Joe at the parking lot near Panther Meadow, Mount Shasta
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I met Joe at the New Leaf Bookstore in Larkspur, California in May of 1996.
I worked on Saturdays at the New Leaf from 10 am to 7 or 8 pm providing short “Psychic” Readings. Joe had a reading. He was very impressed with it.
He started coming in and we began talking about interdimensional realities and spirituality. These talks started getting longer, so I suggested he join me during my lunch/dinner break.
I brought bag lunches in the early days. Then Joe invited me up the street to Spanky’s, a breakfast and lunch place that had a model train on a track near the ceiling chugging around the restaurant every ten minutes or so. We’d eat and kibitz for an hour or so.
He liked my work so much he suggested I incorporate so he could buy a share. I laughed, but I talked to a friend about it. She advised against it. If I made the company public others could get a majority share and buy me out and prevent me from working at my avocation. Or I could have a privately owned company where I would always own 51 % of the shares or more. It sounded too much like a business and I declined all together.
Joe was a client who was also a friend and to some degree a benefactor. He loved going out to dinner. He would take me out to dinner at a variety of restaurants in Marin County from greasy spoons to high-end places. One time we were having steaks at Sizzler near the Marin Civic Center.
“Don’t look now. Don’t turn around. George Lucas and his son (I guess) are behind you having a steak.” Joe turned around. Lucas had a pink Roll Royce outside too. “I told you not to turn around. Geezs, Joe!” He shrugged.
When I first met Joe he wasn’t working because he was recovering from a massive heart attack and triple bypass surgery. Eventually he went back to work – as an architect designing hospitals. He once said that if I knew how to operate AutoCAD I could get a job as an architect at his firm.
“That gives me great confidence knowing there are “architects” whose only experience is AutoCAD – knowing a design program are making a hospital – hmm. I won’t want to go to one of those hospitals because it might just collapse.”
He laughed.
“Well a lot of the work goes through me and then it all gets reviewed by the Structural Engineer.”
When The New Leaf closed in 1999 and I had become locally known and had been hired by Hollywood Types to consult on business, be the entertainment at parties and continue to do readings and healing work. It was all thanks to a two staffers at The New Leaf and word of mouth.
After the close of The New Leaf ( a recovery bookstore) I worked out of an office in Kentfield on Saturdays until the hippy-dippy chiropractor – I subleted from – decided to move his operation to Fairfax (west Marin). I had an office P/T at The Sonoma Holistic Center in Sonoma after that.
Joe had also become one of the three “Lotto Buddies” with a silly cheer. He once said that he would give 10 % of his Lotto winnings for free massages for the rest of his life. (I was also a massage therapist).
“Have you won yet?” I asked him.
“No,” he said, “Not yet.”
“You want me to take your promise of 10% on nothing but a future promise.”
He smiled.
“I think you already know my answer.”
When, in 1999 a colleague and I did a workshop on Mt. Shasta, the Lotto Buddies, Joe, my best friend (a female) and myself reconnoitered the campground where we were to stay and hung out in Mt. Shasta City and on the mountain.
We had three workshops there – 1999, 2010 and 2011. Joe was invited but did not attend. However we traveled up there for those years and then some but before the workshops.
Joe became a student – developing his skills as a healer and could have had a private-healing practice but decided not to go that route. When the economy tanked he lost his job and slipped into retirement. As a result of using an OTC nasal spray for allergies he lost his sense of smell and going out to eat was no longer appealing except for desserts.
Due to Joe’s loss of his sense of smell he became depressed and remarked while with the Lotto Buddies that “I’m just waiting to die.”
After falling down a flight of stairs at his house he decided with his daughter to move to the greater Portland (Oregon) area in 2010.
I visited him in 2011 and 2012.
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He was a great friend; a benefactor and he had great stories to tell.
He passed Sep 29 2017.
psychesweather 