After we bought “the Farm” in 1984, the next task was to maintain it and the extended side yard that gently curved to the sidewalk and then up the hill towards Seaview. The first 30 years weren’t so bad, but then I hit 70, and my work clock began to slowly unwind. The City Fire Marshalls would always inspect weedy open areas around town and give us Written Notice that after June 21, they would clean up all questionable areas and Bill Us for any removal. Not a problem, I bought and used up many a WeedEater for 30 years following their input. And when the native Pampas grasses reproduced for FREE, what better than to transplant them along the fenced property edge for their bulk and privacy. And then they grew for 30 years – up and over the low front fence! Now it’s all I can do to WeedEat the BeeJesus out of them, hayfork them into the trailer, and Farm Truck the whole mess to the Martinez Dump.
©Peter Bray 9/4/2018 All rights reserved

Wanted to Be Neil Diamond

It was a simple aspiration, it was the late 1960s, I’d already made my break from the Military-Industrial Complex and had seen him on TV a few times. His “Solitary Man” knocked me out with its internal rhyme schemes. I listened to all his records during my Night Shift employment building up income after Cathy and Christopher went to bed, me moving ink against mylar, jewel-pointed ink pens, Fresh curves, ellipses, and technical illustrations. Then to Boulevard Way, Walnut Creek: “Soolaimon,” his “Taproot Manuscript,” “Velvet Gloves and Spit,” “Brother Love’s Traveling Salvation Show.” I began to write bits and pieces of my own. It was a magic time.
©Peter Bray, 8/31/2018 All rights reserved

Leaving the Lab

Leaving the lab, headed for home, then downtown to the southwest side of the city, good freeway-access, up a flight of stairs, a gloss-orange wall, wooden ceiling beams that I recycled, a gunny sack-covered office chair, Neil Diamond playing at the Greek Theater in LA, and I’m working seriously at my evolving craft: Graphics & Crunchy Granola Suite! Cathy was 5, Christopher was 4. 1972! Soolaimon!
©Peter Bray 7/18/2018
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Orange Wall in Walnut Creek

There was a gloss orange wall in Walnut Creek, I painted it myself. Up a flight of stairs with good access to the freeway, I recycled old wooden ceiling beams to make a set of bookshelves. I put a trademarked gunny sack on my swiveled office chair, had three workstations, a light table and a turntable to play everything I could buy of Neil Diamond in the 1970s. Later it became my home for a period of time, I was leased and unleashed at the same time, 24-7 and became whatever I could make and sell. Later it took 2 coats of flat white to cover it when I broke my lease and headed back to The Corporate Road. But for awhile I was that orange wall.
©Peter Bray 8/26/2018
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All the Verses I Could Imagine

First verse I was a student and an engineer. Pi-R-Squared was how it played and I sent my share of product to Viet Nam. Everything worked but out-thinking the enemy isn’t a pleasant way to spend a life.
So I put pen to paper and drew for a living which in time became an art, so the second verse was helping corporations sound and look better. Communication, graphically speaking. My group of one, 9, or 32 made the world spin better, and look better, at least for awhile. But markets and technologies change and I did too. The stage became a happy place. Publishing, Open Mic’s, chapbooks, a DVD, Youtube, a poem, a column, a song. All the verses I could imagine and then some.
www.peterbray.org/pedro
©Peter Bray 7/28/2018
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My Group of 32

In my second year there in The City in 1985, they were beginning their “downsizing,” but it wasn’t called that yet. I inherited a group of 32 graphic designers and production people. We were spread out in three locations in two different buildings. “Go meet your people, review their portfolios, and in 30 days we move from the 14th floor to the 19th.” 32 oak drawing boards, drafting machines, and waxers for doing conventional corporate communications all moved to the 19th floor.
Add word processors, editors, typesetters, photographers, we were a small circus. Add the Macintosh Lisa shortly thereafter, and workstations replaced the oak furniture, etc. In time we were a self-sustained Cost Center and down to 8 designers in 1994, we were proficient with FX’s and fast Mac Quadras and global, digital communications. A damn fine group of artists. Today even the building is owned by someone else.
©Peter Bray 7/29/2018
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50,000 Likes

Facebook reported this week I’ve received 50,000 Likes. To which I say Thanks to all those Friends, family, and the public. In a membership since 2010 that amounts to 6,250/year or 17/day! Yippee! Not bad for a poet/songwriter at age 75! I suggest getting over to youtube.com and checking out my songs:
Two Right Shoes  Colitis Blue  Buy The Farm  I Buy Jam  Dog Food Commercial  Can’t Find The Pharaoh (Quarry Song/Rooms & Brooms)  Bottom Back  Life’s Just a John Prine Song  The Box Top Shop  East Benicia Jail Song  Daddy was a Hard Drive  Methane Jane  I’ve Been Better & I’ve Been Worse  Laid Off American Man  You Are The Song  5150 Holiday
Even more stuff at www.peterbray.org/pedro
©Peter Bray 8/19/2018
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Peter Bray lives, works, and writes in Benicia and has written this column since December 2008.

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