A Couple Don Gilbert Stories

Nothing deep. Nothing profound. Others certainly knew him much longer and better than I did. But Morgan and I worked with him, drank with him a number of times, and whenever we ran into him on the street, we'd stop and chat a while. It was always good to see him. Don always had some stories to tell, and anyone who knew him at all has plenty of stories to tell about him. I just want to tell a couple of my own that come to mind.

Don was one of those guys who knew everybody in the East Village. Bikers, artists, rock musicians, actors, street characters and regular schlubs like us. This had its advantages?if you were looking for somebody, or even a certain type of somebody, you could give him a call and chances were usually good he'd be able to put you in touch with them. I guess being in such a position also had its disadvantages?as Don made very clear.

My office phone here at the paper rang one afternoon. It doesn't ring very often, and when I picked it up, I was surprised to hear Don's voice on the other end. He usually didn't bother much with phone calls?he just stopped by.

"Knipfel, what're you doin' to me here?" he asked. He sounded like he was at his wits' end?though there was the definite hint of a chuckle somewhere under there, too.

"Whaddya mean?"

"Whenever you write something that pisses somebody off down here, they call me."

"Why would they call you?"

"Hell if I know. Shit. But every time you piss someone off, I'm the one who has to hear about it. My phone rings, and it's somebody saying,"?he adopted a Vito Corleone voice?"'Don Gilbert, please, you must help us with this Knipfel?'"

"What do they want you to do, beat me up?"

"Hell if I know. Mediate, I guess."

And so he would. "Mediation," in this case, as in most cases with Don, meant that the people who were angry would complain about me to Don, and then I would complain about them to Don, and that would be about it. It was a system that worked very well, and one that likely prevented me from getting beaten up on more than one occasion.

(One night a few summers ago, Don and Morgan and I were having a few beers when Don even offered to do a little of the beating himself. Well, not exactly. Again, he was a mediator of sorts. What he actually offered to do was run around the corner and get a friend of his who could very quickly and very easily put the fear of God into a slumming yuppie asswipe who'd been giving Morgan some shit at the bar. It never transpired, but his intentions were true and good.)

Usually when Morgan and I talked about Don?which we did fairly often, and have been doing much more in recent days?one story always came up. It needs a little background first, though.

We first met Don back when the Press was located on the ninth floor of the Puck Bldg. The office's front door was located just outside the door of the main elevator.

Now, the Puck's main elevator was an ancient contraption that still required an operator. It ground its slow way up and down a shaft that ran through the center of the building. The staircase?for those afraid of the elevator?ran from the ground floor to the roof, spiraling around that central shaft.

It was on those stairs behind the elevator (between the ninth floor and the exit to the roof) that Press employees would sit and sneak smokes throughout the day. Open one of the windows overlooking Lafayette St. for ventilation, and no one said a word. Morgan and I both shared more than a few smokes with Don out there over the years.

Well, one day, Don stepped out to have one of his American Spirits. He cracked a window and lit up.

The night before, see, there had been a snowstorm. Nothing major, hardly a blizzard, but a good three or four inches' worth, which still sat there fresh and heavy on the window sill. As Don considered the new snow, an idea began to worm its way into his head, and he reached out for a big handful.

It wasn't too long before he had himself a perfectly formed and packed snowball. The idea being this: the next time the office door opened, he was going to hurl that snowball as hard as he could, slamming it into the door just a few inches above the unlucky victim's head. That'll make their eyes bug out, he figured.

Nothing wrong with a little harmless prank to break up the monotony of the day.

Unbeknownst to Don, however, behind that office door (where I was working as the receptionist at the time), I was getting ready to step out for lunch. I called Morgan (who filled in at the front desk for me), put on my coat and reached for the doorknob. Once outside, I pulled the door closed behind me and turned toward the elevator, just as Don was releasing the snowball.

I don't know what caused his aim to be a little off that day. Maybe I was a bit taller than he expected. Maybe the hat was something he hadn't considered in his calculations. Maybe he was just a little rusty. Whatever the case, instead of hitting the door a few inches above my head and startling me, the snowball (now more an iceball) smacked me directly between the eyes with such force that I was thrown back against the door before crumpling like so much old laundry to the ground.

Don was kneeling next to me a second later, his wide eyes reflecting just how genuinely mortified he was by what happened. He uttered an endless stream of apologies as he brushed me off and tried to get me back on my feet. I was a little dazed, had a cut under my left eye and was still trying to figure out just what the hell had happened.

"I was expecting it to be an ad rep!" he said.

It wasn't long after he explained what he'd been trying to do that we both started laughing about it, and laughing hard.

And that's the thing, I guess?Don was the kind of guy (at least in my experience) who could smack you in the face with an iceball, then have you honestly laughing about it a second later. You knew he meant no harm.

He and I even planned to write a book together once. At least we talked about it one night. Even took down some notes. We were sitting at a table in the back of a bar and were a bit out of it when it first came up. It was damn good idea he had, too. Don and I had very different writing styles, but very similar sensibilities. He wanted to put together a collection of interviews with cultural figures who had been both created and destroyed by the chaos of the late 60s/early 70s. We had a good long list of subjects, too, but the only three I remember now were Evel Knievel, Sonny Barger and Charles Manson.

He wanted to call it ?And the Hippies Were Boiled in Their Tanks (which I though was a mighty clever twist on the title of an early William Burroughs story). It was making a lot of sense at the time, but after that night, we never spoke about it again.

Morgan and I saw Don for the last time just a couple weeks before we heard the news that he'd died. We had just left a local tavern and were strolling down E. 3rd St. when we saw him walking toward us. You could always spot him from a block away?he had an unmistakable, flatfooted walk. In recent months, he'd also been looking more and more like Klaus Kinski (that's not the insult it first appears to be). I think it was mostly the bleached hair and the suntan that did it. All that surfing, we figured.

It was never much of a surprise to see him around down there?especially on 3rd, over by the Angels' clubhouse?and it was always good.

We stopped and chatted a while about what he'd been up to and where he was working. Morgan had her camera with her, and she took a few pictures. He looked tired, we both had to admit. But again, we just put it down to all that surfing he did. He certainly sounded good.

As we parted, we all promised that we'd get together sometime real soon and have a few beers. It had been too long.

When Morgan developed the film a few days later, everything on the roll looked great? except for the two pictures she'd taken of me and Don on 3rd St. For some unknown reason, those two frames came out almost completely black, with just the echoes of our images bleeding through.

It was very odd, but at the time we figured we'd just get some more pictures the next time we ran into him. Sadly, we never had that chance.