Reflections on GKSA history from Schmidty's vantage point: The coalescence of the GKSA
Sitting down and tackling this subject has proven difficult for this author for several reasons. The first is serious and permanent brain damage caused primarily from my involvement in the aforementioned association. The second is the involvement of so many radically creative individuals who all coalesced at the right time and right place in their lives.
One of the most unique aspects of the GKSA is that it has always had the ability to absorb new cliques. From my point of view it seems that GKSA is like this creative Borg that floats around until it finds another group of freethinkers and then sucks them up and continues on. There are layers and layers of creative cliques within the GKSA. First there was the Labco clique, which was itself layered with its different sub-groups. Joel and Debbie Ellison, Brad Walters and friends represented Wichita or wherever the hell their western Kansas flinthill asses were from (in all actuality they are from Big River aka Great Bend). Phil Whalen, Scott Finkledie, Travis Peterson, Brent Olson, Eric Burris, Chad Swiercinsky and Mark Goodie were already in a full state of Manhappiness. There was also a bunch of really hot waitresses at the Brewery. I'm sure they were all very creative, artistic, musical genius types but to be honest they were just really great to drool over while we attempted to make it through a game night rush. Some of the particularly sweet chunks of loving that got absorbed into our little revolution had names like Stacy, Jill and Christine.
There were two oddball fellows caught in the middle of this mess. Spank and Schmidty. Their physical resemblance to Laurel and Hardy was uncanny. Here is where it all gets a little hazy and mixed up to me. Schmidty was kicking footbag with Goodie, who introduced him to Tom, Booey, Williams, etc. Spank was taking Schmidty over to Ellisons house for after hour bull sessions if you know what I mean. Phil and Walt were having these huge discussions concerning Horticulture and Agronomy. Peterson and Ellison were making everyone listen to Scroat Belly at ungodly decibel levels. Schmidty was demanding that everyone listen to Bill Monroe and the great John Hartford. Spank and Phil and Schmidty started juggling butcher knives for sport. Mark Goodie was puking in the trash on the fryline. We were drinking pitcher after pitcher of incredibly powerful Barley wine. Eric Burris was living with Brent Olson on 8th street, then he was living on some damn tree farm in the middle of the prairie. Man it just gets weirder and more crazy from here on out. Schmidt goes to this party with new fry guy and blues aficionado Dave Pryzblo and meets Andrew Bond, follows him back to his house and hounds him to pick his guitar. Friends forever. Andrew Bond introduces him to Beth Watts. A little picking group is starting to form. Spank and Schmidty start jumping out of perfectly good airplanes for sport (Phil opts out on this one). Somewhere in here Schmidty gets another side job at a liquor store (good for him and his friends, not so good for business) Schmidty follows a waiter named Jeremy Marks home for another so called bull session and picks some tunes with a fellow named Garrett White who just so happens to have went to school with none other than Andrew Bond and Beth Watts (incidently, Peterson also attended high school in Olathe with Andrew Bond's older brother). So we have a whole new clique I call the "Olathe High" clique. The Olathe High clique introduces Schmidty to string master Caleb Gardner and his better half Summer Fields. Schmidty introduces so called labco cliques to the Olathe High clique and man the circus is starting. The creative borg we now call the GKSA starts sucking art into it's event horizon. Suddenly music starts to seep from new fingertips, Finkledei unleashes the fury of the Tokai, Whalen is wailing on the guitar, Williams it should be noted is actually playing keyboards at this point in history. Chad Swiercinsky (if anyone can spell or pronounce his last name correctly they deserve a medal) starts bangin on a banjar. Peterson is picking on his mando and obsessively gets addicted to episodes of WKRP in Cincinnati, but more importantly a seed is starting to grow in the back of his seedy little brain. It is starting to germinate. Peterson and Schmidty start passing these bizzaro mix tapes they make back and forth as well as watching all night WKRP marathons (since Peterson had every damn episode taped). Impromptu parties are breaking out all over Manhattan Kansas (lovingly dubbed 'Swamp Ass Jams'). Whalen's house hosts huge jam sessions. Late night beatnik parties in Peterson's Blue Room Lounge and Patio (which no longer exists now L). Blow out bashes at Bonds house. After hours at Labco turn into all night music orgies at Otto's ranch. Word of caution - Never, ever, under any circumstances get really drunk and head across an open pasture in the pitch black middle of the night, there is a chance you will walk right into a huge horse and you will suffer a certain heart attack. Epic biblical treks through the prairie to an abandoned limestone farmhouse in the middle of nowhere on Burris's tree farm (appropriately named 'GameHenge') where music is played in an almost primal fashion with people banging sticks on rocks and falling out of sky chairs hanging from trees. Man - it got weird out there. . . seriously weird!
One of the oddest connections occurred somewhere in the midst of all this and it concerns our one and only, true matriarch of the GKSA. All present should prostrate themselves and sign the cross at the sound of her sweet name, Joy Raccagno. I vividly remember walking across campus one day with Peterson and he introduced me to a girl in his school of architecture. She had just pierced her tongue. I'm not certain but I believe she was dating a fellow by the name of Reid at the time who actually happened to be a dishwasher at the Brewery and one of Bond's roommates. She was from St. Louis and not a member of any of the previously mentioned groups (except, perhaps the School of Architecture and Design with Whalen, Swiercinsky, and Peterson) so I deem her arrival on the scene in this manner to be divine intervention. Soon good taste prevailed and she dumped the Reid fellow and hooked up with Andrew and she has been mother to us all ever since.
In 1997 Ellison, Walt, and Schmidt made their first trek to Winfield. My recollections of this event are hazy but I know we were working at the Brewery because we stole…er…acquired two whole buffalo tenderloins, a case of ribs, an uncut slab of K.C. strips and lived like kings. I also procured a copious amount of liquor from the store and the party was on. It wasn't my first Winfield but it was one of my best. I passed out in the dirt next to our campfire and Debbie threw a jean jacket over me and I slept like a baby. I woke up the next morning with huge black boogers from inhaling ash and dirt while I slept but I remember clearly thinking that I was coming back and doing Winfield properly the next year. That meant bringing a tent. In 98 I know (only from photographs) that Watts, Bond, Joy, Labco waitress Diane, Stacy, Phil, Walt, Pryzblo, Karl, Labco dishdawgg Geoff, and a GKSA foreign exchange student named Ramone from Puerto Rico were in attendance so it is from this photo that I deduce that it was early winter of 99 that the legendary Missouri conclave took place.
In early winter of 99 the Olathe clique took me to the cabin of one Eric Schmidt (no relation except for GKSA blood) somewhere in the Ozarks I have no idea where except it was pretty. It was here that I met the full Olathe contingent. Caleb, Summer, Charli, Julia, Nate, Watts - there was a shit load of us up in that cabin in the hills. This was a party that to date has yet to be rivaled, I don't care what you say or think I was there and I know my parties and this one was kicking it. There are so many stories and legends handed down from this one party that I am sure if we knew the date we could access some star chart database and find that the whole planet was tilted funny or something. I am not at liberty to divulge much of what occurred, however I will tell you all to privately ask Andrew sometime about the "Green Sock Incident". It was at this party that I earned my favorite and most honored moniker "Quarterback Steve". That's right Summer, I got game and you know it. Team Schmidty rules forever. Now back to my recollections (cause here is where it gets good!)…. One quiet morning at around 1:00 in the afternoon Joy and I were waking up, having some coffee and casually discussing our Winfield plans for 99. I remember telling her my childhood dream of having a tree house that was shaped like a pirates ship. The idea was (and still is; one day when I'm an old man I'll have enough money to finance the damn thing) to have the main tree trunk be the center mast on which you would rig your sail or canopy and then you would build the boat around the tree. We would call it Noah's Bark (read History of Stage 7 and see how Noah's Bark becomes Stage 7). You have to admit it is a killer idea. It's also an expensive one.
Once we returned to manhappiness, Joy and Peterson started to correspond and really got the ball rolling. Being practical architectural types they scaled the dimensions down from my original daydream into something more tangible yet still had the theme intact. Our next problem however was the lack of a good tree or the abundance of too many huge big swampy trees in our first site. It simply wasn't feasible to build the damn thing around or even too near the trees we were stuck with so by god we turned it into a stage (again, see History of Stage 7). It should also be noted that although it is easy to design a stage, it takes someone with basic carpentry experience to make sure things turn out plumb and level. I am man enough here to say that our stage would have been really messed up if we hadn't had a master welder mechanic by the name of 'Ragin Cajun' Bev Hollars (who followed Schmidty up from his new Louisiana home) to get it straight!
The first year I vaguely recall that Joy, Travis, and I spent around 40 dollars a piece for the lumber and about 15,000 dollars of time and energy. The fun we had doing it then and the fun we have had since has been priceless. You all are priceless. GKSA is priceless. It is our thing, not some commercially generated crap shoved down your throat. It is all us, for us, by us. We're way more than friends after all the crazy ass fucked up shit we've seen each other do and say. A whole shit load of us got married to one another and or live together making this family not just ethereal but a fact. I love all you bastards and in closing I would only say that I am loving Mr. Finkledie (aka Curtain, GKSA computer geek) the most for creating this beautiful gem of a website and all of you need to bow down and humble yourselves before this GKSA holy man for all the hard work he has done on our behalf. And let us never forget our benevolent dictator KonzaswamPete (aka Peterson). You two guys need some kind of cool title like Grand Poobahs or something . . .
P.s. I know someone is going to write and say something like "you forgot this or that didn't happen then", trust me when I tell you I KNOW I got it wrong. I'm not lying when I say it's all a bit hazy. If you were there then you should know.
P.s.s. I hate to put KonzaswamPete on the spot but I know he has actual blueprints of Noah's Bark and he should post them on the web site!