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Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Playing in Portland


June 2009

Woke up late again today. Around noon, man, I feel like a bit of a bumb when it’s that late. I ought to be up early doing something productive, right, anyway, rummaged around the house, doing what exactly, I'm not sure, but finally I got in the truck and drove down to the park downtown off of Burnside. I've been hanging in the park quite a bit of late. For some reason the folks from the halfway houses and city run facilities provide much more entertainment than the rest of the Portland people I’ve come across; let’s just say they’re definitely more up front about things. Some times what they're saying might not make much sense and there may be the foul odor of death in the air from too many days away from the shower, but, I suppose that’s part of the deal….

So I sat down on one of the benches with my guitar, figuring if nothing I could at least get a good glimpse at the women walking by. In the center of the park was a woman lying down. Dressed in sweatpants and a tanktop, she looked like she walked straight out of bed and over to the park, which I imagine, is what probably happened. There were alot of bags surrounding her, like a barricade of sorts. All of these folks get booted out of the missions and houses during the day so they hang out in the park and then file back indoors at night. Anyway, some crippled guy with a bad limp, who appeared to be drugged out, joined her a few minutes later and they laid down together Soon a cop came by, nudged them, and told them they couldn’t do that, and “No sleeping in the park.”

Sometime later an old, petite man with a Vietnam vet hat and cowboy boots sat down next to me. He smelled like piss but seemed nice.

“What kind of guitar is that?”

“A Martin.”

“Wow, is that a good one?”

“Yeah, it treats me good.”

He seemed curious enough and not like some of the junked up kids over in Pioneer Square that ask to play your guitar and then bang on the thing not even playing chords and look at you and say, “You know that one, that’s ACDC.”

So I took it out and handed it to him. He seemed to like the dark mahogany wood, holding it in his hands and staring at it.

"You mind if I play?”

I said sure. He tried to strum a chord, but he didn’t know how to play. I then noticed his nails. They were rather disgusting, pukish yellow and with black dots, long like they hadn’t been cut in over a year. All I could hear was nail on strings. I wanted to grab it back but I didn’t and he realized he really didn’t know how to play so he gave it back to me. I played him some songs and he tapped his boot along.

“So what do you like?” I asked.

“Oh, old country, some rock.”

I played him a Hank Williams song and The Carter Family, songs I’ve been practicing of late. It’s quite amazing how just a simple instrument like a guitar can become a magnet for people and conversation; without it I imagine I would sit in the park all day and not say a word to anyone. Shortly after a large man named Jon sat very close to me on the bench staring at my fingers as I played. He had a mustache and a derby cap and looked like a fisherman and it turned out he was from Alaska so I guess that look comes born out of the water up there. He asked me if I new any John Prine and I smiled and said of course I did. A new gained respect is garnered when someone mentions someone like that. Think I played Souveneirs.

"Yeah, he’s got that song “some humans ain’t humans.” Hell of a song. Great fingerpicker, good sense of humor.”

He asked if he could play the guitar and I passed it over to him. He actually wasn’t bad and knew far more of the blues chords then I do. He new some music theory, said he had studied it in college.

Well, we’re just sitting there when all of the sudden three cops show up. They’re standing in front of the old country man, all of them wearing latex gloves and I got worried for a minute thinking, shit, maybe this guys got some disease and he just spread it all over my nice guitar. A very attractive 30 something woman cop asked him if his name was Jon. He looked at her with one of those looks you know when a little kid has done something wrong, trying to lie but just unable to do it.

“No.”

“Well, what is it?”

“It’s JJJJaack,” he said, hanging his head.

“You sure it’s not Jon? I don’t think you’re telling me the truth. When were you born?"

He gave some date, think it was June 1951. Then they asked him again. This time it was July.

“You wait here,” the woman said to the other two cops.

They were silent, a pair of mutes, just staring off into space as the old man held his cap low over his eyes. Jon looked at me and said, “You know the difference between outlaws and inlaws? Outlaws are wanted. Ha ha ha", he laughed, spitting and hacking a few coughs from his clogged lungs.

The cops handcuffed the old man and took him away. One of the cops came up to me a few minutes later and said he had escaped from some facility and was dangerous. Exactly what that entailed I wasn't sure. Maybe he was suicidal. Who knows. I told her he seemed pretty harmless and he went away peacefully. He just seemed real tired to me. Looked like he just wanted to sit on the bench in the park and forget about things. I suppose there’s a whole other story to it though.

A few minutes later I played a Spanish sounding fingerpicking song and the woman that had been lying down in the middle of the park came towards me. She looked like she could barely open her eyes, face all red. She got real close to me as I played, all contorting, looking at the guitar as if it was this foreign creature.

“Oh yeah, that’s a nice sound there, nice sound.”

I continued playing, and hid behind the sunglasses smiling as her face was about six inches from mine.

Jon told me a few more cheesy jokes I can’t remember and then left. Twenty minutes later he was back with a guitar and a small box. He opened the box and there was about six different harmonicas in there and strings and pieces of torn paper with sloppy handwriting of Gratefull Dead and Rolling Stones songs, along with what looked like some lyrics. All I could see was the words in child-like writing, “Rock n’ Roll”. Instantly he was playing classics like “Sitting on the Dock of the Bay,” and “Summertime.” I played along with him and anytime I asked him what chords he was hitting he’d say, “Oh, it doesn’t matter anyway.” He sang loud and off key, kind of mumbly, but it worked and the local folks in the park seemed to be enjoying it. We played a few Stones songs. An older black fella was now sitting where the country guy had been. He seemed fairly well dressed, was digging the music and kept talking to me as I was playing.

“Now, did you see that? No one in their right mind gives their money to a junky. She just told that man she’ll back in ten minutes and there she is taking evey bag she has with her. If she going to be right back why she wanna go and carry all that stuff? Makes no sense. And she’s telling him she loves him and then gives him a kiss on the forehead. That just ain't right, ya heard me? I mean all these folks doing their shit right out in plain sight, I do my thing too, but I do it behind doors, under my roof, ya know. Maybe that girl do come back, but she won’t have all of it. He won’t be getting what he paid for I tell ya.” He definitely had a keen eye for observation and could probably tell a story for all of the people slumping on the benches in the park.

Jon says to me, “You know I jammed with this other guy out here one day, some young kid, but he thought he was some kind of Johnny cash; that’s all he could play, you know, boom chick boom chick, but he didn’t have no rhythm. He had stupid songs like 'Alcohol is the poison in my blood." What kind of stupid shit is that? And then he invites me to this gig and when I get there he pretends like he doesn’t even know me, like he never seen me before. Fuck that.“

“Say, you want to hear a song I wrote? I got my heart broke up in Anchorage so I had to write this song. Everyone says I ripped off the Doobie Brothers, you know, the rhythm, but I don’t care. I got my heart broke. I had to write something.”

I don’t remember the words to the song. but I didn’t play along for this one. Just stared out at the other folks and sat back and listened to Jon scream out about lost love.

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