My old friend Jim Martinez went west last week.
We got the story from his brother, Larry. Jim had an episode at his cigar club: it escalated; he was hospitalized; it was bad. There was nothing to do but let him go.
He was 73.
Jim played a large role in my life. Hey, he was a large fella, nicknamed Jethro, the tallest in his immediate family — father Lawrence, mother Lucy, brother Larry, and sister Betty — and the joke was that the Martinezes must have had a very tall mailman Back in the Day®.
Jim lived large. too. While Larry and I and the rest of our gang were in college at the University of Northern Colorado in the early Seventies, Jim was working for a living.
He dressed well; fashionably, but not ostentatiously. Drove a Volvo. Your money was no good in his presence. And he loved a good party.
More than a few erupted at “El Rancho Delux,” Jim’s three-bedroom, one-bath, ranch-style rental on a rare handful of undeveloped acres in the Denver metro area. Hardly any neighbors to speak of, or to. A pub within walking distance. It doesn’t get any better than that.
The annual El Rancho Delux Welcome Back Summer luau in particular became legendary. Those free-for-alls recalled the parties in Jack Kerouac’s “The Dharma Bums.” I swiped Jim’s copy, which I cherish and am leafing through right now:
“Japhy kept wandering to all sections of the party with a big jug in his hand, his face beaming with happiness. For a while the party in the living room emptied out the bonfire clique and soon Psyche and Japhy were doing a mad dance, then Sean leaped up and whirled her around and she made as if to swoon and fell right in between Bud and me sitting on the floor drumming (Bud and I who never had girls of our own and ignored everything) and lay there a second sleeping on our laps. We puffed on our pipes and drummed on.”
The Martinez brothers, always a persuasive pair, moved into politics, working with the likes of Ed Graham, Monte Pascoe, Michael Dukakis, Ted Kennedy, and Denver Mayor Wellington Webb. I stumbled from one newspaper to the next until I realized that they were all the same newspaper, which is even truer now than it was then.
More than once when I went overboard it was Jim who threw me a line. El Rancho was like Motel 6; Jim always left the light on for you, sometimes for days at a stretch. If the spare bed was spoken for, there was a couch. The couch was taken? Plenty of room on the floor. No, your money’s no good here. You need some? How about clothes? Jesus, Shady, you look like hell. More chins than the Hong Kong phone book.
In 1983 Jim really went the extra mile — miles, actually, and plenty of them — after I broke an ankle as I was preparing to leave one newspaper in Oregon for another in Colorado.
I had a start date, an apartment to empty into the truck, and no way to drive a five-speed manual with one foot in a cast. It took several friends — hey, you know who you are; there’s only so much room on the Internet, y’know — to get me boxed up and shipped east, Jim among them. He caught a flight west and drove my truck, me, and my dogs back to the Ranch(o).
We hit Denver just in time for the party.
Jim was one of the many good Samaritans who put me up, and put up with me, after I burned through that gig in Pueblo and another in suburban Denver in five years.
He had his own problems by then, but found time to school me on the ROI of a creative hair stylist and a small quiver of pro duds, because looking like a werewolf with the mange was not helping the job search any more than my résumé, which had more holes than the Albert Hall.
I finally found another newspaper job, my last one, about a week before I ran out of unemployment insurance and Jim ran out of Christian charity.
Then time passed, and things changed, as they sometimes do when you’re not paying attention. Our paths simply diverged. We traded abrazos at our respective weddings, reminisced with other members of the club in ones and twos, here and there, and enjoyed a few those-were-the-days chuckles during a reunion of a select few of the El Rancho mob at Larry’s place outside Denver in 2009.
That was the last time I saw Jim. I thought of him now and then, recounted the legend of Jethro — maybe embellishing just a bit here and there for literary effect — but I didn’t know that he had a son, or that his marriage had ended. For a so-called newsman I wasn’t exactly up on current events.
In Jim Harrison’s novel “Warlock” a character who lives in the real world says to another who doesn’t: “Don’t you know everyone’s life is shit? You’re smart enough to do something about your own. Don’t be such a drag-ass.”
He also said, “Every time I pass the cemetery on the way to work I get the feeling we don’t live forever.”
I’ve read that book a dozen times. Own two copies, one of them autographed. Paid for them and everything. You’d think I would’ve gotten the message by now.
The most recent images of Jim I’ve seen show a smiling, silver-haired gent in glistening casual athletic wear, hobnobbing with various powers-that-be. La Eme meets the Sopranos with a side of Corleone (Mikey always dressed better than Tony). On social media, former mayor Webb mourned his old friend and assistant as “family,” dubbing Jim his “Luca Brasi.”
Jim knew about family, blood kin and the other sort. His father passed far too early, in 1984, but his mother, now 92, is still with us. He visited her every day.
Larry says there will be a celebration of his brother’s life once this unusually cold Colorado winter takes its foot off the throttle, a posthumous and perhaps premature Welcome Back Summer gathering.
Not at El Rancho Delux, though. Our old outlaw hideout is long gone, entombed beneath a jumble of “apartment homes,” though the pub remains.
And now its proprietor, the host with the most, is lost to us as well.
I miss my brother Jim Martinez. Peace to him, his family, and his many, many friends. Leave the light on for us, homes. We’ll be along directly.
Mad Blog Media 
Very nice memorial. And I don’t know any of you! But you did well here, Slim.
Thanks … it was a tough thing to write, memory being such an unreliable editor. Especially when the writer has punched so many holes in that vessel over the years. The leakage is prodigious.
You know, it’s a sad time for all of us with what we believe might be a soul, at least in this once-free country whatever that meant. I was never much of a rebel rouser or partier but as my 93 year-old mom keeps reminding me, we all meet our end. We like having you around so keep up your good work. It makes us laugh!
Patrick- you were probably friends or know of my dad Ivan Padilla . He was good friends with Larry and Jethro. Many times was Jethro at my house and on occasion the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band was there as well.
Nicely done, Brother Shady. I miss those days, and don’t. I’ll always miss Jethro’s shit-eatin’ grin. I’m thankful that we all – well, most of us anyway – survived as long as we did.
Thanks, bruh. In my case, anyway, it proved better to be lucky rather than smart.
Been that kinda week.
Had a bunch of friends like that back in my Rochester, NY days and still recall sleeping on their couch from time to time when the dorms were closed. Once, hiding my motorcycle in their yard while being chased by the cops. I had not seen the cop car on the side street as I got my motorcycle airborne at a slight rise in the road at the cross street. Fred saw the cop car and told them “yeah, this motorcycle went flying through here and headed down South Avenue” and then told me to stuff the bike in the garage for the night, so I did and walked home.
Still keep in touch with some of them. One of them, Bill Seligman, straightened up and flew right, leaving Rochester and his troubles behind and settling in Tucson. Sadly, he passed of natural causes a few years ago. I think at times beer is thicker than either blood or water.
Our gang has lost a few members. The piper must be paid. It’s miraculous that the tab wasn’t bigger.
Patrick,
I’m sorry to hear of your loss, but appreciate your eulogy. I may never have met him, but after reading your words, twice, I feel I knew him a little.
Take care of yourself and herself.
Michael Porter
Thanks, Michael. As one of our number noted, the good thing about the bad thing is that it puts us all back in touch with each other.
We didn’t always agree, and at times we didn’t even get along. But we have all this shared history dating back a half-century. Richard Nixon was president when I met some of these guys.
Now we’re scattered all to hell and gone — Colorado, California, New Mexico, Iowa — and despite the intimacy of the Internet we’ve still managed to lose track of one another. It was both sad and heartwarming to catch up a bit.
A friend like that is a rarity in life. I had such a friend, but he left the planet early, 1991, due to cancer. I was with him when he left. We spent many hours driving back and forth to Tucson from Bisbee for his chemotherapy appointments. That’s when he told me he worked his way through college being a jazz drummer. I knew he was a drummer, that’s how we first met, but jazz was a surprise to me. “Stella by Starlight” was a standard on those drives. I often think of Hank to this day.
Wasn’t Jim’s Mother the one that occasionally overfed your scruffy ass during college? Anyway, I bet Jim will roam across your mind many times before we get where he and Hank are.
Good you were able to be there for your pal, Paddy me lad. And yep, Lucy Martinez (and Fay Brangoccio, mother of Michael, a.k.a. Mombo) helped give me a whole new perspective on family. Didn’t matter what class of a raggedy old mutt dragged ass off the road and into their kitchens — these mamas would feed ’em like they were their very own.
Fay left us in April 2019, but Lucy is still with us.
Patrick, I’m so sorry you lost your friend. Your eulogy is so vivid and touching.
Thank you, Libby. Jim and his family were (and are) good people. Loved each other and liked each other, y’know? A rare combo, in my experience. Their dad was telling me this outlandish joke about a San Luis Valley sheepherder about 30 seconds after I met him for the first time, and their mom could and would rustle up a plate of top-shelf chile-powered chow in less time than it would take me to open a can of bean dip and a sack of Fritos.
Larry has a gift of gab that would leave an Irishman speechless. “Did he steal the entire Blarney Stone so?” And Jim was no slouch himself. There are snippets of him handling media inquiries for Mayor Webb still to be found on the Innertubes. Those press weenies can be super annoying. …
Awesome POG. Love it though I have no knowledge of the man other than your words. Hopefully you can spare some keys for mine someday, though I’m in no hurry to get off this spaceship! Best to you and all your pals and wow man you can make a jingle.
Gracias, ese. So many tales to tell from those Thrilling Days of Yesteryear, and I started out trying to tell all of ’em, too. It was turning into a historical epic.
When I heard the ghost of Edward Gibbon whispering, “Enough scribble, scribble, scribble, awready,” I consulted with Herself, who agreed with Gibbon, then switched gears, hit the high points, and cut it in half. There are plenty of other friends of Jim who can tell the rest of the story.
Jim, was the best I know Jim for 30 years he helped me get food and clothes for Dominican Republic, Hurricane in 1998, Today I found out he passed really really sad, God, knew best!! Your friend Miguel Lopez, the Cigar guy,