If Orange City, FL, is known for anything, it’s Blue Spring State Park, the quiet little recreational picnic and swimming area where hordes of manatees famously congregate during the frigid winter months (the waters there are consistently warm, averaging 72 degrees year round). It’s a nice refuge in a town whose only other main attractions are assorted economy retail outlets and the requisite fast food chains. Last time I checked, they also had two Blockbuster video stores less than a mile apart from one another. On a clear day, I believe you can stand in the Saxon Boulevard location and see the one on Enterprise (and vice versa).

However, I remember Orange City not for being a cute manatee haven nor its Walmart nor its dual Blockbusters, one of which employed me before it was actually a Blockbuster (the outfit’s original name was 16,000 Movies; there were actually only about 14,500 movies). Nay, the thing about the O.C. that stands out in my mind today is that it’s the city where the original Megadeth drummer lived for a number of years before dying of liver failure in 1999 at the age of 41.

The irony here is that I was a HUGE Megadeth fan between the ages of 13 and 15, and during those years I moved along with my family to Deltona, one of the three or four towns that bleeds into Orange City. Gar Samuelson, the man whose rapid-fire skin-bashing propelled my favorite band’s 1985 debut, Killing Is My Business… And Business Is Good!, not to mention their breakthrough sophomore effort, Peace Sells… But Who’s Buying?, resided in the same general area as the dollar theater where I saw The Cable Guy an unprecedented three times! Who knows how many times Gar cruised the drive-thru of Taco Bell #4206 before I worked there in college? Not me. I wasn’t very good at keeping tabs on X-Megadeth drummers.

That’s what Gar wrote under his autograph the day he wandered into my father’s loan office to procure the necessary cash for a new car: “X-Megadeth.” I was 19 when that happened, way past ’80s thrash in my musical tastes. Pop called me immediately after Gar left with the shocking news. It was interesting, but at the time I was more concerned with the whereabouts of Dee Dee Ramone at any given second. Sorry, Dad. Call me when Henry Rollins strolls into your office looking for help purchasing a Nissan Sentra. Still, when Father Greene presented me with Gar’s autograph, I carefully placed it between the pages of the thickest hard cover book I owned in order to protect it from my extremely messy lifestyle (who needs a file cabinet when there’s still space left under the bed?).

It hit me a few days later just how monumental Gar Samuelson’s presence was in relation to the place I slept and pooped every night. I remember flipping the phone book open many times and staring at his listing. What would I say if I called him? What’s Dave Mustaine really like? No, that’s corny. Would he want to talk to some stupid fanboy? What’s up, Gar. I dig your jams. Let’s party some time. Yeah, because it wouldn’t be weird for a fortysomething metal dude to be running around with a kid who couldn’t legally drink yet. That scenario always ended in me shutting the phone book and hoping for a chance encounter at 7-11 or the auto parts store.

That imagined crossing of paths would never come. The jazz-bred drumming force that made that stupid cover of “These Boots” on Killing Is My Business the most awesome Lee Hazlewood interpretation ever was silenced on July 22, 1999. The news was that Gar had been in poor health for a while. According to the various heavy metal news websites I frequented, it was only a matter of time. Mainstream media pretty much ignored Gar’s death (this was before we had 18 24-hour news channels and live feeds of everything on the internet), but the other members of Megadeth paid touching tribute to their fallen brother two years later on their otherwise uproarious episode of VH-1’s Behind the Music.

“I came to the conclusion that the music world had lost a true giant,” King Mustaine said on camera.

Prior to his passing, Gar had been playing in local act Fatal Opera with his brother Stew. They recorded at least one album, Eleventh Hour, which featured a cover of “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.” I’ve never heard it, but it’s on my list of albums to track down and check out before I die. I’m sure there are still plenty of copies floating around the manatee-centric, double Blockbuster haven known as Orange City.

Watch: Megadeth in 1986 [at youtube.com]

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