Memories of Jerry Redgate

Dylan,

It is so awesome that this technology has allowed me to find you and Janice and Emily. Let me share some of my recollections of your dad.

Jerry was the most genuine good person I ever knew; no fakery, no airs, no bullshit. I considered him a brother. Just being around him elevated my mood to a special place. Knowing that I will never see him again in this life has diminished my prospects for what I expected my future to be. It was always there in my mind that one day we would jam and ride and hit a doobie and a beer or two someday. There has to be a world where we will.

What a time we had as neighbors at Second and Knox. Did Jerry and Janet tell you about the time that some scumbags drove by and shot up Janet's house when she lived next door to me and across the street from Jerry? A few days earlier I saw these human fecal materials kick in Jerry's door and called the cops. Mistake. They eventually rounded up the miscreants based on my description of their car. So the pigs, geniuses that they are, picked me up and had me sit in the front seat and describe what I saw WHILE THE SCUMBAGS WERE SITTING IN THE BACK SEAT OF THE SAME DAMN CAR! So, naturally these semi-sentient barbarians heard me tell the pigs that I saw them kick in Jerry's door from my back porch. So, they assumed, being complete morons, that I lived at Janice's house, which also had a great view of Jerry's house from the back porch. So, a few nights later, a car drove by and emptied a clip into Janice's first floor. Fortunately, she slept on the second floor and did not suffer the fate of her stereo and bathroom sink, which fate was to be rendered full of holes and shattered into porcelain fragments, respectively.

Then, there was the great Christmas blizzard of 1982, '83, '84 or somewhere around there. The whole town was shut down. All of us neighbors there did not care at all. We had all our best friends within a few block radius and Janice and Jerry's sister Connie and some of the other womenfolk ventured out in the Land Rovers and fetched fixins for a feast back to Jerry's house. We had the best Christmas in my living memory. We smoked and drank and jammed and traded gifts that we made and when we were nice and toasty, we bundled up and ventured out into the unmarked, snow-drifted streets and left the first tracks in the Land Rovers skitching up and down Knox Court. Skitching is ski hitching. You tie a couple ropes to the bumper of the Jeep and grab on and slide down the road in your snow boots.

I was crazy in love with Jerry's sister Connie. One day I went to Jerry's house all cokey and drunk and called her little piss-ant boyfriend a Nazi. He said to step outside which I did and he promptly punched me in the face giving me a black eye which was totally gone long before his broken hand had healed. I hope it still bothers him, the little prick.

We used to ride the bikes up to the Little Bear in Evergreen and enjoy the concerts. This was with the guy who lived behind Janice and my houses, Jim Reidel and his buddy Gary. We would drink and party up there and ride back down those winding mountain roads totally wasted in the wee hours, in the pitch dark, taking the turns on a second's notice of which way they were going to bend. Real video game shit. Gary wandered into the other lane one of those nights and front-ended a car coming the other way. He was busted up really bad, but came through eventually. He rode an old restored knucklehead. Me and Jerry had Sportsters. I think from some pics that you now have his. Mine was a '76 from the AMF days. It was an excellent scooter; smooth and leak-free. Any trash-talk about the quality of the AMF years will be disputed by me. Jim had one of the first V-Twin Yamaha Viragos. A sweet scoot.

I took all 3 of those pictures that Emily posted. The one of Jerry on the rocks by the river was a ride we took as a day trip. It was on Clear Creek, along route 6. Jerry had a flat tire that day. We lifted the scoot up onto some rocks we dragged over and removed the tire and patched it. Then, Jerry got on the back of mine with the tire and we took it to a gas station and filled it. Took it back, wrenched it back on and on our way.

Once we went to a party in Fairplay out 285. It was way out in the woods. I mean, we must have rode them Sportys 10 miles along hiking trails. I had to be back to my job, cleaning bars by 4 AM. Jerry said that he could hear my Sporty circling around in the woods for an hour-and-a-half before he finally heard it dwindle in the distance.

The picture of Gary, Jerry, Jim and Connie was taken in a bar in a place called Buffalo Creek. I don't remember where it is or how we got there, but there was some dirt and it was right along a raging creek. That's all I know. And that it was a fun hang. If you go out to Buffalo Creek, you can probably find the joint and see that same scene.

We did a lot of skiing. On my website you will see a picture of all of us on a ridge. You will notice a beer-can-shaped bulge in Jerry's pockets. If you were to examine all of us in that picture you would find at least two beers on each of us. We would haul them up and put them in the snow at the base of a tree at the top of the lift. Then, each run we would stop and have one.

I will always remember Jerry as he was then, totally and without regard for convention, in love with life and living it to the full, smiling and laughing, and unlike us old bastards today with our hemorrhoids and aches and pains and inability to party and crash like we used to, he will remain as he was, and as he is now in heaven, forever young. My brother.

I have more pictures - of parties at Janice's, of that Christmas blizzard, of Connie's two nutty little dogs, of you at 2 or 3 years old dressed as Davy Crockett, of Connie's sweet green Mercury. If you do not have these and would like to see them, I will scan and upload them.

Kindest regards,
Doug Wakeman