Wheels--Part 2

Jory was thrilled with his new wheels.  The Mazda Protege was cool with its jet black paint job that glistened in the sunlight.  We were all a bit concerned about parking the car in the student parking lot at Troy High School, but Jory had an idea.  He asked Mr. Stout, the band teacher, if he could park behind the band room in the empty spaces at the back of the school.  

With permission, he parked his car in what he thought was a safe place, knowing not to tell anyone but his best friends that he had a new car.  All was well for the first month, but some of the band kids discovered Jory’s secret and one day after school, he found that the entire side of his new car had been anonymously keyed.  He was devastated!  He knew it was someone from band, but he never found out who was so mean and cruel.

When Jory left for CalArts the Fall after High School Graduation, the Protege was filled to capacity.  The trunk was jam packed with a full size piano keyboard and stand, a 12-string Ovation guitar, a computer, a midi interface, and speakers.  The back seat contained laundry baskets with bedding, towels, and clothing—mostly black jeans, heavy metal concert T-shirt’s, a Hard & Heavy leather jacket, motorcycle boots, and a variety of hats.  On the floor of the back seat was a disassembled metal bookcase, cables and tools for assembling computer networks, and piles of CDs.  The front seat held his monitor, which was safety belted in place, and his Newton keyboard.  (He wore the Newton in a belt holster and had already become adept at taking class notes electronically, so it was cutting edge, essential equipment, especially since Jory’s handwriting was almost illegible.)  On the floor, in front of the passenger seat, were bags of other necessities for dorm life and college.  He pulled out of our driveway with us following him to CalArts to help him unload and settle in.

The Protege served Jory well throughout his years at CalArts, although there were a couple of hiccups.  The first was a moving violation ticket right at the Mc Bean Parkway exit of the freeway.  He was almost back to the dorm when flashing red lights appeared in the rear view mirror.  He pulled over and politely chatted with the California Highway Patrol officer.  

“What did I do?” asked Jory.

“You were ping ponging in the lane,” he responded.  “Have you been drinking?”

“I don’t drink,” responded Jory.  “What is ping ponging?”

“Where are you going?” asked the cop.  “Please step out of the vehicle.”

“I’m a student at CalArts,” he responded.  The cop eyed his motorcycle boots and black leather jacket with Hard & Heavy airbrushed on the back.  Jory sported a red goatee and long hair pulled into a ponytail that reached down his back.  He could tell that the cop thought that he was one of “those weirdos on the hill.”

Of course, Jory passed the sobriety test, but the officer still issued him a ticket for unsafe driving.  He was furious and decided to fight the ticket.  He showed up in court with his long hair and standard dress uniform of black jeans, Metallica T-shirt, boots, and leather jacket.  Even though the cop showed up and testified against him, the judge hadn’t heard of ping ponging, yet sentenced Jory to community service so it wouldn’t show up on his driving record.

The judge didn’t know that he would be widening a couple of doors that Jory had already opened for himself.  He enjoyed community service!  We had done it for years as a family.  His “penalty” time was spent at the local hospital repainting red curbs.  He loved it!  He felt so good contributing to the welfare of the community, and he learned all about highway paints, which served him later.  

He volunteered at Valencia City Hall to help with other community activities.  His favorite was helping at the city Easter egg hunt, a new experience for a Jewish college student. Later, he recalled his painting skills to use in a CalArts parking lot prank.  He and his friends painted all the spaces with an abandoned, post-earthquake, handicap stencil, to protest faculty parking taking over already limited student spaces.

Sometime later, Jory and his girlfriend were at CalArts, along with hundreds of other students, when the Northridge Earthquake struck.  Bookshelves tumbled down, electrical connections sparked, windows shattered.  Glass and rubble were everywhere, as were fear and confusion.  Electricity and all lines of communication were down, roadways shifted, and freeway connectors collapsed.  Students ran outside and waited for the earth to stop moving, but the aftershocks were plentiful and just as scary.

Jory and Julie hopped into the Protege and headed away from the epicenter.  They drove 79 miles north toward Bakersfield on I-5 and joined the lines of cars trying to escape.  Slowly they made their way 131 miles west on CA-58 across the Mojave desert, and still bumper to bumper, into the mountain passes near Barstow.  Then they turned southwest on I-15, driving another 106 miles and eventually arrived 24 hours later at our home in Fullerton.  They were still shaking and scared, both exhausted and still on adrenaline, when they walked in the door.  They found us both worried and relieved that they were ok and that the Protege had brought them to safety.  

Upon his return to CalArts, the aftermath of earthquake clean-up was just beginning.  Alternate routes on side streets made getting back to campus a long and tedious trip.  Freeways to the campus and the main building were closed.  Students climbed over debris to extract their belongings from the dorms.  Many students, like Jory’s roommate from Tuscaloosa, Alabama, were so traumatized that they evacuated home and never returned.  Classes slowly resumed, but in neighboring facilities.  Some of Jory’s classes were held in a structurally sound pre-school, where the CalArts students sat low to the ground using mini chairs and tables.  A creative and enterprising student came up with a black T-shirt with white jagged lettering to commemorate the occasion.  Jory and many of his classmates proudly wore this “SHIFT HAPPENS” shirt for many years after the Northridge Earthquake.

Graduation from CalArts was held on the lawn in a Mardi Gras atmosphere.  Students in ostentatious costumes paraded onto the venue, making elaborate, artistic statements as last affirmations that CalArts had changed their lives.  Jory was ebullient, dressed in psychedelic clothes from a second hand shop.  His long hair, sprayed the color of purple plums, formed an iridescent halo around his head as he teetered along in hot pink pumps, the heels sinking into the grass.  

Following the reception, he changed only his shoes and moved onto the second biggest event of the day:  buying his first vehicle.  He had told us beforehand that his needs had changed and a sedan could not haul his essential sound equipment into the future.  We had agreed to let him trade in the Protege for a silver Chevy pickup truck.  Jory’s new job as an Electron at the Jim Henson Creature Shop, enabled him to assume the monthly payments and continue living on his own, as well as acquire more essential sound equipment.

That truck served him well.  It carried him through several changes of employment.  When the Creature Shop closed its doors to move to England, Jory transitioned to working for Disney Online, a frustrating job because the Disney employees could never meet their deadlines, which caused Jory to continuously be in week-end crunches when adding the last minute sound to their projects.  He left that job and drove his truck, containing all his belongings, to Marin to join the team at LucasArts doing sound design for video games.  

The truck was more than a vehicle, it also served as his mobile office.  On a daily basis, he checked his post office box and immediately filed the mail in the driver’s door side pocket.  Sometime during the month, when the pocket was overflowing, Jory retrieved the unopened envelopes to investigate what bills were overdue and which credit cards should receive minimal payments to keep him going.  Erroneously, he thought that the exorbitant late fees could be deducted later when he filed his taxes.  One rainy night, after open mic at the Sleeping Lady in Fairfax, his bill payment process was interrupted when the truck was burglarized.  The thief stole his beloved Newton and most of his mail, leaving a few straggling envelopes in the mud puddle beside the truck.  Trying to reconstruct his debt was painful and tedious, prompting him to find a better method to handle his finances.

Jory made Fairfax his home and immediately explored all the tiny shops on the two commercial cross streets in town.  He frequented the restaurants and The Scoop, with its hand made ice cream.  He was always willing to impatiently stand in the log line outside to be rewarded with a waffle cone of vanilla bean ice cream.  Of course, Fairfax’s main attraction was the three night clubs that offered live music every night of the week, with open mics on Monday nights.  

The local hardware shop was soon to become Jory’s hometown resource for building studio.jory.org, but when he first arrived, it was where he discovered a shiny red adult-sized trike with a flat bed trailer.  He couldn’t resist the traditional handlebar streamers in red, white, and blue, and purchased it immediately, along with a classic bicycle bell.  It became his mode of transportation in town.  He rode it to the market and brought his groceries back on the trailer.  He peddled it every year in the Fairfax Festival Parade, hauling a large cooler of ice cream bars that he distributed to the parade watchers on the sidelines.  No matter where he travelled in the world, Jory always came back to Fairfax to ride his trike in the Festival Parade.

Many of Jory’s new Fairfax friends were artists and musicians and some were raised in local communes by hippie communities.  They were active participants in the summer gatherings of Burning Man in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada.  Attendees joined together to co-create Black Rock City, consisting of thousands of temporary, makeshift squatters, dedicated to art and community.  This pop-up city, where almost everything that happened, was created entirely by its week-long citizens, depended upon complete, active participation in the experience.  Each person brought along everything needed for the week:  food, water, shelter from the blazing summer sun, sleeping accommodations, and artistic expressions to share with others.  Everything was shared freely, without money or obligation, and with great appreciation.

When Jory informed us of his plan to attend Burning Man, I was apprehensive and not at all enthused.  It sounded like a giant Love In with lots of drugs and free sex.  To me, it looked like a perfect place for a police raid.  I searched on the internet and found tons of photos depicting nudity and craziness.  One photo showed a lengthy, wooden wall on a raised platform, with knee high, large cut-out, vertical oval holes about every two feet.  Behind the wall were both male and female participants mooning through the holes.  In front of the fence, were nude painters with artistically painted, perfectly oval, rear ends, joyfully painting the nude canvases poking through the fence.  

I called Jory on the phone.  “Are you sure that you want to go to Burning Man?  It looks like fun, but it also looks weird and trouble waiting to happen.”

“Nope!  I’m going!” he replied.

“Well, don’t do anything weird or illegal,” I cautioned.

“Mom,” he countered, “I’m going to look for the weirdest, most dangerous things and do them!”

“Ok,” I replied.  “I trust you to make good choices, so have fun and take lots of sunscreen.”

“You know that I’ll stay out of trouble and I’ve already brought sunscreen from your house.”

Jory threw himself into preparations for attending Burning Man.  He special ordered curving artistic shapes of sealed glass tubes, filled with low pressure neon gas, to conform to the silhouette of his trike.  It took hours to design and carefully attach the neon tubes to the handlebars, wheels, and framework.  Finally, his tricked up his trike would glow in the dark and was ready to take to Burning Man as a unique, creative, transportation offering to the residents.

Getting to Burning Man was just the beginning of the adventure.  Jory booked round trip passage on Furthur, the Magical Mystery Bus, a privately owned retired school bus, painted with hippie-style, psychedelic colors.  He reserved space for his trike, guitar, water and food, and the rest of his gear.  Bouncing along, with others from The Bay Area, they arrived at the dry lakebed in the Nevada desert.  The bus ride set the mood for a week of music, impromptu theatrical plays, creativity, and unbridled fun.  Jory loved it.  He watched performances of Shakespearean plays and traded omelettes and other camp made foods and experiences for rides on his neon trike.  With guitar in hand, he joined other musicians in jam circles and explored as many of the encampments on the playa as possible.  He liked it so much that he returned for many more Burning Man memories.

Meanwhile, inspired by his love for Spike Jones and influenced by CalArts' experimental sounds experiences, he converted the trike into a musical instrument.  Jory found a shop that specialized in goods from India.  Delightedly, he honked dozens of brass bulb horns of various shapes and sizes.  Then he carefully selected half a dozen of them based upon the quality of sound and their musical notes on the scale.  He mounted them on the handlebars, between his bike bell and his big- horn brass kazoo, surrounding the leather pouch holding his tin slide whistle and a mini American flag.  Then, due to his love of trains, he splurged on a large train whistle, sporting 6 tuned pipes and mounted into red birch boards sandwiching a bellow.  Jory had to have it when he discovered that the nice long blow from the bellow created the drawn out steam freighter sound.  Triumphantly, he mounted it on top of the front wheel fender as a final crowning touch.  The trike not only went with Jory to Burning Man, but also year-round to open mics at the live music clubs in Fairfax, and to the annual Fairfax Festival Parades.

COMMENTS:  

Click on Jorysmother@gmail.com to send comments.

Jory Prum (2009)
I am trustworthy, open, and fiercely loyal. I am driven by commitment.  I am a member of my community and strive to see it constantly improve and thrive.  I have a need to be at the forefront of things. I enjoy doing things others don't or haven't yet.  I do not pursue relationships that have no long-term possibility and I have no interest in casual sex.

Barbara Levine

What great stories you tell about Jory.  He was an amazing and creative guy.

Ric Fink
None of Jory’s friends have forgotten their dear friend.

L. Birtler
Delightful!

Di Moreno Lindahl
I love the way u r remembering ur son. 

Sophia Litt

Every time I see a picture of him, he has a smile or grin on his face. What a delight in your life he must have been!

Jamie Meyer

Miss him dearly.

Blue Fluteman

I was just thinking about Jory and missing him.

Sarah Lloyd

What a marvelous legacy you left, Jory.

Photo credit:

laurelms.com, gothamist.com, Laura Brannan, aarestriping.com, Zach@Flickr

  

©   Leslye J. Prum   All Rights Reserved   2017