Now, ole Mac Meda was a powerful man,
Who could smash down a house with the palm of his hand;
He formed a company of destroying fools,
Big Sledgehammers were his favorite tools.
They started out breaking just a house here and there,
Smash out the windows and let in some air;
Knock out the walls and give a few heaves,
And there would be nothing left beneath the eaves.
They broke a filling station, used a truck as a lever,
What Mac Meda broke, stayed broken forever;
They broke a jetliner on the way to a job,
No plane built could carry a Mac Meda’s mob.
Mac Meda became the king of wrecking and breaking,
But he stepped out of bounds on his last undertaking;
They hired a Mac Meda to destroy a bank,
He brought three bulldozers and a Patton tank.
Each one rode in through a different wall,
Whne they met in the middle, it made the building fall;
They got so stoked by the crushing sound,
Mac Meda went out and destroyed the rest of the town.
Little old ladies and big thick men,
Ran for the hills as houses caved in;
They destroyed the courtroom and the Jr. Hi School
They abandoned the tank in the swimming pool.
Then Mac Meda gang had to run for the hills,
With nothing less to eat but Benzedrine pills;
The police rode hard on Mac Meda tracks,
Swearing they would bring this scoundrel back.
How the avalanche started that wiped out the fuzz,
In anyone knows, I’ll bet Mac Meda does;
Now Mac Meda gang just sits drinking gin,
Just waiting for their chance to destroy again.
Jack Macpherson
Charlie Farley
Meda Editors Note: The poem was written somewhere between 1962-1964. Many assume that Charlie Farley is responsible for the ‘benzedrine pills’ part, as Mac hated drugs of any kind … he was definitely a beer guy…with a few Bloody Marys on Sunday morning. Charlie Farley passed away recently
Did any of the Mac Meda group make it as far as Cherry Hill located a few miles over the hills on a dirt road west of TJ around 1959? No Mac Meda stories of TJ ever mentioned this historical “bar.”
It really inspired !! Kudos bro !
RIP Pat Shea.
does anybody have a copy of the movie jack shot at blacks? Mac brought to summer camp one year. We hooked up the projecter to someones car battery.Anyway,the highlight is 4 of the crew get into this old beater at the top of the cliffs,i have no clue who,i’m too young. Little help? So they take off headed right for the cliffs and then you see a little cloud of dust and they’re gone.the next scene is down on the beach,cars totaled,nothing moving.several seconds go by.Then, the drivers door kicks open, then the other doors and they all drag themselves out on the sand,holding their heads and staggering around until they drop back into sand in sheer pain and agony.THE END.Hope to see it on here.It’s good shit! Thanks again Mac.
laralie,not good for jack. i told him. rest in peace youngster. miss you,father.
Hi Mrs. Taylor -Pace I would love to meet and talk with you . please email me at the above thanks
Doug M: “Rose Canyon Chimmney falls in storm”
I hadn’t seen anything about this in any of the Mac Meda posts or info and wondered if anyone could lend more details… I’m a bit sketchy with some of the recall.
Rakestraw had a line on a Finnish anti-tank gun and was in the process of buying it until he had to come up with the $280.00 cash(for gun and 8 rounds). The bullets for this thing were $10.00 ea. and were about the size of a tall coke bottle. The reloads were cheaper at $4.00 ea. He always “knew a guy” who could get him ‘Anything’.
Anyhow January, 1962 and birthday money….. he bought the gun and I and donated twice for the reloads. Bob got Armor piercing and then the cheaper lead ‘dum-dums’…… he had good techincal advice for this project. Good thing we got the dum-dums.(they finally brought it down).
It was a rainy, windy Saturday night with no one but the dogs in the yard. He tried the old armor piercing first. They seemed to go right through or miss after three shots. He changed to the dum-dums and that second shot at the base sent it slowly over…… a LOT of bricks and the earth shock came across the canyon.
No one but the Meda insiders knew about it. It was written up in a long article in the paper as “Sorm Damage” which began the final epitath for ‘Rose Canyon Brick Yard’.
Maybe others can lend some details to this and the twist of Mac Meda humor it deserves. I always thought it could be properly commemorated with a “Before and After”— front and back tee shirt. When I brought it up now and then he just smiled, rolled his eyes and said “TOO HOT”.
The “GRUB”
Bill…This is hilarious and totally Jack Macpherson…I think some of the reason for surplus samples were…he had Route 20, which included Park La Jolla, which at the time had a lot of Little Ole Ladies with blue hair. I think he could of made a judgment call on sample need…which probably didn’t fit postal regulations.
Jamie – I remember that Christmas card. Steve Clarkson was one of my best friends. I’ll tell you a funny story about Jacky. Every time I saw Jacky he would say,”Hey Klein, you owe me 50 cents”. Then he would recite whatever zip code I was, at the time, living in. I never remember borrowing 50 cents, but maybe I did !!! I loved Jacky very much. There will never be another like him !!! There is another wonderful story that should be recorded. My niece Cathy, and a few other girls, were living on MacPherson’s mail route. On day he had hundreds and hundreds of Tampax samples to pass out. Maybe he was lazy, or maybe he felt that the girls were in need, but he left the whole pile, on their doorstep. They were set for years !!!! As I approach my 75th birthday, I often reflect on what a wonderful life we had, growing up in La Jolla. Later, Bill
Bill Klein! Great post! I think Mike McCartney’s track records are still on the books…what a great athlete!
The Dilly Dallies! Don’t forget Steve Clarkson. Jack and Steve Clarkson had a Christmas card tradition…they sent this one Christmas card back and forth to each other for 25 years! Whoever had it, would cross out the bottom name and sign their John Hancock and date it…talk about recycling.
One correction concerning the relay team. It was Junior Jackson (not Johnson). There are too many wonderful memories to immortalized at this time, however one sad note I will recall. Junior and Al Chapman were, tragically killed in a car accident. Good friends lost too early. Oh!…Cookie was a skinny kid, until he ate too many of his own Bully burgers. One day I will relate some stories about the “Dilly Dallies”. Including Mac, Little Diff, Kenny Easton, myself, and a few other crazy kids.
Lorenza Taylor…Jack absolutly LOVED you and your family. One of his favorite stories involved the 1954-1955 La Jolla High relay team (Mike McCartney, Cookie Taylor, Junior Johnson and Jack)…against an East San Diego high school…he said you were their #1 cheerleader and fan!
He also had a set of black and white photos of a 1971 trip at Salton Sea with you and your family…there was a classic shot of Jack…wearing a wig or something (he was totally buffed)…I asked him what the wig was and he laughed and said it was your bathing cap…it was the best photo! I used it on the party invitation for his 50th Birthday party at the West End in 1987.
He really loved your family….
I enjoyed your MacMeda information. I am a La Jollan. My husband was a member of the early group. His Name was Darnes Johnson. The picture on page 4 of your article includes my deceased husband and I wanted to give you the correct spelling and tell you who he was.
Thank You,
Lorenza Taylor-Pace
Branding Iron has the small stickers as well as the large ones.
Timmy…
Hey youngster! His father also used to say
“Statistics prove one out of one dies of something,”.
Mac used to tell me about a saying that his father quiped and I can’t remember how it went…Jamie probably does…”I feel better than I did before I got here”…Or something like that…Anyway..It used to make me laugh cuz it made no sense at all
Nice post, Namie. Love reading the history b4 my time. Doug, are you going to do some sledgehammer t-shirts like that posted with the poem? Hope so, may be you already have. I have’nt been to the shop in years.
I do not think Lauralie made the small stickers,I believe it was JK,I have many.Laralie did more damage then good…everyone is glad she is out of the Mac-Meda family.
On Charlie Farley and a bunch of other stuff…
Charlie Farley died earlier this year. In his obituary, it said he had designed the original Mac Meda tee shirts…this was news to me, but it could totally be true. I had heard that Jack used paper bags from the Mayfair Market as a stencil and then sprayed tee shirts with red paint, in the alley behind Sterling and Joann Burnett’s house on Bishop’s Lane.
Some of the original Mac Meda shirts still exist…in Jack’s closet was one of Earl Gildea’s gasoline shirts from San Clemente…the front said ‘Earl’ and the back was sprayed MAC MEDA DESTRUCTION COMPANY. At the paddleout, Jimmy Fox is wearing an original…check Bill Andrews classic site ‘A Day with Bill Andrews’ to see these classics.
People used to ask Mac how much money he made off Mac Meda. He never made a penny and he didn’t care about it. If one of his friends wanted to start a company featuring mac meda, he was thrilled. If a group of local kids wanted to start a band called Mac Meda, that was great too (the band was renamed Ratt, and graced MTV in its formative years).
The tee shirts have been made by the Branding Iron for the last 30 years. Jack loved Doug Moranville like a son. He loved Karen (and had a trillion photos of Karen in a bikini and hauling in fish at Summer Camp). And he was stoked over how Bobby was being raised. It’s hard to find a family business these days…much less in La Jolla. Congratulations to Doug and Karen for their hard work and dedication…and providing a Mac Meda gathering place, now that Jack’s gone.
Many, many people have contributed to Mac meda. Dave Osborn, besides building the shelves for the beer can collection, has done Mac Meda graphics and Albert artwork and provided Mac Meda devotion since the beginning years. His wife Genie introduced Mac to his former wife Pattie, who Dr. and Mrs. Macpherson considered a daughter.
Bill Decker had the red Mac meda license plates for Robin Crosby’s band…and one ALWAYS hung over Mac’s front door, as well as the front door. His last girlfriend, Lauralie, had mini Mac Meda stickers made up, introducing a new look.
Mac had an unbelievable collection of Mac Meda trivia that people gave him…he treasured every gift he received. He never threw anything away. He treasured ALL of you. He would want his friends to keep the Mac meda legends going strong…like this COOL amazing Kip Ives gem….
If anyone is going to make money off Mac Meda, it needs to be his friends and family. Not someone from New York, Japan or the Middle East. And on the other hand, Jack wouldn’t care about that either – he’d invite the new Mac Medans down for a beer at the West End and give them a sticker for their car. And he’d tell them to cut the white part off.
I wonder if St. Peter has a Mac Meda sticker by now…I’m sure King Neptune must have had one…You know King Neptune hung around Windansea and Boomer…when no one is looking or it’s an El Nino year and the Cove has 12′ waves, King Neptune is checking out the waves and keeping an eye on the children of La Jolla, who wander a little close, when their parents think they’re in school…Old King Neptune is there keeping everyone safe and sound…and zapping those who need to come home…..
My fuzzy recall is Jack told me (Back in the early 60’s) that the original Mac Meda “Poem” was lost. I think the original was the one that Jack helped put together with Charlie.
Charlie Farley seemed to be Rackstraw’s Friend and sort of a beatnik (Before hippies and lot stranger). Charlie wasn’t a Beer Drinking Mac Meda type person.
When Charlie rewrote poem from memory he made some changes. Jack wasn’t against anything but he was not comfortable with the ‘Benzedrine’ line as it was not the correct MacMeda image and MacMeda was 90% Jack Mac.