Jimmy Garland is dead

Friday, January 24, 2020

James Garland is dead. And I can't get it out of my head.

I saw us as the Four Musketeers: me, Jimmy, Frank and Garrick. Now only me and Garrick are left.

Garrick called late yesterday when I was at a ribbon cutting and I was surprised to see his name pop up on the phone.

“I have some sad news,” he said when I responded.  “Jimmy is dead.”

I later learned that Dawn had talked to Jimmy last on Monday but when she tried to reach him Tuesday and then Wednesday, he did not respond.  I'm still not sure just who went over to his trailer in Netcong but when they did, they found Jimmy on the floor.

Garrick said it was most likely a heart attack, but we still have to find out the details because no one really knows.

Dawn said she was supposed to have gotten together with Jimmy within a week or so.

Garrick asked me when the last time I talked to Jimmy.

I told him early December and that we were supposed to get together at some point this month.  My medical stuff was getting in the way, I said although that my medical stuff was getting in the way I said although that was not completely true, we have been piss poor about meeting up.  we mostly talked on the phone and even that was rare.

Garrick had a similar spotty record although he said he had had a long talk with Jimmy on his birthday on December 28th.

I kept thinking about my last conversation with him which lasted for several hours and covered the usual widespread of topics that we usually got to talk about and catch up on.

Jimmy said he was still trying to put together a book of his art that included the museum stuff from more than two decades ago the raccoon from Mars stuff and other artwork he hoped to self-publish through Apple.

He also talked about his music and the controversy had going with Garrick over the reuse of the name Eric Lemmon milk band.  This was the name of the original Eric Lemon band from 1968 and where I saw Jimmy for the first time at St John's community room in Paterson.

Jimmy proposed to use the name again for the new music he was putting together only in some ways it really wasn't new music but rehashed stuff he'd been working on for the last two decades. Garrick claimed to have invented the name, but Jimmy disputed this.

Jimmy said he also intended to use segments of music I had sent him especially the audio of a lead-in that we had recorded at Melody Lake in the summer of 1975.

Jimmy updated me on his Family. Sue and her husband had moved to one of the Carolinas. Mary had some medical issues. Patty of course was with John up in Connecticut. Only Maureen was still relatively local in Jersey. Jimmy also talked about kids who are now adults his nephews and nieces who he had begum that strange single uncle who they had to acknowledge as being just a bit odd.

I mentioned that I had seen my cousin living in Montville right near where Jimmy's old girlfriend's mother used to live in Towaco. I told him that he had driven by the old site but I thought they had torn the house down but he told me he had checked it on Google Maps and the house was still there but they had torn down the trees.

“I don't know why they had to tear down trees,” he said waxing nostalgic for a time when he lived there in 1982 when he has set up an artist studio in one of the rooms, finally getting to live the life he had ached for as long as I had known him.

He was in love with the Merlin character from the Mary Steward books and while at Ginger’s mother's house, he got to act out that role.

He planted gardens in raised herbs and cooked very basic meals, making salads out of what he grew. Never before or since has he been as happy as he was in that moment although from what he hinted at in his trailer he was coming closer to that again.

Eventually jealousy by his girlfriend's new partner made him move out of that house and out of that life returning for several years in Passaic where he lived with me.

Luck and taking advantage of opportunity eventually allowed him to retire early from a job as director of the library. He was able to buy a trailer and move in it and pick up on the life he has wanted from the start what kind of hermit and creative on his own terms.

That isolation scared me because he lived alone, and he was getting older and we were all a bit concerned about what would happen if something happened to him. How would anybody know? And this proved to be accurate since nobody found him for two days.

Garrick apparently talked pretty extensively with Jimmy at the end of December so we both got to have our last conversation with Jimmy even though we did not know it would be the last at the time.

Unfortunately, this is how all stories end and it's sad that this man who I admired from the start never did live up to our expectations or even maybe his own although in the end I think he was probably satisfied with his life.