from Schuyler Ingle

Thirty years ago, maybe more, Adam would often visit in Los Angeles. He knew he could count on a room and a bed, rides hither and yon for God knows what assignations, food and drink and good company. This was long enough ago that Thai food was a new and charming evening out. Can you imagine?

I remember one such dinner with Adam at a small, new Thai restaurant in that Los Angeles gulley between Silver Lake and Los Angeles City College. The place was packed. There were enough of us in our party that several tables were set end to end to accommodate a grand banquet. I believe this was my first taste of Larb Gai. I don't recall how the story began, or why, but at some point during the meal Adam started in on a tale from his school days at Putney, the Vermont farm and prep boarding school to which the elites sent their children to be educated and to work the soil. Adam sat at the head of the tables and within a few words or sentences held our complete attention.

It was a story about a small cadre of miscreants sneaking smokes (his brand of choice would have been Larks back then) and listening to 45s on a portable turntable, both illicit adventures at Putney. He made real the peculiar world of boarding school, where you are liberated from parents only to be held prisoner by adults often less intelligent than you are. A German task master, both despised and imitated by the students, figured in the story. This particular teacher would ever extol the virtues of potatoes, and it was at the potato storage bin that the naughty ones would gather to smoke and gossip and bathe in rock and roll. Adam being Adam, there would have been a digression at this point in the story to explain the enduring virtue and importance of Paul Revere and the Raiders. The kids hated potatoes because they had to dig potatoes, a very simple quid pro quo. So you can imagine where they pissed when they needed to. The punch line, of course, is the German at dinner in the dining hall spearing a potato with his fork and holding it aloft to sing its praises and encourage the reluctant to dig in.

It was a simple story, really, but Adam told it with absolute control and authority, knowing from the first word where he was headed, laying down layers of detail and nuance exactly where they were needed, never overloading any one element, never exhausting either the tale or the audience, letting the laugh lines emerge without any effort or artifice. He spoke in perfectly parsed sentences, a magnificent flow of language. The story went on and on and on and we all sat there, hanging on every word. And when he finished the tale, holding aloft an imaginary pissed on potato and praising it in a thick German accent, we all erupted with cheers and laughter and applause. And much to our surprise, so too did the entire restaurant. Every table had fallen silent to hear the tale, to feel the magic. Adam lifted his Singha to toast the room, making what had transpired seem a simple, almost insignificant thing.