Continuing Connections

Continuing the snapshots from my Connections article for the November-December issue of Shadow and Light are three more Cliff Notes versions of same. The original text for each is several times longer but you’ll get the drift.

The Deaf Drummer

Fifteen miles north of Williams, Arizona on Highway 62 sat a guy dozing behind his drum kit. In front of him was a sign saying Deaf Drummer on Facebook, Donations OK. I’m still leery about approaching subjects but the Donations OK sign signaled the drummer’s willingness to photographed. I folded a ten spot and put in my shirt pocket. Peggy and I approached the musician who looked up and greeted us.

I asked, “How’re you doing? Do you mind if I take your picture?” and handed him the ten. He said, “Not at all. Go for it.”

He picked up his sticks and began to play the baseline in his head, so I’d get some action. After five minutes or so we began talking about the unlikely concept of a drummer that can’t hear.

I asked, “How do you do it? Do you hear something?”

He answered “No. I’m completely deaf. I feel the vibration and the rhythm.”

“How did this all happen?” I asked.

He said that his mother was deeply religious and that they went to church every day. On one of those regular visits he saw a set of drums and began to play them.

His mother asked. “How did you learn to do that?”

He told her he didn’t know. He just could.

She replied angrily, “Don’t lie to me in the house of God.”

Peter Larlham

My first conversation with Peter Larlham at the Grand Canyon began with a shudder. In his first breath he asked my age. I said, “I’m 81.”

He told me, “That’s really old. I’m 76.” as if that were prepubescent.

Our conversation turned to aging and the malicious manifestations of that malady. Bad back. Worse balance. Shrinkage. A flabby belly and no ass. Every man of a certain age has lost muscle mass and most of it vacated his nether regions. Peter, an actor and theatre professor, quoted a line from Shakespeare in which an elderly gentleman laments that he no longer fills his “pantaloons.”

And speaking of age, during our last evening of mediocre pizza, tepid pilsner, and heady repartee he probed a second time, “Aren’t people shocked when you tell them how old you are?”

Victor "Cuba" Hernandez

I first met Victor Hernandez on December 26, 2011. I was driving north on US 285 toward the Colorado border. I turned east onto the Taos Plateau toward a cleft between two rocky hills. A figure came walking toward me. He greeted me in Spanish, his only language it turns out. I responded in rudimentary Español and we shook hands. “Me llamo Victor.” he told me. “Me llamo Esteban.” I replied.

I learned that he had fled Cuba in 1965. He told me he had commandeered a boat with a big pistola after escaping prison. He and his compañeros fled to Florida where they picked oranges. Then three of them got jobs tending sheep in the San Luis Valley of Colorado. He had been herding sheep for Alfonzo Abeyta since 1975 though the year is in doubt. He told me he was from Santa Clara, Cuba just outside Havana. However, the map shows Santa Clara in the center of Cuba nearly 300 miles east of the city.

I asked Victor how many sheep he was herding. He told me, “600.” Later I learned from Señor Abeyta that there were 375 borregos and that Victor nicknamed Cuba couldn’t read, write or count. Moreover, the facts didn’t get in the way of a good story.