Don (1947-2007)

Don’s funeral parade caught many people off-guard. At 1:30 AM on Sunday, August 17, 2008, the campground of the Philadelphia Folk Fest was swarming with revelers. Campsites were going full blast with post-concert music, drinking, singing, and all of the cardinal sin atmosphere of a modern-day Woodstock in full roar.

As we gathered to sing some of Don’s favorite songs, his son, Ben, brought out the wagon. It was an old red Radio Flyer with wooden sides. It had been decorated to look like a Viking ship. The prow was a cardboard dragon’s head. The sides had painted shields. All the edges were outlined with the neon greens and pinks of those sticks that crack and glow fluorescent at night. Inside the wagon was Don; his ashes in a four inch high, by six inch by eight inch sandlewood box.

Ben announced, “I’m taking Dad for a last festival walk, just one lap around the center. Anyone who wants to take a walk with Don, let’s go.”

A little girl came up and said, “My Mommy’s ready.”

Only at a folk fest can a bagpiper be found at 1:30 in the morning, and he led while Ben pulled the wagon down the main road to dusty Ballad Boulevard.  By intent, or accident, four of the younger girls (Colleen, Jamie, Kiki, Alicia and maybe others)closed around the wagon forming a phalanx of Valkyrie, maidens of Odin who choose this hero to conduct to Valhalla. Each carried a plastic dollar store sword.

This New Orleans style  funeral procession took on life as the Front Porch and the Mellons joined behind the Viking boat cortége.  Curious others soon joined, and over 100 mourners slowly marched down the incline, and passed the camps of the Azzoles, the Merry Hoopsters, Group W, Flids and Livin’ Large. As the retinue approached the first turn onto Abe Poole Memorial Blvd. (The fest is on his farm.), the little girl’s mom stepped out and began to play “Taps.” The bagpiper stopped until she finished, then started playing The Flowers of the Forrest, and the procession moved down the road again where most of the young kids, “utes” as Don would say, lived in wabi-sabi patchwork tents.

Don had died last November of the consequences of living life extremely large. He had consumed enough Jim Beam for two lifetimes. But whatever the cause of death, and even if the healing was nine months along, eyes still filled with tears as we walked. Just then a punk rock window washer girl wearing black on black with leather and chrome looked up from her hookah and asked, “What’s happening?”

Someone replied, “It’s a funeral. One of our guys died.”

She slunk back into her tent of Tibetan wall hangings and a haze, and mumbled, “Bummer, man.” Don would have been much more creative; perhaps asking her if her face metal set off alarms at airports, or if she had called Suzanne Summers to get back the money she spent on that Thigh-Master?

One hundred yards down, the procession turned to the right, ascending the Camp Path Road and passed some of the older campers, like the Festicles. The only trouble started as the mass turned again back onto the Main Road. Just past the line of green Porta-Pots. There in the road was a huge red trash dumpster with the name Marasco and Sons stenciled on the sides.

It was inevitable that someone had to start some mayhem to honor Don who was the Puck of the fest, and the Master of  Revels and Impropriety.  There are numerous stories of his non-PC behavior. His daughter had to beg him not to cut off the sleeves and pant legs of his suit before her wedding. Signs in his van often proclaimed unpopular opinions like “Fry Mumia” instead of “Free Mumia.”  

Meanwhile back at the dumpster, the entire group stopped. Walt Bevilaqua started the beat. He thumped a slow dirge against the metal sides of Marasco’s giant empty trash bin.  A hundred plus mourners took up the thumping chant. Boom, boom, boom. Now all festers know that there is no drumming at the Philly Folk Fest. Hi-hats, Snares, Congas, Bongos, Bodhrans, Tabors, Tablas, Timpanis, and Tom-Toms are verboten, and dumpster drumming is the ultimate percussive no-no.

The thumping soon reach a hundred plus decibel crescendo. Sankey couldn’t hit the dumpster hard enough with his palms so he started using his fists. The next morning his hands were so swollen that he couldn’t hold a beer, much less a camera.

Eventually the festival Gestapo came around and threatened expulsion, so the mourners moved on back to the Front Porch. Don lay in state in is little Viking boat, as the musicians reprised the Kingston Trio’s greatest hits, which for some reason Don loved. Tom Dooley hung down his head. Charlie never returned from the MTA. The Worried Man was stuck in the Tiauana Jail, and Scotch and Soda was still playing on the jukebox at the Chatterbox in Ocean City.  If Mike Cross could have been there, he would have played a slow air on the fiddle, or even better ripped out a great version of Whiskey before Breakfast.

It was a proper sendoff for a wonderfully improper poppa.

Don,
Thanks for all the laughs and good times,
Dennis