LETTERS FROM HOME: SOMEPLACE SOMEWHERE BETWEEN BERKELEY AND RENO

July 7, 1994

Dear Carolyn,

Saw James Taylor in Berkeley at an amphitheater that looks like the house Aeschylus built. Like an updating of the ancient theater at Ephesus in Turkey, where someone whispering onstage can be heard from the 100th row. JT whispered and shouted plenty and did his funny little jig that passes for dancing. Of course I thought of you when "Carolina in my Mind" came 'round.

It might be hard to explain to a 20-year-old why certain people go see James Taylor each time he comes to town. This white bread, reed-voiced minstrel, so often in his past so wistfully lost and lovesick, still such a believer in the power of peace, love, understanding and rock 'n' roll. How boring compared to ganstas and Beavis-think. Pleasant pop songs -- DC complained that she'd heard many of them in elevators -- but where's the edge?

I don't know. Maybe edges become less important as age rounds our bodies. Less-polished outsides begin to reveal new contours and hidden beauties. Instead of new lovers, we are touched by things like constancy and old friendships. People yelling out, "We love you, James." Again and again and again.

Most everyone identifies with certain singers or bands at 20. But will Snoop Doggy Dog still have something to say to his fans a quarter century later? I hope so.

I remember a moment from each James Taylor concert I've seen. The first one was in Memphis more than 20 years ago, where a little girl yelled "You've Got a Friend" after every song. He assured her repeatedly that he would get around to the song eventually, and finally pleaded, "Jesus woman, would you leave me alone?" No. At the time I was feeling that way about a woman myself. Silly me.

At Shoreline Amphitheatre in the Bay Area, it was "That's Why I'm Here" dedicated to the people up on the lawn -- "Got your baby, got your blanket, got your bucket of beer" -- who keep him coming back year after year. A couple of years ago at Riverport in St. Louis he shocked all the easy-listening families with a ribald story about the joys of outdoor sex, and then tore the place apart with a satiric anti-Gulf-War rocker. "Big Mac falafel," yes indeed.

I discovered just before we left to go to Berkeley that DC agreed to attend the concert even though she really didn't know or care much about James Taylor. So afterward I suggested we do something she'd been talking about for months: Gambling.

Soon we were speeding across the state toward an all-American Fourth of July rendezvous with Reno, the Hummel Las Vegas.

I figured we'd lose a few dollars, DC would feel guilty and we'd duck the desert heat in the cool of some movie theaters. At first we went to Circus Circus, which has a midway where even kids can gamble on "games of skill" just like they do at the county fair, and trapeze artists do somersaults overhead.

Let's just say one person's excitement at the slot machines' siren call is another's over stimulation. I thought we'd hit the jackpot when we won some stuffed animals.

But then we went to the Peppermill, a more business-like casino where leggy women in push-up bras feed you free drinks and the slot machines make the door awfully hard to find. Turns out my wife, the tender keeper of parakeets and finches, playful roamer of wildflower meadows and tidepools, the Martha Stewart of the redwoods if she had the time, has a slot-machine system.

She thinks the machines at corners on the aisles and near the entrances are designed to pay off more often than others. She slowly walked through the room trying to get a feel for where the "hot" machines were, listening to the tootling of the machines and watching for payoffs like a hunter after prey. Finally she'd try one. If it didn't immediately reward her with some coins she'd move on.

I can't vouch for this system except to say she won $120 in a couple of hours. We saw a guy win $3,300. DC had this kind of goofy smile she gets when the local grocery store sells margarine for 9 cents. It is fun watching a machine spit silver dollars. Kind of a metaphor for the Industrial Age.

As we followed the Feather River westward on the way home, I daydreamed about James Taylor's final encore, where 10,000 people stood and quietly sang "Sweet Baby James" with him. Probably not the sounds running through DC's head.

Love, Sam