A heart wounded by Bishop’s passing

I was sitting in a room full of nurses, watching grisly slides of wounds when my heart was wounded by a text. My friend, Justin Bishop, had passed away.

ChicoSol readers might remember the evocative story written by Chris Hutton last summer when Justin had his electricity turned off in his metal sardine can trailer during an excessive heat wave. PG&E had been barred from power shut-offs in the case of non-payment if the temperature exceeded 90 degrees for three days. When Justin called me to report that his electricity had been turned off, it was close to 100 degrees.

Justin had tried to call PG&E but couldn’t get through to anyone to remedy the situation. So, as Justin’s friend (and former home health nurse), I reached out for help. ChicoSol answered our plea and the story was written. From there it got the attention of an Oroville City Council member and PG&E said, ‘aw shucks, darn it, my bad’ — and the power was turned back on a few days after the ChicoSol story posted.

Justin had bravely consented to being interviewed about his situation with ChicoSol and I admired his courage for doing it. He passed away Oct. 11 at 75.

Fridays with Mr. Bishop

But there was much more to admire about Justin. I first encountered him in my position as a home health RN. Justin was a thin 74-year-old man, recovering from a serious illness. For over a month, Justin didn’t have the strength to get off his couch.

I visited Justin every Friday for almost a year and his improvement was remarkable. I would schedule him as my last visit for the week, during the late afternoon. I did this because Justin was an artistic fellow who rarely got up before the early afternoon. By the time I showed up, Justin would be awake and caffeinated.

I came to look forward to these visits. And we became friends. Fridays with Mr. Bishop.

A first meeting

I liked Justin immediately. The first time I met him, I walked into his cluttered house where he sat watching MSNBC. After 12 years of working as a home health nurse, I can count the number of clients who watched MSNBC on one hand. Usually, they watch Fox.

Justin subscribed to only one magazine, The New Yorker. He told me it kept him sane. He was 10 years older than me, and in ways, I felt like I was talking to an older version of myself. He had a white scraggly beard, balding with a hairline reminiscent of George Carlin — complete with a wispy ponytail.

He had spent his life telling stories. He traveled the world with his two-person outfit that he called “Horse Sense.” He collected cowboy music from the late 1800s and recorded it onto several albums. Justin and his fiddler partners traveled from the 1980s to the early 2000s with cultural exchange contracts provided to him by the U.S. government. Justin kept track of all the airports he flew out of in a small notebook. He showed it to me, and it was filled with page after page of exotic places on every continent.

Justin received grants from the Department of State and USAID (the United States Agency for International Development) as a cultural ambassador celebrating the unique cowboy songs of the Old West. One of his stories got my attention:

He was in El Salvador in the late 1980s during that country’s civil war. He was scheduled to visit a city that was under the control of FMLN guerillas. His sponsors in San Salvador warned him that the guerillas were horrible people. When he got to the square to perform for the crowd, in rebel-controlled territory, he was happy to report that the FMLN fighters were very polite. He even managed to meet one of their famous comandantes who Justin described as a Che Guevarra type of figure.

Rich in memories

His group, Horse Sense, was well known for its story-telling of the American West. He shared the stage with John Denver. He headlined the first National Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko, Nev. Justin told me that he even played at Carnegie Hall in New York City.

In 1985, he received an INDY award for a recording he made with his guitar, banjo and fiddle with a full orchestra. Those INDY awards found the best independent music, and as such, the awards were very prestigious.

Justin said that as he got older, touring became an onerous chore. He had spent 30 years lugging guitars, sound systems, a banjo, a mandolin, on and off airplanes and travel vans. He didn’t have a road crew. He lugged it all around himself. “It just got to be too physically demanding.”

He also said that his love of travel meant that he could never settle down with a woman and have children. “It would have been unfair to them,” he said. In addition, he didn’t build much of a financial portfolio. He was rich in memories but ended up living in poverty in his last years.

But despite his health problems and his meager finances, he was never bitter about it. He had lived the life that he wanted to live. Telling stories, singing songs, traveling like a bard.

A promised cigar

Justin had called me a couple weeks before his passing and asked me to drop by for a chat. I had promised Justin after he got his power restored last summer that we would sit on his porch and smoke a cigar in celebration of his victory over PG&E. I had recently purchased two Nicaraguan cigars with the intention of living up to that promise.

I went home from the class on wounds, took out the cigars and aided by a dram or two of Nicaraguan rum, sat down to write this tribute for my friend.

In my living room, I dug out the symphony piece that had won the Indy Award, the piece “The Hills of Mexico.” The recording has all the things you would expect of it: strings, woodwinds, trumpets, percussion — but I also can hear Justin playing his guitar. And his banjo. And his mandolin. And his sidekick’s fiddle. And it works.

I also have an album that he gave me. Still in plastic. I wrestle with whether I should open it tonight, with the cigar and the rum … or should I keep the album shrink-wrapped?

The album is from the early 1980s with a photo of a youthful Justin Bishop taking up half of the front cover. Justin would want me to hear it. I tear off the plastic and place the vinyl on my vintage stereo.

Farewell, comrade. You did good.

Allan Stellar is a local writer who occasionally contributes to ChicoSol.

This obituary is part of ChicoSol’s Reader’s Voice series that appears on Mondays.