Once I had a friend, now lost,
That I swore I would never forget
Not a year will go by, ‘til the day that I die,
That at least I will remember him yet.

I can’t really say that I knew him-
Tall, thin guy, with long, brown hair
And those round, John Lennon glasses,
Loved to smoke pot, and drank lots of beer.

Trippy Larry we called him, a real nice guy
Mostly quiet, but boy could he laugh,
And man, he sure liked to shake it,
With James Brown on the phonograph.

Sometimes though, when he’d been drinking,
He’d go silent, and just sit, stroking his arm-
The one with all the rippling scars
That he called “souvenirs of Khe Sanh.”

His Viet Nam vet bro tried to tell me-
“Poor Old Larry was in nasty shit.
A lot of his buddies got wasted there,
And Larry, he ain’t over it yet.”

One night, I don’t know the reason,
Larry picked me to have a talk-to
He told me, ”Every night is a nightmare,
I hear screaming, smell fire, and taste smoke.”

“I really can’t wait to be going,
Yep, I think I’ll be checking out soon.
There’s nothing to keep me from leaving,
I am nothing, like air on the Moon.”


“Only one thing’s been keeping me going,
‘sides my friends, and I’ll miss them alright.
It’s knowing that I’ll be forgotten
It won’t matter a shit that I died.”


Well, I was stoned, so I said “No way, Larry!”
And I swore by the joint in my hand
That even if no one else did, I’d remember
At least once every year- “Understand?”

We talked and we toked, swapping lots of bad jokes,
And he seemed to feel better by morning,
But in all that was said, as I went off to bed,
I never heard in his words their warning.

When I went by the place Tuesday morning
Where the group of Nam vets liked to sit,
They told me Old Larry was missing,
Sunday morning, he’d had some sort of fit.

The note finally found on the counter
Started out, “Dear Mother and Dad,
I can’t be your son any longer,
The things that I’ve done are too bad.”

Well, we all got wasted that weekend,
Hoisted plenty in Old Larry’s name,
Then we all had to get back to business
In this world so clearly insane.

I was still very young when that happened
Lots of things to forget, you’d have thought,
But once Ich hatt Ein Kamerade
Trippy Larry, I still ain’t forgot.