Richard's Return (AAAGH!!)

Wow! It's great to hear that there is skateboard activity going on in the wooded backstreets of Salmon Arm, BC. Trust Kill-Joy to ferret out a jump ramp and slider box in the least likely of places! Good luck with the renovations; I'm sure the kids will appreciate it. Just goes to show that sometimes the coolest scenes are right across the street. Like last night, my neighbour, Arnie, invited me over to look at some records he had in the basement. He had mentioned them to me last week when we were out collecting scrap, and I found my record player. The records, he said, had been sitting in his basement since he had moved into the house, about twenty years ago. The stack was all covered in dust and grit, and after some forensic examination it seemed to be composed of three separate collections. There were about twenty Polish sing-along, folk and Christmas records that my Polish housemate got a pretty big kick out of seeing; there was a small collection of classical music, including a boxed set of Prokofiev records from Time/Life books; and then there was somebody's collection of classic rock from the late sixties. These records were all scratched, but Arnie gave me the whole lot, and when I got home they played all right. The set includes some great stuff, like Iron Butterfly and Jefferson Airplane, and several bands I have never heard of. One record, however, surprised me in that it doesn't really fit with any of the groupings. When I was living in Victoria I found a Richard Simmons exercise album at a junk sale. Don't ask me why I'm fascinated with this dancercise guru--I guess he has the ability to move the crowd in his own special way, and I respect that. The record album sleeve was pinned to the wall of the living room for a while, and I think it drove my girlfriend crazy, because she threw it out when I moved back to Ontario. Well, last night I found another copy of this rare gem in my neigbour's basement, right in between the Jimmy Hendrix and Bob Dylan disks. It wasn't even scratched up like the other records and, unlike the Victoria copy, this one has the instructional booklet included! All I can say is that the Lord really does move in mysterious ways (one more time--now work those thighs!!).