The Bartender Put Janis Joplin On

On November 22, 2024, I wrote that I met my older brother at Civic Center and we caught an L train to the sunset to meet our sister who was with our dad at his house. We got on the phone with our older sister sat on speakerphone in the dining room to discuss the estate of our uncle – our monther’s brother, who had recently passed away.

During the family meeting, we got signatures for the mortuary and settled on the date in December for the memorial. Afterwards, I got in my sister's car and we drove to our uncle’s house. It wasn’t hard getting in but after doing a few things we decided it would be a while before we’d be able to settle the estate.

We fed the neighbor's cat and locked up the house. In the car, we had a brief legal conversation before she dropped me off at West Portal. I rode an L Train to Church Station – texting with my other siblings.

When I got home, I was able to drop off the paperwork from the day's activities and walk over to Sycamore. I wove a sad story about my uncle’s storied past as a motorcycle owner, climber and local ruffian from the 1960’s to anyone who would listen. Tom, the bartender, put Janis Joplin on for me-that was nice.

I finished my sliders and beer before walking home and going straight to bed. I had restless sleep.

The next day, I packed to return to the house and my older brother let me know he would meet me. I dressed for rain and stopped at Four Barrel. I took BART and had made it to Phelan when my brother let me know he was waiting for me. I caught a 29 bus.

While there, we found basic paperwork and discussed coming back in a few days. I noted that the cat had not eaten anything, there was garbage and we needed to pay the utilities at some point. Then the two of us walked to Ocean Avenue through the rainy air chatting about how to share the path forward with our sisters and what to do about our younger brother.

At Phelan, he took a 43 back to the sunset and I took a 49 to Bart because I had to go to The Mortuary.

I noted that walking is hard when you’re in suburbia at times. However, my meeting with the funeral director was easy enough. When I got to Civic Center, I caught a five from Van Ness and I took a 22 to pick my boys up.

My brother was waiting there for us when I arrived and my boys were enthusiastic about spending time with him. was there. They got on a 24 and headed out to our father’s house and I took the bus to work, getting coffee on the way. Then, once I had dried off from the heavy rain and got ready to attend a work function.

This is an occasional series chronicling my life. This Notebook Analysis series is meant to be contemporaneous piece developed as an agglomeration of my notebook pages. In each of these posts I used my notes to develop my recent thoughts.