Loose Leaf Notes

Bob Grubel, a musician and author of I Always Dreamed of Flying, is the reason I live in Floyd VA. I was living in Texas as a transplant from Massachusetts when Bob answered a letter I had written to Blue Mountain School, after seeing it listed in a Waldorf School directory. He, one of the early founders of the BMS, included a CERC Newsletter (later renamed A Museletter) in his return letter, which gave me a look into the tight knit homesteading community of alter-natives living in Floyd’s rural mountain countryside.

So, we came across country, sight unseen. Bob was one of the first people we met when my then-husband and two young sons arrived in Floyd in 1985. I remember that he greeted me with a welcoming hug, which gave me an idea of how Floyd living was going to be.

After some 38 years of friendship with Bob, I read his new book and enjoyed the references to the early Floyd back-to-the land community, of which I was a part, and to Boston in the late ‘60s where we crossed paths without knowing it. It’s a generational story told by one of my peers, whose life took different, yet familiar turns.

Random luck or guided destiny? Some of Bob’s songs came in dreams. His story is told in conjunction with songs and his development as a songwriter and musician (guitar and piano) who has produced dozens of locally recorded records and now enjoys regular airplay on Pandora.

Bob was a high school valedictorian disillusioned with the system, and a Quaker college student who excelled at basketball but refused to cut his hair and got cut from the team, which set the stage for creating music. He dropped out for a rock band, to travel cross country and to learn country living skills in a couple of intentional communities before landing in Floyd and co-founding the Zephyr Community with his family and others.

Recently, I attended Bob’s book signing and reading at our local library. He held our attention with stories that included lessons taken from a Boston voice coach who worked with Paul McCartney, Mick Jagger, Aretha Franklin and Steven Tyler, a large touring bus than Aerosmith borrowed, hitchhiking trips, and a big Jamaica Plains house the rock band rented that used to be a nursing home and was still inhabited by aged residents who had nowhere to go. Fast and unlikely friendships were formed.

The library reading opened with Bob leading the audience in one of his chants. He sang a few of his songs acapella and told their backstories. He spoke about being reunited with his old rock band friends after finding each other on social media, and talked about how basketball is like playing music with others because it involves trust and team work.

Today, I found myself flipping through the book’s pages and wondering, ‘what would have happened if he had agreed to cut his hair?’ Maybe this book wouldn’t exist. Maybe I wouldn’t be here in Floyd.

–I Always Dreamed of Flying – A Songwriter’s Autobiography is available locally in Floyd and on Amazon.