David Sorrels

David Sorrels was a scrawny, long haired, denim clad, guitar picking clown.

David's mother, Rosalie Sorrels, is a songwriter's songwriter, from the tradition of Rambling Jack Elliot, Woody Guthrie and Utah Phillips.

Their kitchen became my second home - a place where one could drink Rosalie's homemade sangria, & be a fly on the wall, entertained by the likes of Jerry Jeff Walker, and Arlo Guthrie as they joined the ongoing parade of visitors through that home.

David & I had a penchant for sharing - whether it was George Dickle #8 whiskey, a new tune, or even each others' girlfriends (not simultaneously...) . David & I shared riotous times as we made weekly runs in his old Dodge split rimmed stake truck (Hezekiah) to the Russian River & Mendocino county. There we would cut firewood, felling dense overgrowths of oak, eucalyptus, & fir. We fancied ourselves as lumberjacks & drunkards - in all the best traditions of those two closely related avocations. Usually far too hung over to safely handle chainsaws & splitting malls, we would none-the-less tackle our work with mirth & prankishness, hauling back several cords of wood for sale, which would usually go to fund the next week's drinking.

David had a pensive & moody side - which was entirely unspoken. He was closed mouthed about his troubles, even among his closest friends. One night, while I was away during a year spent working in Santa Cruz, He went to another friend's house & borrowed a roll of electrical tape and a hose.

It was my late friend, Doly, who found him pulled off in his truck into a thick patch of brush alongside Mesa Road, the following day. He had gone to this spot, & quietly finished his quart of George Dickle, as he taped the borrowed hose to his exhaust pipe & then gassed himself at the wheel of Hezakiah. His death tormented me for many years, as I never had the chance to mend a very minor broken fence that had stood between us at the time. David was 23.