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- Essays: On The Road (And A Little Off)


 

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How I met Kim Kruglick

I once had a band, and we traveled across the U.S. and Canada as The Legendary Panama Red With Montezuma's Revenge. It seemed like a good band name at the time.

Anyway we played not-country-enough, not-rock-enough, not-anything-else-commercial-enough songs that I had written. Sometimes to great critical acclaim, and sometimes to no acclaim at all. It depended. They loved me at the Lone Star Cafe in New York City. Intellectuals, I've noticed, can follow a story.
That joint in Mobile, not so much. They said they could not pay me until they located the owner and they couldn't do that because it was Christmas Eve and then I said something on the order of, “I bet you could find him if the place was on fire,” which caused the parking lot to suddenly fill up with a SWAT team, because suggesting that the owner could be found in case of an emergency was deemed to be a threat to these absolute pussies who had been left in charge.
In the meantime, my band, among whom were simply good old daddies counting on having some Christmas jingle when we all got back to Nashville, were at the bar, and having sussed out the situation were drinking as hard and as fast as they possibly could throw it down. So that when we left, all of us broke and some of us drunk, and it being rainy and unseasonably cold even for winter, for the six-hour ride back to Music City, I was in some murderous company...I had my own couple of bulletheads riding back there in the muttering darkness.

Time for a change, I thought.

Enter Kevin Ryan. I'd known of Kevin since Coconut Grove, although he'd moved on before I came there. Everybody in the Grove spoke very highly of him, and he'd been David Crosby's road manager. So, even though I knew I could never even approach what Cros was paying him, Patty, who actually had known him in the Grove, called him up and asked him to come do for me what he'd done for Crosby for maybe a hundredth of what he was actually worth. He accepted and flew into Gnashville. And because Kevin was so very good at doing what he did, the road got smoother for a while. Kevin was loved by all, and he and I became fast friends forever. I think one of the things Kevin liked about me was that I never bugged him for introductions to famous music people he knew. When this part of my craziness was over Kevin moved back to Mill Valley.
Later I had my music career literally shot out from under me, and I wanted to do things on which I could put numbers rather than just feelings. I became a carpenter and then a radiographer. My wife Patty became a Registered Nurse and we ultimately took our degrees and moved to California and lived in San Francisco, she in the trenches fighting AIDS and I taking xrays at the Gay VA and playing a little of my music on the side.

But across the Bay, Kevin came down with cancer.

Kevin had done some remodeling on various houses around Marin. He was a meticulous craftsman and it showed in the perfection of his work. He worked on Crosby's place and he'd done work on the home of a guy named Kim Kruglick.

Every story has to have a hero.

The hero in this one, really, is Kim Kruglick, at that time a hotshot, expensive criminal attorney, sought out by entertainers and bands of the era such as Fishbone, who somehow ended up on trial for kidnapping. Kim was famed for not ever, ever, having lost a case. But he was mostly distinguished, to me at least, by his loyalty to our friend Kevin Ryan, suddenly down with this unbeatable, unbearably fatal disease with no recourse and no resources.
Kim stepped into the role of patient advocate as competently as he had spoken for the dregs and the innocents he'd gotten off in court. Except of course that he didn't get paid. So those of us who were Kevin's friends were marshalled by Kim Kruglick into a team whose sole mission was to make Kevin's inevitable passing, however long it was going to take, however much it was going to cost, as pleasant for Kevin as possible. On that team, as I recall, were Rik Elswit, whom Kevin had known when Rik played guitar with Dr Hook and the Medicine Show; Patty, my wife; me; and some other worthies I'm sure I'm leaving out. But it was mostly the three of us and ever and always Kim Kruglick, who not only took his turns sitting at the bedside but maintained a constant funding connection with David Crosby, then touring and unable to be there, although I'm sure much of that funding came directly from Kim.
We went from a private hospice-type setting to a step-down from that and finally to a simple motel room as the process wore on for weeks and weeks and less and less was able to be medically done for Kevin. Though we all took our turns sleeping on the floor next to Kevin's bed or talking to Kevin when he was lucid, Kruglick, bless him, still worked his attorney job and yet took his turns being beside Kevin. Each day he would come cheerfully to that dingy little motel room, although of course we all knew it was a losing battle.
Finally, one morning at about 8 am, I woke up from my pallet on the floor and noticed that Kevin was finally gone, and called to report to Kim. We had developed a kind of gallows humor during this, and I have to rat myself out here....before Kim showed up that last morning I put some Groucho Marx glasses, the ones with the big nose and mustache, on Kevin's face. I'll never forget seeing the look on Kruglick's face when he came through the door and saw Kevin lying in state decked out in this very undignified manner. Kim fell over laughing. It was such a relief for us to finally know that Kevin was forever no longer suffering, for he had suffered a lot, and yet we all felt that he too would have seen the humor in this bit of silliness. Grief takes a lot of strange turns. I hope someone does the same thing for me.
Peppermint Patty the Nurse bathed Kevin one last time and then Kim called the AAA Crematorium and the man came and slipped Kevin's by now light as a feather body into a cardboard box and drove off in a nondescript van with him.
So Kevin was gone off to the crematory and a little later Kruglick had his
ashes, which he carried around in the back of his jeep in a coffee can.
Kevin had loved coffee.
“When are you gonna do something with Kevin's ashes?” I'd ask Kim.
Kim would cock his head in that funny, thoughtful way he had and say, “I don't know. I'm trying to think of a good place, but for right now, I like having him with me.”
Ultimately Kevin's ashes went into the ocean he loved. But the last time I saw Kim, he still had them in his jeep.

So that was my introduction to the greatness and sweetness that was Kim Kruglick. In a very real sense I inherited my friendship with Kim directly from Kevin, for over the next several years, because of this shared experience, as Kim went through his hassles and I went through mine, I now came often across the Golden Gate and into Marin and we became even tighter friends. He was always and ever available to me in the role of confidante; I like to flatter myself that I helped him through some rough patches, too. I was honored that he chose to reveal to me the exact nature of his health problems when they arose, for while I was a medical guy who knew something about how the human body works, and sometimes doesn't, I was also a trusted, silent, ear.

We were friends. Here's to Kim Kruglick.

There is more. And I'll get to it.

Panama Red

                                              -30-