Late afternoon Wednesday August 20th
We arrive in Ashland without a place to stay and sleeping in the car is not an option since we have piled in most of our personal possessions into the Prius on this 5 week car trip. Russ has been kind enough to find us a room at the Coolidge Inn, just down the street from the cottage we will occupy tomorrow for two weeks. Thanks mucho Russ..really.
The Inn is quite charming and the room had its own bath and designer toilet paper.
We arrive at the Inn just in time for happy hour. Nice cheeses and wines, but when I tell the owner that Paula is really into Black Butte Porter Beer, off to the frig he goes and brings out a local IPA (India Pale Ale) from Deschutes, nearby Black Butte. Wow! What a great beer..I will take a case back to AZ and share it with only my best friends.
We met some nice people during happy hour but we gravitated to a couple from Carmel/Big Sur California. He was Belgium but grew up in SoCal and looked a bit like an old surfer dude. Gaston Georis, his name.
We start talking and I ask him what he does. He owns a restaurant, he tells us. It’s not just any restaurant I find out but “Casanova”, one of the best in the state. www.casanovarestaurant.com/ In a understated way, he tells me about the famous people who have dined in his place including Julia Child, who gave him only one suggestion. ‘Serve tea the way it is meant to be served. Pour the hot water over the tea, never place the tea bag directly into the water. " Got to love Julia!
We do some more talking and Gaston tells us he started his career as a professor at UCLA but always had a liking for music. He had written some scores that were used by advertisers and Hollywood. “Really”, I ask, “like what”. Gaston casually replies,“My best one was the score for “Endless Summer”.
Whoa! The ENDLESS SUMMER! The Bruce Brown mid-sixties flick that followed surfers around the world. The ultimate surfer movie that has been watched by generations ever since. Yup, that movie. Check out this Utube clip. Gaston is the guywith the hat playing the guitar and some kind of accordian you blow into. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GH1K23rAYOQ
Hey Shel,
ReplyDeleteThe instrument is called a Melodica. Jesse has had one for a few years ago. Something a bit more portable than a piano, though not anything near a replacement.