John Mayer HOME

"Maybe it’s the time of year. Yes, and maybe it’s the time of man.
And I don’t know who I am. But life is for learning."
Joni Mitchell / CS&N - Woodstock, 1970.

It snowed like hell in the winter of 1975. Ten feet drifts were not uncommon. The cold was unbearable even for a Canadian musician with thick blood. We gathered in Belleville to decide what must be done.

I had recently broken up with Irene, Orly was between true loves, and Pig's girlfriend just showed up with a pizza. As she opened the door, Bruce Springstein's "Born to Run" escaped into the frigid northern air at seven decibels. The pizza was cold. We ate it as if it didn't matter and got ready to go to the Rocky Horror Picture Show in a blizzard. The weather report from Florida looked a whole lot better than the frozen windshield of Sharon's 1967 Plymouth Fury.

I realize you have never met these party animals, but when I sang and played guitar in the Quinte Hotel's Green Door Lounge, they were fans and friends. Playing the circuit in Southern Ontario provided a lesson about the diversity of Canadians who frequent bars. This group was wilder than most. When closing time came one crazy Friday night, nobody wanted to leave. The bartender flashed the lights, got booed, turned them off, heard beer bottles smashing on the walls, and called the police.

I guess that was my standing ovation. My rendition of the Eagles' "Peaceful Easy Feeling" ended the night and my equipment was all unbroken. The rest of that evening was spent throwing Frisbees in the park bathed in the light of a full moon and making love, not war. My corporate style gigs at the Holiday Inn could never compare to this small town anarchy; I needed to become an uncomplicated rebel for a while.

My ex-girlfriend Irene, on the other hand, used to work with my ex-wife Lynda at Liberty Mutual Insurance in Toronto. We both ended up on the rebound after break ups and I guess the pheromones took over. Irene had long blonde hair, blue eyes, and big "headlights". Her Polish, Ukrainian, and Russian background in addition to her mother’s recipes, made her a great cook, but also endowed her with a shrew-like temper. I used my karate training to mentally deflect and counter attack the wildness.

Most of the time we got along, the sex was good, and the cabbage rolls were excellent. Her daughter Sonya was almost five and well behaved, but a child means responsibility and, as you know, I was in need of space and freedom. My own daughter Nicole had a huge safety net to rely on in case of emotional and financial emergency, so I felt a little less guilty about leaving the country, but the "kid swap" thing was disturbing for all of us. I kept thinking of what beat writer Richard Brautigan said:

"The only hope we have is our children and the seeds we give them and the gardens we plant together."

Ignoring basic logic and common sense, I made up with Irene. It just seemed like it was the path of least resistance and best option at the time. We left my gas guzzling Camaro behind, and drove her new fuel-efficient Toyota Corolla with Sonya in the back seat toward Key West. To my surprise, we made it through the border without a problem, even though I had long hair, a guitar, and patched blue jeans. Orly followed with the rest of the Belleville sun seekers in a car close behind, but failed to meet us in New York state as planned. After an hour, I called the border checkpoint to see if he was there.

Unfortunately for my frozen buddy, his past indiscretions had caught up with him and he was refused entry to the Promised Land. We would later hear that his alternate destination was Vancouver, B.C., and another adventure would come alive in the telling a year later. The Toyota was fired up, headed south, and the rear view mirror was filled with imaginary patrol cars and flashing lights for two hours.

The highway didn't turn black until Georgia. Things that should have been green were brown. The Florida Welcome Center received us and we were thankful, but it was still cold! Not like -10* F, but not exactly southern cornbread warm either. We wanted to stop in Sarasota, but it was still cold. We wanted to stop in Venice, but it was still cold. We wanted to stop in Fort Myers, but it was still cold. We stopped in the Everglades because it was so natural and had alligators, but it was still cold ~ all right "cool".

We set up the tent on our Flamingo campsite with the barbecue on a pole. I recall thinking that palm trees must be envied by the wind. Sleep came quickly and deep, and it rained all night long on the St. Augustine grass and sandspurs.

The next day we went crabbing on the bridge in the canal. No one had money for a net or trap, so we used a rusty old barbecue grate with a chicken neck bone tied to it for bait. Amazingly the blue crabs would hang on to this thing while we reeled it up and dumped them into a bucket. You had to be fast, because once they realized they were about to become dinner, the crabs would jump off and scurry down the drain hole back into the water fifteen feet below.

Blue crabs "cry" like lobsters when you cook them; a sound that makes vegetarians go to war! Damn good eating and worth the effort. Everyone knows they're dead when they hit the boiling water anyway.

We were finally in "Florida Mode" and ready for alligators. Billy Bob the Snake Man had arrived at the nature center and was entertaining the crowd with a boa constrictor wrapped around his neck. Gators were splashing around trying to devour hunks of meat. Pelicans circled above and waited for dead Canadian tourists to become part of the food chain. Flamingoes flew past in attack formation.

Enough! On to Key West.

Dear John & Marilyn,

We drove back through Florida City, past Key Largo, over the Islamorada Bridge, Boca Chica, Stock Island, Smathers Beach, Duval Street, Sloppy Joe's, Mallory Square, and the Key West sunset! My guitar came out of its case as if by magic and I began to play for the crowd along with the conga drum brothers from hell and a host of other solar intoxicated musicians. Shark boats with big red balls dangling from the netting lined the pier. T-shirt and trinket sellers were everywhere. A half an hour later, we scooped up the $6.50 from my open case and headed to Winn Dixie for food.

The Smathers Beach parking lot seemed like a good place to spend the night with the seats reclined and Sonya tucked away in the back. The cops didn't agree and kept moving us around until we finally ended up behind Neisner's Department Store next to the scorpion and snake infested canal. With an incentive to rise early and move on, we headed to the beach and grabbed a prime parking spot next to the showers and rest rooms. C-COLD once again! Hot water was obviously too much to ask for, but at least we were all clean and ready for a great day at the beach ~

Seagull crap had just fallen from the sky as if pre-ordained by Jonathan Livingston to land on my belly button. I chased that damn thing all over the place but just made myself look foolish. A young Tammy Faye Bakker recruited as a beach NARC came up to me and asked if I had any pot, and at that point it was time to lay down and watch the waves roll in.

The beach community wasn't hard to spot. They all had prime parking spaces like us along the sidewalk, because everyone wanted to sell stuff to the tourists. Conch shells were displayed, jewelry hung on black velvet cloth from open van doors, new and used tie-dyed t-shirts and clothing flapped in the wind.

The first Conch Train of the day rolled by with a load of gawking tourists, and was mooned by two wild looking Viet Nam vets. After pulling up their khaki shorts, they salvaged a makeshift wooden bed from the salt pond and dragged it onto the beach for a laugh. We all had our pictures taken beside this treasure like it was a Presidential poster from the White House and we were Sunshine Senators.

After the photo session, Shooter Bill and Black Jack gave us a tour of their converted "Wisconsin Bread" delivery truck. It had a complete kitchen and washroom with everything two Vets could need including marijuana. I noticed an open book by Hunter S. Thompson on the table with a line highlighted in yellow:

Noon arrived and it was time to go to work. Borrowing flippers and a mask, I swam out to collect conch shells in about seven feet of water amid schools of tropical fish and three mean looking barracudas. It was a damn good thing I took my ring off or I would have looked like a flashing lure to hungry things with teeth. With a little cleaning and local know how, we had shells to sell and meat to eat, although I could have done without the "meat". Rubber is more descriptive, even when chopped and made into fritters. I paid back that diarrhea seagull with leftovers from the grill.

Duval Street was always packed and music flowed everywhere. With promo in hand, I knocked on doors trying to get a gig but, of course, I had to have been booked in advance to play the "cool" places. On to Simonton Street and the 900 Bar, with it's huge horseshoe bar and eclectic owner. Big Al lumbered up with a lit Monte Christo hanging just above the combustion point of his beard and said,

Three shots of peppermint schnapps for a dollar later and I had the job. At 4:00 A.M. I was still playing with empty shot glasses lined up in front of me and my eyes closed. Irene said "It's time to pack it in man," so we loaded up the Toyota and left with twenty bucks more than we had the day before.

We lived in the Keys for a month and I loved the laid back life. A whole community lived in the woods by the ocean on Boca Chica Key, with kitchen tents, barbecues, coolers, and kids. I was playing music, Irene was selling shells, and Sonya couldn't have been happier splashing in the water and playing with new kids she would meet every day. We didn't need much money to survive and we were WARM! But Key West was getting more crowded every day with the warmer February weather and a decision was made to head on up the Gulf Coast to see what else was out there. The drive back to the Everglades was a long one.

We made it to Homestead, Highway 41, Fort Myers, Punta Gorda, and finally Venice! I was too tired to drive any farther, so we pulled into a rest area and crashed for the night. We awoke to the sound of digging, sifting, and car doors slamming. Behind the parking lot next to the canal, an archaeological event was occuring. People were sifting through the freshly dredged canal dirt to find ~

Old guys with $30,000 motor homes, hippies, local types; they were all trying to scoop up as many teeth as they could. A visit to the hardware store later and we were set up to join the crazies in the pits. We staked our claim and dug two four-feet-deep "mines" which produced a pretty good haul of teeth. Shawn and Mary, a young back-to-nature couple from Washington state, showed us how to make jewelry, and a new industry was born. It was a damn good thing because we were down to our last $10. A desperate phone call to mom asking for money was avoided.

Irene didn't like Shawn and Mary. Maybe they were too perfect. Calmness, serenity, and acceptance of things they could not change emanated from their space on the planet. A bad word or nasty attitude never came up, traits Irene misread as phoniness. I could only see two allies willing to show us how to survive on our wits with Earth's raw materials.

Nokomis Beach was just up the road from Venice and quickly became the base of operation for our shark tooth necklace Factory Outlet Store. This consisted of two blankets, a cooler, beads, teeth, carpet thread, sea urchin spines, and a drill bit. People would come right up and ask if they could buy some of this neat stuff, providing us money for beer and food once again. I even wore a shark tooth earring (for display purposes only), but used a clip-on keeper that no one ever saw under my long hair and bandana. At this point in our journey, we acted and sounded like Florida locals right down to the drawl. It was ironic that two Canadian beach bums were selling souvenirs to unsuspecting Canadian tourists.

The Venice rest area became home, the shrubbery provided a place for romantic interludes, and life was good for at least two weeks. A nearby oyster bed gave us fresh seafood at low tide and I quickly learned why they make special tools to shuck those little rascals. A screwdriver and hunting knife yielded nicks and cuts all over my guitar playing fingers, but it was worth it. Rolled in a cornmeal mixture and griddled in a pan on the barbecue, the oysters provided our shark tooth mining community with a free feast worth more than money. Corn on the cob, veggies, buns, lots of beer, and sunshine was the recipe for having fun and living off the land.

Eventually, the Toyota became overcrowded with too much stuff. A decision was made to stash the shark tooth "factory in a box" under the car while we slept and by morning it was stolen. Tempers rose, accusations flew, and Irene threw my guitar out on the highway screaming that I loved that damn thing more than her. After rescuing my Ovation, I began to think she was right.

That night we set up the tent at the end of a service road hidden in the pines and everything calmed down until 6:00 A.M. Not fifty feet away, I spotted a black Florida panther making his rounds and I realized something else had laid claim to this patch of palmettos. I preferred eating at IHOP, rather than getting eaten in the bush, so we packed up and left the cat to find another meal.

Back at the rest area, we started digging again, and it wasn't long before we replaced a lot of what we had lost. After two hours in the pits, it was time to hit the restroom. I opened the unlocked stall door to find some perverted, sick bastard playing with himself. For me to be speechless is a rare event. I returned to the shark mine and related my experience to the rest of the miners. Shovels were dropped, sifters were abandoned, and a posse was formed to rid the neighborhood of "pond scum". Upon returning to the scene, the stall was vacated, and all we found was a note taped to the door stating the day and time this guy would return on a weekly basis. Luckily it never happened.

By now we were doing well again, necklace sales were steady, and we ate regular meals. The need to explore and move on was starting to arise but I didn't know what or where. I tried body surfing in the waves generated by a storm and almost got trapped in a riptide. Then it came to me. It was time for a side trip to Daytona for Spring Break. Driving on the beach, bikini babes, and lots of customers for shark tooth jewelry. We packed up again and headed northeast across the scrubland.

Daytona was CRAZY! It took over two hours to crawl through town, but we did get to drive on the beach and sell a few necklaces. After a wild day with surfers and college kids, we headed toward the peace and quiet of Ocala National Forest. I was just happy to get away from all that noise and motion, so when I found what seemed to be a hidden driveway in a rest area, I parked the car. We reclined the seats and went down for the night.

Irene shook me awake and handed over the flashlight. Something had just brushed against the car and rustled off into the trees. There was no moon, it was pitch black, and the Ever-ready batteries were running low as I pressed the dim light against the window.

There must have been a hundred raccoons staring at us from the picnic area and they were NOT intimidated. Why would they be? A swift commando attack with that many soldiers would surely do us in. I ruled out Irene's theory that an alligator or a bear was out there. The 'coons didn't want to become prey for a predator while munching garbage and would have posted lookouts. I bravely opened the door and went outside to try to scare them away. I could have been a tree for all they cared, so we all went back to sleep. At 4:30 A.M. the front seat was flooded with the blinding light of a State Trooper’s "real" flashlight and, after the officer ran the license plate, we were told to rent a motel room next time.

The drive back to Venice produced no surprises. We got to see the Disney World parking lot on the way and the beach became a place to sleep for about two days. Some of the mining community had moved on and were replaced by a new batch of wide-eyed diggers. A few of us drove to Sarasota to visit the Ringling Brothers Museum where they had original artwork painted by the Masters. A replica statue of Michelangelo’s "David" graced the outside garden amid dozens of other Old World pieces. The place was crammed with stuff and possibly a little gaudy, but we enjoyed it anyway.

  The courtyard - Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota

After a picnic lunch and Frisbee tossing on the lawn, we headed to Lido Beach to see how the other half lives. Expensive looking places surrounded us as lily-white northerners strolled along the shore trying to get that $5000 tan. The whole place smelled like coconut oil and broiled lobster. We went back home to the rest area and poverty. I remembered a quote by Bob Dylan:

In a week we made enough money to move up the coast. Cedar Key was holding an art festival, so we made a side trip to check it out. If I had had more money, one particular painting would have been strapped to the roof and taken back to Canada. It was a spacey rendition of the galaxy, the planets, dolphins, and other cool stuff. I don't remember the artist's name, but he had clearly expanded his mind and was destined for greatness twenty years from now. We spent all afternoon at the festival walking around with cold beer, eating good seafood, and elevating our consciousness.

The next day we drove to Panama City where the white sand beaches and dunes were beautiful but barren. The devastation from a hurricane a few years before was still everywhere, but it appeared that rebuilding was taking place slowly. No one was on the beach to buy necklaces and we were bored, so we moved on to Pensacola. 

No one told us about "dry" counties and we had just run out of beer. It was just the start of something scarier. That night we paid a fee and set the tent up in a local campground with facilities and showers. The Good Old Boy Redneck Society was alive and well in northern Florida and a longhaired musician with Ontario tags was not the preferred choice for a camp neighbor. A six-pack and a bug-zapper were considered high-quality entertainment.

Sonya had to visit the restroom only thirty yards away and wandered off on her own while we were cooking dinner. We should have been paying more attention. All hell broke loose five minutes later when the whole camp heard screaming coming from the Ladies room. A scowling woman was carrying a tearful Sonya back to our site as I was running toward the building. She had accidentally locked herself inside and panicked. Of course, from that moment on, we were on a list of suspected child molesters and the dawn, the highway, and a hot coffee couldn't come fast enough.

"What next?" I asked. "How about Nashville?" she said, so we turned north on I-65 toward Graceland and the Grand 'Ole Opry. We didn't get to see much without money, but we saw the gates and admired the building façade. It was getting colder and the car kept heading north like a horse toward the barn. Interstate 75 ended in Detroit. We crossed the border, and headed for Toronto with our shark tooth "factory in a box", an appetite for Mom's home cooking, and enough stories to talk about for a year. My twenties were unfolding in an unusual way, and the journey was good. 

Irene and I settled back into her parent's basement apartment and life returned to normal for a while. Suburban Toronto was like any other place with suburbs; a slow train chugging through a boring wasteland. My newfound buddy the "Ricker" helped to inspire my songwriting and kept the creative flame alive, but it didn't take long for the road to call out once again. The journey to the Pacific in a Volkswagen van emblazoned with a peace symbol began a month later. A book called "Volkswagen Repair for the Complete Idiot" became our bible and a call back home from Vancouver to learn of Mom's brush with breast cancer brought reality back into focus.

Dear Janis (Joplin) & Jimi (Hendrix)

Dear Rocky (the Flying Squirrel) & Bullwinkle (the Moose)

Dear John (F. Kennedy) & Marilyn (Monroe)

Dear Prudence (a Beatles Song)

Dear John (Lennon) & George (Harrison)

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