Geeky Bob

Javalinas are a nuisance in my neighborhood because they knock over people's trash bins and scatter garbage through the streets, and this is especially true when people wheel their cans out to the curb a tad bit early (as I often do). After a recent peccary rampage through our residential rubbish, one of my neighbors quipped "Welcome to Javalinaville," which served as the impetus for the following parody that is sung to the tune of Jimmy Buffet's "Margaritaville."

This evening I watched 2022 ride off into the sunset from Tucson's Saguaro National Park East with my spouse of 38 years, my children, and my grandchildren gathered round... treasured memories are borne from moments such as these, and I am eternally grateful that my long-suffering spouse reminds me now and again to seize these moments before they're gone.

My wish as we dash headlong into the year ahead is that everyone who reads these brief, reflective musings has a joyful and prosperous 2023 ahead of them.

Tucson's Chicago Music Store recently celebrated its centennial, and I must admit - I have a special place in my heart for that store. Growing up as a young musician in Tucson, I was intimately familiar with it.

Back in the late 1970s and early 1980s, I used to visit the Chicago Store all the time and haggle with Joe (who ran the place) over pieces of vintage gear that clearly had no actual value to Joe whatsoever. Joe always seemed cranky, and on one occasion he threw me out of the store when I called him a thief for starting his half of the negotiation far too high and refusing to budge.

However, on a different day, I had been haggling with Joe for several minutes when he had to take a phone call. After he walked away, his brother, Phil, walked over and explained the following to me: the Chicago Store had already made Joe a rich man (in 1980s money), and Joe didn't actually need the work. Phil continued by saying that Joe simply loved to haggle, and if I was willing to put in the time and give Joe a good fight, I could eventually get a good price.

This changed my whole world, and I started to budget several hours per trip to the Chicago Store just in case I found something that was going to require a little more time to negotiate. Over the years I bought a lot of great gear from the Chicago Store, and to this day I still own several items that I bought there. But more than that, I learned how to give Joe a "good fight," and I walked away with dozens of great deals.

Joe and I never grew close enough to be friends, of course, because I was never more than a customer to him, but I'd say beyond a shadow of a doubt that I had become one of Joe's "regular customers," and he always greeted me with a huge smile every time I entered his store - whether I bought anything at all.

I was terribly saddened when Joe and Phil both passed away several years ago.

POSTSCRIPT:

Here are a few articles about the Chicago Store's and it's future.

• Old makes way for new at Chicago Store
  
• Chicago Store selling its iconic downtown space
  
• A History of Heritage
  
• A century of success in Tucson makes Chicago Music Store Absolutely Arizona
  

I grew up in Tucson, and I have fond memories of a local radio DJ that many people in town loved to listen to back in the late 1970s and early 1980s. However, to put things in perspective, radio isn't the same as it used to be; more and more of the contemporary radio programming is syndicated, playlists are dictated by countless business decisions, and - to be honest - fewer and fewer people are listening to radio as it fights to compete with satellite services, streaming apps, and digital audio. (I will admit, I personally listen to a collection of MP3s that are stored on a flash drive whenever I'm traveling in my car these days.)

But back in the late 1970s and early 1980s, radio was king. For most music fans, radio was usually the only way that you discovered new artists, and it was also how you learned that your favorite artists had released their latest albums. There was no Internet back then, and before MTV launched in 1981 there was generally no television coverage for rock music news. In short, if you liked music, there was radio - and that was it.

When I was in High School, there were two rock stations in Tucson: KWFM and KTKT-FM (which would later become KLPX). Each station had their fair share of DJs, and there was one DJ who drifted back and forth between those two stations: Bob Cooke. He was Tucson's premier funny man - he always had the best jokes, but he was never over the top. (Well, perhaps on occasion...)

I recall staying up late on far more nights than I will admit to finish homework assignments as my semesters came to an end, and Bob Cooke always played requests from students all over town who were engaged in similar last-minute pursuits. And Bob was freakin' hilarious about it. I would call and ask for something by Rush or The Doors, then someone else would call and ask for song from a different band, and so on. Bob played them all. He had a ball as he expressed his faux sympathies for all his listeners slaving away with their books and typewriters, and you knew he was glad that he wasn't working on all that homework.

One of the particularly amusing parts of Bob's shows was when he was required to read advertising copy live while on the air, because he could never do it without messing with the scripts that he had been handed. I vividly recall one morning when he was reading the advertisements for Farmer John's Sausage Links, which Bob humorously changed to "Farmer John's Wieners." He kept saying the rest of advertising copy incorrectly, and therefore he had to keep starting over. However, restarting the script meant that he would eventually run out of the music that was supposed to play in the background, so he would have to start over - again and again. The entire episode was side-splittingly funny, and I laughed so hard I probably cried...

People who grew up in the "Naked Pueblo" (as Cooke used to call Tucson) will remember that Bob was tragically killed by a deranged radio listener in August, 1982. (See https://bit.ly/2RswW5o.) People throughout the Tucson valley mourned his untimely death at the young age of just 28 years.

It's hard to believe that it's already been 38 years since his murder, because I can still remember countless hours listening to Bob's priceless and bizarre sense of humor. I'm sure that he would have retired years ago if he had had the chance to live a full and happy life, which means both Bob and the classic radio format that made him famous might have been able to ride off into the Arizona sunset together.

Someone I know was making light of the fact that Californians paint their lawns to compensate for their brown seasons of year, and she wondered if those of us who live in the perpetual state of Arizona's desert browns should emulate our western neighbors' behavior and paint our trees the fall colors of orange and yellow and red.

I countered her suggestion with my observation that every night God paints the entire Arizona landscape with beautiful hues of oranges and yellows and reds, as well as pinks and purples and blues... but during the day we have green-skinned Palo Verde trees with yellow blossoms, and towering Saguaros crowned by delicate white flowers, and Prickly Pears and Chollas decorated with red, yellow, purple, orange, and green cactus blooms. Every day we are greeted by every color of the rainbow waiting just outside our doors, so there's no need to envy those who breathe the foul stench of brown skies and cower in over-priced houses with green-painted lawns - we already have it so much better.

Today's afternoon cycling adventure through the desert was not the hottest ride that I've been on, but it was the second-most.

I had to force myself to ride slower and constantly douse myself with water from one of my water bottles to keep from overheating. As a result, I added a little over a minute to each mile on my ride, but I managed to keep my heart rate low as I kept saying under my breath, "Don't kill yourself," which was meant both literally and figuratively: I didn't want to push myself too hard and overheat, and I didn't want to make dumb choices that would simply get me killed. (Although it is arguable that riding in that level of extreme heat is a dumb choice by itself.)

When you somehow manage to bump the camera button on your phone in its waterproof case during a desert ride and it creates an experimental bokeh-art film in your honor...

As I was riding my bicycle through the Arizona desert outside Tucson yesterday afternoon, I saw a good-sized Gila Monster, which was my first sighting for this year.

This fortuitous discovery came just a few days after I had seen my first rattlesnake for the year, which got me thinking: perhaps I should track a few of the familiar objects that I see every year, which quickly expanded to common occurrences and mishaps. A few minutes later and I had randomized several of my semi-routine desert riding experiences into the following bingo card, where I have already encountered a few of the more-prevalent items this year:

As you can see, there are several items which I have yet to see or do for the year, but only four months have gone by; there's plenty of time to fill up the list.

During today's 32-mile ride through the deserts on the east side of Tucson, I probably should have called it quits when the temperature hit 120 degrees on my GPS... but then again, I was out in the desert with nowhere to stop, so my choices were: 1) keep riding, or 2) die. Or as Winston Churchill famously remarked, "If you're going through hell, keep going."

Originally this was supposed to be my usual 40-mile Saturday ride, but I decided right before my departure to drop the 8-mile loop through Saguaro National Park. (Which in hindsight was undoubtedly a really good idea.) On a positive note, there appeared to be no other cyclists riding today, so I had the roads all to myself.

(PS - I didn't get a photo for when the temperature hit 133 degrees on my GPS because my cell phone shut down due to the excessive heat. Of course, my lack of cell phone meant that I was also unable to abort the ride and call my wife to come find me.)

I saw two good-sized Gila Monsters and a four-foot rattlesnake during this evening's bicycle ride around Saguaro National Park. I won't stop for the rattlesnakes, but I did manage to get a photo of this little guy as he was crossing the road.

And of course, this leads to the question: "Why did the Gila Monster cross the road?"

1. To get to the other side.
2. Because of his crimson hide.
3. He was chasing some stinkbugs and flies.
4. If he bites you you'll swell up and die.