An old memory

Chapel Hill in the late eighties was a town much like the Chapel Hill of the late sixties or late aughts, our present decade, in that, in addition to the student population, which tended to disappear in the summer, there was a much larger population of dropouts, dreamers, druggies, townies, bums, artists, rascals and other assorted characters who never left, who live there still, and who contributed to a sort of social network of sufficient mass and energy that the party could be located on any given night of the week in any house, basement, apartment, toolshed or country shack throughout the summer months, months that move more slowly in college towns anyway, as jobs are temporary and academic commitments, for the minority or us who counted themselves as students in good standing, were at a minimum. I didn’t really know Randy Ward much at all by day, but as parties were thrown or rumored to be thrown or hosted or located or simply invaded, he turned up or was turned up, at times coincidental with the appearance of Cray Dingle, him of the lambchops and chicken-bone necklace, Mark H-lin, Lucas, the haunting beauty Catherine Wahlen, other ragamuffins, the cooler (to me, because, well, for one thing they were not attending the university nor would they ever be, but also because these were just gone cats) of the folks around town back then, and I noticed him, with his blond curly hair, wifebeater (before we even knew it was called that) and far-away blue-eyed countenance. One summer night he pulled into a parking space outside our basement apartment (9A University Gardens) in a black station wagon which simply expired on the spot, or perhaps he had the car towed there on a rope, at any rate, it was inoperable. A few days later, as the skies darkened and thunderheads blossomed to the east, he emerged from the back seat with a hacksaw in his hand and removed the roof. I am not sure how many days passed after that but I do recall that at some point I noticed that he had transformed the car from the dashboard up into a sort of windowless shed or large closet. The term “shanty” would not have done it justice, for the joinery and overall design of the structure bespoke skills that were impressive by my youthful slacker standards. Upon being invited inside I encountered a small but comfortable hovel, an attraction to all who gathered there those first few nights due to its novelty and its recent history as a derelict automobile. Cray Dingle, who goes by a different name now, and is as far as I know still in the building and remodeling business, was there and took credit for a portion of the work, and proudly announced that he could do the same thing to anyone else’s car, for so many dollars. I almost took him up on it, before realizing, of course, that I had no car.

My roommates, which at this point might have included Kevin and Laird D, Brian W, Steve C--per, Shawn Al---, or maybe none of these people, all appreciated having Randy as a neighbor. We even went so far as to supply an extension cord from out of our below-grade window, across the sidewalk, to his “house”. About that time somebody showed up with a heavy three-ring binder, pulled from what was commonly regarded as the best dumpster in town for discovering such items, of studio-quality photographs of skin diseases of all kinds: gangrene, fungi, an assortment of unimaginable and grotesquely fascinating rottings and inflammations. The particularly startling images were of course those that depicted afflictions of the face or genital area. That such things could happen to people, and not by the evil hand of man but rather the capricious touch of the gods, was a potent, frightening tonic to our young minds, and the reaction upon viewing the images was physical: spine-tingling, foot stomping, the intermittent twinge of nausea. I (and perhaps the others) surmised that therefore these images must be of some value (in the same way that, I suppose, a Lucky Strikes or a bottle of National Bohemian beer is of some value), and that there must be a way to cash in. I proposed a booth be set up downtown, where passersby would be cajoled into plunking down, say, five dollars, to READ THE BOOK. If you could get through, say, twenty pages, you would get back the price of admission with interest, if not, you walk away and we keep the jack. I must have had a very high estimation of my own strong stomach, because I and those around me must have gone through dozens of pages on the occasions in which the book was removed from its sacred arc and its contents laid bare for observation. At some point the revenue-generating aspect of the enterprise was abandoned, and Randy accepted our offer of a collection of the milder images as decoration for the walls of his new home.

As you might expect, the buzz-killing and sternly worded call from the landlord eventually came, and Randy was consequently forced to arrange to have his home hauled away. I didn’t know at the time that Randy could play guitar, didn’t think he owned a guitar, but a few years later I certainly noticed his guitar chops in bands like Family Dollar Pharaohs and Metal Flake Mother, playing way better than I ever will.

Over the years I lost touch with Randy. We were never friends really, but I always admired him. Today a quick web search of his name reveals to me that later in his life Randy Ward became a one-man band called Protean Spook, “an ongoing project, part old furniture assemblage, part robotic instrumentation (with a real drum set that played itself)” writes Chris Toenes of the Independent Newsweekly in a May 31st, 2006 review of a DVD of one of Randy’s performances entitled “Live at The Penland.” Randy died of cancer in 2004, and the world is poorer for it. We definitely need more people like him, especially theses days.