I remember the first time we got together to hang out.  No big deal and nothing funny, but it doesn't seem like it was that long ago...

Mark was driving his  gray Chevy Vega that burned at least a quart of oil per gallon.  Nick Massey was with him when he picked me up... 

I think we went to a friend's house down on Beech Street off of Shore Drive near the intersection of Great Neck.  The friend that lived there was named Randy... Randy Cribb, I think.

We hung out at that house a lot over the next year or so.  A bunch of musicians lived and hung out there.  I was and am musically challenged, but Mark and especially Nick Massey were unbelievably great musicians.  

I remember Nick playing a better version of Hendrix's "Star Spangled Banner" that first night and I was blown away at how talented these guys were.  

That's it... just trying to jot down random thoughts so others can know what he was like back in the day. 

Way too long ago a bunch of us were camping at The County Line Campground at Lake Gaston for a few days.  We had a pretty large peninsula all to ourselves. 

After a full day of fun and maybe a few too many, Mark was keeping all of us and some fellow nearby campers awake with his thunderous snoring.  We tried everything to quiet him down and decided on a little fun, drastic course of action.  We (quietly at first) pulled up his puptent stakes and started dragging him inside his collapsed tent towards the waters edge.  We pulled him (laughing histerically now) at least a hundred yards down to the beach.  

He didn't miss a beat on his snoring brigade while we dragged him.  We put the little mesh window of his tent over his face so he could breathe and laughed all the way back to our tents.... still no sleep for the weary - Mark's snoring was echoing over the land and water like he had a bullhorn up to his face.  

So.... we went back down to the source of the horrible sound and proceeded to drag him at least another hundred yards down the beach away from us so we might get some relief.  It still wasn't enough.... about an hour later we heard Mark wake up to some confusion..."what the hell"?!

Needless to say he wasn't all too pleased and proceeded to pull up all of our tent stakes down in retaliation.