Here's wishing a speedy recovery to
Paul Kantner, vocalist/ guoitarist with Jefferson Airplane (which later morphed
into Jefferson Starship), who is recuperating from a heart attack he suffered
on March 25.
I met him once back in 1972, when I
was a patient at Mount Sinai Hospital in San Francisco for some minor surgery.
For the first week I was the only
patient on the ward who was under 80, but that changed on Week 2 when Grace
Slick, the Airplane's lead singer (and Kantner's girlfriend) checked in.
I struck up a friendship with them
– Grace dubbed me "Morton Snort" – and I spent most of each day in
her room playing endless games of chess with Paul while Grace was glued to the
news on TV, looking for inspiration for the songs she was writing for her next
album.
As it happens, Grace and I were
both discharged on the same day. My parents came to take me home, and just as
we were about to leave Grace and Paul appeared in the doorway.
"We wanted to say
goodbye," they explained.
Being a moderately well-mannered
person, I did the introductions: "Mom and Dad, this is Grace and
Paul."
"What do you do, young
man?" my father asked Paul.
"I play in a rock'n'roll
band," he replied.
"Oh?" said my dad.
"Give me your card. My nephew is having a Bar Mitzvah next month, and
maybe we can use you!"
* * *
In
other news, I celebrated my 70th birthday on Sunday.
It
was a very different world I was born into, and it was about to change in a big
way. Within a week Franklin D. Roosevelt was dead – the running joke in my
family was that the shock of my birth was too much for him – and Hitler killed
himself 12 days later. Three weeks after that, Churchill was kicked out of
office in a huge election upset.
The
top record on the hit parade was "Rum And Coca-Cola" by the Andrews
Sisters, the top movie was a Sherlock Holmes flick called "The House of
Fear," and the best selling book was "Forever Amber" by Kathleen
Winsor. Bread was selling for nine cents a loaf, and gas – when you could get
it – was 21 cents a gallon.
For
my parents, my arrival was a blessed event in more ways than one. It meant that
my family was now entitled to another ration book - including those
all-important gas coupons – in my name.
And
they lost no time in applying for it. I still have that ration book, filled out
the day after my birth in my father's unmistakable handwriting. Under
"Name" he wrote, "Martin M. Snapp Jr." And under
"Occupation" he wrote, "Baby."
So
what have I learned in the last 70 years? Not much. The little I have learned
can be summed up by a quote from Kurt Vonnegut's "God Bless You, Mr.
Rosewater," when the hero is addressing a nursery ward full of babies:
"Hello,
babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's
round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you’ve got about a hundred
years here. There’s only one rule that I know of, babies - 'God damn it, you’ve
got to be kind.'"
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