The next day Dave came around the lake from the west side by car.
David is a good friend, we saved one another's hides from serious tanning once or twice.
Dave was Kay Snow's nephew. He introduced me to the artist, John Snow. I became John Snow's studio assistant in 1965. Mr. Snow was responsible for arranging a place for me in Montreal and university art school. It would not have happened without David.
Dave brought me to the Okanogan in the summer of '66 and introduced me around.
When we where both living out on the coast in Vancouver in the 70's, David introduced me to B. B. King's west coast backup band that he'd been jamming with in a strip club.
He is a good storyteller and has some great ones he has learned from the Okanogan band elders.
He had recently returned from a month long pilgrimage to India to visit an exiled Tibetan Buddhist monk he and Emily have been supporting for twenty years. Stories of adventures in India.
"Since I have no children; I decided to adopt a monk."
David is an organic farmer, jewel expert (buying and selling), blues man, medicine man, devotee, silver and goldsmith.
I was amazed. Dave had a car and was driving it!
Even more amazing: He could talk, drink tea, and drive at the same time!
Of course he had a story about driving: A hang glider pilot crash landed on his hood and kicked in his windshield while he was driving a provincial park road on patrol.
We stopped at Dave's parents house that he had inherited on a site blasted out of the Okanogan lakeshore cliffs.
He played a little blues on the porch. I knew he wanted me to jam with the High Farm band but, I'd left my Marine Band blues harps in Toronto... click on for Windows Media Video.
We went in to Vernon and Dave liquidated an ounce bar of silver but, the pawn broker had trouble evaluating a Jamaican silver coin of the same weight.
He sent us to a coin dealer a few blocks away.
We stopped off to browse a vinyl shop on the way.
Dave had a paranoid freak out at a computer shop...
The coin dealer was not interested in Dave's San Diego studio safe story. He had a safe story of his own.
Fortunately, Dave got what he wanted for the coin, it's value in weight of pure silver the purity established via internet visual comparison and the posted value of silver at that moment. No scales or chemical tests were employed.
Business, as it was said, cannot take place without trust.
We went to the ice cream shop to celebrate the successful deals with cones and met three of David's friends at a sidewalk table.
They were discussing health issues and alternative medicine. Dave is considered to be a healer knowledgeable in herbal remedies.
But, he cautioned, their friend who was in the hospital required the kind of treatments that could only be had there.
I went across the street to get a closer view of a back country truck that had designs finger sketched in the dust of the rear window.
The re-foresters who used the truck told me that they had been having trouble with a bear. I advised them to put some food on the roof of the truck to get paw prints on it too.
When I got back to the sidewalk table the friends were still discussing health issues.
We drove to the west shore of Okanogan Lake where Dave and Emily's home is. David showed me some of his treasures.
Next he took me to his jewelry studio and explained how centrifuge casting is done.
Click on for Windows Video.
David, Emily, and I drove back to Ellison Park to pick up Mary for a dinner party in Vernon.
The cool, overcast, scattered showers had returned.
