July 14, 2025

Howdy folks. I wish you a Happy Bastille Day in the name of Rush. I'm thinking about Dave Cousins, founder and chief songwriter of The Strawbs (or just Strawbs), who died yesterday at the age of 80. Strawbs were another of my earliest discoveries from College Records. Their album "Hero and Heroine", released in Spring 1974, was recommended to me by one of the clerks, probably Pat or Barry the manager. I was immediately hooked; it was classic prog, with a twist of English folk. "Hero" was their most commercially successful album and even had a track played on FM radio ("Shine On Silver Sun"). I played it repeatedly (and still do fifty-one years later), and it led me to earlier Strawbs albums, found in the used bins at College, that I purchased to complete my collection. "Grave New World", "From the Witchwood", "Ghosts": all are highly recommended. On a side note, one of my favorite albums from those days (and all time) was "Six Wives of Henry the 8th" by Rick Wakeman, and while hanging out at College I found out that - before he joined Yes - Wakeman was a member of Strawbs. 

Is it any wonder he's a candidate for the King of Progressive Rock?

But it was Dave Cousins who wrote most of Strawbs' music, and every song featured his distinctive, throaty voice. I never got to see them live (they toured mostly in England) but I have loved their music, and songwriters like Dave Cousins don't grow on trees. Thus, we remember him today. 

Anyway, how goes your Summer? Are you enjoying the long, lovely evenings? I've gotta get back to hiking (haven't been on the trail in a year, omg!), but for now, I've got my walks. As you know, I'm an Inveterate Walker, picked it up from my parents, and I walk five miles every day to maintain my weight (155, ten pounds less than high school).

Now, get ready for a segue.

During my years as Pearl's caregiver, we went on many walks together, at first to rehabilitate her hip. In the beginning they were short - just around her block to build strength, but they continued and got longer, often at parks with her dog Kobi (who became my right hand man). Toward the end of her life, eleven years into my tenure, our walks involved a wheelchair, in which I pushed Pearl around our tract and beyond, into upper Reseda.

If you know Reseda, you know about The Tract (as the Originals called it), an area of residential homes almost a mile square, devoid of boulevards, businesses, and noise. It's just houses and quiet streets between Roscoe and Saticoy and from Lindley to Louise. The core of the tract is tighter than that, and is centered at Meadowlark Park (which consists of three streets: Keswick, Hatton and Lull), but to rein this story in, one of our favorite walks was a wheelchair push up Zelzah to Cantara Street, and past Cantara Elementary School. This walk is at the heart of "The Summer of Green Parrots", our book published earlier this year. Just south of that school is the short strip of Newcastle Street, which in the 1980s was home to the families of Forducci, Villanova, and Watson (last names slightly changed).

Pat, Lys, and Sean. And also Sean's sister, Kelly.

Our segue leads mostly to Lys.

We've mentioned Lys several times recently. She was Lilly's close friend. I always liked Lys, and have noted that in these blogs. I've even called her a "hero", for reasons that will presently go unmentioned. 

Lys was at the Capitol Records Swap Meet on the night Lillian and I were introduced. I think Malia was there, too, and maybe Luann, but Lys is the important one for our discussion.

Pat Forducci knew all of these girls and it was he who introduced me to Lilly. He claimed he knew them (and her) from his job at Moby Disc Records on Ventura Boulevard in Sherman Oaks, not far from the high school they attended.

But what he didn't say was that he lived, at the time, within a stone's throw of Lys's house on Newcastle Street.

I never thought about this until I started walking there with Pearl.  

On a side note, while I worked for Pearl I came to love Reseda maybe even more than Northridge, and on our walks, when we went down Newcastle, I thought of Lilly as "my Reseda girl" because in our early days she spent a lot of time at Lys's house. And, of course, their famous Tennis Match in the Street is still the stuff of legend. If you're gonna have your car blocked while driving down Newcastle, there's no better way for it to happen. One time, they invited me to meet Lys's parents. Her Mom made salsa. Lys's little sister thought I was cute.

But yeah, at the Swap Meet in October 1980, when Pat introduced me to Lilly, he never said anything about living on the same street at Lys. Nor did she mention it, and both of them were standing there with us. I don't think Pat ever mentioned it in all the years after, and it was only in 2020, when I started walking down Newcastle with Pearl, that I started to wonder if their proximity on that street, and Pat's failure to mention it, was more than a coinkydink.

I'm not saying that my introduction to Lillian was pre-planned (and if it was, Pat and Lys get a Gold Medal), but it just seems hard to believe that Pat could "know these chicks from Moby Disc", as he said on the night of the Swap Meet, and not know Lys from across his own street. Anyhow...

After high school, Lys (I think, correct me if I'm wrong) briefly attended UCLA, where she studied psychology. She went on to work for a major airline (not crucial to the topic at hand), but the reason I mention her is because I'm coming to realise she was "there" at many key points in the 1980s.

Without getting specific, Lys was present at noteworthy incidents in my life in 1981, 1983, 1984, 1988, and especially 1989. Lys was present in the lobby at Northridge Hospital on the day I was released from my involuntary, medically-induced, evil amnesia treatment. Lys pushed me around that lobby in a wheelchair. True story.

Now, I've called her a "hero", and I'm not rescinding that. She, and Ann too, bailed me out of more than one horrendous situation. However, neither has sent me so much as a postcard since. Both just kind of "exited Stage Left". Ann was "Navy", which is Ad Slang for "she had some kind of unofficial affiliation". Lys may have been "Navy" also; she sure was connected to something or someone to get into the places she did, especially that hospital lobby, on that day at that time. I don't begrudge Ann or Lys for not saying "hi" all these years. Maybe they had to sign a non-disclosure agreement or a national security oath or something.

Lys rode along on some of the Clandestine Car Rides in the early '90s, as noted in blogs from last year.

But Lys was also present at some incidents that weren't so "heroic". She had a Sunflower dress that may have been symbolic, and to quote the late Sean Watson, "they call it Free Love but there's nothing 'free' about it". Still, at the end of the day, Lys was (and is) probably a nice lady. Young women can be coerced into unwholesome things. And bad guys can get away with bad things. Just ask P. Diddy.

As for Lys, I'll leave it up to Lillian. If Lilly says Lys is okay, then I agree. And I think Lilly probably does.

Lillian had two purple jumpsuits that were really super cool. One for herself (a cloth one), and one for me (nylon or synthetic fabric). I mean, it wasn't mine, it was hers and she let me wear it (or had me wear it). How I fit into it I will never know. Even at 155 lbs today, I wouldn't get the zipper halfway closed. But back then, in Summer 1981, I did fit into it, we both looked cool, like twins almost, and I always called it a "jumpsuit" (and hers was) but the one I wore, in hindsight, was more like a flightsuit. 

And maybe hers was, too.

It was like we had our own personal Air Force, just me and her, whenever we wore those flightsuits.

Much later, in 2002, I wrote a short story called "Wingwalkers", from my mythical-but-real other life. The story was about my protogenic "child self", a kid called Little Ad, and his wingwalking partner, Vivian.

Vivian was based on Lilly, and perhaps she was Lillian, or once was her, in a mythical-but real other life.

I think Vivian was real. Heck, if all this other stuff is real, this stuff with Lys, and everything else, it's no stretch to believe in Vivian.

Once again, I'll leave it up to Lilly. If she says Vivian is real, I agree.

Thanks for reading. Back soon. Tons of love as always.