July, 2001, Lake Erie. Very, very far from anyplace I had ever been in my life. Riding on a ferry boat across the water on a beautiful sunny morning, aimed for next new experience. Just about a week beforehand, I had taken Adela and Marcos from Phoenix back to Guaymas to stay with her mom, then loaded up my gear and headed for the Midwest. Destination: Put-in Bay, Ohio, otherwise known as South Bass Island. Back in my Rocky Point Days, a friend of mine, Brian Salata, had told me about this tiny little tourist island known to cruisers and Midwesterners as “Disneyland For Drunks”. Tons of restaurants and bars, a few wineries, and boatloads of pre-hung over revelers dropped off hourly. He knew the area well and gave me a few names in case I ever got the urge to play at Put-in Bay. One day, for some strange reason, I did.  First place I called was a local microbrewery. As luck would have it, when the owner of the place picked up the phone, I heard “Going Coastal” playing in the background. Yes! God is truly good. Turns out that Brian had left him a CD and the guy loved it. From there it only got better. Not only did I immediately score a great gig with him on the island, but he also hooked me up with the owner of one of the more established restaurants in Put-in Bay, The Boardwalk.  I ended up contracting two excellent gigs a day at the Boardwalk with my off night at the Brewery. Good money, meals and lodging too. Hello, Ohio!

    The down side?  Try leaving your wife and kid (barely six months old at the time) behind for SEVEN weeks, with nothing but a lousy payphone to keep in touch. As each night went by, I missed them more and more.

     The best part of the trip was when my friends from Arizona came out to visit me. Michael and Tammy Bauman came with friends, as well as Brian and his wife Betty.  One of my oldest and best friends, Kyle Richmond, came out along with another buddy I knew from Rocky Point, Jim Scheidler. They rented a house on the island and we truly had a blast while they were there, teaching the local bartenders how to make margaritas like they do in the southwest, “sampling” local wines, and generally making fools of ourselves whenever I wasn’t singing. Without getting too much into the details, one night after I performed at the Brewery, a disoriented Kyle ended up nose to nose in a screaming match with a Blues Brothers mannequin, challenging him to a fight. The crowd watched in awkward silence as Jim and I pulled an enraged Kyle from the mannequin out to the parking lot. The following day was the ONLY day in sixteen years of knowing Kyle that I actually witnessed him turned down a beer.

     After my friends were gone, though, being away from my family became simply unbearable for me. A few more weeks more and I found that I just couldn’t do it anymore. I talked to Eric Booker, who ran the Boardwalk, and begged him to find another band for the last week and a half of my contract. Told him I’d honor the contract if he wanted, but after several days of putting up with my groveling, plus the fact that he was a new father himself, he agreed to let me go and find a fill-in for the last week. The second that band showed up, I threw my stuff into my car, caught the last ferry, and drove my butt off til I got to Oklahoma. The next night I pulled into Phoenix, then a few hours later headed south for the border. I’ll never forget how Marcos looked at me without recognizing me the night I pulled into my mother in-law’s place in Guaymas. But the moment he heard my voice he smiled and held out his arms for me to hold him. We sat out on my mother in-law’s front porch for about an hour, just the three of us. Every minute or so Marcos would quietly look up at my face, like he was wondering if I was really there. I’ll never forget that moment. God, it was good to be home.