A Simple Ode

A Simple Ode

He was lightning in a bottle, a supernova that burned out too quickly, he was the sun and we all orbited around him and I’m proud to say Vincent Edwin Webb was my friend. He was entirely different and yet exactly the same as most of us, he was morally bankrupt and yet at the same instance, he had unapproachable ethics, he was an American through and through with a bloody vicious English accent.

I met this loon when he was a freshman in high school, he was my unofficial music teacher, definitely not with an instrument, but what to listen to. To this day, if I’m feeling blue, I’ll listen to my Vinnie Station on Alexa and it cures whatever ails me. From Linda Ronstadt to The Clash, Bowie, Tull, anything from the other side of the pond, he introduced most of us. Sure he was certifiable, yet one of the best read people I’ve ever known. Vinnie was so many things to so many people, he became legendary.

Besides a few years in Hawaii and a few apartments here and there, Vinnie was entrenched, or as he used to say, hunkered down, in his family home on Bowdoin, a cozy culture-de-sac in the College Park neighborhood of Costa Mesa. It was walking distance from the Orange County Fairgrounds and after his dad passed Vinnie ruled his roost with an iron fist. If you weren’t eighty sixed from Vinnie’s place, you most likely weren’t his friend, he was a fair but fierce ruler of his domain. I served six months for dating a woman Vinnie didn’t care for, and although we talked in the Telly a few times, I was forbidden to enter the Bowdoin Estate. After I broke it off, I was forgiven by his royal highness, and the crazy picked up where it had left off.

We talked of many things, Vinnie was not a believer and he had good reasons, at least in his sometimes altered mind. His dad fought in World War II and saw atrocities that in his words, weren’t human. His mom was but a child when the Nazi Empire bombed her hometown of London nightly for months on end. Vinnie came to the conclusion there could be no God if this were allowed in the world. We debated, at times heatedly, over this matter, but once his mind was made up, it would have been easier to change the tides.

In our late teens Vinnie got his hands on a Subaru Van, powered by a motorcycle engine, and to say it was small would be an understatement. It was a golf cart on steroids, but legal on both streets and freeways, and top end was sixty miles an hour or more. It was small enough to be driven in sidewalks, which of course Vinnie did often, despite the illegal nature of this act, but large enough to cram six of us into, including the six foot five, three hundred pound plus Shawn Wilson.

After years of hi jinx and misadventures Vinnie actually married into the family, taking my youngest cousin Jennifer as his wife. By then Vinnie was hitting the bottle quite often, tequila, and after a few years Jennifer had enough. She left the king in his castle and without her presence dark clouds invaded the kingdom. Vinnie struggled with his drinking, it had become a crutch, and he leaned heavily on that crutch. We talked many times about what triggered his drinking, but by then he had no interest in that thought process, he just liked pulling the trigger.

A few years after my cousin had departed, Vinnie decided it was time to clean out the cobwebs that were cluttering his mind, and he went after sobriety with the same gusto as he did the tequila. He stayed for a few weeks at a sober living home on Hamilton Street, I visited a few times, and after he had beat back his demons, he started to see the world differently. His strength returned and he took gainful employment for the first time in years, but he was still Vinnie. He got a job at the OC Fair hosting at the Weird Al Yankovich exhibition, and only Vinnie could go from stone cold sobriety to Weird Al Yankovich, and I’m not making this shit up. He wore a watch and tennis shoes, he hadn’t worn shoes in eons, combed what hair he had left and wore pressed clothes. The transformation was beyond my wildest imagination.

Like most addictions Vinnie stumbled again a year later or so and fell back into his cubby. He hunkered down, never drove again and used his only transportation, his bike with a whicker basket in front, and would ride to the local gas station for tequila and smokes. He lost all interest in taking care of himself, quit paying the mortgage and despite pleas from family and friends , Vinnie drank himself into oblivion.

He had no place to go and I caught him on a somewhat sober day, or in between drunks, and cajoled him into moving in with me. I didn’t have much, but I had a two bedroom apartment with an empty room. He didn’t have much left after the house was sold to avoid bankruptcy and gave away his keepsakes to friends. About a year before the wheels came off, Vinnie joked, as a nodule was found on his back. The nodule invited family and friends and as Vinnie said he had another head growing on his back.

He had the cancer removed but like his drinking, it too came back. My cousin who had loved Vinnie hopelessly and her sister Linda, a school nurse, visited the apartment often, doing their damndest to patch him up. He was still family and always will be. My neighbor and good friend Mike Murray lived three doors down and helped a lot as well. Those last few months were villainous to Vinnie, as the pain was taking its toll.

His second head, as he referred to it exploded at halftime during the Rose Bowl in 2012, the paramedics came and wheeled him out on a gurney. He looked up at me with distress in his eyes, and quietly said “sorry for the mess Dolan” and I could have cared less about that. Both Mike and I suspected the worst, he hadn’t had a drink in days, and as absurd as this sounds, when he had a good day he’d take a corker or two, but not on his bad days. I saw him at Hoag Hospital that night and he called me early the next morning. His last words to me were “get me the bloody hell out of here”.

They flushed his system that day and I never heard his voice again. There was a group of us at Hoag on January fourth when he passed, and no one like Vinnie will ever pass my way again. I believe his death certificate used cancer as the cause of death, it wasn’t, alcohol was. As I think of Vinnie now, I smile and cry, he was one of the good guys, but a long life wasn’t meant to be. He left me a few oddball items that I treasure and I miss him everyday. Whether you’re in heaven, Valhalla or tanning in a beach in your beloved Mexico, I hope to see you again Vinnie!

Crack Egg Out