JAMES EDWARD WRIGHT
June 12, 1954 – July 1, 2016
Every time I fire up a hot dog or two, I think of my ‘brother from another mother’, namely one James Edward Wright, who passed away on July 1, 2016 – Canada Day – at the age of 62. Jimmy and I spent endless summers at his cottage, christened Pinecroft, a rustic, hand-lettered lawn sign to that effect, and bounded by the Bay Rd. and the cottage’s dirt half-moon driveway. It was located on The Bluff, a collection of summer cottages at Parlee Beach in Shediac, New Brunswick, a steep-peaked log cabin built by his grandfather, cozy living room with a pot bellied stove that often kept summer alive a few precious weeks longer, two tiny bedrooms, an enormous country kitchen with a picnic table, and a tiny bathroom with no shower. It’s gone now, sacrificed to an unholy generic suburban bungalow, to my everlasting sorrow.
Jim and I met at Sam the Record Man when future mutual friend John Poirier opened it in October of ’76 and hired both of us, and we weren’t that crazy about each other at first – we were more competitors than anything else in those first few weeks. But we shared a similar sense of humor of the absurd variety and a disdain for political correctness, and so it pretty quickly matured into what would become a 40 year friendship, without which my life would be infinitely poorer for its absence. Every Saturday morning, John would have us break down the shipping boxes and take the garbage next door to Medjuck’s furniture store, owned by the same family, where we’d look in on my astute cousin Thom McCarthy in the high end audio room, and then sit down at the TV’s to indulge our weekly fetish, an atrocious and poorly animated cartoon series called ‘Rocket Robin Hood’, ‘entertaining’ our fellow record store staff upon our suspiciously delayed return from garbage duty with Shakespearean-emoted dialog from that week’s episode. We gave John more than a few headaches in those days, but I prefer to remember it as Jimmy and yours truly doing him a solid by sharpening his employee management skills.
Jim was generous to a fault; I had my own key to the cottage, and could come and go as I pleased whether Jim was there or not, and I took advantage of it at every opportunity. On one occasion when Jim wasn’t around for a few days, I dragged down a 4-track recorder, guitar, bass, keyboard, drum set and mics, set up in the kitchen and made my very first multi-track recordings. We would open and close Pinecroft together every year, raking bags and bags of leaves off the spacious treed lawn every spring, then battening it down, taking the rented propane tank back, and scattering the moth balls liberally around the cottage rooms every fall, only to turn into the equivalent of an ersatz ‘Easter egg hunt’ again in the spring. For years, that spring phone call from Jim was my Christmas. Because there was only that rudimentary toilet and sink, we’d shower at the public showers on the beach, a two-minute walk through another half-dozen cottages and the parking lot separating us from the beach proper.
The author at Pinecroft
On most days, we’d lie on that blissful meeting point of sand and saltwater and blue sky for hours, the first sit every season a contest to see who could spot the first thong bikini of the year. In the evenings, we’d sit in the screened-in front porch on a haggard, saggy old couch swing and just shoot the shit, a few selected favorite tunes in the background, be it Howard Werth and the Moonbeams, Michael Franks or Sarah Vaughan, the huge maples on the property creating a canopy of green over the porch, leaves whispering in the warm, salt-infused summer breeze, or on a less comfortable evening, take a spin to the rundown video store on the main drag of the resort town of Shediac and rent a couple of videos, usually a comedy and a drama of some sort. Jim would make huge spaghetti dinners, you could eat the ‘sauce’ with a fork, the best I’ve ever had to this day.
Oh, the hot dogs? I had a little idiosyncrasy food-wise that Jim never failed to rib me on – I’d sprinkle a fair amount of salt on the hot dogs that we’d barbecue on the lawn with a little hibachi. Still do, in fact. Jim dubbed them ‘salty dogs’ in his best pirate accent. “RRRR matey, here’s a salty dog for ya.” I wish I had some better photos at hand, but these will have to do. At least they were taken at the now-fabled Pinecroft, that sacred meeting ground now existing only in precious memory. Miss you always, Jimmy.
Terry H. Gorman ©2016
Listen to ‘I Could Tell You Stories‘ on Bandcamp.
(words & music: t.h. gorman ©2016 teztunesmusic)
In memory of my brother from a different mother. This song was your parting gift to me, Jimmy. I wish it hadn’t cost you so dearly.
Dear Jamie to his family
To friends just Jim or Hutch
A rose by any other name
It doesn’t matter much
Today my heart is empty
But my mem’ries overflow
A 40-year alliance
He chose on me to bestow
Yeah, I could tell you stories
A hale and hearty lad he was
A ladies’ man to boot
But such a perfect gentleman
He’d think before he’d shoot
With such an air of graciousness
She’d think him undisguised
But when she chose to open him
A scamp inside the prize
There’s just so many stories
Yes, I will tell his story now
To anyone who asks
Fling open all the windows
On my fallen brother’s past
I’ll challenge his humility
Now he’s beneath the grass
A million stories lurked behind
That sly and throaty laugh
I gotta tell ya, bud
He was a joker by a half
But that cavalier exterior
Hid such a gentle soul
A lamb in lion’s clothing
Once you got past the show
But I could tell you stories
Yeah, I could tell you stories
I’m sitting at the bedside now,
His nurse has left the room
He looks so frail and breakable
The darkness falling soon
A hale and hearty lad he was
By anyone’s account
And now with every memory
The tears begin to mount
And fall upon these stories
If I could bring back yesterday
I’d drag it right along
I’d stay in it forever
It’s the place my heart belongs
I might have raised a glass tonight;
Instead I wrote this song
To tell a few old stories
He left so many stories
Friend, I could tell you stories…
Terry H Gorman Essays 
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