A Long Strange Trip & Happy Birthday

Rick in his '56 Porsche Speedster

In the spring of 1970, coming out of the raucous 1960s, I took my first "real" job as a writer at the San Jose Mercury News daily newspapers. I was as green as an under-ripe tomato. But eager to bloom.

The Sixties had bled into 1970 as we saw four students shot and killed by National Guard troops at Kent State University in Ohio. Mad rock 'n roll was blasting on radio airwaves and at the Fillmore Ballroom up the road in San Francisco .

What was happening? I wanted to know. I wanted to write about it.

My new employer had a peripatetic writer who was answering those questions on a regular basis. I saw story after story in our newspaper about music, films and culture under the byline,  Rick Carroll.

Who was this guy?

As a promotion writer I was confined to the newspaper plant, a fancy building of Sixties architecture featuring a moat in front of the lobby. Seriously. These were heady days for the SJMN, whose classified section was bigger than the LA Times. This was early, early Silicon Valley.

I'd deliver copy to familiar editors in the newsroom but never see the mercurial Rick Carroll, whose bylines I saw almost daily.

I was near mesmerized when I read his story about the film making of Leonard Gardner's novel, "Fat City," a classic boxing tale directed by the legendary John Huston (Chinatown, Treasure of Sierra Madre). Not only did RC write about the Stockton-California based movie, Huston put him in the film. Outfitted in a wide-lapelled suit and fedora, Rick appeared in a front page photograph with his story.

Some days later I saw the same face, bearded, a cool beanie pulled over his head, stepping out of a classic white Porche convertible, chatting with one of our fashion writers.

It was Rick Carroll live and in person.

I never had the opportunity to meet him.

Less than three years later, I walked out of the newspaper plant upset with their tired conservative politics. Not long after I saw RC's byline in the San Francisco Chronicle,  the "Voice of the West." That's where the popular writers were going. And he was part of that line-up.

I relocated over the mountains and through the redwoods to the little sea burg of Santa Cruz. I miraculously found a great job as editor for Santa Cruz Publishing Company, whose new publisher/owner Lee May had assembled a talented assortment of fun-loving media types.We produced good products, including a tourist guide that showed off our skills and became successful.

Rick Carroll's bylines were showing up in the Honolulu's Star-Advertiser, the daily newspaper for the Hawaiian Islands.

I didn't see these stories but word got around if you were in the biz.  A writer named Lee Quarnstrom, a former Merry Prankster with novelist Ken Kesey, had gone straight and become the dean of Santa Cruz journalists. He wrote a column about Santa Cruz for the Mercury News. Maybe RC's name appeared in an LQ column.

Those were lively days for writers and artists in Santa Cruz, today a distant memory faded into software vapor.

Fast forward through time: We resume our story in Santa Cruz in the new millennium circa 2018. A neighbor shows me a book he thinks I would like called "IZ: Voice of the People" by Rick Carroll. It's the story of Israel Kamakawiwo'ole, the gentle giant with the sweet voice most recognized for his mellifluous recording of the medley, "Over the Rainbow/What a Wonderful World."

I told my neighbor, "I know the author."

I devoured and thoroughly enjoyed the book.

Marcie and Rick, Ohau days

About that time we decided to find a place on Kauai so that we might be close to our daughter, Isabel Bryna who resides here with her two kids, our grandchildren.

In my post yesterday, I talked about Puamana, where we landed here on the island. And who do you think we found for neighbors?

That's right: Rick Carroll and his lovely wife Marcie Rasmussen Carroll, who, coincidentally, also wrote for the San Jose Mercury News way back when. That's more than 50 years ago!

The rest is current history. (I think that's an oxymoron.)

Today we will be celebrating Rick's 77th birthday together, with a few other Puamana refugees.

Happy birthday, Rick. What a long strange trip.