A REQUIEM OF SORTS...
...for someone I's never met...
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A couple of years ago, I bought some records over Ebay, and I corresponded with the seller about various facets of the records I had bought from him. This was back in the final days of 2006. He was an old Bob Dylan fan, and while I did not share his desire for Everything Dylan, I was at least familiar enough with Bob Dylan's music (I've got probably 20 of his albums) so I could correspond with him on a semi-intelligent basis. As happens, a discussion about one artist can meander in many different directions, and even though Joe was several years older than me, we struck up a fast friendship and sent lots of e-mails back and forth.
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He began sending me stuff. He had various projects he needed to have done, such as making CD's from his old cassette tapes, all of them hand-lettered with song titles and other info. He let me keep all the tapes he sent to me; he was trying to get everything converted to CD, and so I stayed up late doing that kind of stuff for him. Turns out he was also a big Beatles fan, and he sent me a very good copy of The Beatles' Christmas Album, which floored me. He also sent me 20 or 30 Beatles Bootleg vinyl discs! In his package, he'd tell me what songs from which album to put on CD, and of course, I'd drop everything and stay up late to get that stuff done for him. And I got to keep all the vinyl and cassettes he sent me. A good deal, eh?
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I guess he knew quite a few people from near and far, and he would make special CD packages for them. He didn't have the equipment to put them on CD himself, although he could make copies of what I'd sent him from his computer. He also sent me some 1980's vintage Beatles newsletters, which employed low-tech mimeographed typewriter copy in the articles. Each issue featured several pages stapled together. Kinda gives one insight into how information was disseminated before the days of the internet. Those old raggedy newsletters look very, very rough, but that's part of the charm. Also, he'd told me that he also liked Neil Young, but wasn't all that familiar with his albums. He was about as familiar with 'Neil' as I was with 'Dylan'. So, I took my 20-plus Neil Young albums and made him a bunch of CD's; after all, I felt he had to find out what all Neil Young had recorded. In a way, "Neil" is my 'Dylan'. So I wanted to share.
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Joe evidently had a hard time getting through life, especially in the cold winters where he lived, in Reading, Pennsylvania. He would tell me that he'd been trying to find good items he could sell on Ebay, and he also had have some Veterans' Benefits coming in. We talked about a whole bunch of stuff; he'd send me long e-mails and I'd reply with even longer e-mails; no subject was safe. We'd 'trash' George W. Bush, we'd gripe about the economy, he'd tell me about his cat and I'd tell him about my bird, he'd ask me if I'd ever heard some particular artist, I'd ask him the same, since we both came from different backgrounds. He sent me several old cassettes and CD's full of old-time blues and folk. Joe really liked Tiny Tim, would you believe. "Tiny" did a lot to keep old songs alive; he wasn't just "Tiptoe Thru The Tulips" and that's it. Joe even met Tiny Tim once; it was one of his proudest moments. And we talked baseball, too. He was an unabashed Phillies fan, and me, I live and die with the Seattle Mariners, what can I say?
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I thought about Joe quite a lot, and in our e-mails, I would ask him, "are you all right? Are you depressed?". And I'd tell him to just hang on, for things are bound to get better, at least, someday. Joe had given me all of these CD's, Records and old Fan Club Newsletters, and I began worrying about him because he kept giving me stuff. Not that I was unthankful; he really loaded me up with things I thot I'd never ever get to hear. At the same time, a thought crept into my brain...why was he giving me all this stuff? He wanted to make sure I didn't throw away his Beatles newsletters. I've still got those, plus 3 boxes of cassette tapes he sent me, and tons of great Beatles bootlegs which he sent me. That's almost the holy grail of Beatles collecting...the Bootleg Stuff!
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I'd heard that when People are contemplating their mortality, and they decide to 'not be living anymore', one of the signs to watch for is the person all of a sudden giving their things away. I could tell Joe was depressed in his e-mails, and I'd ask him, "Hey, you're giving me all this stuff; are you okay? You're not going to do anything drastic, are ya?" and he'd never answer that head-on. I know about cold winters when you can't find a friend, and you're so depressed that you just wanna lock yourself away. He had also told me about his various health problems; he said he was getting frail, he'd tell me he'd been sick; he told me he was down to his last few dollars, taking day-labor jobs so he could eat...and also buy food for his beloved kitty-cat. While I am not a veteran, I do understand how a cold winter and hard life can affect a person. I've been through that stage in life.
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We corresponded almost daily with long e-mails and just talked about tons of stuff. I would always look forward to his e-mails, because they gave me a platform to unscramble all my thoughts and send those back to him. I felt like I made a very, very good friend; you know that inner-warmth a good friendship can bring? I had that for him. I would like to think that by corresponding with me, he knew there was at least one other person on the planet that felt the way he did about things. I never had a big brother, but through having a friend like him, I felt like I was accepted by someone older and wiser. A kinship, perhaps?
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As happens, sometimes friendships wane. We corresponded from Winter 2006 until Spring of 2008. After that, I didn't hear from him. I tried e-mailing him, no answer. I've been thinking about him lately because, I've found some Bootleg Bob Dylan stuff including one CD of a performance in Germany. I wrote Joe a couple of hours ago, telling him what I'd found, offering to make CD's for him. I never did get one of those "mailer Daemon" notifications that my e-mails didn't go through. But this time I had to know how he was doing, and "something" led me to do a search. I found the website of a paper which serves the general area he lived in, plunked down his name on the 'search archives' button, and there it was...
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In the newspaper, on December 31, 2008, an article said that a 62-year-old man had been found dead in his home. It was Joe. Friends hadn't seen him for a few days, and the coroner had ruled his death a suicide. At that point, officials were still trying to find a 'next of kin'. This age of the internet brings us a lot of advantages, but it can also bring heartache, and while I'm not 'kin', I feel a great loss here. I got to share my thoughts with him, and he'd do the same, and it was nice knowing there's someone out there who I can relate to. I just found all this out about an hour ago, and so I'm trying to deal with it, the result being this post. I'm gonna miss ya, Joe. He was a really good friend.
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The Internet Brings Good Things, too. That's where I got to know ol' Joe, and for that, I'm glad. I never saw him, never heard him, but all the same, he was a great, great friend. Those kind of people don't come along every day.