Suent Scientific had a quality, diversity,
customer service program Old Folks called "Suent HONKS," or "HONK
if you love Suent."
I forget what the real elements were, but Old Folks
called them Holistic, Omnivorous, No Bugs, Milady (the diversity
element), and Keratodontalism Forever! (fight tooth and nail for quality.
He also designed a logo.
Suent was the present participle of suer, to follow.
That was Suent Scientific's idea of leadership. To find out what everybody else
in the industry was doing and imitate it. That is, to follow.
* * *
When Suent Scientific sold the factory, APRF, to OFÉ, Optical Fibers Enterprises,
Old Folks modified the logo, and named it after OFÉ's premier product, a line of cable
they called bRIGHT mOMENTS, after the Rahsaan Roland Kirk concept Bright Moments.
APRF was the abbreviation of Atlanta Product Realization Facility.
Pronounced A-perf.
Once you can get them to call a factory a
product realization facility the battle is halfway won.
Keratodontalism forever? Fight tooth and nail for quality?
We put
the k in kwality? Was Old Folks career-suicidal?
No, Old Folks just didn't
give a shit.
He knew what he was doing was career-suicidal, he just didn't
give a shit.
From little oafs big ofays grow.
Rahsaan Roland Kirk
was a hero of Old Folks. Thelonious Monk.
Mingus, Charlie Parker, Fats Navarro.
Dodo Marmarosa, in his parents house in Pittsburgh, practicing, to keep his chops
up. Woodshedding.
Old Folks was woodshedding.
If he wasn't playing
a gig, or traveling from one gig to another, he was practicing.
Learning
his ax.
Ornette Coleman said if they don't like what you're playing they
will say you do not know your horn.
Owen Saunders said, "No gig lasts
forever."
Gigs end. You find something else to do.
Old Folks's
gig was ending. That was all.
The business cycle was fixing to convulse,
like a strangler fig choking a ficus tree.
When Old Folks alphabetized the list of titles of the books of his stack,
he saw he was missing a K, a Q, an X, and a Z. He sketched out a series of four
books called Racist, Sexist, Homophobe, Shirker: A Book a Month, Posted Online,
Daily.
This was either very foolhardy or very brave.
But he really
did do it.