Chapter - 55 - Mammoth Avenue

IT WAS 1980 and the television sets of America were inundated with ads for Ronald Reagan or Jimmy Carter for president. Blair had moved into a house on Mammoth St. in Van Nuys with Jeffrey Hamilton, who was making a name for himself as a make-up artist in LA. Blair got involved with a The Palmer Drug Abuse Program or PDAP after being introduced to it by Jeffrey. They both had a desire now to be sober; Blair because he felt that he would like to experience life without being high, which he hadn’t done since he was fourteen, and Jeffrey because he was over the top with substance abuse and was suffering with hepatitis. PDAP is a twelve-step program located in Houston and joining is relatively easy. There are no forms to fill out; there weren’t any interviews or registration process to complete, and families are not required to pay anything. This was perfect for Blair since, at the time, he didn’t have two dimes to rub together.

In Houston, Blair and Jeffrey met the Paschal brothers, Mark and Mike and they had come back to Van Nuys to hang out in the house on Mammoth. Another Robin, this time it was Blair who would have dibs on her, also followed the merry gang of PDAP alumni and before too long there was a whole host of people living at the three-bedroom house in Van Nuys. Mark had a girlfriend by the name of Hilary, who was absolutely beautiful, reminding of a French Julie Christie, with big brown eyes and dark blonde hair and too cute to be a minute over seventeen as described in the Chuck Berry song, Little Queenie. I had a bit of a crush on her—so did everyone. I think I was the only one who didn’t sleep with her after she arrived at the legal age in California.

Mike’s girlfriend was a New Jersey girl by the name of Martine—also a member of the tribe that Blair and I belonged to. She had short dark hair and big brown eyes, and I liked her a bit. I was single and fancy free and just because she had a boyfriend, it wasn’t really a big deal if I flirted a bit—nothing serious, mind you. I remember Martine giving me the best back rub after I had been up all night with Blair recording. I think it felt so good I had non-clamantly asked her to marry me. I had later asked Marly to marry me and was rejected seven times. I didn’t ask anyone to marry me after that until right after my father died. It was Thanksgiving of 1988, and I finally asked the right woman, Donna Smollett— she said yes. I’m proud and happy to say we are still married with three sons and live in an old farmhouse thirty miles south of Nashville.

After a relatively short while, Blair and his Robin broke up. A few week later, he was standing in line smoking a Marlboro (these were the days when you could smoke in public places) when a darling, freckle-faced, red-head recognized him from behind. She knew it had to be Blair by the way he smoked his cigarette, with an aggressive manner of holding it tightly between index and middle finger and the thumb, flicking ashes on the floor while his thoughts were focused on where, what or who was happening that night. Her name was Patricia, and she was his old girlfriend from Baltimore from almost ten years earlier. She used to come down to his rehearsals in Pikesville, Maryland, and listen attentively to his soaring Hammond B-3 organ, the one he had to carry to the basement inching his way down a narrow suburban staircase, in his first band, Lucifer’s Mother. They would hang out together listening to Cat Stevens. It was Patricia who had turned Blair on the song Father and Sons which had greatly influenced him in, not only his music but his entire life. I don’t know if it was on a sudden impulse or if it had been discussed at great detail, but Patricia went back to Baltimore and made plans to move out to LA to live with Blair and Jeffrey at Mammoth Avenue. The rest of the gang had moved on at this point. Mark and Mike went back to Houston. Hilary had run off and married some French dude, had a baby, and was nowhere to be found and Martine had gotten her own place in the valley near Coldwater and Magnolia.

Patricia was an enigma and I really thought she was amazing. She was totally in love with Blair and would do anything in the world for him. She was a first-class chef and made some of the best dinners (when I was invited to dinner, which was usually most of the time) I had ever tasted. She got a job as a barmaid at Roger’s on Beverly Drive and when Blair and I came in to visit her she would always have a glass of Frangelico waiting for us at the bar. She was a walking contradiction—the type of girl who would get high on coke and then do yoga— but she was as lovable as the day was long. Her father, Huck, owned a music store back in Towson, Maryland by the Baltimore docks, and when Blair and I formed a duo later in 1981 called Two Guys from Van Nuys, she would have her father mail her guitar strings and harmonicas, which she would be more than happy to dole out for the cause. I think I have one or two of those harmonicas laying around my studio still here in Tennessee. Blair, Patsy (a name he had called her, but I always called her Patricia) and I were constantly together. She would come with us to all of our gigs at places like The Natural Fudge in Hollywood and the Bla Bla Café in Studio City, where we had a regular gig once a month on Wednesday nights. She was there when we recorded our first demos at Creative Space, a studio where you paid ten dollars an hour and they would throw you into a room with a four-track cassette recorder and leave you to your own devices. It was really a great idea and ahead of its time, since now everyone and his mother can do home studio recordings, which is what Creative Space, in fact, really was. I think that Patricia even paid for those sessions. She was the best!

 Soon things would take a turn for the worse between her and Blair, and she got a little bit insane. She would bang her head against the wall trying to make Larry react or respond to her cries of love, but he couldn’t deal with it, or her. It was too hard watching her disintegrate before his very eyes. She was sent to a mental ward and, much to Blair’s displeasure, took great joys in weaving baskets. He got her out of there after a week or so, but they eventually broke up and it would lead, or at least contribute, to her total demise. After a while, the Two Guys from Van Nuys had decided to call it quits and Blair was playing music now with Jon Lowery, who had a cover band, and they had a gig in some dive on Western Ave. near Third Street. Patricia had moved into an apartment in West Hollywood with a roommate, an actor and stunt man by the name of John, and they were completely platonic. I started visiting her there and our friendship was turning into something more—we started falling in love. I wasn’t sure if she really loved me, or if it was because I was Blair’s musical partner and friend, as if just being with someone so close to Blair would be like having a piece of him there with her.

When I drove up to John’s and her apartment complex on La Jolla I would park my car on the street and instead of ringing her doorbell, I would stand outside her balcony and play the intro to Thunder Road on my harmonica and beckon her to come out. It was very romantic, reminding me of a modern West Hollywood version of Romeo and Juliet. I can still see her in my mind wearing those Flashdance leg warmers over black leotards, low cut t shirt that exposed one of her shoulders nicely and her hair tied back in a fiery ponytail. Her face was a constellation of freckles interspersed over milky white skin; her top lip pointed sharply upwards making a pronounced V as it lay a perfect distance from the bottom of her nose. Patricia was classically beautiful in a French way. I could almost see her beneath a parasol drifting in a boat upon the Seine in a Matisse or a Monet painting as she stood on the balcony indicating that she would be right down to meet me.

 I was in two minds about our relationship and felt guilty that I was involved with Blair’s old love even though they had officially broken up. I went down to the dive on Third Street where Blair was playing keyboards for Jon Lowery and was determined to tell him I was now seeing his old girlfriend. I didn’t know how he was going to take it, but I had to tell him. If it were me, I would have been devastated, but not Blair. He was not only happy about it; he was relieved that someone he knew and trusted would be looking out for her. I had built up all these scenarios in my head for nothing.

I’m going to skip ahead in to late 1982. I had an apartment on Highland Avenue not far from the Hollywood Bowl. It was an older house that was dived into three separate apartments and mine was on the northern part of the house. The apartment was taller than it was wide; I think the ceiling was fifteen feet high. It had a living room, bathroom and a small kitchenette. I had asked Patricia to move in with me and she tentatively agreed. That night when we went to sleep, we were awoken by scratching noise coming from the wall. As soon as we turned on the lights to investigate, the noises stopped. This went on for an hour or two and we eventually saw the cause of all that scratching and clawing—it was a rat that had chewed a hole in the wall and was staring at us from the foot of the bed. She freaked out and decided not to move in and we thought we should remain friends instead of lovers. She found a place on Wilcox in Hollywood with— yes it is true, a self-proclaimed warlock named Robin (yes, another Robin—but this time it was a male) as a roommate. He was a quiet and calculating young man who dabbled in the black arts and Patricia ended up marrying him at a witch’s coven on Ivar just south of Hollywood Blvd.—it was a white wedding and I, of course, didn’t go. She had shaved her head except for a red tail that protruded from the back of her shiny cranium. She claimed it was freeing up the highest chakra so she could be closer to God. I would still visit her, bald head and all, and would ask her jokingly to put on a hat. She had changed, losing her sense of humor which was always so prominent. I didn’t like her husband in the least and I didn’t think he was good for her, but ever since her break-up with Blair she was treading on thin ice. I was a happy distraction for a while, but I knew things with her were going very dark and I didn’t know what to do about it. The last time I ever took a psychedelic, I was with Patricia in a park near Santa Barbara. I told her with presentiment that after she died I wanted her ghost to visit me. She told me in all seriousness, like it was a foregone conclusion; she would do that very thing.

A little more than a month later a letter came to Larry. It was from Patricia, and it was addressed to nine people, Blair and I being two of them. It stated that she and Robin had grown tired of this crazy world and had planned to shoot each other with pistols at point blank range and their bodies would be found in Griffith Park. Was she bluffing? Could she actually do such a thing, such an insane desperate thing as mutual suicide? Their house was left with everything still intact except for a suitcase that was assumed to contain clothing, guns and food— but they were gone. For ten years the mystery of her disappearance was scrutinized by the local police and her mother and father had hired a private detective to find her to no avail.

I had a dream one night about her. I saw her riding in what looked like a miniature train circling through the Painted Desert or California Sierra forests, I couldn’t be sure—you know how dreams are, they can change locales in a split second. It was like that train ride in Disneyland—the western one under a blue sky streaked with cotton candy clouds thinly scattered like they were being pulled by young children trying to see how far they would stretch before breaking apart. The train kept circling around a mountain pass never seeming to get any higher or lower—just going around and around into oblivion. It seemed like a message to me. I knew she was somewhere near a train. But where? For ten years they searched every square inch of Griffith Park, but they must have missed the area at the north end of the park. In a ravine near a grove of twisted trees their bodies were finally recovered—about a hundred yards from the kiddie train. Was Blair jinxed or doomed? He was lucky in all aspects of his life but one—his love life. First it was Christa, then Caroleen and now the lovely Patricia. There would be one more tragic loss of love for Blair in the near future that goes beyond the boundaries of this story. If I were a girl I would stay as far away from him as humanly possible. Patricia was damaged goods and maybe it was wrong for her to come to LA where, as Ogden Nash once said, “the United States in built on a slant and everything that is loose rolls to Southern California” or would the same thing have happened if she stayed in Baltimore. God only knows; but he’s not telling me—or maybe I’m not listening. Sometimes I don’t—but other times I do.