Camp Howdy

Martin, I love you man. YOU, and only YOU, can take take the realities I wrap around myself, and espouse, to everyone's chagrin at times, and then, go get the proof, and do all this, while playing the spoof. Yer a hoss, hoss.

"Through demoralizing and fracturing the body politic, they can impose their will using psychological warfare and the political alchemy of the Hegellian dialectic."

One of the greatest sentences ever writtn in ANY language. And it's true.

That whole Skull N Bones thing, I have seen many parts of it all, but, never this particular full length rundown.

There IS proof positive enuff in it all to make any citizen nervous . . . . my personal life, beginning in SE ASIA, and forward, tells me, the world is inherently crooked, and made of crooked stuff. From top to bottom. I 'spose most of you know about the seedy side of deals, on and off your jobs, over the years. I ain't preachin nuttin we all don't know exists.

Sometimes, it's better not to know stuff. But, I made my choices long ago. :GRIN:

"Give Me Pork Products, Over Mesquite, Or Give Me Contraband Goods."

-larue, '05
 

Striking accord with ukuleles

Published: February 3, 2005



Click this picture to view a larger image.

Peggy Reza (right)plays a ukulele while her husband, Douglas Johnson, plays harmonica and Bill Diehl of Arnold plays stand-up bass. Reza recently started the first foothills club for ukulele players.
Amy Alonzo/Copyright 2005, The Union Democrat




By MIKE MORRIS


When Peggy Reza slips on a leopard-skin dress and red "Lucille Ball" wig she transforms into Aunty Uke, her ukulele-inspired alter ego.

"I wear big pearls and look like Wilma Flintstone," the Copperopolis-area woman said.

Dressing up as Aunty Uke began as a joke at a Santa Cruz ukulele club Reza helped form.

She is now hosting monthly ukulele club meetings for foothills residents. The group met last month for the first time, and its next gathering is set for 6 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 17, at The Pickle Barrel restaurant in downtown Angels Camp.

"The most wonderful thing about the ukulele is I've heard every type of music on it," Reza told last month's audience of 40 people, some of whom played ukuleles to such sing-a-longs as "You are my Sunshine" and "Under the Boardwalk."

Reza hopes the Calaveras club will take off the way the Santa Cruz one did.

At that club's first meeting four years ago, 35 people attended. By the next meeting,160 folks showed up.

The standing-room-only meetings are now held on a bocce ball court.

While the Angels Camp meetings have a ways to grow, William Heath, owner of Murphys Music Company, anticipates they will draw new members.

"I think the next meeting will be a lot bigger and maybe we'll have to eventually look for a bigger venue," said Heath, who has handmade about 30 ukuleles. "I think there's a lot more interest in the ukulele than anyone expected. Nobody should be without a uke."

Reza, in a floral print shirt and sunglasses at the county's first uke meeting, sang animatedly while playing a cross between a ukulele and banjo. Her group, The Blue Shoes Band, played a few songs and led group jams.

The band has bass and dobro players, in addition to Reza and her husband, Douglas Johnson, who plays the harmonica and other instruments.

Johnson is a maintenance and restoration worker at Columbia State Historic Park. The couple has been married eight years.

Both have children from previous relationships. Her 26-year-old son, Arian Stevens, is a photographer and bartender in Bear Valley. And Johnson has a 15-year-old daughter, Shameca Johnson, who is involved in soccer and drama at Sonora High School.

Reza has given them both ukuleles as gifts.

She recalls her parents giving her a small mahogany guitar when she was just 7 years old. The first first song she learned to play was Ray Charles' "What'd I Say."

But her lifelong love of music goes back even further.

At age 2, Reza remembers being in a hardware store and hearing a man playing a bow saw. "I was so mesmerized," she said. "I couldn't leave him."

Reza bought her first uke about 15 years ago for $20 in Angels Camp.

She is now hooked on the four-stringed Hawaiian in-strument because, as she says, "it's got a happy sound, it's friendly, it sounds like the ocean."

Reza teaches ukulele lessons every week at a Columbia saloon. Her five students there are mainly from Tuttletown and Columbia.

She also hosts home lessons and will soon begin weekly lessons in Murphys.

Gigs with The Blue Shoes Band — in which she sometimes dresses as Aunty Uke — keep her going to shows throughout California and Oregon. And band members are planning a trip in a few months to ukulele heaven — Hawaii.

Reza laughs as she recalls the band's strangest gig — playing in the middle of a downpour at a street festival near Monterey.

"They wouldn't cancel the festival even though everything was blowing down the street," she said.

So the band sought shelter under an old gas station awning, where a crowd gathered to hear them play.

Along with being a musician, Reza is an artist.

She has designed T-shirts for the annual Strawberry Music Festival and the High Sierra Music Festival in Bear Valley.

And she paints everything from bar signs to ceiling murals.

Her next project is painting a 1940s art deco design on the wooden floor of a Copperopolis home.

Of course, she paints ukuleles as well.

"I just painted one like a turtle," she said. "It's great."

Reza has even written a book called "Aunty Uke's Cool Little Ukulele Book," that teaches ukulele students how to play the instrument. It's small enough to fit inside of a uke case.

"She loves her ukes as much as I do," Heath said of Reza.

In his Murphys music store, Heath has some pictures of Reza dressed as Aunty Uke. He said Reza's Aunty Uke costume gets her in character to play the ukulele and entertain a crowd.

"It's like Clark Kent becoming Superman," Heath said. "She's got the loud clothes and the funny demeanor that just screams ukulele fun."


Contact Mike Morris at mmorris@uniondemocrat.com.


Sierra Views is a weekly feature profiling various people and places of the Sierra foothills; every one and every place has a story. Have a profile suggestion? Call the editor at 588-4546 or 736-1234