Isaac’s last days were spent both with his Fiancée (Girlfriend🙏🏻🫡🤷🏼‍♂️) occasionally his rescue dog Loki, and the university aged son his fiancé had living with them. Meanwhile, Toni and I had just lost my Magnificent Mother on April 7, 2017.

Three days of whirlwind preplanned funeral arrangements ensued (for which we were given a fantastic deal…but this is yet ANOTHER long detailed tale).

We had already booked our trip flights and accommodation in Phoenix (Avondale) because it was coincidentally partly booked from the year before. And 3/4 paid for.

This was a private deal. We had been there several times before. We’re extremely well acquainted with the owners; family members ties, marriage, cousins, brothers, nephews…

NEVER would we ever have thought anyone from THAT MILIEU would intentionally RIP US OFF FOR THOUSANDS,

I’m convinced their justification met their expectations. Which were abysmal.

BUT live and learn

Or don’t

I never seem to 😒

_________________________________________________

Isaac’s birthday was January 24, 1976. His Christmas present was also his birthday present that occasion. Often, “big gifts” 🎁 get combined, so a rather costly gift might be shared between two or more occasions and/or gift givers which occurred fairly frequently.

He had been gifted a small drumset by her. That set is pictured here in trapset form, from the catalog; they are exactly what you see. The other photo was the first picture sent to us. They had never been set up. Not played. Never been touched except for moving. She wasn’t rich, so I bought the unused kit for about twice what it was worth because it was brand new. Didn’t want to get into the nitty gritty of the numbers. The whole thing was pretty difficult for all of us.

Below is the kit in the corporate publication for this manufacturer and in her basement before delivery.

Now I have four drumsets in my basement. And none are making any noise anymore…

This makes me extremely sad as well.

Nobody else in my family, even my extended family, has any interest in them.

The music 🎶 has been silenced by apathy and the pages of tyme are static.

Jim is weeping…wherever he ended up.

Jim actually was a “churchgoer” and was a regular congregant at the Catholic Church by his girlfriend’s condominium.

Isaac would have scoffed at the notion.

Circumstances have kept me from personally erecting a kit for my own use.

It’s very complicated for me.

Isaac would not have been deterred.

An era has come to a screeching halt.

Without so much as a whimper…

PEARL “ROADSHOW” trapset

Isaac used to play for hours in the basement of any house we lived in, with or without accompanyment.

That’s what all drummers have to do. All musicians, frankly.

Isaac was reasonably fit. He played high school football for four years.

He was the Centre. A tough position physically.

He liked his food though. And he was a big fellow.

Drums were not the first instrument that Isaac played or learned on. The first was the Accordion 🪗

He took lessons at a music school which was located on 14 Street N.W. immediately north of Kensington Road. It’s not anywhere anymore.

The “Alberta Conservatory of Music” which was owned and run by a couple who eventually became .insurance clients of mine.

He learned to read sheet music on the accordion and the bass guitar from that school.

He was a quick study of music, though he preferred percussion 🥁 to melodic instruments. 🎸

Again, the drums above were never used. Not even set up to use.

The set he used on stage, in the basements rehearsal halls, recording studios and on tour of Canada and the United States, was essentially half of my original Roger’s kit; he rocked them very hard and gave them a second life!

They’d have many stories to tell if only they could.

One would be about how my original Roger’s Hi-Hat Stand had “sprouted legs”…the walking 🚶🏼 kind…while outside of my HOUSE on the front sidewalk while the boys were loading up the van to leave for a gig.

Since I got the kit at my age 12, the whole kit had travelled many thousands of miles/kilometers with ME in “The Pages of Tyme”. Without incident. Of any sort. I have never overcome it. However HE was bawling his eyes out! He was extremely upset and humiliated! It was quickly overcome with the hat stand from another drumkit which I had, but it remained a powerful reminder that he needed equipment to play and had to take better precautions than that!

All of the once animatedly noisy instruments in my life and home are silent now.

{Even the music systems I used to listen to music 🎼 🎶 on have been dismantled serially as technology has morphed with a rapidity which has been increasingly more expensive without much real life benefit.

And the many thousands of dollars poured into electronics evolutions is unthinkable, in the glaring light of current financial and monetary transmutations circling the globe. We have little more to do than to recycle ♻️ for NO VISIBLE AUDIBLE or FINANCIAL gains. Somebody makes money from it though. And it’s not us…}

To be continued in the next instalment…

Sorry for taking so long on this one 😒