corridor", on a beat up blanket playing my guitar with a rotating cast of about a dozen others who would come by to have a beer, sing along, or just sit and relax.

It was that summer when my two guiding inspirations and my one stroke of luck would occur.  The first to happen was what I would call "the grand idea".  Born out of a partial hallucination of a mind deprived of food and roasted on marijuana, the conceptual basis for what would become BrainWorks hit me and stuck, as I sat talking on the beach in late May of 1989.  I had no idea how to implement it, or even if it was possible, but the concept behind BrainWorks -- to research and understand the chemical interfaces of the human brain and thereby, control and replicate all sensory input -- overwhelmed me as a revolutionary concept that could change the world.  That idea was to wait years before truly being acted upon, but the research and planning would be in the back of my mind from that day forth.

The second, less stunning but more immediate inspiration, hit me in late June.  On and off, I'd run into a group of local kids playing pick up soccer a few blocks from my home.  I'd always kid with them in the minimal Spanish I knew, and they'd rib me back as the "beach bum", an English phrase I'd taught them.  To my surprise, I found them one day trying a game of baseball.  My own childhood love of the game outweighed the bad memories of a few years back, and I began teaching them a few finer points of the game.  By late May, I had informally organized the first real kids' baseball team in Cabo San Lucas and I wanted to give them some feeling of being a team.  These were mostly poor children who had no baseball gloves and didn't even have a real bat and ball until I dug some out of my things.  I ordered a dozen small baseball gloves through a mail-order sports catalog from the States and distributed them.  But what I really wanted was uniforms for the team, and that was far more difficult.  I hired a few local women and organized supplies and designs for them to make primitive but functional uniforms for the "Cabo Gringos" (the children picked the team name, not me).  It was this experience that led me to the concept of SCA Designs -- my youth sports apparel company.  Handling the ordering, distribution, and design of uniforms for these kids was not only something I enjoyed doing, it was valuable and rewarding.  Again, it would take more than a year for SCA Designs to take off, but the concept was in place.

Finally, came the stroke of luck that would lead me out of my self-imposed exile and back into life.  Barely a week after outfitting the "Gringos" and stumbling upon what would become SCA Designs, I was spending my standard day on the Playa El Medano with a few friends, when I happened upon a group of young American women visiting town for the week.  I was instantly drawn to one, a young, plain but attractive brunette named Jessica.  The eight of us spent the day hanging out and they agreed to join us at the "Marlin" that night.  Jessica and I began to hit it off more and more as the night wore on, and the next three days would find us growing ever closer, as we explored the sights, sounds, and smells of Cabo, from the isolated but beautiful beaches of the corridor to the shops and local little-known restaurants of the town.  Although I had learned her full name the first night, it wasn't until our third day together that I put together why her name seemed to ring a bell.

Walking back from lunch with her, it suddenly hit me that I had unknowingly met and become romantically involved with Jessica Betts, the daughter of Dickey Betts of "The Allman Brothers", as well as the inspiration for their classic Jessica.  I wish I could say that finding out her background didn't change the way I felt about her, but it's not completely true.  I had really taken a liking to Jessica in the 3 days we had spent together before this revelation, and was certainly on my way to a romance of some shape or form with her, but my interest and commitment to her was redoubled upon finding out her past.  We spent the remainder of her week in Cabo pretty much attached at the hip.  I felt rather self-conscious playing the guitar in front of her, knowing that her father was one of the all-time greats, but she still seemed contented living my daily grind of beach, music, and beer.  When her week was up, I asked her to stay on in Cabo, as my place was certainly large enough for the two of us, but she declined, promising to come back and visit but needing to head back home with her friends.  I waved goodbye at the airport, half thinking I would never see her again, but my luck continued, and she made good on her promise.

Jessica came back less than a month later, in late July, and we hit it off even better than before.  I felt more strongly for her than I had for anyone since Carolyn, and I felt an attraction back on her end, but as our second week together drew to a close, I was torn as to how to make this work.  Jessica was only 18 years old, and still lived with her mother in Georgia.  Cabo was hardly an option for her, with the exception of a few vacations a year.  Meanwhile, at 24, I'd finally felt as if I'd discovered a life I could lead, even if it was the life of a dropout, and I was hesitant to leave this place of beauty and relaxation for another turn in the States.  We decided just to see where things led and I excitedly accepted an invitation to fly up to Georgia and meet her family (including Dickey himself) and see how this relationship would progress.

THE MUSIC BIZ

My trip to see Jessica in August would be my first trip out of Mexico in nearly 5 months and, in retrospect, would be the thing to finally pull me back from the brink of lifelong slacking.   Jessica met me at the airport in Atlanta and drove me to her mother's house outside of town.  Jessica and I spent 3 days together in town, sleeping in separate bedrooms of course, while we shared walks through the park, laughter, and closeness that I had missed for years.  me down to Macon, where I would -- in a state of awe -- meet the great Dickey Betts for the first time.  Jessica and I spent 3 days together in town, sleeping in separate bedrooms of course, while we shared walks through the park, laughter, and closeness that I had missed for years.  But somehow, removed from the surreal party world of Cabo San Lucas, I could tell it wasn't quite the same for her.  Perhaps sensing this, I spent the majority of my last two days in Macon with her father, Dickey.  In 1989, Dickey was still an alcoholic by pretty much everyone's description and, at this point in my life, I wasn't far behind.  His initial suspicion of me and my motives with his teenage daughter soon mellowed out and by the end of my trip, we had actually become more or less drinking buddies.  On August 13th, my last day in town, Dickey and I split a fifth of bourbon, starting at about 9 AM, and sat and played guitar together.  He even tracked down an old bass, and I will forever remember that morning, sitting in the studio in Dickey Betts' house playing the bass line to Ramblin' Man while Dickey, half-drunk, ripped off a guitar solo like nothing I had ever heard before or since.

By the end of that week, I had pretty much decided to move back to the States and try life again.  My interest in music had been rekindled in those 5 days, and Dickey said I had enough potential on the bass that I should try to do some session work.  He gave me a couple of numbers in Nashville and L.A., told me to use him as a reference, and then perhaps gave me the greatest compliment I have ever gotten.  "I never want my daughter to date a musician," he said, "but I might let her give you a chance."  Even with that ringing endorsement from her father, I had a feeling inside that something had changed between Jessica and I and that she wasn't the same person with me as she was in Cabo.  As it turned out, my kiss goodbye to her at the Atlanta airport would be the last time I was to see her.  We talked a few more times on the phone, although Dickey probably said more to me than she did, but as I thought, the magic was gone.  Somehow I lost the allure that I must have held as a slacker beach bum hiding away in Mexico.

I followed through on my plans to move back to the U.S., though.  It took me a week to close things out in Cabo: saying goodbye to my friends, the kids of the "Cabo Gringos", the staff of the "Giggling Marlin"; and just getting things in order.  By the first of September, I had settled into an apartment in Santa Monica, near the Hollywood scene of L.A., and began to run down my list of numbers to pursue my career as a musician.  One thing I found out quickly was that even though Dickey had been only on the fringes of the business for years, his name and his contacts were like gold in the industry.  I wound up with a couple of auditions right away, but they were mostly jazz, which was not really my scene.  One of the studios was interested enough in me as a session bass player though, to send me dozens of perks, trying to persuade me to sign on with them. One of them was a ticket & backstage pass to the Elvis Costello show at the L.A. Universal Amphitheater.  After spending days with Dickey Betts, I felt like an old pro at dealing with celebrities and I managed to keep my excitement in check when I got backstage to hang out with Elvis and his band, The Rude 5.

My backstage pass from the Elvis Costello show at the L.A. Universal Amphitheater
This was my ticket t o my first meeting with E.C. and it's now displayed in my "music room".

I had played in a lot of bands and with a lot of different people, but never did I meet a more fun or greater group of people than E.C. and The Rude 5.  Although I had just met them, they were as relaxed around me as I was around them.  We shared music stories, drank a little, and just proceeded to interact not like a rock star and a fan, but as two people communicating.  I was certainly a little high on myself at the time, but it felt like I was going to be asked to join the band by the end of the night.  Alas, that was not to happen, but I got some great contact information and again, I had another name to drop in my search for fortune and fame in the music business.

The rest of 1989 was just a slow reacclimation for me back in the States.  I did end up doing some session work here and there, mostly jazz, but it did pay the bills.  I had a line on a few leads into maybe getting some session work with big name rock bands, but nothing had panned out.  Socially, I finally contacted my aunt and uncle who were still in Rialto and let them know I was back in town, but neither of us really wanted that much to do with each other.  My search for some old high school friends mostly blanked out, so I ended up hanging out with a few other session musicians, wanna-be actors, and drop-outs that tend to amass in the Santa Monica area.  I kept in contact with some of the Cabo San Lucas folks, but never really picked back up to see any of them.

TEN YEARS GONE

As the decade drew to a close, I was beginning to realize that my dream of becoming a big name rock star, rekindled by my week of jamming with Dickey Betts, was probably not going to be.  Jessica and I hadn't talked since October, and it was becoming increasingly more obvious that I was alone and really headed nowhere -- no further than I was when I graduated high school.  I had drifted and wasted my time away for some seven years, chasing dream after dream, only to fall short at the last minute.  I almost became desperate -- desperate to find why it was I was here on Earth and to just get down to business and do it.  I knew somewhere in the back of my mind that somehow Cabo had brought me the answer, but I was not yet ready to act, to accomplish what I needed to in order to realize my ideas.  But looking back, my lost decade wasn't really all lost.  I moved from adolescence to young adulthood and got confused, as a lot of us do.  I think part of that period of all of our lives is to wander a bit and find what it is we want to do with the rest of our lives.  My wandering period lasted longer than most, but I did come out of the Eighties with at least a basic concept of what my life was to be about, and where I was headed in the future.  I just hadn't realized it yet.