Where’s Hagabee, Hagabee and Hagabee?

By Stacey Warde

Here at The Rogue Voice, we’re mostly a bunch of ill-tempered drunks unable or unwilling to get our lazy butts to work in the morning, scornful of work, in fact, and we’d really rather spend our days lounging around our dog patch abodes, watching oil drip from our unregistered, duct-taped vehicles, complaining about our situations, poking holes in the coveted SLO life, turning our noses up at all of the wonderful possibilities it has to offer: Like making more money than a Halliburton CEO and driving fancy cars and owning 6,000-square-foot homes with ocean views and Mexican housekeepers, beautiful wives and six kids under our wings.
Not long after Anne and Doug of Cayucos reproved us for our negativity and cynicism [Letters, August 2007], we received a note from Duane Hagabee of Hagabee, Hagabee and Hagabee in San Luis Obispo, requesting space to tell a side of the story that never gets told in The Rogue Voice, the story of good people like Duane and his wife Bethany, and others like Anne and Doug, who have come to really appreciate the SLO life, and who can’t understand why guys like us love to gripe so much.
As Duane points out in his “In defense of the SLO life,” starting on page 12, if we got our acts together, we’d discover how we messed up our own lives and how we’ve missed all the fun things there are to do here, and how we got jaded. If we could find a purpose in life we could stop being so unhappy with everything. Thanks, Duane, but if we did that, there wouldn’t be a Rogue Voice.
We’re sure that there are many readers in SLO County who agree with you and, really, we feel privileged to present a view that’s critical of our own and which brings some balance back into the discussion of who we are and where we live. We’re truly happy to have Duane’s interesting perspective on the subject. Who knows, one day we could all become like Duane and Bethany. Wouldn’t that be something?
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To offer up some of the color you’ll find in SLO, we asked artist Martin Shields, who illustrated “Getting Out” last month, to help us out again and illustrate this month’s cover with how the town must look to Duane and Bethany. We hope they both appreciate how lovely Martin made Bethany look. Martin also continues illustrating the “Gettng Out” series by Antonio C. deBaca. See page 19 for part II.
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Alas, we’re never far from tragedy, as Life in the Cage columnist Tito David Valdez Jr. makes clear in his sad story about an inmate chaplain who loses what is most precious to him, the only thing of value to him in his 20 years of incarceration. See how brother Danny deals with his tragic loss in “Suicidal tendencies,” starting on page 5.
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Inspired by Duane’s adventurous spirit, we decided to take a risk and run Dennis Cutshaw’s story of a woman pirate who takes command and finds treasure in another pirate’s trousers in “Dalliance with Barbara Belle, Queen of Pirates” on page 23.
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And T.J.’s back. Remember Talmadge Jarratee? Author of the occasional “Sketches of San Francisco”? Well, he’s been working out, riding a stationary bike and doing what even Duane admits doing: Checking out the babes. Tal will offer up periodic “Views from a Stationary Bike,” stories about life at the gym where people go to socialize as much as to work out. See page 14 for Tal’s first report, with conversations of a couple of older guys whose friends seem to be disappearing, “Every day above ground.” Life must be rough up in Santa Cruz.
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Cabby Dell Franklin doesn’t remember a fare named Duane Hagabee but thinks he might have met him at one of the local dives. Bethany, the wife, wasn’t with him that night but Duane, Dell says, was yukking it up pretty good with a couple of the ladies. It’s hard to miss a guy like that, Dell says, you can spot ‘im a mile away. Anyhow, you can’t think about people like Duane when you’ve got a drunk on your hands about to slip into a coma. See this month’s Cabby’s Corner, “Thanks for the water,” on page 10.
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The last thing Dell said to me before going to press was, “Where the hell’s Hagabee, Hagabee and Hagabee?” I said I don’t know but it sure would be great if they placed an ad in The Rogue Voice. §

Stacey Warde is editor of The Rogue Voice. He can be reached at swarde@roguevoice.com.

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