I rarely get up anywhere near 5AM, and I am most certainly never out of the house and in my car before the sun peeps over the hills. But on this particular morning I had to be at my bookshop for a film crew renting my space for an advertising shoot. So there I was, gliding along the 101, my existence confirmed only by a smattering other headlights cutting through the dark on the other side of the freeway.
Disquiet lurks in the edges of serenity at this hour. It is a mystic feel, being up this early; a breath of fresh air taken underwater in the depths of a dark lake. As I drove along this time vein, somewhere from the faint illuminated line of the murky horizon edge, Garth popped into my thoughts.
Garth was the audio technology guy at EMI Music Publishing, a company I worked at for most of my adult life. He was usually tucked away in a room full of sound relics, in the back part of our office. There he sat, eight hours a day, tapping away with his pointer fingers on the only typewriter left in the office, or on the computer wedged between reel to reel machines and stacks of double cassette decks. In the waning years of his job, he sat documenting and transferring decades and decade’s worth of audiotape and vinyl into what would become our digital library. His job was slowly fading to black around him the closer he got to finishing, but he never relented.
Every day Garth would get on the road and head to the office by 5am to “avoid traffic”. He would pull into the parking garage and snooze in his van until the office opened at 9:30AM. I barely knew who Garth really was outside our office setting. Yet here he was, a ghost sitting in my car, reminding me this quiet, simple sliver of the day should always be his.
A memory montage of Garth flickered through my mind as I drove:
He had a David Crosby mustache and thin, pin straight shoulder length hair that hung down from his bald spot and circled the back part of his head like a round shower curtain.
He was a Veteran of the Vietnam War.
He would walk by our cubicles, see us writing emails or looking up information on “All Music” or “Yahoo” and grumble loudly about how all we did all day was play on our computers.
He was one of the few people I let call me Jenny.
His body was always tensed up and jittery-- almost as if he were physically resisting the years from dragging him further away from an era in time he understood.
He came to the office dressed up as a klingon one year for Halloween. For the record, I dressed as Lizzy Borden.
He had square teeth and a smile that resembled Teddy Roosevelt’s. His jaw was always clenched except, I imagine, when he was brushing his teeth in the men’s room, which according to some of my coworkers was quite often. I asked him once why he brushed his teeth so much. He said “because it saves me a trip to the dentist!”
I pulled up to my bookstore just as the sun was making its presence known. Garth faded into this soft yellow light, as headlights and streetlamps flickered and blinked off. He will return, as he often does, usually when I am brushing my teeth. I am not sure why Garth of all people remains with me as a presence in this way, but I am happy he does. He lives on. It always felt more grounded and stable knowing he was there in the back room surrounded by magnetic tape and vinyl.
Hello, Garth.
I remember when I visited you, you had Carole King's ? you were taking to her daughter.
I also remember you showed me the tallish stool , my favorite all time singer sat on to record and/or work with bands, Frank Sinatra
Not to mention when you took me over to Tarzan territory. You were doing what for Tarzan? Please elaborate in another or this musing for your very now senior aunt . It was always a thrill to visit you.