John Gierach, A Remembrance 

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Photo by Louis Cahill

The first lesson John taught me was how to kill a chicken with a stick. It was far from the last.

It was October fourth when I found out John had passed. Exactly one week after I had nearly died myself in the flood waters from hurricane Helene. My wife, Kathy, and I had made it out of Western North Carolina to my family in Virginia but I had loaded the truck with food, water and supplies for my neighbors, plus a hundred gallons of gas in a tank borrowed from my cousin, and headed immediately back. 

Green Mountain felt like a zombie movie. The destruction is beyond my ability to describe. Everyone says it looks like a war zone. I’ve been in several. They’re nothing like this. Not since World War One. I had been digging through the mud and sewage in my ground floor looking for things I could save, delivering food and gas to neighbors and hearing the heart breaking stories of the neighbors who were gone. 

I had cleaned up my 1950s Kay arch top and plugged the Starlink into a battery pack so I could text my wife and let her know I was ok when I, on a whim, opened Instagram and saw the post from my friend Dan. Just like that he was gone.

I had been emailing with John, not long before the storm. He was doing better. Frustrated that he wasn’t improving faster. His heart had been giving him trouble for a while and he’d had a couple of procedures. He was stingy with the details, never one to get too close to complaining. It was hard to know exactly how much trouble he was in.

“I chose a lifestyle that I knew would beat me up and now I’m standing here wondering how I got so beat up.” 

That was his last message about his health. not one I took to mean, ‘I’ll be gone before you hear from me again.’ I wanted to be angry with him, but I think it caught John by surprise as well. Apparently, he had gone to the doctor for a follow up visit and been given a clean bill of health. The doctor left the room for him to get dressed and came back to find him dead in the chair, his shirt half buttoned. 

The wave of grief that washed over me felt like a second flood. I’d been surrounded by death, destruction and loss for a week and it was the first time I had cried, and I cried for them all. Tears like the rain that had swollen the river. With no other outlet at hand, I picked up the guitar and played the saddest blues licks I know. The damp old guitar howled at the moon for John.

“Never meet your heroes.” That’s what they say. It’s a load of horse shit. John had been a hero of mine. An inspiration and a mentor of sorts, though I don’t think he’d have liked my saying it. He’d also been my friend. I never had a conversation with John that wasn’t substantive. We never did small talk but, man, was he good at big talk. I could always count on John to cut through the bullshit. We agreed on most things. Disagreed on several and out right argued about a few. He was one of the smartest and deepest feeling people I’ve ever known and, as far as I could tell, truly did not give a fuck what anyone thought about it. I was damn lucky to know him.

I will always miss you Brother.

If you are interested in reading more about John, I suggest you give this a try.

Not Just Anybody’s Saint Vrain

Louis Cahill

Gink & Gasoline

www.ginkandgasoline.com

hookups@ginkandgasoline.com 

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