Jack Keroac sparked my curiosity for jazz music. At first I didn't get it. It was like music from the moon; all lit up but inside you knew it was blue. I had a friend Pat who was an American kid living in Dublin with his mom and dad in the basement of their house on Ailesbury road. The top part was always rented out. His mom was a cherokee indian. His dad was an ex jazz musician now trapped in a wheelchair and suffering from Parkinson's disease.
After school Pat would come home and he and his dad would play chess together. Occaisionally we'd get a glimpse of him in his chair through the opened door in the living room, frail and bearded, the room always with closed curtains and Pat would raid his stash of Jazz albums and we would spend late afternoons listening to these beautiful LP's from Oscar Peterson, Sonny Rollins, Dave Brubeck and Miles Davis. We would have lengthly, opinionated discussions about Keroac, Harleys, hitch-hiking and the American highway system. Most of my education, it seemed to me happened after school.
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