We called him Calvin Ozone. Partially because it was a natural perversion of his real name, but mostly because it was a deliciously appropriate perversion of his real name.
Here’s a fer-instance-why: One evening his motorcycle failed to start. Exercising extreme good sense, Ozone removed the gas tank cap to see if maybe he was out of gas. It being somewhat dark and all, there was some difficulty seeing in there, so Ozone lit a match to illuminate the scene and leaned close to the open tank to peer in.
Poof!
The tres chic “no eyebrows” look elicited more than one comment that week.
And oh! This happened not once, but twice.
Now don’t get me wrong – we all looked up to Ozone, and he was a great guy, and a good friend. He was older, and from Chicago, so naturally he knew so much more and was so much more worldly than us recent high school grad rubes from the hinterlands of the Western States who’d recently found themselves all thrown together in the huge cowtown of Phoenix. Most importantly though, he knew a lot more about certain substances, and where to get them, and how to use them, than the rest of us put together. And he put this theoretical knowledge into practice on a regular basis, too. Ozone was our guiding light in the smoky haze of the early `70’s.
And he constantly amazed us.
First there was the ongoing drama of the 442. See, Ozone had driven down from Illinois in this 442 that was nothing but trouble. It had died about six times on the way down, and cost him a small fortune to fix up, like a new engine and who knows what, but he was determined to hang onto it, because Car and Driver had named it Car of the Year in 1969. Currently, though, it was gathering dust in a parking lot in north Scottsdale, where it had most recently died, forcing Ozone into the purchase of a motorcycle for basic transportation. Yet he stopped by the 442 every day on the way to work, to unpeel any “abandoned car” stickers that might sprout on its windshield, and he just knew that someday he’d make millions on that Car of the Year. We all knew he would, too.
After he’d got the bike he had to get a helmet, and instead of buying a normal motorcycle helmet he got this Thunderbirds or Blue Angels castoff, a really neat looking Air Force sort of a thing with a huge dark brown visor, not really a motorcycle helmet at all, but outstandingly cool. One of the guys from work thought it was cool, too, and in a substance-induced flash of genius decided to try it out in his open Corvette, tooling slowly down Scottsdale Road with this Air Force helmet on, the seat reclined way back, and the music on high, ZZ Top probably, me in the passenger seat, until finally about Thomas he rolled his head to the side, real cool, real slow, to look to his left, and stared straight into the eyes of a Scottsdale motorcycle cop, who apparently had a stunted sense of cool. Ozone got his helmet back, shortly thereafter.
Next there was Emerson, Lake, and Palmer. ELP was, of course, not everyone’s favorite band, and in fact we’d never known anyone whose favorite band it was, but naturally it was Ozone’s. Whenever you’d visit at his place, he’d be crankin’ on “Pictures at an Exhibition”, or “Brain Salad Surgery”, and we all grew to know, in excruciating detail, the sound keyboards made when Keith Emerson jammed a dagger into them. Once Ozone was going to make a trip to Tucson to see ELP at the Civic Amphitheatre, but Phoenix to Tucson is a long, hot trip alone on a bike, so somehow it turned into a group outing and I ended being volunteered to drive my `60 Chevy wagon, a car which did maybe eight mpg on a new tuneup, despite the oh-so-aerodynamic fins. This was during the height of the Arab oil embargo, and we had to beg every gas station in Tucson for fuel to get back, but I couldn’t hear a word any gas station attendant said because ELP had been so damned loud. Quadrophonic, man! But it was pretty cool seeing Keith jam those daggers into the keyboards in person.
Sometime after the concert, Ozone scored hisself a new quadrophonic sound system, and he had big plans on how the first sounds through it were to be ELP, but the stereo shop setup guy somehow managed to play some other band first while he was setting it up, and Ozone was devastated. Forever after he would sort of apologize, like an embarrassed father, for the poor violated sound system, sullied as it had been by some other band first. Or maybe it was for the fact that he could only afford two speakers for the quadrophonic system. I really can’t remember. These things tend to blur blur together together in my mind.
But Ozone-est of all was The Wall. He had this astounding mural going on that he was painting on one wall of his living room, all spacey and strange, with a sorceress looking individual at the center, and doors into nowhere, and stars and the galaxy, and things to remind you of the 2001 Space Odyssey trip scene, and Escher-looking stuff all twisted and strange. He’d be painting away, whenever we stopped by, and as the air grew smokier, and the evening got weirder, so would the painting, and he’d always be crankin’ Brain Salad Surgery, “Welcome back my friends to the show that never ends!”, double extra loud.
Finally one night after a respectable number of months the mural was nearly done, and Ozone was going add to the coup de grace, a kind of a little legend, to say what it was and finish it off. After after some minor debate it was agreed that “Stoned Is The Wall” would be appropriate, as that legend certainly reflected the work that had had gone into it, it sounded cool, “Stoned Is The Wall”, and what’s more it would positively put to rest the doubts of anyone who might happen to stop by and think otherwise. So Ozone started painting, and the rest of us continued studying or whatever else it was we were doing.
When he got done, he stepped back and proudly displayed his work, a neat little two line legend there in the center. We all thought it was pretty cool, too, and were checking it out, when suddenly I thought I detected an anomaly. I looked once, and twice looked, and the thing didn’t change. I busted out laughing then, sank back in in my chair, and though the fits and convulsions had some minor difficulty pointing out the greatest of Ozone’s masterpieces:
Stoned
The Wall
Ozone O Ozone – Is You Out There?
Author/Copyright: Tiger, of tigerwhip.com fame Date written: 06/02/1994