A pure Chico memoir
`Rock My Soul: A Poet's Heart, A Brokedown Palace, and a Final Fare-Thee-Well'
Few books have captured the essence of Chico like Stephen Metzger's new memoir, “Rock My Soul: A Poet's Heart, A Brokedown Palace, And A Final Fare-Thee-Well” ($19.95 in paperback from Stansbury Publishing; also for Amazon Kindle), available at Made in Chico,
The Bookstore or from the author at SMetzger@csuchico.edu.
Metzger retired from Chico State in May 2010, after 30 years teaching in the English, American Studies and Journalism departments. (Subsequently, he taught at Butte College until December 2018.)
At Chico State, Metzger connected with librarian Jim Dwyer, hired in 1986. Dwyer had a scholarly side (“Where the Wild Books Are: A Field Guide to Ecofiction” was published in 2010, his retirement year and the start of his “downward spiral”), but also, as Rev. Junkyard Moondog, an activist alter ego bigger than life.
“You could spot him a mile away,” Metzger writes; “long, stringy gray hair, crooked baseball cap, smile as wide as a kayak. … he always managed to surprise — if not embarrass — everyone around him, while he somehow seemed impervious to embarrassment himself.”
More than once Moondog recited a poem while he “nonchalantly began to undress.” As a former girlfriend noted, “Jim didn't have any filters.”
Metzger intertwines his own story with that of Moondog, interviewing those who knew Dwyer. Pot and alcohol use didn't do him any favors in retirement. He died June 28, 2015, collapsing at a minimart on his way home after attending the Grateful Dead's Bay Area Fare Thee Well reunion tour.
KZFR lamented the passing of a “free spirited eccentric, outspoken, caring, giving, loveable oddball. … He was pure Chico.”
In 2016 Metzger bought Jim's old house in Chico from brother Billy. It became a rental, complete with a peace sign on the roof, and later shelter for spillway and Camp Fire evacuees.
Friend Lisa Emmerich: “People say he was a dancer who couldn't dance, a singer who couldn't sing, and an actor who couldn't act, but I think he really could act. His quin-essential role was the one he played every day.”
Jim's house is a memorial to Moondog, but so is this book. Pure Chico.