My family moved to Roseville from the beaches of Southern California in the late summer of 1963. As a teenager it felt like an “end of the world” event. I had to bid farewell to all my dear friends, and, having recently sustained a serious athletic injury, I arrived in this new town, hobbling around on crutches.
When school started I naturally felt alone and depressed. As I made my way through these new high school corridors, a certain group of upper class men would follow me around, making fun of me, and at times, kicking my crutches out from under me, saying, “you dropped your books, crip”. They would laugh out loud as I struggled to pick them up. I said nothing to my teachers, the principal or my parents…I think it was a combination of fear and embarrassment.
All that sounds pretty damn bleak, right? BUT!… a LIGHT suddenly appeared at the end of that darkening tunnel, and, that light had a name… DENNIS JUMP. The thing I immediately saw in Denny was the complete absence of pretense. He was genuinely friendly and kind. He was funny, witty, and a little goofy, like me. His presence was both comforting and reassuring. I LIKED HIM IMMEDIATELY!… of course never knowing at the time just how much I would grow to love him, building a deep friendship that would last more than half a century... sharing a soulful path together.
Certainly the brightest of all the shining lights along that path was MUSIC. We both absolutely loved all kinds of music, whether it was Louis Armstrong, Latin jazz, or the Beatles? I remember the very first time I visited the Jump residence, there sat Denny’s sparkling Ludwig drum set in the family room. I was in awe! At the time I did not play a musical instrument, but within days Denny was giving me my first drum lesson. Because we lived just around the corner from each other, drum lessons became a near daily occurrence. His mom and dad could not have been more gracious, making me feel like I was part of the family.
Within weeks I rented my first set of drums from Stizzo’s Music. Over the months that followed, Denny was able to elevate me to the level of a “marginally decent” rock drummer. We even played several school assemblies, utilizing a dual drummer set up. This, I might add was before ever seeing the Grateful Dead or the Allman Brothers (two classic rock bands that performed with two drummers). It wasn’t that we were ahead of our time, it was more like, Denny could drown out the mistakes “I” was destined to make. Thank you Denny!
After high school, Denny and I would lose touch for various periods of time. But throughout our more than half a century of friendship, we always found our way back to that soulful path that we began sharing in our teenage years. In fact, the truth is, our friendship grew deeper and wider, especially over the last two decades. We spent countless hours in conversation, discussing family, music and current events, pouring out our most heartfelt feelings, and of course, LAUGHING… and I mean really laughing. Laughing in a way that only the truest of friends can laugh.
Denny will always be incredibly dear to me… and it’s not something that easily translates into words. To say, I miss him and love him seem like small brushstrokes on an endless canvas. So please permit me to use these final “words” to share something Denny came up with a number of years ago. We were midstream in conversation one day when he decided to give us nicknames… STICKS & SKINS… initially I was STICKS, he was SKINS, but eventually, those names became interchangeable. The idea of course was…in order to keep the beat going and the rhythm pulsing and moving forward, STICKS & SKINS must always come together. And come together they did and will again! Because one of these days, I’ll be taking that final walk around the corner, where Denny will be waiting, to give me one more lesson…
And it will be the one that goes on > FOREVER.
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