Does anyone remember the old TV show "Taxi?" See it in reruns? The character played by Christopher Lloyd, Reverend Jim Ignatowski, was the classic '60's burn-out, but he occasionally showed flashes of a former self, prior to all the drugs. There was a show where he was sitting in his apartment eating breakfast and a wrecking ball crashed through the wall -- the building was being demolished, and Jim had somehow failed to see the eviction notices. I think he said something like: "Boy, there's a draft in here!"

There was another show where Elaine, the aspiring actress, needed someone to escort her to a cocktail party being thrown by a very wealthy theatre patron. Jim was the only one available to act as an escort, so Elaine got Jim all cleaned up and took him along. She told him to be quiet, and he was doing an OK job. But during the course of the evening, the pianist who was supposed to entertain the guests failed to show up, and the hostess was bemoaning her plight. Jim said he played the piano, and the hostess promptly took him up on his offer. So Jim sat down and began clunking out "Chopsticks." Elaine was slowly dying. Then Jim suddenly started to play gorgeous classical music; he stopped only briefly and said: "Hmmm... I must have done this before!"

At Meadowlark Coffee, there's a fair number of Jim-like characters hanging outside, because it's across the street from the hospital that houses the county mental health facility. The outpatients sometimes sit outside at Meadowlark waiting for the bus. There's one guy who's obviously medicated to the gills, but he's still somewhat coherent, just a bit dazed.

Last Friday I was sitting inside Meadowlark, reading, when someone began playing all sorts of songs on the piano. The repertoire ranged from jazz standards to show tunes to Beatles songs. I couldn't figure out who was playing the music, and I couldn't see the piano, so I stood up to take a look. And it was the Jim-like guy, playing them all from memory! A woman who was probably his caseworker from the mental health center was sitting with him, and every now and then, they'd start singing together.

Amazing. It was really very funny in a Reverend Jim sort of way, and it was also sad, because you wonder what this person was like before the schizophrenia, or whatever is organically wrong, got to him. He never did say "Hmmm... I must have done this before," but he did at one point stop, look at the keyboards and say: "Not bad!"