My friend Jackson died over Labor Day weekend. He was a couple years younger than me. I met him in January 1978 right after my friend D. and I made it to Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley, CA. I was 22 then. Jackson came up to us in People's Park. He carried a rather beat-up guitar in one hand and a quart of Rainier Ale in a paper bag in the other. We started talking and drinking. Then he began playing some blues. The guitar was missing the high E string, so he compensated by playing some old blues songs in alternate keys. He told us about the 25 cent meal then being distributed every evening in a church basement on College Street a couple blocks from the park. After the meal, we headed to Earth People's Park—a crash pad owned and operated by the White Panthers. Jackson headed off to his next endeavor. The fellow “running” the crash pad that night was a guy D. and I had met in Englishtown, NJ the morning after a one day festival at the race track there that featured the Grateful Dead. We joined him and his fellow Bleecker Street Yippies in gathering all the food the vendors had left when the concert ended. Then we started a fire and cooked breakfast for the thousand or so festival goers who hadn't made it out of the grounds after the show. Anyhow, we said hey, he told us where we could sleep and then invited us to drink from the mason jar he had in his hand. It contained a rather potent psilocybin tea. I think D. and I slept for a couple hours before she and I headed back up to Telegraph at morning's light.
Anyhow, we became good friends with Jackson over the years. When some friends of ours from back East joined us and we rented an apartment, Jackson was a regular—guitar and beer in hand. When there was something going on in People's Park or on Telegraph, Jackson was there. As we grew tight, he began to hint at his past. He had hit the streets when he was in junior high. His dad was a jazz musician who sometimes had work and sometimes didn't. His dad also struggled with a narcotics addiction. The family lived in a working-class district of Richmond, CA.--a working-class town dominated by industry and pollution. Jackson didn't talk about his family much.
Always a step or two ahead of the police in Berkeley, Jackson lived off of panhandling, some petty crime and busking. His easy smile and natural openness combined with a natural and smooth blues guitar styling usually ensured a decent audience until the cops ran him off. For a while he and a bass player also named Jack played regularly on the corner of Telegraph and Durant a couple blocks south of UC Berkeley's Sather Gate. After the street quieted down, we would all meet up at whatever bar or restaurant was selling cheap pitchers of beer for a night of drinking and talking shit until the place closed.
I left the East Bay in 1985. Mine and D.'s romantic relationship had ended a few years earlier and I was a new father of a son. His mom and I headed north to Washington state. I went back every year or so for a while and usually ran into Jackson. He was still playing his guitar. Sometimes he was drinking and sometimes he wasn't. Sometimes he was with a woman and sometimes he wasn't. When I moved east to Vermont in 1992, I had lost many of my connections to the Bay Area. Some of my friends had died, some were in prison, some were living lives their parents had wanted them to, some were up in the woods growing weed. I had no idea where Jackson was or what he was up to.
About two years ago, I received a Facebook friend request. It was from Jackson. We chatted back and forth over the next few months before I lost contact again. His missives went between remembering the old days, deploring his on again, off again unhoused situation, and rants about wearing masks. There were a couple more periods where he would start messaging me again and we would continue our conversations. He told me he was fighting cancer and was finally being housed in a decent place with a little privacy. He also told me that the place was dirty and dangerous, especially for women and young people. About six weeks ago, I lost contact again. I didn't think much about it.
This morning I saw a post from a mutual friend (someone who also crashed at that apartment mentioned above) that Jackson had died. Every time Jackson would begin drinking, he would splash a bit of the first can or bottle on the ground when he first opened it. The first time we drank I asked him why. It was “for the brothers and sisters gone before” was his reply.
So, a splash of beer for my brother Jackson.
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