A friend Balder had been in the Marine band in New Orleans with, Matt, got out and enrolled at Georgia Tech. They'd lived off base together in New Orleans. Matt was from Georgia.

When Balder got out, he decided to go to Georgia Tech, too. He had the GI Bill, but he decided to live in Georgia for a year to establish residence, then attend as a Georgia resident.

Matt's father helped Matt buy a house on the edge of the campus, fix it up, and rent the rooms out to students. Matt let Balder live there for free for helping him fix up the house. Balder learned construction skills from Matt's father.

So basically Balder took a year off to decompress from the Marines.

He drew six months of unemployment, then worked in a pizza joint.

He and Matt formed a second-line band, Back Azimuth. Matt played saxophone and Balder played trumpet. A roommate and a guy in an Army reserve band played Sousaphone and trombone.

One gig they played was in Little Five Points. They played a Sweetwater Brewery 420 Pale Ale Pub Crawl, on April 20th, when the 420 Pale Ale kegs were tapped.

420 is the police radio code for a marijuana bust. The ale was rumored to have THC in it. I don't know if it did or not.

The band went from bar to bar. Beer was half price when the band was playing.

One of the bars was the Vortex. The entrance was shaped like a skull, with a spiral coming out of its eyes.

One Sunday Justin had a Vortex T-shirt on, and I said to Balder, "There used to be a bar with a skull like that, in Atlanta, and Balder said, "Yea--the Vortex."

I had forgotten the name of the place.

Willem de Kooning kept painting after he got Alzheimer's.

Has a writer ever kept writing after he got Alzheimer's?

If he had Alzheimer's, would he know it?