Big Steve
When I first started doing the Rummage, almost ten years ago, Steve wasn't around. They talked about him: big guy, ran the record department, he was off in South America or somewhere, teaching or something. A few sales later he showed up, and he was big. I was a little put out at first. Big voice, big body, and a lot of big talk. But the guy was a blast to be around, and he knew his music. He'd pick up a beat-up old guitar with four or five strings on it, and the thing looked like a ukulele in those big hands of his, but he made it jump and jive and come to life.
Steve had been in bands his whole life, and his whole life was organized so that he could continue to do that. He'd been around; he'd met people. There's a difference between being a good person and a good musician; our opinions differed on who was a good musician but I always trusted his judgment on who was a good person. Some of the famous ones: not so good. You'd be surprised. But if Steve said it, it was so.
Over the years we got to be pretty good friends, in that Rummage, spring-and-fall, kind of way. He wasn't in great health, some of the time, and his back bothered him, and then one year his Dad died. I got occasional emails from him during the off-season, and wrote back. I was a little pissed off when he started reading my journal. Telegram, it was called then. I was uncomfortable because I had written, quite a lot sometimes, about some people we both knew, and though I was trying to be oblique and clever, he managed to put the pieces together sometimes. If he'd figured out who Micawber was, why not Agnes?
Then, two falls ago, we started losing him. Rob had also been diagnosed with cancer, and then Rob was gone in a flash. He'd seemed so strong, and just getting ready to start a new life in Maine, and that life never happened. I'd had a wedding at the church the last Saturday that Steve and Rob were both at Rummage, and when I got back they had both gone home.
Steve spent a lot of time in the hospital, got a stem-cell transplant, and chemo, and I got an email from him that fall which was optimistic but resigned. And then he slipped out of sight, and we heard from time to time how he was doing (not too well, but holding on) and I felt bad, when I thought of it, that I hadn't been trying harder to keep track of him.
At the fall sale, Linda showed up out of the blue, and brought us all up to date. He'd been in the hospital pretty much the whole year, and he was in pretty bad shape, but he was holding his own. I gave her a hug and a promise, a promise I never got a chance to keep. In a few days he was gone.
I miss you, Steve. I'll see you when I get home.
