Sitting at a patio table outside The Lighthouse on a sunny October day, Julie and I could hear the live jazz stream out the doors around us as we finished our shared lunch order of nachos. While splitting lunch may sound like self-control, if you've ever seen the size of the nachos platter at The Lighthouse, you know that we were actually feeling self-conscious about having finished it off between us. I mentioned to the waitress that somewhere in Vegas oddsmakers probably lost money to seemingly foolish gamblers who bet an adult (as opposed to teen-aged) couple would finish a full order. The fact that we drank Diet Cokes to accompany the heaping tray of chips covered in cheese, jalapanos, beans and salsa veggies hardly made up for the calories we ingested, though we did have the waitress withhold the sour cream.
As the waitress went to get our check, Mark Isbell, whose band had played a great set, introduced the members of his quartet. "And on keyboards, Gerry Schroeder."
I told Julie that was the name of a teacher I had at Golden West College who doubled as a jazz musician, and when I went inside to see the far side of the stage where the keyboardist sat, I could see that was indeed him.
I went back to the table and paid the check, and then went back in to give my regards, and I was surprised when he said he remembered my face, if not my name, amazing considering he taught at Golden West for 33 years. While I had taken a forum humanities class, "20th Century Sights and Sounds," which he co-taught, I knew him primarily as the primary developer of a brand new program, Recording Arts Technology, in which I was one of the original students. I quit Long Beach State as I was to enter my senior year to return to the junior college for the new program.
After a year in that program, I embarked on a summer cross-country trip with my old friend Pat and his soon-to-be ex-wife Gloria. If you clicked on either of the hotlinks in this paragraph and read that, you already know what I mean by titling this post with words from "Truckin'," a Grateful Dead song that I played about any time I broke out my guitar.
The Recording Arts classes had already showed me how little I cared about the more technical aspects. That trip, on which I met incredibly talented musicians on country crossroads and city bus benches revealed to me just how my musical talent paled by comparison. It also told me how much I enjoyed traveling as an adult rather than as a kid in the back seat of a car, although I always enjoyed traveling with my parents, too.
At The Lighthouse, Gerry shook my hand before he came down from the stage, saying he'd like to know what I'd been up to.
I started rattling off my answer in the American way, like a work resume, and even my eyes were glazing over by the time I said I had joined the Air Force and then got a job at a big corporation.
Fortunately, at that point I skipped most of the "blah blah blah" of the path I had started down. Now if I had truly done something remarkable in my career, that might have merited the American-style reply, but the reality is that my life story is one of family, friends and travel
On the former subject, I did manage to tell Gerry that my son Jay worked at Universal Music, having graduated from CSUN's Music Industry program, which I consider the brainchild of that Golden West pilot program he had startpearheaded long ago, to which Gerry replied, "That's the way it seems to work for a lot of people."
The words I heard Crosby, Stills and Nash sang a few nights earlier in a great concert at the Greek Theater, which had been Jay's treat for Julie and me. "Teach your children well...and feed them on your dreams." Gerry seemed to immediately recognize the reference, which is exactly what I would expect of him based on the teacher I'd known in school.
The son of a musician with whom he had often shared the stage prior to the father's death approached, and I was surprised when Gerry excused himself to go with me to meet my wife. It told me that for him, that career as a teacher invested in the fate of his students held a cherished place in his heart possibly even above his music career, although the two are certainly intertwined.
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