Birdland by Weather Report / Played Constantly on Mystic Boatmen Trip

An interesting coincidence? In Sept. 2024, we went to Ireland for the wedding of my wife’s daughter Sarah. The wedding was in a castle in Kilkea built in 1180 and we had a room in the castle. We had the Ernest Shakleton room as this was engraved on the key holder and also on a plate outside the room. I think this was what got me thinking of my old post to gather my Mystic Boatmen each year for our “hazardous” journey in the Delta.

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Such an interesting time in my life brought back to memory by the key to our room in the castle. I was working for a huge international corporation in San Francisco at the time. In a situation that was not a fit for me. I was looking around.

All my friends were starting careers. Many, just out of law school. Most from my hometown of LA but a number of new friends from the Bay Area where we moved.

I was reading a lot of Joe Conrad at this point in my life as well as creating a Jazz Review Newsletter I sent around the Bay Area. All done at night and weekends. I knew I was not long for the big corporation. I stuck it out for five years though. 

Through this time, I was fortunate to find some great books to read in some of Berkeley’s used bookstores. I spent a lot of time at them over the weekends and when my sons were born I took them with me on a back-pack. 

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One of the books of Conrad I read at this time (perhaps mid -70s) was his book The Shadow Line. One of the great author’s later works, written from February to December of 1915. I read the book sometime in the mid-70s and it was on my mind when I was going through this period in my life. It spoke to me so much. Words from the beginning of the novel:

Only the young have such moments. I don’t mean the very young. No. The very young have, properly speaking, no moments. It is the privilege of early youth to live in advance of its days in all the beautiful continuity of hope which knows no pauses and no introspection.

One closes behind one the little gate of mere boyishness—and enters an enchanted garden. Its very shades glow with promise. Every turn of the path has its seduction. And it isn’t because it is an undiscovered country. One knows well enough that all mankind had streamed that way. It is the charm of universal experience from which one expects an uncommon or personal sensation—a bit of one’s own.

One goes on recognizing the landmarks of the predecessors, excited, amused, taking the hard luck and the good luck together—the kicks and the half-pence, as the saying is—the picturesque common lot that holds so many possibilities for the deserving or perhaps for the lucky. Yes. One goes on. And the time, too, goes on—till one perceives ahead a shadow-line warning one that the region of early youth, too, must be left behind.

   One of the most beautiful quotes in all of Conrad’s writing I think. It shows that this is a story about that magic period of time in the life of all the young.

For five years, when I lived in the Bay Area, I led a group of friends on a three-day houseboat trip to the nearby California Delta. I called the group The Mystic Boatmen and I had T-shirts made up with Mystic Boatmen on them in gothic letters over a pirate skeleton.

As the years passed, the boat trip got more popular and we went from having 8 guys to 14 on the last year of the trip. I was in law school and most of the guys on the boat trip were also law students. There was a mixture of my friends from LA and current friends from the Bay Area.

Each year, I sent out a flyer for the boat trip to see who was going to make it and give out details on time. The above is an example of one of the pieces I sent out one year. It is taken from the post in The London Times by Ernest Shackleton attempting to get members for his trip to Antartica. I use the exact same address in my flyer to my crew that Shackleton puts in his 1913 advertisement.

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A few images of the trip below

Top – Al the Wops in Walnut Grove, California is where we all meet for our first night dinner.

Next – The Capain (me) in green rugby shirt with Mystic Boatmen crew members.

Next – Seaman William Fraim wearing the Mystic Boatman t-shirt and (appropriately) a Planet of the Apes mask.

Next – A shot of the Mystic Boatmen on our houseboat. 

Next – The beautiful and exotic Lost Isle Club was always our final destination.

Bottom 2 – Captain Fraim. In his shadow-line period.