My father was an asshole. It’s not that I didn’t love him, but after years of personal failings, shortcomings and his eventual disappearance, I didn’t know or see much of him until his cancer left him even less of a man than he already was. But through it all, my family grew smarter and closer because of our shared experiences. When my mother decided to remarry, I never begrudged her the right to finally pursue her own happiness. I only hoped that she extended me the same courtesy.
In hindsight, I never gave Ron a chance. I suppose he had never wanted children or he would have brought his own brood to the table when he met my mother. It stands to reason that in half a lifetime the opportunity or notion would have surely presented itself. Still, isn’t it implied that when you enter into a relationship, especially one such as marriage, you accept all that comes with your partner, even when it’s an arrogant, know-it-all teenager? No matter the case, neither of us had asked for or expected the other. Strike one.
My stepfather inherited more than a de facto son but a headache as well. There were unpaid loans for things I simply had to have, random phone calls and visits from troubled girlfriends whose lives seemed to hang in the balance over some drastically perceived teenage drama and there was, of course, a couple of incidents where cops and phone calls from jail shattered the calm of the night. I wasn’t a hoodlum by any stretch, only prone to my adolescent abandon and staunch belief that the world was indeed mine for the taking. He never asked for my troubles, and I never asked for his involvement. Strike Two.
Still, the real problem that underscored our rocky relationship was far from a problem at all. In fact, it’s so simple it pains me to even admit it here on the written page. Ron was cool, too cool. The gold record for “Soul Man” now hung in our living room, a testament to his first real paying gig with Sam and Dave. He had partied with Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin and opened for Cream in the late 60s, when his band at the time, Woody’s Truck Stop, was poised to break nationally. On a trip to the Caribbean, he met Chris Blackwell of Island Records and sat in on some of the most iconic recording sessions in music history. He even provided the low end to KC and the Sunshine Band in a cocaine-fueled haze that even he doesn’t remember much of to this day. “That’s the way…uh-huh uh-huh…I like it…uh-huh uh-huh.” That was Ron.
Since I was already too cool for school and a budding musician myself, whose limited- release seven-inch singles and week-long “tours” in the summer were tantamount to success, this was a problem. Even more so, I had always been the daredevil, the risk taker, the one to lay it on the line and forge my own path. How could I compete with his resume? Perhaps even more troubling, the two of us under one roof both competing for the affections of my mother was too much to bear. He never expected such consternation nor I the ultimate rival. Strike three.
With time came wisdom and maturity and, at the very least, a sense of collective accord if for no other reason than my mother’s sake. I would visit for holidays or the occasional family event without incident but also without a perceptible effort to break down long-standing walls. That’s why his cell phone number appearing on my caller ID was such a surprise. I knew the number, but I couldn’t understand why he would be calling me. I quickly thought but couldn’t remember a single call, email or even text message that had traveled directly between the two of us. My mother had always been our conduit for anything remotely important. I answered with trepidation that something had happened to my mom or my brother, something so awful that he was the only one left that could deliver the awful news.
“You have to come over,” Ron said. “She’s back. I can’t believe it.”
There was a friendliness and excitement in that brief conversation that I had never experienced before. After a few days of delaying my inevitable visit, I saw what inspired such enthusiasm. There in the corner was a 1953 Fender Precision Bass, battered and bruised from 57 years of service, but still aglow in all her vintage beauty. Her varnish had faded, her tone knob was lost long ago to an unknown grave and her fret board was worn in spots that must have been so familiar to countless hands over the past half-century, but there she was. She took a cord into her like a familiar lover and, after a jarring crackle, filled the room with a sound unrivaled by any instrument since. Indeed, she was back.
In the early morning hours of July 20, 1969, Ron parked his ’66 Chevelle Super Sport outside his apartment in Philadelphia after a gig and left his bass in the trunk. Too tired to lug his gear up the steps and thinking it was a safe neighborhood at the time, he figured he would get it in the morning. But he never made it back to his car the next day. He was hosting a lunar landing party that night and figured he needed as much room as he could muster. As mankind watched three men reach new worlds and fulfill an unthinkable dream, one man needed a ride across town. The next morning, the car was gone, bass and all. Ron eventually found the vehicle, but his gear was nowhere to be found.
It’s practically a miracle David found Ron, but he did. David was a fresh-faced teenager in 1969, gigging with his own band, Sweet Stavin’ Chain, around Philly - not unlike another character in this story. With shows scheduled and needing an instrument, his brother knew of someone selling a 1953 Fender bass for a mere $75. He knew of Ron, had seen his band before, knew some of his gear, but the two had never actually crossed paths. After purchasing what he thought was an absolute bargain, his peers noticed it looked similar to the bass Ron played.
“A few people mentioned that the bass seemed familiar,” said David. “Still, I never put two and two together at the time. I loved the bass and thought someone was just looking to get rid of it.” Little did he know, the bass was an absolute steal.
And while David loved and played the instrument for nearly 40 years, the nagging suspicion that it may have actually belonged to Ron never left his mind. But after close to four decades, he thought it impossible to ever be sure. After his nephew suggested he search for Ron online, his intuition was confirmed.
UPS arrived at my parent’s house the next day, the driver lugging a large package up their driveway. And now here I was with my stepfather, gleefully going over every detail, nick, scratch, perfection and imperfection along her wood-grain body. Inside the case was a short note from David that simply read, “She’s home.”
The bass was crafted a mere seven years after Leo Fender founded the now-legendary company, when he was still essentially selling guitars out of his California garage. Like most things, they just don’t make ‘em like that anymore. It was stunning, that after 40 years, she somehow wound up back in Ron’s hands. She truly was a thing of beauty. Sometimes, it takes a miracle, the splendor of something so beautiful to melt away years of indignation and stubbornness that was born of nothing at all.
We laughed. We spoke. We looked in wonderment at what was really before us. We cracked a beer, and Ron told me of stories that this was the bass he was tuning when Ginger Baker nearly took a swing at him for being in the wrong dressing room at the old Electric Factory. We marveled over how losing his bass and my eventual birthday shared a common date. Our conversation eventually meandered away from discussing the astonishing events that had just unfolded and turned toward the broader topics of life: love, loss and redemption.
Like my real dad, I had never really known Ron. But in that moment, that fleeting conversation on my mom’s back porch, I realized he shared the same compassion, zeal and strength that I prided myself on for so many years. I yielded to humility in the hopes that I could return to myself the same way the time-worn instrument inside had, minus the seemingly requisite nicks and wear. Instead of succumbing to pride, I surrendered my arrogance in knowing that today was the start of a better life for my family, finally. Sometimes, it takes a thing of beauty.