Many years ago, circa early 1980s, I took a job through a friend at a frame manufacturer just over the Manhattan Bridge in Brooklyn. The shop was located in a nondescript building on Flatbush Avenue within a block or so from Juniors.
The crew there was an interesting mix of people. The guys who made the frames were Mexicans, hardly speaking any English and sometimes throwing me a cold bottle of Malta. The girl who took the orders over the phone, Susan I’ll call her, an extremely overweight loud girl who was consistently broke, spending her paycheck on shoes. The other two “fitters” as we were called, as we “fitted” the art in matts, backing, glass, frames, etc., as required, were Bill and Rich.
Bill was a guitarist in a popular country punk band, that toured every now and then. He hardly ever spoke and we had very few conversations. Rich, a southerner, was a friend who I had met in another frame shop some years ago. (There’s another story there.) Rich was super, super thin and tall. He was a Southerner from Georgia. He got me the job. He was also an alcoholic who began his days with a super large cup of coffee and a Marlboro 100. Sometimes a donut, all washed down by the first of many Bud Tall Boys. Rich always kept a few Tall Boys under his table. By 3PM everyday, Rich was downright incorrigible, racist, and loud. I could never escape the daily 3:15PM Jew jokes. In Rich’s eyes, after a few Tall Boys, thought I was worse than the Mexicans who worked there and I was definitely not white. Funny thing though, if you needed it, he would give you the shirt off his back.
Anyway, we always kept the radio on while we worked. WNEW FM. One day a Mountain song came on and the owner, Ginny, she was a very high strung woman who always yelled when she spoke, quietly walked from the office into the shop and turned the radio off. I thought it was strange and looked over at Rich and then Bill. They both shook their heads to keep quiet. Thirty minutes later they turned the radio back on.
After many times of Ginny turning off the radio whenever Mountain played, I asked them why Ginny would turn off the radio? It never occurred to me to put her last name together with any members of the band. They told me that her ex-husband was Steve Knight, the keyboard player. She was bitter because he was never a full member of the band, just a hired hand, losing out on the royalties the music generated for the other members of the band Ginny was an artist and did some of the album art for the band.
Steve, at the time, after the demise of Mountain, was playing in piano bars. Eventually being elected to a seat on the town board of Woodstock.
