So many memories flood in…Here are a few

Helping Linda care for the horses and looking outside to see a scraggly new guy, an ordinary sight, but this guy has a Don Quixote grin and is walking with a horse behind him.  Les is wondering if there might be a place for Josie to relax at the farm.

Les as a Tipi mate…Eureka had been up to his favorite pastime of licking cows’ noses and gotten a cut on his leg in the barbed wire.  Brian and Leonard had decided that they could sew it up efficiently, after all that’s what a vet would do.  Several weeks later Eureka went to the vet with a larger wound and was given a cast that went from his shoulder all the way down his leg.  We were told it had to stay on for several weeks and we had to keep him from running and pulling it off.  Sure!!  Daytimes were not too bad, but the nights were hard, listening to him trying to bite it off.  Leonard had taken a part time job at night, washing dishes for our evil counterpart S.A.G.A.  (the university food service) and I was in charge of Eureka.  Les would promptly appear each night to help care for my charge, regardless of what was going on with the group.  We’d talk and laugh about all things trivial and serious while taking turns keeping a hand on that cast.  Pup Dog was generally there keeping watch as well.

The Monogamy Talk…It was a hot summer afternoon at Jory’s home in Corvallis.  We were laying on a cot or something like that, on her porch shooting the breeze when Les decided that he wanted me to help him learn about being monogamous.  After I stopped laughing, I realized that he was very earnest about this and attempted some reply.  How do you explain to a free spirited bird how to be a wolf?  We talked for a while and then slowly dozed off in the heat of the day.

Reunion chat…Hadn’t seen Les in a long time and wanted to reconnect with this “new confident person”.  Humor had always worked so I decided to give it a try.  I was teasing Les about his “Rock Star” image and how hard it was to believe that from a scruffy potter and artist rose a successful entrepreneur.  Les gave me that wonderful grin and said… I couldn’t help it Sharon.  I’m a N.Y.  Jew and it’s just in the “genes/jeans”.  I really didn’t try.  It just happened!!  I told him that my drawback must have been that I was from Brooklyn and he Manhattan.  After that all was good.  The next morning we were having breakfast at a wonderful restaurant with a large amount of choices.  I felt overloaded.  Les came over with his bagel and lox and laughed at my identical choice.  I guess, he explained when you get overwhelmed you just go back to your roots.

Your roots are with your family now, dear Les, may your spirit fly free!

Riding with Les –

Stephen Cummings

Les ate oranges anyway.
Hundreds of them, oranges only, nothing else for weeks, wrapped in a shawl.

Just three or four years later he was gunning a stock Mustang, 65-66 model I remember, running pottery up and down the west coast.

Sprouts and tofu ice cream and big real estate deals and golf clubs.

Les he does have style.

My fondest memory of Les is from our last reunion in 2012 in Santa Cruz.  I was sitting on the sofa in Tom’s house when Les entered, came directly to me, and told me what a big influence my grandmother had been in his life.

I had forgotten that Les had even met my grandmother, who died in 1994, but I imagine that he met her in February 1974 when we were driving from Santa Cruz to Arkansas in Les’s Mustang.  We were going to pick up some Medjool dates in the Coachella Valley and my grandmother was living in Palm Springs so he must have met her then.

As I remember that 2012 conversation, Les said that my grandmother had told him something to the effect that “health is your only true wealth” and he said that he had always kept that in mind when making major decisions about his life.

I also remember Les speaking very clearly at the reunion about how he wanted his body handled after he died.  He said that he wanted a sky burial, which I had never heard of before.  If you didn’t hear Les’s description and want to know more about it, here is a link:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sky_burial