Nobody Reads This Page – ‘Mugshot’

 

c. 2023 Rod Ice

All rights reserved

(12-23)

 

 

I have often written about my late friend Paul Race from Corning, New York, in various projects penned at the Icehouse. We met when I moved to Ithaca, in the Finger Lakes Region of that state, during the summer of 1978. He was already in his early 30’s and had earned degrees in Biology and Chemistry from Cornell University. I was 17 and very much in awe of his record collection and guitar arsenal. He projected the counterculture stylings of a hippie, yet spanned the generations from Beat Era authors to Punk Rock and Heavy Metal modernists in his appreciation of culture. At heart, he carried many similar vibes to friends who had grown up in the Village of Riverside. A neighborhood inhabited by working-class residents like his parents.

 

Music gave us an everlasting kinship that otherwise would not have existed.

 

As I grew older, the fellow I once revered as a local hero and icon began to age not only in chronology, but also with the development of my own life experiences. After joining my first wife and her son in the 1980’s, the backdrop against which I viewed this oddball genius shifted. I realized that things relating to him were not perceived clearly by my teenage self. He was impulsive and extreme as a collector, to the point of exhausting his own weekly paycheck. Then frequently, he borrowed money from his wife or begged flea market vendors to extend some sort of credit arrangement. He seemed able to literally smell the scent of vintage vinyl artifacts, or collectibles. His home on Hornby Road, outside of the city, was a literal warehouse of things. Little free space remained anywhere. Even the spare room and basement were stuffed full of interesting artifacts. He had a wringer-washer and a refrigerator with the coil on top, both sitting in his garage. Boxes of records were stacked in the bathroom. Beer signs covered his walls. The manifested groove was one of pure obsession. Yet he had a casual manner, enhanced by frequent use of marijuana products. 

 

I reckoned that he must have been stoned for most of his adult life. But he kept a grueling schedule as a professional laboratory technician, and never missed work shifts.

 

His sense of humor could be wildly clever, or dark and seedy. He was happy to describe himself as a ‘shit-bum’ from Steuben County. He had none of the pretentiousness I saw in other artistic cohorts from the area. This made him beloved as a mentor. Though eventually, I felt us drifting apart. I outgrew him in a sense, while pursuing journalist ambitions, and a career in retail management.

 

When I visited in 2006, he had divorced his own spouse, and moved down the hill to a boyhood home still owned by the family, on Balcolm Avenue. The place where he knew Pat Kelly, who we all identified as ‘The Migrant.’ This miscreant troubadour was his best friend, and confidante. A petty criminal and druggie who nevertheless possessed a sort of charm and wit that kept us entertained. Both of them had formed a band called ‘The Embarrassing Pinworms’ with other musicians connected to Channel 13, where I was a student apprentice. In the fullness of time, this shared history kept us bonded. Though as a grown man, I tended to view him with amusement and pity. I would shake my head and wonder about his exploits.

 

By that point in his life, he had reached a precipice of finality. A heart ailment kept him hospitalized for a short period. His collecting rigor was so intense that boxes of LPs were even stacked on the front steps, outside. His trees and lawn were overgrown, to the point of offending neighbors. Being detached from his wife cut the last lifeline he had to reality. When brother-from-another-mother Pat passed away, it left him isolated socially.

 

I knocked on his door during a trip back to visit the Empire State, and he refused to answer. So, I crafted a crude note on a scrap of cardboard, and left it in his mailbox. A day later, he called my wife’s cell phone number to explain that paranoia over being accosted by members of law enforcement, or bill collectors, had him wound up tightly like a clockwork spring.

 

I noted that in a front window of his living room, he had placed an official portrait of Richard Nixon, looking decidedly severe. The image was out of place as something anachronistic, but also because I knew my comapdre had voted against that controversial candidate in both 1968 and 1972. Paul had been drafted for the military, but refused to participate in the Vietnam experience. He performed services as a conscientious objector, cleaning floors with a janitorial team, and doing construction work for those in need.

 

I filed the memory away with many others that were varied and sometimes in conflict with each other. He was a complicated person. Yet always fascinating to know.

 

When Donald Trump’s mugshot from the Fulton County Jail in Atlanta, Georgia circulated in news reports and online, I was moved to recall the presidential photo displayed in Riverside. The eerie emotions provoked were decidedly chilling, and similar. Paul had completed his mortal journey in the middle of 2014. But I wondered with hindsight over what sort of reaction he would have had, seeing the image. It made me revisit his inexplicable choice to have the Nixon print at a place of prominence, for everyone to view. Was it a nod to the persistent presence of conservative forces in our greater society? An admission that he remained haunted by this specter of ‘The Establishment’ as it was called in those days? Or did he intend it as a mockery of the same?

 

The question was one I could never ask.

 

My contrarian idol remains alive in spirit, with his Fender Telecaster guitar at the ready. I think of him often, especially as I have reached the age where he was, so long ago. My own back is bent now, and my hair is gray. I have a home full of treasured ‘junk’ as he used to denote such trinkets with affection. He once said that we liked to have “Shiny objects that no one else will appreciate.” I reckoned this declaration was right on target. Proof before the fact that though he might have despised POTUS 45 personally, I am certain that he would be collecting Trump items such as hats, shirts, cards, bobbleheads or figurines, anyway. It was in his nature.

 

The mugshot opened a portal of sorts. Through that scowl, I could envision the eternal soul of my departed friend, laughing into the vastness of eternity. 

 

Irony, unlike the physical form, never dies.