Blue Guitar Highway

No Money Down

  NO MONEY DOWN It was the worst summer of my life. I was emotionally destroyed by my mother’s death and felt like my soul had disappeared with hers, and in a way it had, gone up in ashes and smoke to wherever souls go. I had barely enough money to cover rent and groceries as I had spent a large chunk from the proceeds of my Mississippi Farewell show to cover the recording costs at Pachyderm Studio. I had done my Minneapolis swan song and couldn’t really swim back to play any more gigs in town. Every river and road out looked dark. I had experienced periods of depression throughout my life, blue spaces of time that would settle in, seemingly out of nowhere. I was a middle-class white kid, raised by great parents in comfortable houses, with a close extended family. So why the depression? My high school counselor suggested it could be a “seasonal disorder.” It would last for a week or so, then vanish as quickly as it came. Fortunately, music provided an escape hatch through the misty gloom. But that summer was different, darker, and deeper. As hard as I tried, I could not shake it—and there was no mother to call for advice, solace, or just to pass the time. I’d try to walk outside but the sunshine hurt, and when twilight slipped through the windows it brought all the bad spirits with it. I could barely listen to music, much less play it. I had nothing to say, and barely anyone to say it to. I spent the summer locked in my apartment, watching little else but the O. J. Simpson saga on TV. Simpson had been one of my heroes as a kid, along with Bobby Hull, Gordie Howe, Fran Tarkenton, Harmon Killebrew, and Bronko Nagurski—one of the toughest football players of all time and a North Star State legend. Simpson’s fall from grace brought another layer of sadness. Heroes don’t commit murder. The world was getting smaller—my apartment was small enough—and now it was getting colder, too. Summer gave way to fall. Winter in all of its madness was right around the corner. Thanksgiving was coming up and knowing Mom wouldn’t be there was a wound unhealed. The one bright light in my life was my friend NO MONEY DOWN   Larry Kegan. I could count on him to pick up, and pick me up, when I called him; he offered advice like the street rabbi that he was. He told me that Jews set an empty place at the table for one year after a loved one departs this world as a way to recognize the loss and honor the person. I did that, at Thanksgiving, then Christmas, and my cousin and sister hosting both events let me do it in spite of the fact both houses were full and they probably needed the space at the table. They loved my mother, too, and understood that I was just trying to patch a hole the size of Albert Hall in my heart. Christmas was Mom’s favorite holiday. When we were kids, our little house bustled with older relatives dressed up in their fancy clothes; the living room was festive with pine boughs and ornaments, flocked snow scenes on the picture windows, angels made from Reader’s Digest magazines , and red-and-white felt Christmas stockings that Mom’s own mother had made with our names in gold glitter on the tops. Pink and pearl pillows of her grandfather’s homemade taffy were tucked into tray after glass tray of artfully arranged Christmas cookies: green wreaths with cinnamon candy berries, apricot balls, sandbakkels, sweet Swedish Fattigmann crisps and fragile rosettes dipped in powdered sugar, Norwegian krumkakes pressed with ornamental designs, prune tarts, coconut/almond cookies rolled in red sugar that looked like strawberries with green frosting leaves, jelly-filled thumbprints. More would magically appear from the basement storage room whenever we ran out. One year Mom bought us matching red-and-white striped flannel pajamas from Sears Roebuck; my little brother John’s even came with a nightcap. On Christmas Eve while opening presents, Dad would bring out the 8 mm movie camera and Mom would hold the Sun Gun, lighting the room in a dazzling brightness that transformed the cozy living room into someplace where elves could live. None of us realized how much Mom did, until...