Great memories, Pete...
Every time you think of Steve you just gotta smile,
know what I mean?
It was truly a shock to find out he's moved on,
wish I had a chance to say goodbye, and hope
I get to see him again when I take my ride outta here.
I think I'll go hug my kids now.
Jack
Pete Waddell
<PWaddell@UPMEDIA
GROUP.COM>
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Please respond to [DC] Old Porch Dawgs never die...
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<DesignerCouncil@
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Pete Waddell
<PWaddell@UPMEDIA
GROUP.COM>
Caterpillar: Confidential Green Retain Until: 02/26/2005
Retention Category: G90 -
General
Matters/Administration
Please forgive me if you find this inappropriate for this forum
I knew from the moment I met him that he was off grid which is an
essential quality for any good board designer and especially for the Porch
Dawg that he was. Steve Toothacre was one of those people that could amaze
you one moment and get you riled up the next. But he could always make ya
laugh. He was a heck of a harp player - played it everywhere he went and
understood all the complexities of it. He was an early member of the Porch
Dawgs - first chair harmonica.They tell me he was also a good designer and
from what I've seen of his work I can believe it.
We could spend hours if not days recounting stories involving "Pork Chop".
Many of them are truly the stuff that legends are made of. Talking today to
people that knew him we found ourselves sad one minute and laughing our
butts off the next remembering stories involving Steve. There was the time
he tried to sneak a huge hunk of bone, with some meat still left on it into
my hotel room. I mean the thing was big enough it took two people (him and
Rich Collins) to carry it. He'd taken it from the carving station on the
show floor at PCB West and was gonna play a Godfather style joke on me.
When he couldn't get anyone to let him in my room he thought to stash it in
the shower in his room. The next morning he got up a bit late and went down
to get breakfast. Well as luck would have it, housekeeping came to make the
room while he was gone. Can't you just image the maid's reaction when she
flung back the shower curtain to clean the tub and saw this huge hunk of
bloody meat lying there? And then Steve walks back into the room while
she's having a panic attack. Another variation of the story, told by an
innocent and anonymous bystander (named Ronda) has Mike Fitts and Rich
Collins teamed up with Steve in the caper. It was her first show and the
first time she'd met any of them. When she got on the elevator and saw them
holding this white table cloth wrapped around something with blood dripping
out she began to get scared. She says Fitts looked at her, grinned, and
said "uh, it's not a body."
Another time he was passing out business cards at the show and telling
people to put these cards in their wallets and within 30 days it would
change their life. Well, the card was magnetic. It changed people's lives
all right, when it demagnetized their credit cards.
Another time he called me about a month after PCB West. " Hey Pete, I've
got your carpet." Huh??? "Yeah, on the last day of the show when everyone
was breaking down the show floor and packing up, I got some guys to roll up
the piece of carpet with the PCB Design Conference logo on it and shipped
it to my office. I was gonna mount it on the wall. Problem is it's too big
for the *%@#%&* wall. The damn thing is huge! Where do ya want me to ship
it to?"
Turns out it was the third year we'd used this piece and the show
management was gonna trash it anyway. Steve was stuck with it and we didn't
have to pay to have someone to haul it off
There's lots more stories of the "Pork Chop". Teresa Gentry and Laura Sims
(who Steve loved and always said was the one that got away, others say the
one who RAN away) tell that one year they were having lunch in the lobby of
the Westin at Santa Clara when Steve showed up. They asked if he'd like to
have lunch but Steve said he'd already eaten and didn't wanna spend the
fourteen bucks for the buffet. Trouble is the pork chops smelled so good
that Steve had to get a closer smell. Taking a cloth napkin in hand, he
walked over as if to examine the buffet and sort of apprehended a couple of
grilled pork chops that were clearly intending to escape by jumping out of
the steam tray onto the floor. As luck would have it the runaway chops fell
square into Steve's folded napkin. Well, what could he do but punish the
recalcitrant chops by forcing them to spend a couple of hours in his
stomach and points beyond. Steve was, from that point on, affectionately
known as "Pork Chop".
I didn't tell him often enough, but I loved and respected him. And I'll
love his memory for a long, long time. And next time there's a full moon,
I'll go outside, look up at his smiling mug etched as the new
man-in-the-the moon, and howl long and hard for him. Hell I hope that every
hound for miles around joins in and creates a noise that will reach all the
way up there where he is now.
See ya next time Pork Chop, play it loud brother.
Pete Waddell
President
UP Media Group
678-589-8813
Pete Waddell
President
UP Media Group
678-589-8813
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