Big Mike: A Fate Better Than Death

September 1st, 2009

And so the farewell tour begins.

It’s Monday afternoon, about a quarter to five. I play Trivia on Monday nights down at Dick’s Pizza on Goose Creek Road. Wouldn’t miss it for the world. So when Loren the Weather Watcher calls and invites me to hear his old man, Leo the Trombonist, play down at a pizza parlor next to the Second Street Bridge, I hem and haw.

I like both Loren and Leo. Fils is about my age and pere will turn 80 in February. The two hang out together which is both puzzling and neat. One of the first times I ever saw them, they were raving about the Earth, Wind and Fire concert they’d attended the previous night. I had a tough time living in the same country with my father so it’s inconceivable to imagine we’d attend a concert together if he were still alive.

Anyway, Leo sits in occasionally with Dave Mehl’s Swing Street Big Band at Bearno’s in the Iron Quarter (so-called because it’s the last remaining cast iron-facade block in the country.) Bearno’s and a fortune teller on the second floor are the only signs of life among the abandoned storefronts and cobwebs.

Leo plays with the band as often as his arthritic hands allow him. With the good summer weather, he’s feeling pretty well these days. But, as I say, I hate to miss Trivia. Loren won’t take no for an answer. “Dad really wants you to come,” he says. How can I refuse that?

The two pick me up and Leo spends the first five minutes of the ride thanking me for coming along. The three of us haven’t seen each other in a few months so we also have to engage in that old Kentucky ritual of reaffirming our friendship. It’s true — good old southern hospitality masks people’s true feelings so when they honestly like each other, they have to have little cordiality reinforcement sessions. “I’m really so glad we met you,” Leo says, as Loren, driving, nods. “It’s our good luck that you came down here from Chicago.”

Wonderful words, of course, but I feel like shit when I hear them. I have to tell them that The Loved One and I will be moving to Bloomington, Indiana, in three weeks.

I help Leo carry his instrument and music stand in as Loren parks the car. Walking in, I remember the first time they’d brought me here to see the big band. The pain in Leo’s hands wouldn’t allow him to play that December night but a bird even older than him was to sit in his place. “Y’gotta hear Sam,” Leo said. “Pushin’ 90 and won’t give in an inch to all those younger guys.”

Sadly, Sam was forced to give in to that mean old bastard Time that night. Nobody could figure where Sam was when it was time for him to come up to the bandstand. Then someone noticed the men’s room door was locked and its occupant wouldn’t respond. The manager was summoned. There was a hush as he unlocked the door. Sam was semi-conscious inside. People sighed in relief that he was alive. Two weeks later, though, he died. “Man, I wisht you coulda heard Sam play,” Leo lamented when he told me of his death.

Dave Mehl’s orchestra is a standard 17-piece big band — four trombones, four trumpets, five saxes and a rhythm sections composed of guitar, bass, piano and drums. Most of the players are middle-aged-plus (emphasis on plus) with a smattering of less ripe members. The guitarist, gray and bent, looked to be as old as Leo.

The audience skews even older. There are couples and families with a son or daughter here and a grandkid there. Everybody seems to be dressed for a Saturday night out. Men actually pull chairs out for women.

As the band sets up, Loren and I talk about Leo.

“What’d he do?” I ask.

Loren laughs. “Sales. You name it, he sold it,” he says. “He was good at it. He coulda sold brass knuckles to Ghandi.” He adds that Leo, born in Slater, Missouri, lived all around the eastern US. He traveled even more as an aircraft mechanic in the Navy. In fact, he’d met his future wife at a servicemen’s dance.

The band starts at 6:30 on the dot. Loren leans toward me and says, “They always start out with something patriotic.” Sure enough, the band launches into “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” swing-style. The band rarely rehearses but all the members are skilled, professional musicians, able to sight read and sound tight. Still, they play a tad sub-tempo at first, just to make sure nobody’s left in the dust, like a baseball team playing tentatively after a long layoff.

After playing “Misty,” the band jumps into Duke Ellington’s “In a Mellow Tone.” Now they pick up the tempo. A few songs later, they let it all out on “Woodchopper’s Ball.” Even the bent old guitarist is bobbing his head and vigorously chunk-chunking the rhythm.

A few people dance but most watch one particular couple who’ve changed from street shoes to Capezios (his are flashy spectator pumps) and who glide and hop like extras from a World War II-era movie.

A well-dressed older woman with thoroughly sprayed hair and pancake makeup comes along with a money jar. She tells me people are free to make $4 donations, although I sense she’d be happier to omit the word free. I realize I have no cash on me so I ask if I can pay with a credit card. She gives me a fishy look and says no. I borrow four singles from Loren and catch up with her. Her face relaxes slightly as I hand her the dough. She smiles guardedly as if to say, I’ve still got my eye on you.

The band takes a break. Leo joins Loren and me at our table. “Man, I love it,” he says. “There’s nothin’ like playing up there. Sight readin’ is more fun‘n anything because it’s such a challenge.”

Dave Mehl comes by to tell Leo there’ll be a slight change in the song set when they resume. Some woman in the audience named Gladys has requested “Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree.” I’ve always thought the song, which sounds so innocent, was actually a desperate plea from soldiers to their girlfriends back home not to fuck anybody else until they returned.

“C’mon, Leo,” I say. “That’s song’s just a euphemism, isn’t it?”

He looks at me as if I’d pronounced the sun rises in the east. “It sure was!” he bellows. “I was too young to take advantage of it but all the men were away, fighting. The ones left here sure made hay. After the war, I went to work on an oil rig. All the older guys who’d stayed home during the war because they were ‘essential workers,’ they were fulla piss and vinegar talkin’ about all the action they’d got!”

If only my high school history classes were so instructive.

I ask Leo how one gets to play with a band like Dave Mehl’s. “People in this business just know each other,” he says. “One guy’ll recommend another guy and then the second guy’ll get a phone call. Way back in 1970, I got a call from this guy Quentin, a bandleader. He said, ‘We got a breakfast gig at a hotel tomorrow morning. Six a.m.’ I said, ‘Quentin, who the hell plays big band music at six in the morning?’

“Quentin goes, ‘We do.’ I played — I wanted the work.”

The second set rattles the dishes on the tables. The Capezio-ed couple seems to go airborne during Les Brown’s “Leap Frog.” The last song is Glenn Miller’s “In the Mood,” done so uptempo that, when the band is finished, Loren asks Leo if they had a plane to catch. His father grins in response.

Leo packs up his trombone and folds up his music stand. He flexes his left hand gingerly – the arthritis will punish him tomorrow. But tonight, his eyes are those of a man forty or fifty years younger.

There’s still a little light in the sky as we get into the car. We may all have younger men’s eyes right now but we’re stuck with aging bodies. Late nights are distant memories. We ride toward the East End on Interstate 71 as it turns completely dark out. The only thing breaking the silence is Loren mix CD of Chicago and Blood, Sweat and Tears.

I screw up my courage. “Hey, guys,” I begin, “I gotta tell you something.” I explain that The Loved One and I are moving. At first, Leo shakes his head almost imperceptibly. Loren mutters, “Shit,” and slaps the steering wheel. After a few moments, Leo speaks.

“That’s too bad, Mike. I’m sorry to hear that,” he says. Then after another silence, he adds, “Well, it ain’t as if you’re dead.”