What The Commandos Became Famous For.. Part 1

The Zeps were famous (infamous?) for their party celebrations of everything from Halloween to the Summer Soltice. Many a party grew to big to the point hired help was required to park cars!

In addition, the invites distributed to inform the millions about the upcoming parties, were themselves, created with a bit of artistic license. Some of these rare flyers can still be found....but not in the Smithsonian!

AJ here: What Bob neglected to post here were some of the additional pages of the invites.(Maybe I neglected to share the jpeg with him.) Our invitations became elaborate multi-page reflections of the cultural and political climates of the 80's. Here's one:

Timeless. Right?

The Night of the Living Jack

THE NIGHT OF THE LIVING JACK

Outside the Rawah Wilderness, west of Fort Collins, Colorado 1981.

A Friday night that turned into Fright Night for some unlucky RVers.

The night that Jozep danced in the fire for the first time.

On this particular occasion Jozep and Bob R and I packed up his big honking Chevy and headed out for a weekend of camping in the Rawah Wilderness. In the 70's and 80's it was still a very pleasant two hour drive from Denver. This was way before the population explosion in Colorado that occurred in the late 80's and early 90's and the highways weren't nearly as busy as they are now.

We, contrary to state law, had a few nips of Jack Daniels on our way up Poudre Canyon and Bob cranked up the tunes. As we passed one of the many campgrounds that are in the canyon we were singing along to some Beatles tunes when we noticed that people were actually stopping what they were doing when we drove by. Just a minor disturbance in their Wildness Experience. Or maybe they dug the tunes as much as we did.

We arrived at the Chambers Lake Campground, where we had planned to spend the night, at around twilight. A quick drive thru found that all the sites were full, so we opted to find a place on the other side of the lake on the Laramie River Road and just pull off and walk in a bit to set up camp.

For reasons long since forgotten, we found a small turn out that sat at the base of a 15 or 20 foot bluff that we had to climb to find a spot level enough for us to build a fire and set up our tents.

We were well into our first bottle of Jack and night had fallen when Jozep pulled out his guitar and he and Bob began taking turns playing and singing fireside.

I think it was Jozep that first heard the sound of a vehicle rumbling up the road towards where we had parked the car. I was busy keeping the bottle of Jack from getting dirt on the bottom.

"Commando alert" he said and the three of us slunk over towards the edge of the bluff. We all dropped to prone positions and belly crawled up to the edge.

Looking over we found that a big Winnebago Class C (not really that big in those days) had pulled over into the turnout just below us.

The three of us, four if you count Jack, could hear the people inside the RV talking.

"So what do you think? Is this a good place?"

"Oh, I think it will do just fine."

Un-uh. I don't think so.

Without thinking I leapt up from the darkness and screamed down at them.

"GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE!!"

Man, you should have seen that Winnie peel out down the road. You'd have thought it was Charles Manson yelling at them.

We had a few more thugs to finish off Jack No.1 and on to Jack No. 2 as we walked back over to the campfire for a good laugh about it.

Later that night Jozep treated Bob and I to his version of "Stagger Lee".

"Stagger Lee shot Billy
  He shot that boy so bad"

Jozep was so into it that he had inadvertently (?) stumbled right into our campfire. Bob and I sat there for a moment amazed by what we saw until Bob finally said. "Uh, Joe, you're in the fire."

Not fazed by his feat of fire walking, Jozep just continued on to finish up his song and moved slowly out of the campfire.

"Yes, Stagger Lee shot Billy"

Bob and I laughed till we cried about that. Little did we know that it wouldn't be the last time we saw Jozep dance in the fire on a camping trip.


The Night of the Living Jack. The night that inspired our Halloween T-Shirt that year.

How It All Began: Part 1

I first met Zep Commando Co-Founder Jozep in 1974 after I joined Ma Bell as a directory assistance operator. Jozep's wife at the time was a co-worker and invited a bunch of us to a end of summer party at their Capital Hill apartment complex.

Honestly I don't remember a whole lot about the party but Jozep and I met on other occasions at other parties and bars for after work drinks and got to know a bit about each other. Not really friends at this point, as I was with his wife, but I think we liked each other enough to do things together at some point.

Sometime the next summer, Tommi, Jozep's wife, approached me with a very strange request. Tommi knew that my girlfriend and I camped and hiked a lot during the year and wanted to know if I'd invite Jozep camping for a weekend.

Well sure, I can do that, but what's really the motive here?

Well, Tommi says, I think Jozep might be gay.

Okay. Just what makes you think that?

He's always spending time with his friend John and never with me. (Okay, there's some logic there, right?)

Let's look at the timeline here. I'm 24. Served 4 years in the Air Force. Moved to Colorado to spend some time with a woman that I'd met in Spain. Ended up falling in love, both with her and the Rocky Mountains. I'd met gay people, both men and women, at work and never had a problem with any of them, but I probably wasn't the open guy in the world. I was playing sports and drinking and cussing and doing all the manly stuff that was expected of a guy in the early 70's.

So what do I do, besides saying yes I can go camping with him? I invite a wing man for protection.

Dan F. was a co-worker that started at Ma Bell on the same day as I and I'd become good friends with him and his wife, who was also a co-worker. So Dan became my back up in case Jozep decided to try anything funny.

Well, Jozep isn't gay. The three of us had a great time camping in Rocky Mountain National Park, hiking and smoking weed and drinking Jack Daniels.

I reported back to Tommi that she had nothing to fear, other than the divorce which would happen a year or so later.

When my own marriage failed, Jozep and I became better friends and spent many a evening sitting around his dining room table after he got off work and before I went in for Graveyard shift.

Jozep played his guitar and was an accomplished painter even then and one night as we were taking Jozep showed me a "ZEP" hat that his brother in law, who was a rep for the cleaning products, had sent him.

I immediately laid claim to it (read: I stole it) and proclaimed that from then on we would be known as the ZEP Commandos.

And the rest, as they too often say, is history.

The Man Beneath the ZEP Hat by Jozep 1977

Why you ask?

I've been blessed that I've known most of my friends, none of which I grew up with, for nearly 40 years in most cases.

Bonded by a love of good, loud music, whiskey, the love of the outdoors, stimulating conversation and more partying than we probably should have done, we've endured differences of opinion, politics, new men and women in our lives and all those parties and continued to be friends. 

We are and have been VP's of companies, Artists, Lead Software and Hardware Engineers, Union Members, successful self employed entrepreneurs, musicians, 10 to 30 year state employees and in my case, just lucky to have had a career.

So I've opened this blog to share some of my memories and I'll be inviting every ZEP Commando that I've got an email address for to post and share their versions of the truth (while there's still time), so maybe you will get to see what I've always said about my friends.

"We're some funny motherfuckers."

A brash statement I know, but one that I think that the stories that we post will bear out as fact.

I hope you enjoy reading these stories (not all will be safe for work or easily corruptible young minds), but all will hopefully entertain you and give you a glimpse of our lives over the last four decades.

Later.

The ZEP Commandos (v 1.1) circa 1976