A true story of my adventures with a dear friend in this life and AFTER he passed over.

When I first saw him, I thought he looked dreadfully skinny.  He stood as tall as me, 5’ 11”, but seemed to weigh about half as much.  His glasses were thick, like a plate glass window, which made his eyes small.  His hair, full and unruly, looked more like the mane of a lion, the color of burnt sand.

He reminded me of my sister.

When I first met Mo, she’d already been dead five years; little did I know that he’d only have ten years himself.

When he told me his twin brother died a few years before and that was why he left his childhood home in Maryland, I knew we were meant to be friends – it’s as if we were to become each other’s lost sibling for a little while - I would become his brother – he my sister.

His father, a musician, carried a love of music deep within his own soul.  Somehow that love must have swum its way into the family gene pool.  Mo was a drummer and he played in whatever band he could, no matter his day job.  Mo worked so he could play his music, he worked to live – not the other way around. 
When I’d walked into the Mariposa Gazette for the first time and saw him there I immediately felt like I’d known him forever, I felt as if we were “twin sons of different mothers.” (I don’t remember who first said that line, but it wasn’t me.)  Like me, he bit his nails to the quick.  Yes, we were related.  I’d found my sister again.

Day in and day out for five years, we worked side by side, ate lunch, smoked cigarettes, shared our stories, and became best friends.  We were together eating lunch in a bar the day the Challenger blew up.  We watched it on TV.  Mo, moved to tears by the whole event, couldn’t finish lunch.

Though he built and sold ads, the artist lived quietly within him – every now and then he would show himself in the way he took a picture, decorated an ad, or played a song.

Mo was the first guy I met who could be as emotional as a girl.  Maybe it’s that right-brain, creative, feminine side thing going on.  Every month, like clockwork - it would be his time - and he’d bite at pieces of everyone.  Even I wasn’t spared.  A few days later he’d come back with his head hung down - you couldn’t resist this puppy dog.

Oft-times the people who came to one of his gigs (and I went to all of them) were some of the same people written about in the newspaper.  This one a drunk driving, that one a 5150 (toys in the attic), the other, a beaten wife.  A hard line to walk sometimes; Mo did it with the grace of a cat on the open Serengeti.

Once a week for over a year, we drove across the river gorge to Groveland, an isolated mountain town on the west side.  We worked to establish a little weekly paper over there.

Every Wednesday, we made that 100-mile run - me to collect a few stories - he to collect a few ads.  We roamed all over that historic gold-mining town staking our claims.  After we’d finished for the day, we’d drive up to his friend’s place, a large log home on a flat piece of ground in a woodland meadow at the top of a hill.  This was band practice – just this side of heaven. 

Tina Turner’s song, “What’s Love Got To Do With It?” would echo through the meadow on that hilltop, the sound of a strong drummer moving the song forward.  Mo played on.  He never missed a beat.  Ever.

And on the way home on that windy (like wind a watch) mountain road we’d listen to music; we’d sing to stars so bright in the skies above Yosemite and we’d be grateful that we weren’t like city folks; we were far beyond the glare of city lights.

The darkness would wrap us in warmth and not in fear.  We’d lived in the mountains a long time - the fear of dark had given way long before to an expansion of the soul.  There were no corners to hide within here.  Corners are for people who live in the city, who live in the flats, people we would jokingly call flatlanders.  Flatlanders are like engineers – they think in two dimensions.

Mo never cared that I couldn’t sing.  He only cared that I loved music as much as he did.  Besides he couldn’t sing either.  We’d stop so he could pee or I could pee along the long mountain road.  And as you relieved yourself outside (there ain’t no better way sometimes) the only things you heard was the road sighing as it gave up its warmth from the day or a frog tentatively searching for its own voice again in the silence of the dark.

I remember him trying to teach me – ONE – which is where a beat begins as in ONE-two-three-four.  Or it could go like this: four – ONE – two – three.  I don’t think I’ve ever laughed so hard in my life that night he tried to teach me ONE.  If it’s any condolence, I did learn to play the air drums real good.

Ellis - for that is his real name - soon became Elmo to me.  Maybe it was because he reminded me of Elmo from Sesame Street, all gangly arms and legs and straight lines, or maybe because I needed to make a part of him mine.  I think it was more the latter.  Soon even Elmo was forgotten and he just became Mo.  A name only one consonant away from Jo, my sister’s name.

I think of Mo a lot still, even though it’s been seven years since his passing.  Every time I hear the John Mellankamp song, “Little Pink Houses” I see Mo sitting on the seat like Ringo Starr, drummin’ his heart away.  It’s then that he talks to me and tells me things I should know.

Mo wasn’t meant to die; it was an accident, at least that’s what he told me that night in my dream.  Even today, I still hear him every now and then say something to me that I can’t quite get - or I catch a glimpse of his reflection in the glass of the sliding door, but when I turn, he’s not there.

I tend to think of him more like my angel, but not the kind with wings.  I don’t think he’s watching over me as much these days, ‘cause now he knows I’m safe.  He visited more when he first passed over.  Besides, I hear told that Mo’s formed a new band now and it’s called A Different Beat.

And sometimes, if I listen real close, I know I can hear that drummin’.