From a distance it looked like beer.

This picture was taken in the Joshua Tree National Park the day after Florida defeated Ohio State in the 2006 National NCAA National Football championship. The park has an amazing variety of plant life and animals. Every curve you round appears to be a completely different landscape. Some of the larger boulder strewn fields will remind you of pictures taken on the moon, then around the next corner there are acres of white, onyx, crystalline rocks with pointed spines. The Joshua tree, for which the park is named, is an eerily beautiful plant growing almost straight up with only the top portion having what appears to be a combination of Spanish bayonets and fronds. We were there at sunset and all around us some of the distant mountains seemed to turn blue as the sun was setting behind them. While others still in the fading sunlight, were orange and red. All in all, it was a beautiful afternoon and evening.

I had went there to see the site where Gram Parsons was cremated. What a great story! Gram Parsons was, and is, an icon in Country/Rock music history. In the beginning he was a solo act. Later he played with the Burrito Brothers and the Byrds. He wrote some amazing songs and more importantly he discovered another music legend, the "Gray Goddess" Ms. Emmylou Harris. Rumor is they were involved romantically, but in any case they recorded some wonderful tunes together. Gram and his manager loved the Joshua Tree Park and made a covenant that which ever died first, the other would bring his body to a location in the park and cremate the remains in the park they both loved.

Little did they know how soon their pact would be tested. Gram died a few months later in his mid twenties. His manager got an early morning call from a distressed girl that awakened to find Parsons dead in her bed. The best bet was a rough night of booze, cocaine and sex overwhelmed his heart. Anyhow by the time the manager reached the hotel the body had been picked up and was at the Los Angles Airport awaiting a flight to Louisiana for burial. To make a long story a bit shorter, the manager rented a hearse from a hippie commune and he and one of the members drove to airport and pretended to be transporting the body to the plane waiting on the tarmac. After stealing the body,they carried it to the agreed upon spot in the park. His manager soaked the coffin in gasoline and burned it. Later, the manager said there was a hell of a secondary explosion. He said, "We failed to allow for the amount of alcohol Gram still had in his body." Is that a great story or what? A few years ago they released a movie entitled "Grand Theft Parsons." If you haven't seen it, check it out.

I talked with an old and dear friend of mine today. He and I have stories we can only tell in each others presence. Without our cross verification, no one would believe most of them. Come to think of it, even with our attesting to the truthfulness, a lot of folks still do not believe us. He reminded me of one time we were going to the races at Sebring. My wife had strenuously objected to my going, I seem to recall something about "if you go I will kill you" or something like that. Anyhow, we were driving toward the highway and suddenly a car came driving across a grassy median and thru a row of shrubbery headed straight for my new corvette. Luckily the Vette was nimble and we managed to avoid the wife attempting to carry through on her threat. I don't remember much of that weekend or any other time we were at the twelve hours of Sebring. We wre young and in our natural prime and we did have some times. There were four of us that ran together, Wayne, Floyd, Lee and myself. Only Lee and I are left, Floyd and Wayne left this world far too soon. Neither of them saw sixty, so you can imagine how surprised I am to still be here.

My friend, Lee Simmons was a marine at the siege of Khe Sahn, we were air traffic controllers together in Miami before the PATCO strike and in San Juan when we were rehired. I was the Best Man at his wedding in Puerto Rico, (an event that deserves it's own story) Suffice it to say the entire ceremony was in Spanish and at that time Lee only spoke English. After the vows were over, I said "Hell Lee, you don't know if you are married or have reenlisted in the Marine Corp." We have been friends for almost 40 years. It was good to talk to you today, and no I am not going to tell the New Orleans story. Yet.