Shhh! This is a Library…..

The 605 traffic has coagulated to a crawl, so I take the DelAmo exit to cut across town.
Easy.
I know this route, this town.
Its shortcuts and backstreets are embedded somewhere deep in my very being, like a Naugles hot sauce stain that forever soils a Camaro dashboard.

Past Pioneer, then Norwalk, turn left at Bloomfield at the Gemco.

Gemco? Is that what I said?.
Yes children, long before Target marked that corner with its illuminati bullseye, Gemco was the shit.
A department store, that’s what they called it.
A place that sold blenders and ironing boards, TV consoles big as a fat man’s coffin.
Magazines and records, pastel shaded clothes both itchy and flammable.

As I continue down Bloomfield it is the memories of places long gone that I am seeing.
There, the old Cerritos Cycle Park, where I spent countless afternoons burning up the clutch of my XR75.
It is now just a softball field in a shaded corner of the Regional park, site itself of so many late night high school hijinks.

That tract of homes? Was still a dairy farm when we moved in, what? 1969?.
I can still smell the cowshit symphony that seasoned every family dinner, still hear the lowing cattle being led to the milking machines.
And the tractors roared, new construction: everywhere, always.

I’ve returned for a Meet the Author event at the glorious Cerritos Public Library, though the word Author still gives me a bit of a cringe whenever it is applied.
Sort of like a line cook calling himself chef, or punk rocker calling himself a musician.

But I can’t deny it is an honor to be invited back to the old stomping grounds, a night to celebrate not just the book but this very town itself.

As a punk band with a wildly generic name and rather meek members, the early fanzine scribes had a hard time tagging us.
Nerd rockers? Emos? That wasn’t a thing yet.
So they finally settled on that Cerritos band as our classification in the phylum.
An easy enough shortcut I guess, relying on that hoary old built-in irony: Punk coming from a sterile suburban place.

But ya know, situated on the very border of Los Angeles and Orange counties, Cerritos was indeed a fitting home for us.
Part of both “scenes” though not fully embraced by either OC or LA.
We existed in a sort of punk rock limbo, too fast for the LA art rockers, too timid for the wild new breed of OC thugs.
But this dear old town was a hotbed of weekend parties that let us hone our meager craft.
Parents gone, drywall destroyed, a hip broken. And next weekend? Again.

But apparently punk rock is safe enough to be city celebrated now.
Mike Ness receives the key to Fullerton, Ventura names an April date Ill Repute Day.
And now, (on the eve of No Values, a festival that indeed has value to Goldenvoice stockholders), we are invited back to Cerritos to dig up some old laughs, meet up with some old chums.

I’ve invited the original fellas to come help me:
Kimm of course, but also Larry and Jack, both survivors of those Hey Vern! Auto square commercials and a fiery plane crash that marked our youth.

I get up there by myself at first, and I find myself mumbling and stumbling through a few introductory remarks.
I’m nervous.
Why is that?
Haven’t I been doing this for four decades now, standing there in front of a crowd?
The elevation of stage and amplification of a battered Shure SM58, the only things keeping the lions at bay.

I realize, of course, that is because I am up there alone.
Without my shield of electric guitar, without my constant companion at stage left, Kimm’s spiky blonde head burned forever into my peripheral retina.

So I call the lads up to join me and strap on the Rickenbacker, and all feels suddenly right.
We settle into an easy groove, play a song, bring it down, read off a few paragraphs,
I read a page while Jackie and Larry vamp quietly on a verse, updating the Greenwich Village coffeehouse reading with pyramid spikes and dick jokes.

We are playing at a lower volume than usual, but it’s working.
I see some heads bopping along to the songs, but the Summer sun has not yet set.
We are in a library after all, and this keeps the crowd seated.
Though I know a few troublemakers are just itching to get up and get the fuckin pit going, if for nothing else but bragging rights of getting this shit boiling in the multipurpose room.

On the final song, we go into the final chorus, reminding the world we indeed are still dangerous (I got a gun, mannnnn!),
Yeh man, and don’t let this graying hair or that electric car in the parking lot fool ya—we still punk!

Riled thusly, I take the opportunity to kick over the music stand that I have been squinting at all evening.
The stand goes flying, the pages take flight.

And for a moment the words float before us.
The memories of a blessed youth, the characters that have gone ahead or are, incredibly, in this room tonight.
.