PRAYER
OUR PRAYER
(From FRIENDS/20-20 ALBUM: BEACH BOYS)
Jesus was killed in a drive-by shooting.
He had been walking on 58th & Corby St. It was a cold autumn evening in Omaha. He was under the streetlight by a big house that Gustaf Wallin had built around the turn of the century. By now, the neighborhood had grown older, but the houses were still good. Years ago, such people as Warren Buffet the multibillionaire and Hollywood movie star Nick Nolte had prospered there. An elementary school, Rose Hill was just down the street.
Jesus was about to cross 58th toward a two story that Gustaf’s daughter had lived in for 50 years. Jesus had rented a basement apartment there. As he waited to cross, a car came up from Military Street and one of the occupants shot Jesus in the chest. Gonzales died shortly there after. As it was night, his body was not discovered for many hours.
Jesus was killed not for his convictions or his color, but for his location. It was a standard drive-by killing. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Gonzales moved away from his body and watched it for a while as he located himself near the streetlight. He could see that the leafs were turning gold this late September night. He could remotely view that his long black hair and beard were spattered with blood and that his light brown skin was turning blue.
This was when he met Gustaf who told him that he had died. Gustaf was a Swede who came over on the boat in the 19th century. He had become a successful businessman and inventor, and after he died, he would periodically revisit the old neighborhood. Gustaf brought his daughter Doris with him and his wife. They all told Jesus that he would need to go on a new journey. After they appeared and left him, a spiritual guide ushered him into a new world filled with joy. The guide told him that he had been followed, watched, and helped all of his life. His guide was a female and her name was Annie. On earth, she had grown up on Meredith Street in North Omaha. She was related to Doris and wanted to let Jesus know that he was finally heading home.
Jesus started heading upward with Annie and he followed a light with a tunnel. He looked around and saw other people and animals going toward the light. Some got closer to the light than others. As he passed through the darkness, he saw spirits that were in despair and anguish. It was as if they were being tortured, but it was their own self-destruction that was occurring. They could not say that they were wrong. They would not ask for help, and until they would commit themselves to a greater reality, they lay in their own misery.
As he reached heaven’s gate, a greeting party approached him. There were sounds of bells and brilliant jubilation. He met his mother, Maria, and his grandmother Anna Lee. He even saw a dog that he had called Peppy and numerous other relatives. Then he met Jesus of Nazareth. Moses, Mohammed, Confucius, Krishna, Buddha, and Loa Tzu as well as female deities surrounded Jesus.
Jesus indicated that he was the savior, but that each of the great religions had their own special miracles.
Angels then showed him his life and all the sorrow that he had brought onto others and all the joy. On balance, he had made earth a better place by being there some twenty years. Jesus, like his mother and grandmother, were healers.
Jesus then entered the heavenly kingdom where Angels sang a wordless song with rooftop raising harmony.
The greatest hope were for those who dwelled in the darkness and who would finally be saved from their own sins.
Jesus was home.
HEROES AND VILLAINS
(From HAWTHORNE, CALIFORNIA: BEACH BOYS)
Jesus was born in hell.
The baby of Maria and Grandmother Anna Lee, was born in a town in the old west just over from the Yankee border, called Tijuanna. The town was known to cater to American servicemen. On their r and r’s, the little town was filled with young men. Bars were crowded with a theater over the liquor shelves behind the bar and enclosed with plate glass. There women and men would have live sex. The crowd would cheer when the participants arrived on the stage and when they were involved in the sexual intercourse. The biggest cheers came when the male and female finally had a fake orgasm.
Down the street, one could see people having sex with animals, and men in cages who wanted to kill each other. There were also cock fights and dog fights to watch. There was a special secluded spot where women were chained together and beaten. Snuff films were also popular.
In the streets, young women and men would offer sex for a price. Little boys and girls made the most money of which nearly all went to the pimp. Most would die of STDs and Aids, but their parents had sold them to the pimp.
Jesus was born in the back of a bar. His mother Maria was not a prostitute, but a bar matron. She was thought to have special powers and could heal folks. Her mother Anna Lee was a healer who traveled the world from the Himalayas to California beach houses. She used her healing hands to help and nurture people back to health.
Jesus’ father was a Yankee serviceman who left Maria when he found out that she was pregnant. Maria carried on by delivering Jesus, and working in the bar. Jesus did not have to become a prostitute, because early in life, he could see visions, talk with the dead, foresee the future, and heal the living. In many ways, the good priests of the local Catholic Church took him in and nurture him as Maria continued to work in the bar.
One night as the sun went down and the patrons felt all right, Maria was caught in the middle of a rain of bullets between two gun fighters in the bar. She was killed instantly and her soul went directly to heaven.
By then, Jesus was twelve and he gave the eulogy. At a very tender age, he was articulate in both Spanish and English and was very charismatic. Jesus talked about love and the sins of a town filled with many villains and a few heroes like Maria. Although her death was difficult for him, as he preached in front of the body of his mother, the small audience grew and grew and the love for Maria spread like fire.
Thousands gathered to sing and pray for Maria. As tears go by, the crowd saw tangerine trees and marmalade skies. Maria’s face was created in the skies and her eyes appeared to be diamonds.
Maria decided to stay here on earth after going to heaven and her spirit lives on in that Old Wild West town.
Anna Lee, Jesus’ grandmother, soon headed northward to get lost in a city so that Jesus could keep his anonymity and escape the evil of a town filled with the beauty of orange crate art, but painted black with evil.
COUNTRY AIR
(From SMILEY SMILE/WILD HONEY: BEACH BOYS)
“Wake the world it’s brand new day,” said Jesus’ grandmother. Anna Lee had taken Jesus to Omaha, Nebraska, which had a growing, and prosperous Hispanic community. From there, she had taken him far north to Loess Hills in Iowa to greet the dawn.
It was the beginning of summer, and she drove him to Blue Lake just north of Missouri Valley. As he looked at the trees and the lake, Anna Lee told him to look at one beautiful and huge tree by the water. There, Jesus was to keep his eyes open and continue to stare at the tree. He whispered the word of Maria and soon discovered that the tree and the lake were melting. They grew out of proportion and became soft and billowy. It felt as if Mother Nature had filled the air so that he could see the beauty everywhere. And then he saw a little bird in a tree singing to him about the love of his mother Maria.
Maria then gave him a gift. Soon, he could see that there were angels or guides around everyone’s head. They were encouraging people to be there very best that God had intended them to be. These angels were there, but nearly everyone could not see them and were earthbound with their own troubles. It was as if they felt that they were not made for these times.
Then his grandmother asked him to lie down and travel out of his body to other places in Iowa. Jesus saw Lake Delhi, north of Cedar Rapids, the cliffs of old historic Dubuque, and the shoreline in the downtown area of Sioux City.
Jesus could fly everywhere and headed north to Minnesota up by Park Rapids. There he hovered over a peninsula on two Inlets Lake by Weigelwood Resort. He could see a cluster of trees across the lake and on the ground of the peninsula was a large wooden lodge and country store. Then he traveled around the lake and saw people rejoicing. He even saw a barnyard with various animals singing in their own way. This all took but a matter of seconds and he was back to earth at Blue Lake.
There they returned to their home in South Omaha. The houses there were painted lavender and green, purple and paisley. The homes were vivid. Jesus prospered in his new life and was home schooled by Anna Lee.
From then on, Jesus would travel all over the area, daily. The Midwest had become his friend and in another consciousness, he could see treetops and people. As time went on, he flew to Australia, Canada,
Bellingham in Washington, Portland, the Sandias in Albuquerque, Houston, and the back home.
WONDERFUL
(From 30 YEARS OF GOOD VIBRATIONS BOX SET: BEACH BOYS)
By birth, Jesus was a multicultural person. His mother was Spanish & Indian and his father was Anglo.
Jesus had now turned twenty years old and his reputation for healing have become known through out the city. Although he lived in a basement apartment near 58th and Corby Street in Omaha, he spent much of his time working in south Omaha. He would get up in the morning and take the bus on Military street to
Downtown Omaha and transfer to South Omaha. It took nearly 90 minutes. However, many of the regulars got to know each other in their sojourns to somewhere near an Omaha outlet.
There in south Omaha, his grandmother Anna Lee had a shop that sold herbs, rosaries, worry beads, and fresh vegetables. Both he and his mother were psychics and for a very small fee that would help people with their problems. Jesus would talk with the dead and also heal people. However, he could not heal many because he would bleed on his chest and would be exhausted from the healing.
One day, a young Anglo lady came to him with her troubles. She was in her early 20’s and had fallen for a local musician who was a gifted rock star and piano man. He played the key board and was an excellent
Stylist-vocalist. She told Jesus that the more she saw him, the more she felt troubled and the more that she was attracted to him.
Never known as a non-believer, she had her mother and her father who would love her, but Jack her lover made her miserably happy. His stage name was Jack Flash and he dazzled audiences with his humor, and musical skills. One late afternoon, the young Anglo, named Wendy with blue eyes and blonde hair, went with Jack down a wooded path in a pretty park near the university. There they sat and talked. Jack filled her with stories and little asides that how wonderful she was.
Then he slowly took off her clothes. She began to tremble and wanted him so badly, but felt torn by the love of her mother and father desire for her to wait until later. As the sex began, Jack went cold.
He quickly violated her and she felt pain. It was over shortly and Jack left her there, all alone. She put on her clothes, got a ride, and went to see Jesus. She wanted to be healed, because she made it with this guy.
As she sat with him, she made herself into a ball. She tightly hugged her knees and cried and cried. She told Jesus her problem. Jesus listened. He told her to lie on top of him and take her legs and put them around him. No sex was involved. She could feel the warmth come from his body to hers. It was unconditional love and not erotic. As she lay on top, she began to see blood come from his chest. It didn’t matter; she lay there for close to 45 minutes. Her swollen vulva felt better and she felt healed. She then got off of him and went to the bathroom, where she took cold water and washed it off of her blouse. He gave her a big hug.
She parted. She worried about her crisis and wonder if she could be pregnant. Should she take two of her girl friend’s birth control pills? She wandered and worried. Later, she found that she was not pregnant and swore to avoid Jack and guys like him. Why weren’t there more guys like Jesus? God only knows.
CHILD IS THE FATHER OF MAN
(From SURF’S UP/HOLLAND decoupled from SURF’S UP)
Jesus was finally connected. His house was wired for cable and the Internet. For the first time in his life, he watched cable television. He had 200 channels and a remote. His apartment at one time was a basement and a family had lived there for 50 years. The next owner had also made improvements and had the front door painted red. The family that had been there for half a century had the coal furnace removed and knotty pine walls erected in the basement. The floor was a multi-color pattern. Toward end of the room were a pantry and a bar. The second room was his bedroom which was cement painted green and off that room was a shower and stool.
The living room had a corner where he put his television. Cable offered many stations and he enjoyed the ones that were in Spanish. On some stations, people were screaming at each other and trying to hurt the other. Some stations had on preachers with lots of hair spray in their hair, screaming and crying about Jesus Christ. Other stations had robots trying to smash each other, while still other stations had people having sex.
It was a zoo. Some had men in cages were involved in extreme violence.
He then learned how to navigate the Internet. He spent three hours watching pornography. Every time, he tried to leave a site another pornographic venue would pop up. There were men whipping women and women whipping men. There wasn’t any idea that wasn’t used for a live sex shows. There was group sex, single sex, and couple sex. It was all for free, but you could see much more and for longer periods if you paid $10.00 a month.
What he discovered is that the Internet and cable reintroduced him to the old western town just over from the Yankee border that he grew up in when he was a child. He felt cold and distant from God and from himself. He then learned that he had to navigate cautiously if he wanted to see the world from his basement in Omaha. He learned that certain sites would allow him to see roads and mountains as well as busy city streets. He began to know when it was raining in the Big Apple and if Nogales in Mexico was warm or hot.
He also went into people’s homes as if he was electronically invited to see them do ordinary things in their lives. He had favorite intersections where he could watch the traffic and the ocean nearby, although the site was in reality thousands of miles from him.
Cable could put him in touch with news all around the world, and he liked a Canadian station, because they
Broadcast news from Mexico in both Spanish and English.
He also bought a spy cam so that he could talk with Wendy and his grandmother by telephone and the Internet. In turn, they would talk with him. When the system was not working, he would e-mail them.
He also went to chat rooms to learn about other healers and to discuss religion with prominent psychics as well as clergy.
Soon people were calling him from all around the world, who wanted to be healed by phone. In every instance, he felt that he could not do such a thing and what ever he could do would probably not work.
He would not take money.
In other words, he could make millions, but didn’t want to violate the gift that he had from God.
KMTV, KETV, and WOWT, along with KFAB-Am all offered him a radio show to help heal people. He refused. When he was interviewed by all of them, their ratings by Arbiton were better than there were the play-by-play accounts of the Nebraska Huskers football team on Saturday afternoons.
When he did call in shows, the Arbitron ratings went off the charts. People, who wanted to be healed, beg him for help or advice. When not tending his grandma’s herb and vegetable store, he would go to hospitals and directly place his hands on those most in pain. After 15 or 20 patients, he would have to exit to the bathroom and take off his bloody dark shirt and replace it with another dark shirt to hide his bloody chest.
Maria’s remains were shipped north to Omaha and were reinterned in Forrest Lawn cemetery. There, Jesus would talk with his mother. He had a special conversation with her and times would return home and sit in front of his desk. Then he would get a blank piece of paper and start writing her messages on the paper.
Most were filled with love and the messages were about how Jesus could bring people together in this world to whatever religion that would bring them closer to God.
Jesus would often preach on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays. His message was always the same about unconditional love. To the Muslims, Jews, and Buddhist, he had an uncanny knack in knowing their language and their traditions. Among Christians, he had the ability to harmonize his message with their worldview. He was also beloved by the Unitarians when he would speak of the world of Science and the Enlightenment and the possibilities of religion.
Jesus would usually end his sermons with a children’s’ song…. that noetic and the poetic would come from children who would disappear into adults. His messages were to keep faith simple, but cautious… to reunite critical thinking with faithful thinking, and to reunite the child with father or mother that the adult had become.
He called that wisdom.
CABINESSENCE
(From WILD HONEY/20-20:BEACH BOYS)
Jesus fell asleep and dreamed of the cottage that he had visited at Cottonwood marina when he was with his grandma heading north. The marina and the surrounding cottages were on the Nebraska side of the Missouri river.
The cottage was small and looked over the Missouri and he dreamed that he awoke at dawn to see the
mist coming of the river. He also knew that the night he left the cottage for the last time, all of his loved ones, both dead and alive said “good bye.” From there, he drove to Cedar Rapids where he lived in the Cedar Forest and could hear a train go by, down by the Cedar River at midnight. Further along the Cedar River was Harper’s Ferry/ Seminole Valley. There was a creation of the stagecoach days and the onset of the new iron horse called the railroad. The iron horse of course was the mighty engine that would unite America.
In his dream, he saw thousands of men who built the rails and the orange crate art that showed those Grant Wood’s billowy cornfields where crows uncover the ground beneath.
The train came from the sky, but plowed onward into the earth digging and turning, digging and churning inwards, and then the train swooshed upward again into the surface. It then followed the earth’s surface from California to the Atlantic coast.
Night fell and the train went by Jesus’ Alleghany lodge. As the train disappeared into the distance, two dogs named Banana and Louie barked signaling that the train had passed by and moved into the distance like the fabled iron horse.
Jesus felt powerful and compassionate. Maybe he could become the ultimate catcher in the rye that would save the children hurriedly running off a cliff into the abyss and death.
Before, he awoke, he turned to a Catholic clergy and said “Brother John are you sleeping?”
When he awoke, he dressed, and walked up to the shopping area called Benson. He called his dreams
Sunshine dreams or summer land. It helped him feel connected to God and was always in the back of his mind.
BICYCLE RIDER
(From 30 YEARS OF GOOD VIBRATIONS BOX SET: BEACH BOYS)
Jesus went to a bicycle shop in Benson. There he bought an old 1950’s Schwinn Flyer with a panel in the middle where he could press a button and there was a battery-operated buzzer that he infrequently used.
Jesus had become a bit more prosperous and his bicycle was added to his other transportation, which was a wood, paneled 1949-ford station wagon. The Schwinn and the Ford were relics from the past, but each had their own story and tradition.
For the bike, there were stories and traditions that the Schwinn Flyer could really fly into to the sky on full moon light nights. A few chaps over the decades had tried such a thing and alas they met with disaster. Bikes don’t fly. However, his metaphorically glided along the pavement with it’s fat white walls buffering the bumps along the way.
The Ford recalled a time when suburbs were really out in the country and at that time (in the 50’s) Omaha ended on 72nd street. Today, the city had grown to 250th street or further. Ideally, the suburbs were then
Met by cornfields, but the dream was that at the end of the new development was a lake. The wood paneled Ford then represented what the ideal suburb could do and could be. Sometimes, the back end of the station wagon was filled with skis and it was rumored that in California in those days of the 50’s, one could go on
Route 66 all the way to the Pacific coast. Thus, one would have surfboards in the back.
The California myth was also tempered by Yankee culture (that if one could only take a trip over the Atlantic, one would arrive in the UK, although it was thought of as England, and things would be okay.)
Americans had revolted against the crown hundreds of years ago, but the castle and cottage tradition complimented the pacific coast legend. At any rate, happiness was somewhere else, and for the moment,
it was better to be an suburbanite than live in the ills of the city. Thus, many brownstone houses and brick homes had an English feeling to them. Thus a city cosmopolitan could mix the two: California and England.
In the 20’s through the 50’s, many surbanites had homes that had the best of both. There were two story and “ranch” homes that filled the bill. Importantly, if there was a particular door and stone façade, the house was the ideal. Both the bike and the station wagon also meant summer. The things that we did last summer and the summer before lasted all year round in northern places like Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin.
Then suburbs turned tacky with red ones and blue ones and pink ones and they all were little boxes all the same. However that was later and those relics were of another time and another era. Jesus lived on the edge of the Country Club-Dundee area. He loved to ride his bike to a shopping area in Dundee. There he would buy a soda. And reminisce about what those times were like when the houses that he would ride his bike past were built.
In his area, (immediately to the east most of the houses) were two story brick even including the Villa acres mansion that he drove by when he traveled southward on 56th street. After he crossed Blondo, he traveled another few blocks to an area that was once George’s Lake, and then from there he drove to Dundee.
George’s lake was drained years ago, and housing development was put in it’s place. The following years the owners of the home would find water in their basements and the developer was run out of town.
However, Lake George still lived on in so many ways because it was rumored that just across from it was an Indian mound that carried the bodies of the dead. First Nation or Native Americans who were thought to inhabit the area at night. The spirits of the dead would scare the local residents along the area, but Jesus felt at home. During the autumn, the area was gorgeous and walking in the neighbor on the way to the university or Memorial Park was an afternoon delight. Saturday mornings was especially beautiful as the homes radiated with their brick and well scrubbed homes.
In the Dundee shopping area, the most notable in the history of the area was Buffets. It was the store of the parents of Warren Buffet. It was just the opposite of the bright lit supers of today. The floors were wood and so were the shelving. Most did not shop at Buffets, but called and had their groceries delivered to their homes. The food was packaged and put in small trucks just off the “duck.” The “duck” was the dock, but some of the affluent customers mispronounced the word so that it eventually was the “duck.”
As times changed the Dundee Dell had perhaps the most charming history. One night a local disc jockey noticed that the bar matron would continually fill the jukebox with money to hear some of the same songs over and over. Watching her behavior, he surmised that perhaps the best AM radio format was to play a song frequently and top 40 stations blossomed all over the world. The top 40 had originated at the Dundee Dell, which was a nightery with cocktails, beer and short orders.
Within the last few years, the local merchants began to rename their stores after the names of songs made famous by the Beatles, Beach Boys, and the Rolling Stones. The drug store was called “Mother’s little Helper” (after Valium) and there was Ruby Tuesdays, an afternoon shop with gifts and cards. By now you can imagine the rest…Penny Lane, Eleanor Rigby, Wendy’s, Michelle’s, Lovely Rita, Good Vibrations, Baraba Ann, Rhonda’s, Mr. Kite, and Sargent Pepper. There was even a tanning salon called California Girls. A church in Benson had a youth center named Strawberry Fields.
Dundee in some ways was the castles and cottages of England. The names just added to the mystique, but the feeling was just the same. Jesus would shop there or in Benson.
How American was Jesus? He was American Indian, Spanish, and Anglo. He was multicultural and extremely handsome. He loved to ride his bike and it (metaphorically speaking) along with his classic suburban station wagon represented the America that unfortunately trampled the church of the Native American that roamed the plains, prairies, and bluffs of the Midwest hundreds upon hundreds of years ago.
Jesus had become a bicycle rider, which was not common for an adult until the 70’s or 80’s, but he loved to ride it and once rode all the way out to Peony Park. Peony Park was not a public park, but a Disneyland of sorts filled with Disney Girls in the summer at the swimming pool. It had a sandy beach with chlorinated water and water falls that continually hummed through the afternoon and evening. Peony had rides and confectionary stands. It was open from early Memorial Day to Labor Day. The park was surrounded by
Beautiful trees and special lamplights for the evening. After Labor Day, the ballroom would be open for large dances and big bands. Even the parking lot was filled with trees.
Many of the big names in big bands played at Peony Park. When the crooners gave way to rock bands, a local named Eddy Haddad tried to adapt by having the big band located just back of a local rock band. It worked for a while, and the local teens would populate the ballroom at the “Opener” held after Labor Day and the “Fade Out” held the Friday before Memorial Day were commenced.
Jesus rode his bike out to Peony to watch it be demolished. What was originally taken from the Native American was now being taken over by a new generation of Anglos as well as other investors who lived
around the world. Peony Park gave way to a new shopping mall. The big swimming pool, the Disney girls,
the big band all took new forms and functions and scattered to the suburban winds of change.
Benson, Country Club, Dundee, Blackstone area had all drifted into a new generation of consumers. The kids who remember the old days there were in Skyline Manor or other eldercare centers. Or they were on their way to senior citizenry. Jesus knew this because he was able with his meditation to go back in time and revisited those experiences.
For most, it was over, but for Jesus he could come and go with time and it’s quantum dimensions.
The church of the American Indian was still alive within him.
GOOD VIBRATIONS.
(From SMILEY SMILE/20-20: BEACH BOYS)
Meditate and Levitate. That is what Jesus learned when he went to Vedic City in Iowa. In the 60’s the Beach Boys and the Beatles had communed with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and the spiritual guru grew in fame. A year or two later, he traveled with the Beach Boys on their tour. Vedic city was the home of the Maharishi University of Management, once called the Majority International University or MIU.
Jesus befriended a literature professor there named Susan who originally was from Omaha. Along with others, she taught him how to meditate and do yogic flying. As a treat, she then took him into neighboring
Fairfield where they went to the Co-Ed movie theatre to see a new movie and discuss it’s literary (or lack there of) content.
Jesus found that the more he meditated, the more he could levitate, and the more that he could do the two, the more he could have an out of body experience. In his basement apartment, he meditated for an hour in the morning and an hour at night. Soon he found that he could fly about his bed in the apartment. Later, he discovered that he could also watch his body fly about the room. From there, he could watch as his spirit
flew up into the clouds and head for Wendy’s house.
He liked Wendy’s colorful clothes and with the gentle word of ay-oom, he became part of her dream. Together they wandered up beyond the hilltops and looked down on the busy little dots below them that looked like people.
Jesus and Wendy had entered the Blossom world filled with the sounds and smells of Jasmine. There they discovered a certain sound or vibration that resonated with their souls. There was a special sensation and excitation of breaking away from the self into a whole world of clouds, joy, and elations. Together they saw a light and rapidly moved toward it. The calico sky became a vast universe of joy and dear hearts. All of this became the nearest faraway place because, anyone who could clear their souls and meditate could go there from whoever they were. Jesus did not know where but God sent him there to castles, cottages, little trails and purple skies. Sunsets and sunrises from the back of one’s mind began to billow and melt. As he felt the Good Vibrations lift him, there were really strawberry fields that brought him back to the valley and then to a tarmac where a jet engine was roaring and the sounds of the two songs brought him abruptly back to reality.
Jesus gave Wendy a call. She said that she had just awoken and had a wonderful afternoon nap where she looped and looped around the universe. She saw time run back and forth and dimensions meld then come apart and they all fell into place a on a long promised road that she thought that she knew about before she was born.
It was a Tuesday afternoon.
VEGETABLES
(From HAWTHORNE, CALIFORNIA: BEACH BOYS)
Nobody, but nobody had a better fruit and vegetable stand than Louis Market at 58th and Military. From early spring to late fall, Louis had the best. The very best vegetables stand in Omaha. It didn’t matter what you wanted, he had it. Louis had it outside so that when you got near the grocery store, you smelled the vegetables. The outside ambience brought people inside where the air was filled with a wonderful fresh vegetable smell.
Every week, local customers would tell Louis or one of his staff what the latest favorite vegetable would be. In other words, there was the favorite vegetable of the week. Some folks would buy there vegetables and begin to eat them right there on the side walk. Louis didn’t care, because any activity like that was good for business.
If you wanted and some people had a 40-call phone (only 40 calls a week were allowed at a special price from Ma Bell) would still call in their favorite vegetable. At the end of the week, a prize was won by one of the customers, and the winner would receive a great big brown bag of vegetables. Most every one liked Louis, because his vegetables were organic.
Did you know that vegetables are good for you? You spend your life eating vegetables and you can live a long, long, time.
Louis’ Market became the home for many people in Dundee, Country Club and Benson to buy their vegetables and fruits. There was an urban legend once that a famous Omahan named Nick Nolte came to the vegetable stand and couldn’t find the right vegetable for the right price. He got so mad that he threw his tennis shoe at Louis. Louis called the cops and the next thing Nick was in the paddy wagon being booked for a minor misdemeanor.
Even Johnny Carson and Merrill Workoven (the voice of Omaha) would shop at Louis market. For Merrill the shopping was easy because he lived just a few blocks away on 56th street. Johnny, however, had to drive all the way from 33rd and California (in the Cathedral area) to get his vegetables.
Louis prospered and soon the vegetable stand gave rise to a bar. After the bar was built, he added a liqueur store with the best prices in town. Later a few houses were torn down and Louis had a new super market built just behind the bar. With the advent of the new super market, the smell of vegetables became muted.
It was located in one department and many of the fruits and vegetables were wrapped in cellophane.
In other words, the little market became a super economy. Times had changed. Nolte went on to Hollywood, Johnny Carson to the late night show and Merrill Work oven remained the voice that thanked you for listening to him on KFAB. His time was up and he wanted to thank you for your time spent with him.
Louis continued to go to the super in his restored 1952 gray Packard. He could have walked, but as time went on it was better to drive. Louis lived on 56th street with Merrill living just a few blocks southward and Nolte lived on the same street almost catty corner from the Villa Acres mansion and just one block north of
Blondo Street.
Today, a number of class reunions begin at Louis bar. In Benson, a high school was started in the 20’s at the western edge (now Benson West elementary school). However, as time went on, the population grew so large that a new Benson high was built eastward on 52nd street. The land was ideal because of the location. Krug park had been located there, but it died. Before the great depression, Krug park had been another
scaled down Disneyland, open in the summers. It had a pool, confectionary stand, and numerous rides.
Unfortunately, one night, the roller coaster zoomed up and around one corner to head downward and the
the coaster went off its rails. The cars rained down on the crowd watching and both individuals in the cars and in the crowd were instantly killed.
Both the Omaha Bee and the World Herald covered the tragic story. From the lawsuits and related, the park never recovered and for years remained an empty field of which one could still see some of the remains of the old park.
Benson high became for a while the new suburban school. Students came from as far north as Sorenson’s Dairy road (now a shopping mall) and south to Dodge Street. Unfortunately, the school had a mascot called the Bunnies. Can you imagine playing football for the Benson Bunnies? At any rate, the school endured and was located about 10 blocks from where Jesus had his basement apartment.
Jesus bought his vegetables at Louis, but it wasn’t the same. Louis passed on and market became a super market. Any resemblance of the past could be found in the bar, and unfortunately some of the patrons spent night after night there waiting to die. They were like a cork on the ocean, or a rock in a landslide, or perhaps a leaf on a windy day.
Jesus didn’t spend any time at the bar, and the vegetable stand remains a memory.
WIND CHIMES
(From SMILEY SMILE/20-20:BEACH BOYS)
Although Jesus lived in a basement apartment, the family upstairs would allow him to go to the screened- in porch in the back of the house. There he could see Babcock’s backyard. Actually, there were two
Babcock families. Grandma Hazel lived next door and Earl and Bessie lived on adjoining property that formed an “L” around the house that Jesus lived in.
Jesus had a wind chime place in the corner of the back porch. This way, the wind chimes would move and make a gentle noise like a happy whistle muted by thatched grass. He thought that the wind chimes could whisper. They whispered gentle wood chops and porcelain liquid. It was all a very pleasant setting and he could recall sitting out there in early March when most people still hid inside from the bitter cold, but he stayed out that Saturday afternoon to watch the whistle fly onward into the sky.
However, there was a day when the wind chimes began to crash telling Jesus that troubles were on its way. The sky had become dark and the wind had decided to stop in its tracks. He quickly ran to a radio and the KFAB announcer was telling his listeners that a tornado was on the way. Although, Jesus had transpersonal powers, he could not stop this cyclical creature. It’s ugly snake like head would dart from the clouds and then return, hitting some and leaving others alone.
Jesus went to the pantry under the front porch and waited. He could hear the monster circle over his house and he then heard it move toward Blondo. It then marched to around 72nd and Blondo and there it stopped.
It first killed a man on a roof over a gas station, and then it flattened a super market. Ten retreated back on Blondo to around 70th street and trashed and stomped on some houses, but not others.
The rubble was spawn all over the road and the yards of those who lived in the area. One tree was carried a couple of blocks and a piano flew over a housing subdivision; there it remained in the air, then thundered to the ground. The announcer Kent Pavelka calmed the listeners, who were in bomb shelters and related places began to cry as they heard that their neighborhood and loved ones were in harms way.
The tornado then moved north to Blair, Nebraska went in search of some farms, did its damage and then disappeared into the distance. Pavelka then described various homes, the address, the occupants, and the
surrounding damage that had been done. It didn’t take long to figure that most would face financial and
physical disaster, but that only one person died in the tornado.
Jesus loved to hear the wind chimes. He had the ability to touch, talk and feel the elements of existance: air, earth, fire, and water. With the wind chimes, he could have an astral projection move up to the chimes and commune with the wind. And when the wind got unhappy, he could feel its anger.
Some called the wind Mariah. He didn’t give the wind a name because it already had one and that was pleasing to the wind. The chimes only announced what the wind had decided.
FIRE
(From THE BEACH BOYS: AN AMERICAN BAND VIDEO/dialogue and music: BEACH BOYS)
Jesus stayed glued to his cable television. The worst of all worlds had come into being. Sir Paul McCartney had been assassinated like his co-writer, John Lennon. Of course there had been rumors years before that
Paul had disappeared when some dj played one of the Beatles records backwards some thought some one was saying that Paul was dead. It was a sham and a shame.
Sir Paul had been driving outside of his Arizona ranch when a sniper shot him dead at the backend of the limo. Sir Paul died instantly. The McCartneys had invited Brian Wilson along with the rest of the Beach Boys to play at the funeral. Mick Jagger of the Stones was to sit in the front row along with Ritchie Starsky or Ringo Starr. Sir Elton John also played and the whole damn thing reminded mourners of Lady Di’s funeral.
McCartneys chose Brian because Sir Paul had given him an award for the songwriter’s hall of fame.
As the service (an Anglo-Catholic affair) continued Jesus was in constant tears. How many times had he played Beatle and Beach Boys CD’s? And of course, he had all the Wings CD’s too.
The whole thing was really a November kind of tragedy and reminded him of that long weekend that he read about when President Kennedy was assassinated.
As the body was carried along in a carriage driven by horses. Hundreds of thousands of people watched as his McCartney’s body rode by. Rock and royalty had come together. Sir Paul was closes to what many countries had as its crown.
Jesus thought that he got the best coverage on NWI the Canadian Broadcast Corporations world news. Although, he would flip to CNN. After the ceremony, MTV and VH-1 ran continuous videos and documentaries and talk show re-runs of McCartney. It became very late, and Jesus went to sleep.
By the time, he was dreaming, Brian Wilson came into his dream wearing a fireman’s’ hat with the screams of “Fire.”
Jesus woke up choking. Smoke filled his basement apartment. Jesus burst upstairs, got the family up and out along with their two dogs Maxwell and Wilson. In the front yard, the fire department came and quickly doused the fire that had started in the furnace. At most, the damage to the house was a quick repair of the
Furnace and some smoke damage in the basement and first floor.
The entire household went next door to the Cavanaugh’s and Jesus slept in one of the rooms on the second floor.
As the fire episode past, he discovered in his dreams of how afraid Brian Wilson was of fire and how he had mistakenly believed that if the his song that he wrote about fire was played, it would cause fires in the houses and neighborhoods of those who played that instrumental song. Thus, this piece of music has never been released, and the video and the song remain in the vaults of EMI-Capitol records.
Jesus looked around the next day and there it was. The world was now without another Beatle. Sir Paul’s last song before he died was released it was called “Heaven” and was a voice over with the deceased Beach Boy, Carl Wilson. The song was very appropriate, as both had passed from this world with numerous friends and admirers who grieved their loss. The song went straight to #1.
(at the time of this writing, Dennis &Carl Wilson of the Beach Boys are dead and Lennon and Harrison of the Beatles have passed away.)
FALL BREAKS AND BACK TO WINTER
(From SMILEY SMILE/20-20: BEACH BOYS
In the Midwest, November passes into December and many still enjoy the weather outside. However, January, February, and March are nasty. Folks dress warmly and look downward so that the weather cannot bite their face. In the northern Dakotas, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, the joke goes that there are really 2 kinds of weather all year around. There is winter, winter, summer, and winter. In some areas, by Labor Day the leaves turn red and gold, but shortly thereafter they are brown. If you drive along I-29 a mid September day in Iowa is really green as you travel from Omaha to Sioux City there is not much change, but from Siouxland to Sioux Falls there is a tipping point where there is recognizable change in the weather and from Brookings, South Dakota on north, it is the beginning of winter.
However, one can be seduced and amazed by Mother Nature?
Jesus went to his aunt’s funeral in Omaha in January. In fact, it was the middle of January and he could recall the day that his mother’s ashes were reinterned on a very cold early February day years earlier. It was so cold that the mourners clung to each other as the clergy shortened the graveside benediction and the
Gathering repeated the Lord’s Prayer. That day with the clouds and the short burst of pink in the sky was a time for California dreamin’ However, most Nebraskans and Iowans still face weeks upon weeks of cold weather. It is really not until some time in April that individuals begin to believe that the outside is not a hostile place to live.
Aunt Helen’s funeral was a sad affair, but on a balmy January day. The sun was out and it was 50 degrees or slightly more. Midwesterner learn early in life that this kind of weather can’t last long. They are afraid to believe that the next day can be the same. You grab the good (if you can) when you can and hope the fall break lasts until the next day. Balmy winter weather is like having a winning lottery ticket and going to sleep a winner and waking up and discovering that a number on one’s ticket is slightly wrong as those magical winnings become dust heaps of despair.
Aunt Helen’s funeral was followed the next day by a terrible snowstorm and numerous autos were stranded on side roads and the interstate. Winter had returned. Hopes were dashed and summer dreams were just that until fall would reassert itself or spring became real enough to believe that it could be good weather again.
A sunny Beach Boys CD is best enjoyed in the winter. In the Midwest, fall, winter, and spring can easily trade places with each other and knowing when to enjoy the best gives you courage to carry on.
One also has to remember that this weather change varies with cultural changes. Some poor souls actually like the winter. For some, summer is very short, filled with bugs and water puddles as well as rampant
Humidity. Thus, winter is looked upon as a great season where one dresses for the weather and one goes out and enjoys the cold. Jesus thought that they were nice people, but a tad bit crazy.
COOL, COOL WATER
(From 30 YEARS OF GOOD VIBRATIONS BOX SET: BEACH BOYS)
Man touches all oceans, rivers, lakes, and streams. Everywhere, there is water, Jesus noted. His favorite was not the oceans, because at times you had to wear a rubber suit to be able to withstand the cold.
Rivers were okay, but there were always eddies that and whirlpools that could drag a person under. So he liked lakes and streams. Colorado seemed to have the most streams, but Iowa, Wisconsin and Minnesota had the lakes.
He loved the Bemidji, Walker, and Park Rapids area in Minnesota. He loved to look at the Paul Bunyan statue in Bemidji and cross the beginning of the Mississippi in a park near Two Inlets and Lake Beltane.
His life was surrounded by images of that and Door County in Wisconsin.
In Iowa, he liked Blue Lake, Lake Delhi, and Lake McBride. He also enjoyed the Spirit Lake and Lake Okoboji in the Iowa Great Lakes region. At Lake Delhi, an uncle had a cabin there, which he really liked to sit on the deck, and watched the boats go by.
Lake Mc Bride, near Iowa City held his most fascination. He loved the private cottage area and the peninsula just across from it. There he could see all the lodges and cottages along the shore. Lake McBride was a spring fed lake with an earthen dam that separated it from the Coralville Reservoir. All along the area there were always trails to walk and trees to talk to.
As time went on, Lake McBride needed dredging. It had not happened in many years and it was about time.
Previous to this, a wonderful man who was a very reputable businessman had a home in Cedar Rapids and his family had a very pretty cottage on Lake McBride. One day about three summers ago, he left his home in Cedar Rapids to spend the day at the cottage on Lake McBride. He left home by saying good-bye to his wife and headed south to his cottage. The trip was not long. It only took about 20 to 25 minutes. It was a pretty sunny day when he disappeared.
It is one of those stories where folks leave and head into forever. They are never seen again. Soon, bulletins are given to the mass media and it makes the newspapers. Search parties, as well as friends who try to cover the likely route that this man may have followed follow this. At first, there is a lot of excitement. Numerous parties are involved. Traces of various rumors are pieced together and the public safety officials are in full force. Then nothing happens. Anniversaries of days and months continue on and diminish the search.
Some are never found. The relatives are left with an empty death. They begin to put together the details, conjecture, and related. Some even have a memorial service when it is thought that this person has died and will not return. Some of the special mementos of the lost and presumably dead are placed in a casket or box
and buried with a head stone. Life goes on.
To dredge a lake means that the water must be lowered and drained. Then the bottom of the lake can be cleaned and residual dirt is scraped from the bottom and is removed to another site. It is a long and some times very expensive process. Numerous items from the past are found in global information archeological
digs on the lake bottom. After the cleaning and rearranging of the earth along with compliments of sand and stone at the bottom, the lake is refilled slowly. The lake then is renewed, generally is clearer and the water at least appears to be cleaner. However, the cool cool water is not drinkable.
On the CBC news in Canada, there are still stories of pretty lakes that appear clean and clear when it is not.
The water has been contaminated by coal and lumber companies, even though it is clear. However, among
First Nation people even the water no longer appears clean or clear.
At any rate, Lake McBride’s water level got lower and lower and what emerged was the man and the car that had disappeared. It was a tragic story, but somehow as he approached his cottage, the road pointed downward and the car must have slipped into the water about 15 feet from the shore line. Officials had checked the area both visibly and with technology without getting any response about the driver and the car.
The story was now complete. It appeared this good man had a heart attack at the wrong time and place and the lake had become his temporary grave. With the finding of this fellow, his remains could be placed in a grave and the story could be finished.
If it is Fire Lake, the land to 10,000 lakes, or any other kind of lake, the overall effect is quieting, but mysterious. What lies below? Most of the time, it is land and rock. However, a Lakeland community is always in demand. Devil’s Lake in North Dakota is now consuming it’s own city.
As Jesus discovered, describing a lake is like trying to define life. In the ocean or in a drink…cool, cool water is such a gas.
Jesus decided that lakes were probably chosen for baptism because the lake stands for purity. One can clean their souls and water is really the beginning of civilization. Water and land are necessary for survival. Did man come from water? Are we not made up of water? Cool water. Clean water. Drinkable water becomes the pyramid to life.
Taoism, one of the major world religions uses water as a metaphor in its TAO-TE-CHING thought to have been written by Lao Tzu or Uncle Sun. Water is also a powerful metaphor in Christianity. And now, no one sings about it better than the Beach Boys.
SURF’S UP
(From SURF’S UP/HOLLAND: BEACH BOYS)
Anna Lee died. Jesus’ grandmother was the healer of so many people. She spent the last of her life in a Hispanic community in Omaha. There, she had an alternative medicine and herbs shop. The Omaha World Herald had a story about Anna Lee next to the obituary. The headline read THE POOR MOURN THE DEATH OF ANNA LEE. Much of Omaha came to her funeral. The Catholic Church called the Cathedral
Of St. Cecilia’s had a huge ceiling that had just freshly been restored. It was a beautiful church with a small
Nebraska chapel on the side.
The local congressman and the former majority leader of the unicameral were there. Numerous local dignitaries sat up front, but most were poor and working class folks who came to grieve her passing.
Many sat outside the church and listened to the homily and mass on loud speakers. It was a cloudy stormy day, but so many stood there in the rain.
There was a hush that seemed to go all over the world, as Jesus spoke about his grandmother and told stories about his Mother Maria. Jesus said that Anna Lee thought that the world needed a vision. That somehow and someway, we had gotten off the trail. Jesus said that we needed moderation and world where everyone had a job, food, health care, and where lust and greed were not celebrated, but moderated.
At the end, Jesus cried out “Surf’s Up.” We need to start again, to renew the world and let the Spirit
Renew us. There is a God that forgives. We are fallible creatures looking for that in the outside world that can dwell within us.
The people there shook their heads in approval. The ocean was ready to form another wave that would crash to the shore. Every generation writes it’s own story. What are we proud of? How do we deal with others? How can one out shout a waterfall? We fall down so that we can get up. Surf’s Up.
And the people went to their homes wondering about this whole world.
YOU’RE WELCOME
(From SMILEY SMILE/WILD HONEY: BEACH BOYS)
There was a big advertisement in THE OMAHA WORLD HERALD. The Beach Boys were coming to Omaha on the 29th of June. It would be the beginning of the 4th of July weekend. A local bank had sponsored the event, called an Evening in the Park.
Jesus was excited. He loved the Beach Boys (along with the Beatles and Stones) and was so exhilarated that the band would be heading his way. The band shell was at the bottom of the very large Memorial Park and not far from the old George’s Lake where Jesus would ride his bike on the way to the Dundee Shopping area. It was a beautiful day, and skateboarders were out there doing rights and lefts. Crew were putting the stage together and loud speakers in an adjacent park, the parking lots just up the street at University of Nebraska-Omaha,
Boom boxes at St. Mary’s church and along the drive right up to where Henry Fonda’s sister lived before she passed away. There were other loud speakers that snaked their way to the north and to the south of the venue.
Folks started showing up the day before to get a good seat. A festival atmosphere began to emerge about
two hours before and people were conversing about the weather and their favorite songs. Many were teens with Hawaiian like shirts on who were much younger than the band, began to notice each other.
At leased 65,000 people showed up.
The band started with California Girls and as soon as the first chords were played the crowd roared. Soon nearly everyone was standing. They first looked at each other shyly wondering what to do, but standing and swaying to the music became a two-hour affair. Even with a few misses of flats and sharps, the crowd boomed with the lyrics and hand clapping. After three or four numbers, Mike Love said some thing about Omaha and folks got frantic, and then came another number. Most Americans can sing along with 50 of the 350 songs that they have recorded. The group plays 35 songs. Intermission came about 50 minutes into the concert. Folks were on the edge of exhaustion. For about 15 minutes, those 6 to 60 began drinking what ever they could get their hands on and the confectionaries were overwhelmed.
Then came the second half, pain turned to pleasure. There was a wall of sound that covered a radius of about 10 blocks. One in five Omahans had come to the event. In the middle of this, Dodge Street, the major thoroughfare of the city closed down, because there was dancin’ in the streets. Dodge Street intersected with Memorial and surrounding parks and parking lots.
People couldn’t take it anymore and the band stopped, went off the stage and then did an encore of
Good Vibrations, Barbara Ann, and Fun, Fun, Fun. With the last song, there was a wild roar as the entire 10-block region was singing at the top of their lungs.
Tired puppies. Thousands went to their cars, with light heads, slight dizziness, elation and exhaustion. One of the top concerts of their lives in terms of pure emotion had just been experienced. The event became front-page news the next day.
The Beach Boys were off to more US cities, Europe, UK, and Scandinavia. They did 170 gigs that summer.
One year, on a fourth of July, the band played to 750,000 in Philly in the afternoon and a million at Washington DC in the evening.
Jesus barely got home. He took off his clothes, lay down and instantly went to sleep.
EPILOGUE
(From HAWTHORNE, CALIFORNIA: BEACH BOYS)
(Post coda, last pneumonic sounds with Heroes & Villains instrumental)
JESUS died from a drive-by shooting on 58th and Corby St. the following fall. Numerous witness testify that he still stands under the streetlight on summer evenings and the quickly disappears and reappears.
Others have witnessed him walk from the Corby streetlight to Rose Hill School just down the street. He enters the grade school and again disappears.
WENDY On a cold February night, while on the balcony of her 2nd floor home, Wendy accidentally slipped and fell to her death, one story below. She hit her head on the concrete of the driveway, lingered and then died. The next day, her death created a front-page newspaper account, because she had become part of a political controversy years before. She had also been given the coveted Buffet Outstanding Teacher Award while working in the Omaha Public Schools.
JACK FLASH sired many children and became a court case before the Wisconsin Supreme Court. He was told that since he had not supported his children that he would be mandated to have a vasectomy. Flash is now in prison for other violations.
ANNA LEE is buried in Forest Lawn Cemetery next to her daughter Maria, whose remains had been shipped from Mexico.
THE BEACH BOYS are now divided into three bands and play to hundreds of thousands of fans all over the world.