Fillmore George

 

Every time I think of George, I hear the Grateful Dead in my head.

That’s because every time I saw him that’s all he played.

He claimed except for his wife, he loved nothing better than the Grateful Dead, and I believe him.

With the walls of this tenement so think, we get to hear everything that happens in George’s apartment upstairs.

His record player grinds out Dead song day and night.

We even hear the giggles of the girls he brings back from the Fillmore when his wife’s not around, and then the ranting, raving and crashing dishes each time she finds out.

From time to time we even hear the pounding of police fists on his door and the hurried flush of toilet in the bathroom before he opens up.

George likes us, too, stopping in on his way home from the Fillmore when he’s feeling lonely or blue, always bitching about my love of the Beatles which I love as much as he does the Dead.

Sometimes, when he stops in, we have to fix up his bleeding to keep his wife from knowing he’s had another fight.

She wants him to get a real job, where he won’t get stabbed or beaten, and where he can’t pick up girls.

George refuses.

He says he would work for nothing just to stay so close to the scene at the Fillmore, and waits for those weeks when the Dead come back so he can work for them.

So I guess it’s a bit of a surprise when one of his work mates knocks on our door instead of upstairs to tell us George is dead -- stabbed on the stage by a jock from Jersey – leaving me to take the trek upstairs to tell George’s wife.