Ashland & Grant's Pass

Friday day, we went over to Mrs. Qs, had good bkfst & Ron comped us!!! Shoulda ordered a bigger bkfst. With Ron sitting there, waitress screwed up Sylvia's oatmeal, gave her CoWheat...then we went over to Ron's house, big impressive, sorta cold, so full of collectibles that it makes you sneeze and breathe funny. Lots of junk records, some good ones.

Friday nite, we took Joe, Susan & Evan out to dinner, met up with Lloyd, Maureen, & several out of towners in for Ben's party - Peg & Dave from Seattle & Tom Clark from Bend.

Both Peg & Tom are a little strange; she's a teener not unlike Lloyd, he's more of an r&ber...but an odd guy, very conservative, tho his wife is very liberal, and wasn't with him for dinner. He wanted to meet...guess who? Me? Yup.

Fun.

Sat a.m.: wow. We get in our respective cars and drive to Grant's Pass, knowing that Lloyd will be there first. He was, so were most of the other folks. Turned out it was a combo party & record swap, with the Thursday night theme of guess the artist, win some dough, in which I won $7....Olympics on What'd I Say & Roy Hamilton on something. Then came the trivia constest in which I kicked butt, got a score of 39, Warren was second with 28, then Lloyd with 22 and Steve Roberts with 20. I won $10, all the dough was reinvested into 45s, which is sort of the idea. As an example, I invested $20 in a copy of Hot Rod Race on Mtn. Dew, tho I knew it might well be a fantasy 45 - from Ron...woulda paid close to that for bkfst.

Found out that before we got there, Lloyd asked Joe: "where's Steve?" Joe RFed him by saying we had a big fight, I'd left, don't want to talk about it. Joe was convincing, but finally broke a grin, Lloyd had been had and talked about it the rest of the day.

Ben turns out to have little to do with the L.A. R&R scene, much less the R&B scene than locals credit him for, was in a surf band called the Gestures out of Pedro, but cut a 45 backing a country singer in which he etched out the group name with a church key: the Rocking Hillbillies - don't blame him. He's a real enthusiast.

The record dealing took place in a garage where 45s were set out and picked out, on a table & one the back of a pickup. I picked up about 15, prices from $5 to 20.

We left, leaving about 15 records I'd bought, didn't realize it until we were in GP, had to turn around, 15 miles or so back, only to find out that Ben had given them to Floyd to get to me. Ben was hazy about directions but drew me a map on the back of a trivia page. I had to find Floyd's in the dead of a Medford night in badly light streets, but by luck and avoiding serveal ditches, got to Floyd's - Tom Clark was there, going thru records - got them back, returned to Ashland at about 10 instead of 8:30 or 9.

Next day, cut out to Shasta after having a nice bkfst in town. Good trip, so far.