Prelude: The First Tale
I immediately cut across two lanes to get to an exit, and flew off the freeway down the exit ramp, while all this time my passengers - Stephen the teenage drag queen and the elegantly dressed Black woman - continued their nonstop screaming.
But somehow the Cadillac also managed to pull off from the freeway fast lane all the way down the exit ramp, and they were on our tail again!
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How did I get into this situation? You see, my contacts in the gay world of S.F. helped my country-rock band Chambray get some bookings, and so we got booked to play the city-wide gay bikers club dance at Longshoreman’s Hall. All the gay biker clubs in the city were having a dance in the huge main room there. We arrived early to set up our speakers, only to find that the start of the dance was not for another hour. 'What to do? "I should have brought a book" but I hadn't, so ...
... I thought "I just have time to visit my soul brother and psychedelic partner Blackstone in his Haight-Ashbury apartment and maybe get a nice buzz from his always top of the line smoke". Sure enough, he was smoking with his girl friend while watching TV, so I joined them. We heard some street noise, and Blackstone jumped up, saying "Lee, did you leave the street door open when you came in? You never leave the street door open in the Haight!"
And no sooner said then done, when a Black woman ran up the stairs and into Blackstone's apartment, screaming "Help! They're after me." Of course, I immediately ran down and closed the door (Closing the barn door after the horses have already come in?) Blackstone calmed the woman down, and we decided that I would drive her to the nearest police station.
So we went down to my car, when I heard someone shouting "Lee! Wait a minute!" It was Cory, a gorgeous teenage fem from Northern California, whom I had dated several times. Cory started to tell me something when the Black woman screamed 'They're here!" I looked in the rear-view mirror, and sure enough parked right behind my Econovan was a giant Cadillac limousine, with two giant black men glaring at me with 'if looks could kill" lazer-beams shooting from their eyes at us. So I shouted to Cory 'get in the car!"
And so we sped off from the curb. The Caddy was right behind us, and Blackstone, whose motorcycle happened to be parked right behind the Caddy, jumped on his bike and followed after. It was quite a wild view, the Blue Econovan, Black Caddy, and motorcyle speeding through the streets of Haight-Ashbury, until I saw a freeway entrance ahead and flew up it. The Caddy was still right behind us, but Blackstone had lost us a few streets back.
Cory said "Lee I've got to tell you something." "What?" I shouted as we sped along. "I've just been treated for gonorrhea, and all my contacts have to get tested."
"Okay", I said, "If I live that long .." and the woman shouted "Go! Go!"
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I was about to panic when a wonderful idea flashed through my mind:
I wanted police attention, the folks in the Caddy, not so much.
So if I kept speeding through red lights, it's bound to get some police attention - and that part of the Mission District had a light at every intersection.
So I jammed on the gas and tore through one red light after another, leaning on my horn nonstop. The Caddy kept up the chase for three lights, then I guess they didn't want to take any more chances, because they vanished from my rear view mirror and we never saw them again.
Meanwhile I was getting later and later for my band's afternoon gig at Longshoreman’s Hall.
So I jammed on the gas pedal again and in ten minutes managed to get to the Hall, but only after Chambray had already played two long songs. We were still afraid that the Caddy and company might re-appear, so we ran into the hall screaming "Help! Gangsters chasing us! Call the police!"
Chambray was set up right by the entrance we were running in, so they were the first to see us screaming by. They were playing Booker T.'s Green Onions. Steve the drummer was the first to see us, and as his mouth fell open and his eyes opened wide, his drum beat went slower and slower to a full stop.
Chambray in action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSWlbW_vyM8
The icing on the cake was that two major biker clubs were also entering the hall, just opposite my screamers. Silently marching in two long lines they came into the Hall one by one. One club was dressed in Prussian army uniforms, with the spiked helmet of pre-Hitler days, the other in full leather with an big flap on their butts. Each line had over a hundred bikers in it, and the two lines crossed each other just as my little group ran screaming into the hall. Too bad nobody was filming the whole thing!
And we even had a happy ending. Our sound man took the Black woman to his cabin deep in the rural area of Marin County, far away from her pursuers. She later moved North to Oregon (as so many Bay area folks did then and now). The bikers liked Chambray so much that they paid the original large fee and added a few hundred dollars, enough to cover all our rents for two months (back in 1970 Berkeley was still a cheap place to live).
I went to the clinic and got treated for gonorrhea, and after three weeks when the doctor tested me and pronounced me cured, had a wonderful date with the now clean Cory. And ten or so years later, Steve the drummer became mayor of Sonoma, the capital of Sonoma -County. He must have been a fine mayor if his politics matched his beautifully solid beat. He's still on the Sonoma City Council, and he and his wife are still devout meditators.
Chambray – L to R: Philip Bouwsma bass; Pat high vocals; Steve Barbose drums;
Mike Hansen vocals, guitar, composer; Lee Cronbach Hammond M-3 organ |
Chambray's bassist Philip Bouwsma made a powerful, strong on the beat but never repetitive musical foundation, and his rhythm was in perfect sync with Steve's drums. In the mid-70s Philip went from music to calligraphy, and moved to New York, where he got a big break, designing holiday cards for the Rockefeller family! He then went on to designing scripts for computers and the Internet, which he still does. For the last 20 or 30 years Philip returned to the West coast and has been living in Guerneville in rural Northern California. (Here is the link to his site where you can see some of the new scripts Philip has created: https://www.facebook.com/bouwsmaph
and his breakthrough article from the New York Times (1977)
Coda: The Second Tale - By around 2015 I had gotten tired of teaching children from 'home schooled'' families. The ones I had taught rarely practiced, rarely did their homework, and showed no interest in anything artistic. So when a mother contacted me about taking on her two home-schooled daughters as students, I was less than enthusiastic.
I was in for a big surprise. By their third lesson I realized that Alice and Cathy were a great pair of students, the type of students a teacher dreams about getting. They practiced their assignments and usually went ahead in the book. They played not only with accuracy, but with spirit and soul. Often instead of watching out for any mistakes or problems to correct, I would shirk my teacher's role for a few minutes and just sit back with my eyes closed to enjoy their 'concert.'
I also discovered that they had wonderful characters - polite and obedient, but also lively, full of energy, self-motivated to the max. After two months they began telling me what genres and pieces they wanted to learn: songs from movies and Broadway, like Phantom of the Opera and Lord of the Rings, and also easier pieces by the Classical masters (Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, and others). Meanwhile they continued to burn through the last book of the 'method" series, which was designed for students at the Senior High School level (while they were still 11 years old). By now they were the stars of my student recitals (see link at end) - nobody wanted to follow them.
By this time I had become friends with their mother, Barbara. She was as much of a bibliophile as myself, which explained why 'the girls' were always borrowing books from my library - mainly fantasy and fairy tales. Barbara belonged to a group of Catholic mothers who home schooled their children according to a common plan, and who all studied the same textbooks. They had a contact back in the States who would pick up all their book orders for the coming semester and then mail them to the Philippines. I was able to 'piggy-back' books for myself, and the day all the books arrived was like a mini-Christmas for all of us (this was before I got my Kindle reader).
One day I was driving back from the park where I walked our big Golden Retrievers with our 'alalay' (house helper) Jonathan. The girls' house was on the route home, and as I approached it I saw Alice being hauled into a big SUV by a middle-aged white man - her European father, from whom Barbara had separated a few years back. As he started to drive off Barbara ran out of her house, shouting "Stop them!" She jumped into my car, and I realized this was Barbara's ex-husband doing one of those parent kidnapping deals.
So I slammed on the gas pedal and took off after them - in my little car jammed full with me, Jonathan, Barbara, and our giant dogs Pogi and BoBoy. The chase went on for almost half an hour, through little streets, farm roads, jungle dirt roads = and all the time Barbara yelling "Faster, he's getting away!" The whole time I was thinking "Another car chase! Who would have thought this would happen twice in my life!" as we sailed through the giant plants and palm trees of rural Luzon.
Finally the father had run out of back roads and had to drive down a main street. This gave Barbara the opportunity to call the police, and when we arrived at a main intersection where police were directing traffic, (there are no traffic lights here in Tagaytay, but police hand-directing traffic on weekends), the chase was over. All cars had to stop, and a policeman who had received the information that Barbara had phoned in, stopped the SUV. I drove Barbara home while the police arranged the return of Alice.
The sisters played one last recital, featuring their four-hand piano on complex arrangements of "My Favorite Things" and a Filipino love ballad (kundiman) called Sarung Banggi, followed by their own arrangements of Christmas carols.
The Sisters final recital with me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nET3ydivEIU
Soon after Barbara decided she had to move somewhere far away, so that there wouldn't be any repeat performances. Soon after, the COVID crisis started, and nobody wanted to risk exposure just for a half-hour piano lesson. A year later I came down with Parkinson's disease together with childhood polio returning to my aged left arm ('post-polio syndrome'), so after 50 years of teaching and playing, my music career came to a screeching halt.
Barbara and her children drove back to our barangay (village) one last time to get their remaining books, dishes and other household items. They stopped by our house to say goodbye, and Barbara took a photo of me with her kids, my last gift from this wonderful family - and the final closure of my teaching career.
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My two students are the two girls standing up in back of my chair-
Barbara was taking the photo |
Lee in the middle; two ace piano students standing up in back; their two younger sisters and their brother (a guitar student); photo taken by their mother.
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