Discussion Topic |
|
This thread has been locked |
Patrick Oliver
Boulder climber
Fruita, Colorado
|
|
|
Topic Author's Original Post - Aug 14, 2014 - 06:10pm PT
|
August 7 I gave a show in Boulder, and while there I visited my friend Dave Rearick who is making very good progress after a stroke. I then visited Mort Hempel, another lifelong friend, who has Parkinson's and lives at Manor Care in Boulder, not in good shape but still a very good memory and sense of humor. I remember in about '67 when Mort and I climbed the Left Side of Reed with Chuck Pratt, how strong Mort was, and then music he performed so beautifully around the campfire or back at his apartment in Berkeley. I frightened him one evening when I showed up at his door with my face covered in black train smoke from riding the freights... Mort and I did any number of recording sessions together. Finally he moved to Boulder and lived with me for a time... until he found housing. He was destined to stay in Boulder.
|
|
Rollover
climber
Gross Vegas
|
|
|
Aug 14, 2014 - 06:14pm PT
|
Welcome back Patrick!!!
Life does indeed...
|
|
Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
|
|
|
Aug 14, 2014 - 06:27pm PT
|
It's true, anyone who ever heard Mort play and sing will never forget it. I was lucky enough to hear him in Berkeley in the late 1960's.
It's good of you Pat to visit both of them.
|
|
jgill
Boulder climber
Colorado
|
|
|
Aug 14, 2014 - 09:16pm PT
|
We all fade with time, but Dave, who is eighty-two, still resembles the sharp, witty mathematics professor I remember from half a century ago. We talked recently about our careers and how we both enjoyed teaching complex variables to undergraduates, and how our mutual attempts to implement modular, self-paced formats for freshman math courses failed to produce desired results.
Over fifty years ago Dave and I practiced pressing handstands on the twenty foot square cement slab in the Climbers' Campground in the Tetons, an unsuccessful Park Service experiment that was shut down shortly thereafter and plowed under, so there is virtually no trace of it today - except for the cement slab, hidden under a blanket of pine needles.
|
|
Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
|
|
|
Aug 14, 2014 - 10:52pm PT
|
Pat gave a great slideshow by the way in which jgill was a prominent feature. Mostly though I enjoyed his remembrances of Layton. If I closed my eyes, I could imagine Layton was right there.
Thanks Pat!
|
|
Patrick Oliver
Boulder climber
Fruita, Colorado
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - Aug 15, 2014 - 12:37am PT
|
Thanks so much, Jan. It was a different type of show, a little
summary of the book I have been trying to write. These people all
have meant so very much to me.
|
|
couchmaster
climber
|
|
|
Aug 15, 2014 - 08:26am PT
|
One of the joys of the digital age is that there would be 20 camera phone U-Tube or Vimeo videos (or more) of Mort Hempel if he was playing these days.
Anyone have anything ?
|
|
survival
Big Wall climber
Terrapin Station
|
|
|
Aug 15, 2014 - 10:30am PT
|
Looks like no one has a recording? Too bad.
Couch is right, these days so much more (and less worthy) stuff is recorded.
Example, back in the day I jealously hoarded every exposure on a roll of film, 2/3 of which were sh#t anyway. Many of my best climbs are completely undocumented, which is ok since most folks don't care, heh.
Now I snap away with my digital and have absolutely no trouble coming up with lots of decent images and just easily deleting the rest.
*sigh* some things are better these days, some things never will be....
|
|
goatboy smellz
climber
लघिमा
|
|
|
Aug 15, 2014 - 03:05pm PT
|
Hey Pat, sorry to miss the show in Boulder.
Like everyone else said above, would be cool to hear those sessions you recorded with Mort.
|
|
donini
Trad climber
Ouray, Colorado
|
|
|
Aug 15, 2014 - 03:32pm PT
|
The renewal of old friendships is a soothing balm.
|
|
PhilG
Trad climber
The Circuit, Tonasket WA
|
|
|
Aug 15, 2014 - 04:35pm PT
|
Welcome back indeed. I was thinking of you the other day. Worried. I know how quickly life can change us these days.
Good to hear from you.
|
|
guido
Trad climber
Santa Cruz/New Zealand/South Pacific
|
|
|
Aug 15, 2014 - 07:04pm PT
|
Several years ago Mort sent me several CD's of his music as I wished to share it with some of our old gang. I will endeavor to post some songs up in the near future. It was a Golden Era for many of us and the recollections of Teton Tea parties and Mort serenading us deep into the evening on many occasions is forever etched into my little old mind.
Mort and the beautiful and soulful Ms Judy
|
|
Patrick Oliver
Boulder climber
Fruita, Colorado
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - Aug 16, 2014 - 11:04pm PT
|
Oh yes yes I have all sorts of recordings Mort and I made together but also some of his earlier stuff and some tapes he made in some home studio. In fact, his later studio recordings, where he tried to capture the old folk days, are not very good quality. I think he was nervous in that studio environment and did not have his great old voice. He sings a bit off key at times, yet still he is great. In his day, had he not run into the tough days he suffered through, he might have been a major star. He had flawless pitch back then and a certain tenor and intonation that had real beauty and power.
|
|
Evel
Trad climber
Nedsterdam CO
|
|
|
Aug 17, 2014 - 07:46am PT
|
Thanks for a wonderful evening Pat. Inspired my pal and I to go right away into Eldo and make a moon-lit climb or two.
|
|
FRUMY
Trad climber
Bishop,CA
|
|
|
Aug 17, 2014 - 07:58am PT
|
Thanks for starting this tread.
|
|
David Knopp
Trad climber
CA
|
|
|
Aug 17, 2014 - 10:37am PT
|
wow i'd love to hear some of Mr. Hempel's music...
|
|
Rick A
climber
Boulder, Colorado
|
|
|
Aug 18, 2014 - 05:48am PT
|
Pat,
Damn, life intervened and caused me to miss your slide show.
Glad to hear you have a new book project. Life moves on, but there will never be a time like you guys had in the 50s and 60s in Eldo, the Valley and the Tetons. Important to capture that era now.
Rick
|
|
Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
|
|
|
Aug 18, 2014 - 08:32am PT
|
That's so true! And nobody has worked harder to capture it than Pat. I keep telling him to take good care of himself so that he can keep doing it for a long time to come.
|
|
Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
|
|
|
Aug 18, 2014 - 08:49am PT
|
Pat, in the end what do we really have other than family and friends?
You've had that in spades and I appreciate your sharing of your riches.
|
|
Patrick Oliver
Boulder climber
Fruita, Colorado
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - Aug 18, 2014 - 11:19am PT
|
Thank you dear Jan, and thanks Rick. I looked for you at the
show. Strangely very few of my closest friends were able
to be there, but then I made the acquaintance of quite a few
people I would not have known otherwise.
I remember, Rick, so well when I took you and Gerry on that
magical mystery tour through the secret cavern under the
river. I have not gone there since then. One day we should do
it again, for old time sake, if I still am able to find
the entrance...
I try to work on my book and have worked on it for 8 or is
it 10 years now, and it has in it good writing I believe, some
of my best, but I have difficulty when I try to imagine how to
pull it all together, how it might ultimately coalesce. I have
trouble with whom the audience
might be. At times I think it should be for non-climbers as well
as climbers and perhaps for those who never knew Eldorado or Layton
Kor.... I want it to be also for people who might like to delve
my nostalgia, to walk back through those portals into
a golden era of time.... I often feel rather astonished I was so blessed
to have individuals such as Layton, Rearick, Royal, Pratt, Higgins,
Kamps, and Gill as my friends. They were the best of their time, bar
none... I also knew such grand and great spirits as Goldstone and
Greg Lowe and watched from a distance with awe the noble Stannard,
king of the Gunks.... Barry Bates, a beautiful spirit with whom I
bouldered in Yosemite in the late '60s, even Bridwell with whom I
did a number of climbs and with whom I bouldered.... It sometimes
feels now that I cling to life, as it passes so very quickly....
Of late I have been in a dark place, where I think of the evil ISIS
people and their murders of young people, unarmed people, helpless
and aged people, just because those people are not their same
religion. When I think of all the peace and beauty we enjoy it almost
feels as though we trifle with life, or should I say I trifle with
life. Why am I not out there on the front lines, somehow, of such a
war? Crippled in health somewhat should be no excuse, really.
My art seems so trivial in comparison to a young, tender Iraqi life....
Sorry for that digression.
|
|
|
SuperTopo on the Web
|
Let us know!