I once knew a guy...

By A.E. Bayne

Certain people impact our lives without even meaning to do so. They are not people with whom we share childhood memories, become close friends, nor good neighbors; rather, they are those who drop into our lives, seemingly from the ether, and blow our minds, cascading us forward toward a new way of thinking or understanding. They have come into my life, these unlikely guides. There was the rebellious nun, Sr. Helen, who saved my soul after a serious bout of clinical depression during my freshman year in high school. In Blacksburg, it was Tim, a graduating college senior, so terrified of what lay ahead of him that he teetered in the moment by talking with me for four hours about Buddhism on a knoll overlooking College Avenue. Later, Rebecca, the chain smoking psychic, taught me about grieving one evening over beading and beer. Then, there was this man.

I once knew a guy named Jimmy Kola, a man with considerable charisma seasoned with a hint of insanity. Jimmy was a shaman of sorts, playing surf music for the local college radio station into the wee hours of the morning, and eeking out a living by trading his jewelry and doing odd jobs around town. He was a person whom I understood immediately would be an adventure in the knowing.

To the casual observer, Jimmy looked like a resplendently bejeweled and wildly hirsute counterculture hippy: the Green Man incarnate. A highly decorated soldier of the Wastelands, Jimmy wove bracelets up his arms and hung heavy contraptions of copper and clay from his neck. Multicolored tribal beads and copper twining linked the piercings that perforated his earlobes to his prominently bushy beard. On any given day, one might watch him pedal his battered and buckling bicycle barefoot through the center of town. I never saw him with shoes on, even when he came into the co-op for food. Jimmy’s clothes were always a mish-mash of textures and styles: one day a faded flannel shirt and dirt smudged chinos; another, a dashiki and shredded denim shorts. Whatever the fashion, he was instantly recognizable, even as he remained on society’s fringe.

Jimmy ran with the Kola family, jewelry makers by trade, a nomadic group. Legend had it that the family had been living out of authentic teepees in the mountains of West Virginia, but Jimmy ended up in Kent after hooking up with a cat named Jexo who ran a local art gallery, drum circle and children’s theater. Sometimes Jexo would take off for Maine or Canada to pick blueberries with the migrant workers, and Jimmy would join him for the extra cash and commradare. Or maybe it was the other way around, being that Jimmy was the nomad of the two. Jimmy’s family travelled through Kent from time to time, but most often he maintained an active social life with people from the co-op and shops in town.



I first met Jimmy while working behind the counter at
Kent Natural Food Cooperative. Already a familiar member of the co-op’s inner circle, he padded in on dusty feet one day to collect profits for his jewelry that was on display. The jewelry in the case had ensnared me on my first visit to the co-op, intricate pieces wrought with a heavy hand and an eye for detail. Copper coils deftly encircled rough agate and crystal stones, snaking back and looping through subtly mottled earth colored beads. The pieces were not gaudy, yet they had presence. Perhaps it was the natural elements; or perhaps it was the hand that crafted them, for Jimmy oozed a kind of sensual natural grace and wisdom. In any case, I was inspired by the jewelry, wanted to purchase a piece for myself, and was awed by the man who had dreamed and designed the artistic loops and twirls that gleamed under the glass countertop.

We didn’t talk about anything significant during our first encounter, though I did let him know that I admired his artwork and would like to eventually buy a piece for myself. The hair on Jimmy’s face shifted about and I knew that he was smiling appreciatively. He took the money from his recent sale out of the cash register and bought a few sparse groceries, some hummus and fruit, a little bread. I watched as he stopped in the back room to chat with Brian and Amie, both of whom knew him well.

The next time Jimmy came in, he struck up a conversation with me about organic fruit versus farm grown fruit. He told me about how satisfying it was to work with the migrant farmers harvesting berries, though the work was difficult and the hours long. I noticed how toned and sinewy his leg and arm muscles were, likely due to the physical labor of pedaling around town and working with the copper in the jewelry, in addition to laboring during the harvesting season. Eventually, and after numerous visits, Jimmy’s magnetism became such a potent force for me, that one day when he came into the co-op I nearly fell on the floor in a swoon. To me, he was simply dynamic.

Jimmy was the last person I saw when I left Kent. My soon to be ex-husband had travelled back to town after an extended trip to his future home in Arizona to help me pack up the moving van that would take my son and me to Virginia. While he and Xaviar were inside packing and cleaning, Jimmy rode by the house and circled the street in front of the driveway two times. I waved to him. He raised his hand lazily and continued down the street toward the center of town.

Now, I realize that none of this seems especially riveting or life altering, but knowing Jimmy for this brief time left me with something that I carry to this day: I am a wild woman at heart. For many years, my untamed self fought with tradition, enraging me and causing me deep and silent distress. Insecurities and self-doubt ripped through me on a daily basis. And while most of the people that I met while I lived in Kent helped me realize my true self through their examples of alternative and cooperative living, it was Jimmy Kola, in all his weird organic beauty, who became locked in my mind as the ultimate example of how to be true to one’s self. I keep two bracelets and a necklace that Jimmy made because they remind me of whom I really am, even as I traipse around in this other world.