I'm still very shaken after reading his obituary in the Chron yesterday. I'd been talking about him with some friends recently and was thinking about tracing him down. Kelley and a group of us came out to California in 1963 from Bridgeport, CT. We spent some time in Venice hanging out, eating Mexican food, going to the flat track races at Ascot Park, smoking up a storm and drinking a lot of Guiness. Most of the guys ended up back in Conn. but I stayed in LA and Kelley drifted up north. I last saw him 1964. He came down to Venice and stayed with us for a couple of days. He told me about family Dog and tried to convince me to come back up to SF but for a lot of reasons I stayed in Venice and eventually moved to the Bay Area in 1971.
Mostly I remember my late teens with Kelley in Connecticut.
He opened a world to me that I could have never found for myself. We worked on cars, took the train into Manhattan to go to the Gugenheim, listened to Jean Shepard, looked at Kelley's strange paintings (Pollack-like in those days, one was even triangular) and hung out at Parmelees motorcycle shop until they threw us out (Kelley got his Matchless there, finally).
He was one of the most important people in my life and I regret very deeply not seeing him again later in life. My very deepest condolences to his family here and in Connecticut. He will be in my heart always.
John Alfonso
Richmond, CA
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