This was begun as we flew back from San Francisco the Monday after Hardly Strictly Bluegrass. i have been trying to express well what i experienced this year and the following years. It is a great experience thanks to the Hicks family and Cy Fraser.

It happens every year about this time, the first weekend in October to be specific.

Often there are other major get-togethers, like homecomings and reunions, but those others always lose out if they conflict with this tradition.

It sounds innocent enough, if not oxymoronic. i mean who would expect a major bluegrass festival to be held in San Francisco? But it is big, and i mean big.

i must point out bluegrass is no longer the majority genre. Back when, 2007 when Warren Hellman started the thing, he called it “Strictly Bluegrass.” But it grew, and more than bluegrass was played. So Warren changed the name to “Hardly Strictly Bluegrass.” Now that Warren is gone, it seems to me there are more of the other genres than bluegrass.

We started coming here in 2009 when it was mostly bluegrass, or at least “country.” Bluegrass was the initiator but even that is secondary to this anachronism. To me, the “Hardly Strictly Bluegrass” weekend in Golden Gate Park is cathartic.

It amazes that so many people from so many backgrounds can get along so well. You see, the festival’s head count is estimated between 750,000 and 800,000 over the weekend.

So the chosen few head out somewhere between 7:15 to 8:00, driving down San Francisco’s steep Ninth Avenue through the stirring businesses including an all-night market where we used to stop and get ice and beer, lots of beer. But we are older now and the beer intake has decreased, and Alan has figured out the new ice packets work better in our coolers than ice and with bottled water, lots of bottled water for it can get hot in the hollow midday, and yeh, okay a bottle of wine or two. But for the past couple of festivals, we’ve skipped the market and continued down the hill straight to the entrance to Golden Gate Park.

Riding through the beautiful park with its eucalyptus, Monterrey pines, and Monterrey Cypress, trees originally planted at the park’s beginning in the early 1900’s, take your breath away with their majesty. The one sitting to the back right of the Banjo Stage is simply awesome (i think there is a photo somewhere of the Hicks and us underneath it in non-festival times).

Almost every year since 2009, the weather has been as good as it can get in Golden Gate Park. In one or two years, it has been cool and overcast. That, on the Banjo Stage in Hellman Hollow translates to bitter cold and harsh winds. i vividly recall Joan Baez announcing she was “freezing my ass off” on a particularly cool Saturday. But incredibly, it has never rained upon us during festival days.

Regardless, it is an escape from the negative for me. i spend four or five days with people who are so far beyond just best friends they give me peace. i am talking about Alan and Maren Hicks, their daughter Eleanor (and one of my favorite people on earth, another daughter), and Cy Fraser (Cy’s wife Julie died just over a year ago and we miss her being there). There are others who join us: kin, friends, friends of friends. We’ve had as few as six and as many as 20-plus join our stakeout.

i am not enchanted with the way college fraternities are run. But to give the system credit, i met some of the best people i’ve ever met in my life, especially my pledge group but all of the guys ahead and behind me with whom i experienced my life change. To call them “brother” is pretty much right on. And with this October San Francisco bunch, family is included. We are more than friends. We are family.

It is good to spend an escape with our family, my brothers.

Then there is the music. In our beginning, it was spectacular for bluegrass fans. Doc Watson, Earl Scruggs, the Stanley Brothers featuring Ralph Stanley, Helen Means, Emmy Lou Harris along the best bluegrass bands on the planet. There are also unusual bands, relatively unknown and inventive. A few are on the Banjo Stage but most, including some rock and new music acts on the other five or six stages spaced throughout the park.

Several of us wander to the various other stages, seeking out musicians we personally enjoy. A couple go to more stages. i normally stay in place although about three years ago, Maureen and i walked or rather navigated down the hollow through the masses to the Arrow Stage and watched the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band perform, which was worth the trip. But my travel is mostly restricted to the banks of port-a-potties and back. Except, of course, in the early morning when we stake out our claim at the Banjo Stage with Alan’s tarps, the beach chairs and variations thereof (regular camp chairs are too high and block the views of those thousands behind us), and of course, the ubiquitous coolers.

After laying claim to our territory – by late morning, the hollow looks like a quilt with tarps, blankets, and other devices for land claiming – Eleanor, Alan, Cy, and i, the early claimers, set up and wander back to the tents holding food. There is only one open early. Fortunately, they serve wonderful breakfast burritos. With that and coffee either there or from a nearby truck, we are set. We nap, we read, we meet those close by, and just talk until the show starts midday.

There are some un-pleasantries but very few considering the crowd. San Francisco is a most liberal place. Some attendees are a little too demonstrative, including a couple of the performers wearing their political leanings on their performance sleeves. Several festivals have coincided with San Francisco’s “Fleet Week.” The Navy’s Blue Angels perform their aviation acrobatics over San Francisco Bay on the Fleet Week weekends. A few of their stunts take them over Golden Gate Park. Steve Earle in Saturday’s closing act several years ago shot the bird to the Blue Angels as they flew over. Even though he said some words i won’t print here, i will not fault him. That’s his choice. That’s what freedom is about even if one doesn’t agree and personally finds it offensive. That’s why our military (unlike many others) are serving: to allow him to do those kinds of things. But it didn’t sit quite right with this Navy Veteran. Now when the Blue Angels in the crowd, there are a smattering of folks who copy what Steve Earle did.

It is the only thing i find really offensive during the whole weekend. Oh, there are people who crowd to the front late and stand up blocking views or talk loudly. But they are just being selfish and unaware. i understand and can endure their actions.

Because there are so many other examples of good, good people. There is the guy who sat next to us on the hill in one of the earlier festivals. He worked on ferries. Salt of the earth. Brought his fiddle. Played along. Pretty good. Old guy. My kind.

There has been the one thin, grey haired woman who stakes out a place up front near the center cleared for the song tent. She does this modern dance thing, moving swaying, rhythmically flowing her arms and legs through the air, to bluegrass, all day. Seven hours.

Once, there was this transgender (i’m pretty sure) behemoth dressed in leopard skin leotards, a pink tutu, and large bonnet. This person had long, thick blond hair with the roots showing. Not pretty. Tough looking. A bluegrass band was knocking it out. She was in the middle of the crowd. I don’t know who initiated it, but this person and an old country boy with a straw hat and bib jeans began dancing together. Kept it up for the whole set. Made you feel good.

There are white boys with long dread knots, shirtless, barefoot, shorts, dirty, with a dog, and blowing weed like there is no tomorrow being nice to folks as they pass by.

No fights. i’ve been to at least eight, maybe nine of the HSB’s, and i’ve never seen a fight.

i have seen people passing out. Most from over-indulging. A few with medical problems. Sometimes a combination of both. Know what? The people around them (and there are always people around, thick crowds of people around at HSB) immediately turn their attention from the band, their friends, and do what they can to help. People. Good people.

Every once in while, i will look up at gaze at the masses all around me for as far as i can see; i will watch the sea of moving humanity flowing into the park. People. Good people. All persuasions. Getting along.

So next year, i would recommend you check it out if you are so inclined. Hardly Strictly Bluegrass in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco the first weekend in October. Put your prejudices and biases in a bag and leave them somewhere. Enjoy good music, really good music and people enjoying really good music.

And if you do, check out to the right of the sound stage looking toward the Banjo Stage. There will be one tarp with three pretty women, three older guys, maybe more. The goofy guy will be one of them. You will be welcomed to join us.

Beautiful setting. Great music, my kind. People: individuals enjoying other individuals as well as the music. A show. What a show. All of it.

Family. Good feelings, a catharsis for me. i plan to be there for at least several more years.

The photo in this post is not of my grandfather, Hiram Culley Jewell but of my great grandfather, Hiram Carpenter “Buddy” Jewell. He has a pretty remarkable story of his own (later). But i just had to include the photo where he is mentioned.

i am not into mysticism, spirits, and all of that kind of stuff.

i don’t disclaim it exists and occasionally am struck by some extraordinary story about the supernatural. But i’m inclined to believe that kinda stuff wasn’t intended for me.

Still thanks to a very wonderful counselor who helps me when i need it, i have found meditation a source of strength. So after my disclaimers, i’m really sorta open to that kind of stuff.

And then yesterday out in the third garage stall designated at the get go and remaining my workspace, maybe even more like my escape place, i channeled him. Or perhaps he channeled me. i’m not sure which.

But it happened. Even though i never knew him.

You see, this channeling stuff happened with my grandfather. He died in ’39. Tuberculosis. Right after my folks got married.

This channeling thing occurred while i was doing a chore put off too long. Hiram Culley Jewell didn’t talk to me. It was more of an internal thing. i felt him. Down deep inside me. My heart? My soul? Can’t really say. But for me, he was there.

i had burned off the old grease on our cast iron cookware and was taking them down to bare metal when we channeled. It reminded me of one of my parents last winter trip out here. My father was 86 and had limited time to drive his wife and himself out here in the fifth wheel with his Ford 150. He and i (with me mostly watching) took the cast iron skillets and pots down to bare metal in a way that would strike fear into the world of gourmet cooks. We, or rather he was using a propane torch to burn off the residual grease buildup.

As i looked over his shoulder and he blasted away at the skillet sitting on my workbench, we talked.

We always talked, mostly i listened and he told stories. My father was a great story teller later in life. His older sister, a elegant woman in appearance, was one of the best story tellers ever. i have always wondered if they got that from my grandfather. You see, i once thought i would be a great writer, follow in the tradition of William Faulkner and Robert Penn Warren. i no longer think that. i’m not disciplined enough and one of the worst editors in existence. But i do think i’m a good story teller.

But Daddy only told me a half dozen stories about my grandfather. Those were never what he thought about his father. They were stories nearly always funny. He and my aunt seemed to always be laughing when they told a story. But he just didn’t talk about my grandfather very much. He never said how he felt toward his father although i sensed he loved him. It was blatantly obvious my father had the greatest respect for Hiram Culley Jewell.

Culley was a working man by fate. His father, Hiram T. “Buddy” Jewell died when Culley was ten. Culley and his brother Barbee were raised by different uncles, Newton and Thomas. i believe this is correct but am not sure which brother was raised by which uncle. However, my mother told me the uncle who raised Barbee believed in education and guided Barbee and his own children into college. The uncle who raised Culley didn’t believe in education. He believed in work.

Culley worked all of his life.

My father did tell me of his father having a work shed at their home at the beginning of West Spring Street. As we were working on the cast iron, he also mentioned Mama Jewell cleaned their cast iron by throwing it in the fire they always had burning in their backyard. They would pull the skillet or pot out after several hours and the vessel would be “clean as a whistle.” Then Mama Jewell would cure it on the wood burning stove in the kitchen.

Perhaps that was the connection that produced my sensation of channeling.

i was working. Granted my grandfather’s work was on a grander scale most of the time. Same for my father. But i was working.

Sometimes i think i was supposed to be a worker. Like my grandfather and father. But i wandered off that track. My mother told me after they took me to Vanderbilt for my freshman year, my father cried on the way home because he was so proud to have a child going to college. i wonder how the working man, Hiram Culley Jewell, my grandfather, thought of that.

Of course, it was different times, a world apart.

But while i was bent over that skillet in the bright sun of the Southwest corner, i could feel him, not my father Jimmy, but Culley looking approvingly at me working.

That was yesterday. i worked on things around the home the rest of the day. Last night, i ate dinner and sat in my family room chair watching sports just like my father did in his den on Castle Heights Avenue after a day of work. i kept thinking of that feeling of my grandfather being with me during the day, the workday.

i slept well.

This one hit me as i was going over the weather, my schedule, and “to-do list” after my morning routine of making coffee, getting the paper, and setting the breakfast table. Just hit me. And once again, the question of why i have this need to write and make it public. Don’t know. Just flat don’t know why. But it’s there. It’s there.

oh to be young again
when
the answers were so pat,
when
one side was right
and
one side was wrong
and
oddly, the right side
was always, always
on my side;
oh to be young again,
when
i didn’t know what i know now
and
the path was clear to success,
to victory
to riches
to love, unbridled passionate love
lasting until the sun set on life
and
that path did not, did not
include screwing others
(with many meanings for “screwing others”)
to get on down that path;
oh to be young again
when
i knew i would conquer the world
and
be a hero, the good kind
for
the bad kind was to be reviled
back then
and
didn’t worry about
hurting someone’s feelings
by a forbidden word
or
being misinterpreted by a zealot
from
one of the many sides of a problem;
oh to be young again
when
i was not aware
of
the hate and meanness of ordinary people
for masses of other humans
with
different views, different hues of skin color;
oh i wish i were young again
when
i was blind to all of
the injustices all around me
and
life was simple
in
my little slice of the world,
but
now
i know
and
it is not pretty,
without answers,
but
oh how much, how so much
i wish i were young again.