POINT ARENA, CALIFORNIA | 1971
After slowly, but steadily, wearing out the good graces of Palacios, and throwing a couple of bucks into the band’s tip jar, the two men found themselves out in the gravel parking lot next to the 442.
“Hop in, old man, I’ll give you two a lift to the lighthouse,” Perigo offered.
“Forget it, Charlie, we are taking the Chevrolegs,” Anderson countered. “It’s the end of the month and Burton has to meet his quota. I don’t figure the fact that you are screwing his niece is going to keep you from walking a line. Besides, it’s only one klick from here. The fresh air’ll do us both a bit of good.”
“Sticks don’t know from klicks, man. It’s all contour and tree lines from up there,” Perigo teased before realizing there was inherent wisdom in the offer. “Lead on, ground pounder. What’s the big surprise, anyway?”
“Do you really not know how surprises work? That’s just sad,” Anderson pouted in drunken jest.
“That’s just sad!” Gloria Lynne agreed.
“I have to admit, Floyd,” Perigo mused as they left the lot and turned toward the sea, “I didn’t get the chance to really hang with any RTOs back in ’Nam, given their propensity for walking around the jungle with a big fucking antenna. Was Korea any better?”
“I was lucky, Charlie, I got drafted out of college and ended up in the 1st Radio Broadcasting & Leaflet Group. ‘A Very Proper Gander,’ as Thurber put it. Ever hear of us?”
“Psy-Ops?”
“Machinations of a most devious and duplicitous nature, all told.”
“Far out.”
“The furthest, Charlie boy,” Anderson copped. “But it did get me thinking deeply about the power of radio. Isn’t it amazing how hearing a voice out of thin air can hold more credence than one standing at your side, yammering in your ear?”
“I don’t know about that.”
“Sure you do. Let’s say you are having a shitty day and someone, an invisible hand, plays several glorious minutes of Otis Redding. Something like that can turn your whole life around. Did you know that scientists are now saying we are nothing but vibrations on the molecular level? Now imagine another vibration is introduced into the system, resulting in a better, more harmonious tone. That’s powerful juju.”
“What about television?” Perigo countered. “That seems to gaining some serious ground on the national psyche. What about the Nixon/Kennedy debate? You can’t discount image.”
“Television?” Anderson exploded. “Fuck Television! I’m not talking about flashing shadows on the cave wall! I’m working on the spiritual level. I’m talking about something that seeps in through the bones, something that has the power to alter the spin of nuclei.”
“OK, you win,” Perigo laughed. “Where is all this going, chief?”
“I was a Specialist, E-4, but that’s neither here or there,” Anderson said. “This is it.”
Perigo looked up. Realizing that their talk had brought them to the base of the lighthouse, he was powerless not to scan the tower to its apex and back down. Anderson opened a black-painted wooden door and motioned his friend inside.
“As much as I use this thing as a landmark while flying the chopper, I have never been to the top,” Perigo admitted.
“We aren’t going up there,” Anderson clarified. “At least not yet.” The men entered a dimly-lit hallway that bisected the building’s bottom floor. On either side, an interior door guarded a half-circle chamber, giving the men the impression of walking into the tower’s respiratory system.
“Right, this way,” Anderson motioned to the left, leaving Perigo to open the door himself. “The light is on the right.”
Inside, Perigo was treated to the sight of a monk’s cell, that is if the mendicant’s order was dedicated to spinning records with a single-minded commitment. Against the far, curved, cement wall sat several tables built from heavy timbers evidently scavenged from a shipwreck in which the tower was held blameless. A pair of turntables and what he took for a repurposed amplifier and field transmitter sat among a scattering of Olympia beer cans and an overworked churchkey. Turning around, he saw shelves filled with music albums covering the flat wall.
“What is all this?” Perigo asked, suspecting the answer all along.
“Welcome to K-RTO!” Anderson exclaimed. “The number one pirate radio station for the Mendocino Coast.”
“Number one? You mean there are more?” Charlie watched in interest as Anderson powered up the desk.
“Not yet, my boy,” Anderson futzed with mysterious dials with the shining eyes of a zealot. “But I do hope to help democratize the airways, the way that the Good Lord intended them to be.”
Picking up his cherished copy of The Quintet’s Jazz at Massey Hall, Anderson placed it on one of his turntables as if delivering the Eucharist. Donning a well-duct-taped set of headphones, and looking all the world like he might call in an air strike, Anderson dropped the needle, and essentially does just that.
Suddenly, the sound of Max Roach’s drums thunders out of monitors Perigo hadn’t noticed were there, setting the pace for Gillespie and Parker to chase each other through the opening changes, Dizzy scatting, marking the jump in octave with the seemingly nonsensical phrase, “Salt Peanuts,” his incantation inciting inference patterns that when they collide, open a channel just wide enough for Bird to escape through, with Bud Powell’s delicate piano fills following him into the glorious void, all the time, Mingus sitting back solid as a mountain, ready to receive them all back into his imposing magnitude when their flight is finally exhausted.
“Far out,” Perigo declared, simultaneously meaning nothing and everything.
“Salt Peanuts,” Gloria Lynne, who had flown off to her corner perch, agreed.
Román Leão 
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