tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-49131784342674116332024-03-13T02:57:25.342-07:00Tales from the TunnelSeth Swaaleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02442058078452795462noreply@blogger.comBlogger45125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4913178434267411633.post-40875208586622403292011-01-18T10:58:00.000-08:002011-01-18T10:58:27.263-08:00High, Low, and In Between<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNQifch6JQJejKtvdfzqYU7AnjwUy590yBa6QA__BNcmRHmlBPuPRTcA1ztyfYLkJTrsR28QNJGkg2ejmtlC1UwmYdtCVOxavgY9tN6Bp02JUq1b0Qm2lcAtkVrgJcwLDTlApCc8wW4_o/s1600/IMG_1674.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNQifch6JQJejKtvdfzqYU7AnjwUy590yBa6QA__BNcmRHmlBPuPRTcA1ztyfYLkJTrsR28QNJGkg2ejmtlC1UwmYdtCVOxavgY9tN6Bp02JUq1b0Qm2lcAtkVrgJcwLDTlApCc8wW4_o/s320/IMG_1674.JPG" width="240" /></a></div> <style>
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<h2 style="text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt;">Chapter 12 </span></h2><h2 style="text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt;">Another Day at the Office</span></h2><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">I went on to set up in that tunnel in August and September for the next five weeks. Each day I got a little more comfortable with my new form of employment. Like any job, there were your good days and bad days. I made as little as eight dollars and as much as a hundred dollars in what usually consisted of about four hours. Tax free. Thoreau would be proud. Money had very little to do with why I was out there; but then again, any compensation for your art, for doing what you love, despite what anyone says, is always welcome. And the best part was that, for once in my life, I was my own boss. There was nowhere to clock in and no one to report to. No journeymen to bow down to. No manager with a feeling of superiority looming over me. In the tunnel I called the shots. I played what I wanted and when I wanted. I took my break when I was tired, and when I felt like going home, that was it. I packed my guitar up, counted my earnings, and filed back into the streets, almost mysteriously. No one knowing of my daily exploits, I’d ride the subway smashed alongside the other riders reading and with their headphones on, some of them just staring off into another world. I’d curiously watch them with my little secret life of sorts to myself.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">But the reality is, what I loved most was the spontaneous interaction. Sitting on my stool with some wood and some strings and a lackluster voice and a book full of songs memorized, I was granted time with folks from all walks, everything from life-long New Yorkers to tourists visiting from every country imaginable. Many of them would stop to request songs, tell me a story, ask how I’d come about to playing in the tunnel. I couldn’t help but marvel at how entirely different it was from the makeup of a playing a live show. Aside from the music, I had to be personable, willing to talk, and willing to listen. I had to provide the brief role of entertainer and, although I don’t deem myself to be much of one, I had fun trying my hand at it. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Barry, the philosophical Buddhist Jewish voice-over man of Manhattan comes up to me and asks me about Fred Neil. Two hours later, I realize I am sitting in front of the most animated intellectual person I’ve ever come across as he goes into lengthy discussions about the deepest and most profound questions of man. A retired freight train operator is singing the “Wabash Cannonball” word for word as I quickly figure out the chords. A wedding party of twenty foreigners is dancing in circles before me as I play John Hurt’s “Pay Day” four times in a row. A gorgeous girl from Colorado talks with me and takes pictures for an hour and as I tell her, “You are beautiful,” she keeps her hand held in mine for more than just a while. She gives me a big smile and parts ways and skips through the tunnel and up the stairs. On a cold, rainy day the most amazing looking French woman leans on the wall next to me and tells me “You juz’ made my day.” An hour later, a bum pisses right in front of me and demands three dollars. The Vietnam vet who hasn’t showered in months and is always wasted by noon, looks at me from the corner of his eye as he stumbles by. A baby in a stroller bops his head around as his Caribbean nanny pushes the cart to and fro. Boris, the grumpy sax man, curses me for playing in the tunnel. Valentine, the Russian sax man, greets me with a smile each day and says, “America! Great Country! <i>C'est la <em>vie</em>.</i></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> This is the life we choose!” An old school Brooklyn Italian sings Woody Guthrie songs to me and serenades the people passing by in an operatic voice that would make Pavarotti and Bocelli cringe. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">These are days when you are looking down into the case with a few bucks, two hours of hardly anyone paying any attention, sort of wondering what exactly it is you’re doing out there.</span> Then people like this come to you and you realize that this is your place.<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> That though you spend much of life in question, wondering where and what you are supposed to be doing with the hand you are given, whether you are a success or failure, if maybe you could’ve gone about things another away; that at this particular time this is where you are meant to be and were meant to be. Whatever questions or fears you have in regards to making it, well, they’re briefly answered. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="text-indent: 0in;">All in all, I went to the tunnel about twenty times, taking notes of each day: the highs, the lows, and all the in betweens. My goal was just to give a little glimpse into the world from the musician’s perspective. As I did, the words began to pile and pile one after another. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjp457Vaz24LDWFdLDIBZQbHw4vfIFWVWRnzA_cBAf3VXwDxVKsau1nlhRX60wmpditfgfQMO5A94CaTDoaejPEaRcOZgPSviiHHnAyXeoRD8kPjf7Wg1kH8AQfnxSAsYwfX9BrIVwDceI/s1600/IMG_1660.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjp457Vaz24LDWFdLDIBZQbHw4vfIFWVWRnzA_cBAf3VXwDxVKsau1nlhRX60wmpditfgfQMO5A94CaTDoaejPEaRcOZgPSviiHHnAyXeoRD8kPjf7Wg1kH8AQfnxSAsYwfX9BrIVwDceI/s320/IMG_1660.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="text-indent: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="text-indent: 0in;">The last time I played in Central Park was in October. The weather had considerably cooled off as winter approached and there weren’t nearly as many people out. My fingers freezing, I found it impossible to pick out the notes on my guitar. I realized, as much as I liked playing, I wouldn’t be back for a while. </div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="text-indent: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="text-indent: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="text-indent: 0in;"><b>Chapter 13 </b></div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="text-indent: 0in;"><b>Denouement</b></div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="text-indent: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="text-indent: 0in;">New York is a hustle town, I suppose more than any other I’ve ever been in; you see the prosperity in the suit and ties and sleek dresses on the streets of upper and lower Manhattan and in the trust fund college kids and you see the fallen dream in the raving chalk-legged men on 3 a.m. subways and sleeping on benches and in front of storefronts in the dead of winter. So I laid the guitar down and went out and got a job bussing and bar backing at big Texas BBQ restaurant in Manhattan. Although it isn’t much of a skilled trade, I can honestly say that I enjoy the work, much more so than I did being an electrician. Every day I ascend from the subway up into the streets and often I question whether or not—the buildings touching the clouds and the sun and moon somewhere out there though you can’t ever see them, the millions of cabs and people bustling about—I’m not still sitting in Portland, fast asleep; instead in some rather strange industrial dream in which I’ve yet to wake up from. Maybe something out of <i>Metropolis</i><span style="font-style: normal;">. Soon I will open my eyes to the dark light of the morning and a constant drizzle and find myself stumbling around in a foggy haze and putting my boots on and grabbing my tool bag and growling back at the mean raccoon that hugs the tree in my front yard. </span></div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="text-indent: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Thankfully, that’s not the case, so in my spare time I decided to type up all of my journal writings from the park and other musings from New York rambles. I also went through old columns from when I was writing for <i>Razorcake</i></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> and put them online. I hadn’t hardly written in over four years and now I felt rejuvenated with the word; not knowing if it was any good, but enjoying going through old and new tales, some happy, some sad, but stories all the same. I figured they were just gathering dust, sitting on the shelf along with rejection letters from a few I tried sending to other magazines, so why not throw them out there? </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Now, as I sit in front of the window of my apartment, staring out at the warehouses and a huge carwash billboard and an air conditioning rooftop unit with wires fully exposed (definitely an electrical code violation. Stop it! Those days are over. Let it go!), a mysterious pair of underwear that hangs on the barbwire surrounding the back perimeter (foiled burglar maybe?), listening to the cars and semi-trucks racing along the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway towards the Battery Tunnel as the rain washes the Christmas snow away, sending me into a calm, meditative trance of sorts, I’m left with these thoughts: </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Life is merely a long line of fleeting moments, an endless array of frames we find ourselves in, and as much as we want to hold on to them, as much as we want to give them a lasting sense of permanence, they run away from us, like forgotten dreams that we’re desperately trying to grasp onto, swinging blindly, like an old boxer caught on the ropes, flailing aimlessly into thin air; then again, sometimes they’re engrained in our blood, tattooed thick, everlasting, forever following us around like shadows, that it is this ebb and flow over time that shapes our being, our experience, our view of the world and ourselves in the midst of the orchestra, in the vastness, in the dark and in the light, in the movement and in the middle, of it all. One moment we’re filled with love or belonging, amazement and laughter; in another we’re filled with fear or sadness, maybe despair, maybe anger, loneliness; but there’s a certain vivid truth in all of these emotions that form the spirit, that form the soul, that make us who we are; but I’ve come to realize that, really, when it comes down to it, maybe looking at life in this way is trivial; all things pass, from good to bad, old to new; emotions and experiences and relationships will come to take new shapes and new forms and, truth is, it goes on and on like this until one day, most likely, we part ways with the world as we know it…and now my mind drifts far from my room and downdowndown, into the underground: it is the end of summer and I’m riding the 6 train into Manhattan out of the West Indian streets of Crown Heights and emerging into the lunch crowds along Lexington Ave. (a world of separation) and I think of the good life and mimosas in the sun and neatly folded napkins and doormen in fancy suits and ornate iron fences that lead to courtyards and enormous suites, and oh, just for a little of that, and now I’m making a left down 59<sup>th</sup> St., standing before the opulent Plaza Hotel and feeling the spray of the fountain at Grand Army Plaza in the epicenter of the world’s fashion and consumer society and the idea of a ridiculous amount of wealth (Trump Towers, hundred dollar T-shirts, Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Tiffany & Co.) hits me square across the jaw, and the buildings line up unending, down the blocks of 5<sup>th</sup> Ave. like enormous dominoes, and I stand in the middle of the crosswalk marveling at it all, but a few seconds later a cab driver brings me out of my reverie, yelling bloody murder at me with his horn and I wave my hand back at him and there he goes, blasting that horn again, but there is no anger in any of it, only a strange from of communication, an organized chaos of language and music of the city and the streets, and I now stand by the brick wall across the way, observing the crowds for a brief moment, a panorama left to right with the horse carriages lined up and street vendors and tour busses and sketch artists, then the ponds and carefully landscaped trees and bushes and flowers and with the winding sidewalks it looks more like an amusement park than something that would be in the middle of New York and far off I hear a sax be-bop-bopping in the distance and I walk into Central Park, now moving the feet a little quicker, excited to get to my spot, and the tourists are milling about like they just stepped out of a Pissarro or Monet minus the parasols, and then my mind drifts back to second lines and a wild array of colors and the Mississippi River and brass bands and jazz and old southern white ladies and young black girls dancing hand in hand in New Orleans, but I’m not there, that’s another time, damn parasols, I’m in New York, I’m in New York and people are smoking cigarettes on benches and snapping photos and I get around the corner and see the tunnel, dark and empty, just a walkway, a musty smell and some garbage to the side and I laugh as I see my pick from a few days ago still there underneath the remains of a cigarette butt and a leaf, so I prop the stool up, take the guitar out, tune it up, throw some dollar bills and change into the case when no one’s looking, and play a tune, and, for a while, things are quiet, a few people pass by paying no attention, some point at me from a distance and speak in undecipherable tongues in curiosity and vanish before they can hear more than a few notes, but then there at the end of the tunnel is a father and his little daughter approaching, all dressed up for the zoo, and at first they’re just walking, big hand in little hand, but I switch it up, play a happy ragtime instrumental piece I wrote, thinking it’s more fitting, and suddenly she starts dancing all the way down the tunnel and I keep playing the guitar and she does a pirouette, little ballerina and all as notes fly into the air, arching and echoing against the curved old stone walls, and as I find myself a mere actor in a part of a scene far from box offices and Broadway, I realize all the writing in the world won’t do any of this justice; there is no philosophy; there are no deep, profound truths, no cleverly written, insightful words of wisdom, no metaphors or poetic rhymes or well-versed stanzas, no critical analysis with playful linguistics to file into the pantheon of lyrical prestige for scholars to discuss and file on the shelf next to dusty bottles of scotch, nothing to put this all into its particular place, nothing to vividly capture the true essence of this one moment; no, no, </span>this is merely just life; this just is and nothing more <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">and so with that, I tip the hat and the girl places the dollar bill into the case and the father thanks me for the music and I follow them as they drift off, under a clear blue sky, around the corner, into the crowd, and then…disappear. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
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</div>Seth Swaaleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02442058078452795462noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4913178434267411633.post-68450506265249424972011-01-09T09:00:00.000-08:002011-01-09T09:00:35.536-08:00High, Low, and In Between<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIkdAwV04rQkhEqWGk276NrsdY-vKs28gqc7aaKBj2hY3q6ncck_6RIXH0M4DU6pA41-knY_oG8ngQUtjvJ6b8AfTdqB6ZSt3zJdkM6ICT9eVWhvoO1Z4CNngEVEv3ntS2uwNqrlnHk5w/s1600/IMG_1609.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIkdAwV04rQkhEqWGk276NrsdY-vKs28gqc7aaKBj2hY3q6ncck_6RIXH0M4DU6pA41-knY_oG8ngQUtjvJ6b8AfTdqB6ZSt3zJdkM6ICT9eVWhvoO1Z4CNngEVEv3ntS2uwNqrlnHk5w/s320/IMG_1609.JPG" width="240" /></a></div> <style>
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<h2 style="text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt;">Chapter 10<span> </span></span></h2><h2 style="text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt;">Nowhere but South</span></h2><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">By the time I got to Nashville, it was midnight and I couldn’t find the hostel I’d heard about. I camped out off of Broadway near the Cumberland River, which, for some reason—maybe geographical dyslexia—I was convinced was the Mississippi. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">I slept in my truck, but by six in the morning the summer heat was too much, so I went out and found a breakfast joint downtown. Sitting there, I knew I wasn’t quite in Mississippi, but I truly had the feeling that I was in the land of Faulkner. I was taken back to a time years earlier, driving through the Delta, in the land of abandoned churches and plantation homes. Muddy Waters on the speakers and catfish and kids on bicycles followed by their dogs. Hanging out on 61 and 49, eating a pulled pork sandwich at Abe’s, and staring out at the legendary crossroads. An old dilapidated donut shop next door and thinking of Robert Johnson and the nice fat waitress and the cops in the corner. The mother of the family all wearing U. of Mississippi shirts raving about, “That rhubarb pie. Oh honey, I jus’ <i>got</i></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> to have that rhubarb.” </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="text-indent: 0in;">And now, years later, I was in a similar joint in Nashville. There was an old black lady serving grits and eggs on a paper plate. A younger Italian guy (son of the owner, judging from the pictures on the walls) stood behind the register. A friendly cook huddled over a steamy pot and another guy who looked and acted retarded walked around the kitchen in circles. The random cast of regulars filed in through the door, all on a first name basis, ordering the same exact thing I imagine they’d ordered for the past twenty years.</div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="text-indent: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">The owner asked me if I was doing all right in a weird tone and I took it the wrong way, thinking, jeez, I must really look like shit. I did look rather ragged without much sleep. My stomach was a little shaky and I was feeling a bit lonely. Some days the blues get you; they get you good. Where was the woman of my dreams? Where was the romance along the road? Where was the great story I’d read about from countless writers who had traveled all around? Was it all just fiction? I didn’t want to wrestle with that thought so I brought my guitar down to the river with visions of Southern grandeur. I thought, it is times like these when great songs are written. Yes, it is in these moments when inspiring lyrics pour from the blood of the poets within all of us. But that heat was getting hotter and hotter: hell-hot and humid. All the benches shaded by the trees were taken up by the homeless so I was sitting out on the concrete, ass on fire and sweat dripping onto the guitar. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">A little while later a guy, I’d say around forty-five, approached me. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">“Hey partner, you got a song for me?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">I looked up at him and could smell the hard liquor on his breath. He was short and stocky, with fairly clean-cut blond hair. He removed his sunglasses and I noticed his eyes had a hard, reddish glaze to them. They had that strange, lost, glossy look. Eerie almost. I kept hoping he’d put those sunglasses back on and, eventually, he did.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">“Sure. Original?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">“Yeah, that works.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">I played one, but half way through he didn’t seem all that interested. His name was Jim. He sat down alongside of me and stared out at the river. I suppose the real reason he came over to me was that he had a story and he wanted to tell it.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">“Seventeen years, man. I’ve driven through every state. Seventeen years and they let me go just like that.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">“Damn. Sorry, man. Yeah, I spent some time out of work. How was driving a truck, as a trade and all?” </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">“Fuckin’ sucks. You ain’t got no friends and all you do is talk to yourself. You can’t never sleep. And they let me go in the middle of Tennessee. No loyalty. Nothing. Didn’t even give me the money for my last check. Just like that, I’m stuck in Nashville. No money. Nothing.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">I wondered how he could go straight from having a decent job to having no savings whatsoever. Something else had to have gone on. It wasn’t any of my business, though. I’ve learned there are some folks you just don’t pry on certain things. Jim seemed to be one of those types.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Jim noticed me looking at two large scars on his arms.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">“That one’s from a Sawzall. Tried to cut a piece of aluminum gutter off a roof and fell. Sawed straight into my arm. Never was one for construction. This one’s from my ex-wife. Stabbed me when I tried to leave her. But look here, bud, that ain’t what I came over here for. Now you look like the hard-working American type, and I figure you might want to hear about this. The thing is, we’re in an economic crisis here. Just look around. People like yourself, hard-working blue collar workers are out of work. And you know why? Because everything we buy now days is going overseas to China. Instead of putting it back in the pockets of us Americans, it’s all going to them immigrants in them other countries. It ain’t right. No money coming back, no money to spend, no money to manufacture. We’ve eliminated all the good jobs.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">To an extent, I agreed with him. We’d pretty much sold our souls to foreign countries in the name of a few dollars and now we were paying the price. It was no different than what we’d done to other nations and I found myself remembering a poem I had once read by Pablo Neruda about the United Fruit Company and the impact it had on Chile and Latin America. Jim wasn’t bringing up anything new, but then he started to get real heated up on the immigrant slant. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">“What it is is these damn Mexicans and Asians. Taking all these jobs for nothing, undercutting American wages. A man can’t earn a decent livin’ with these fuckers stealing our work. Don’t even pay taxes. I say we stick them all in jail. Yup. When they pay all the taxes they owe the government and the American people, we’ll let them out.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">I didn’t know if this was really a healthy solution, but I nodded my head and let him continue. I was kind of regretting telling him I’d been a union worker that had been unemployed. I suppose it gave him the wrong impression. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">“But here’s what I’m getting at. See, I got this idea to make some money. I’m gonna start up an internet website. I’m gonna’ call it “Taking Back America.” Anyway, look here partner, this is my idea. I’m gonna go around the country with a camera interviewing people out of work, hard-working Americans, just like you. I’ll have them tell their stories on camera. Then I’ll put it up on a website and people will pay to watch the videos.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">“Isn’t most of that stuff free now days?” I asked, not trying to kill his dream, just being realistic.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">“Yeah, but, these will be real stories, the stories they don’t tell on TV. These will be real Americans. People will pay for it.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">“Sounds like a good idea. Do you have a computer?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">“No, not yet, I’m working on it. Just need to take some classes, get a laptop, figure out how to use the internet. Get some money coming in, get a consultant, you know.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">It was then that I shut up. My days of playing devil’s advocate are over. I wasn’t going to be the one to keep the guy from his career aspirations. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">“Listen here, Seth. When it comes down to it, I really need some money to get this thing going. I swear to you, a little dough for a camera and a laptop. So what do you say? You look like someone who would be into this. You got anything to contribute towards the cause? Whatever you can spare. It’ll go straight into the business. It’ll be like an investment. I swear to you man. No bullshit.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">“Sorry, Jim. Sounds like a good plan, but I don’t have anything.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">It was a nice hustle, but I had nothing financially to offer him. I told him I’d spent most of the past week sleeping in my truck.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">“Well, shit.” </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Jim stared out at the river for a few seconds shaking his head, not really angry that I hadn’t given him money. His mind was somewhere else. Maybe with that woman who had given him the scar. Maybe with all the money he’d blown somewhere along the line. It was hard to tell. He then got up, bid farewell, and walked down towards Broadway.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">An hour later, a kid with a ragged-looking mutt on a frayed rope approached me. His name was Matt. He had a guitar on his back.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">“You play?” he asked.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">“Yeah, I mess around with it. You?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">“Oh, yeah. I play here on the streets. Only Christian music, though. I play for the Lord. That’s what God wants. I’m recording here for an album. This big label, they’re all into my music. I trained under the world’s number three-ranked guitar player. I’ve got a whole crowd of regulars that come back to see me. Sometimes they throw in twenties. Guitar Gary was giving me shit for playing on the corner the other day, but screw that guy.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">“The hippy dude?” I’d seen some guy on the corner who couldn’t even muster a single chord earlier.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">“Yeah, he sucks. He kept telling me this was his street. I told him to fuck off.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">I saw him scratching at a yellow and purple infected hole on his arm. It wasn’t pretty.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">“Recluse bit me last night. I dug the poison out with my knife. You have to get it all. I learned all that survival shit from my dad in North Carolina. I’m going back there soon. Been staying at the Flying J with my wife in our van. I’m so sick of that place. Almost fought one of the drug dealers the other night. Kept coming up to my door, asking if I wanted drugs. I don’t do that shit. I’m done with it. He wouldn’t stop banging on the door. He’s lucky I didn’t kill him. I’m trained in karate, you know. Black belt.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">“Are you trying to stay in Nashville?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">“No way. I’m sick of living on the streets. I’m sick of Nashville. This place sucks. Once I get some money, I’m going back to North Carolina. I’ve had it here.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">I stuck my hand out and petted the mutt on the top of the head. Neither of us said anything for a while. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">“Well, look man, I got to run,” said Matt.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">“Yeah, good luck with everything.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">The kid was nice enough, but I had the feeling that everything that he said was a lie. Maybe just extreme exaggerations. The road allows for this, though. Be all you can be, but a little different connotation than what the green camouflage-wearing men in the commercial portray. After talking to him and Jim, I reflected that the hobo life is all and well, but nothing I wanted to delve too far into. Maybe the train-hopping punks I feel very indifferent to would beg to differ, but it was there, sitting on that bench, staring out at the river, that I said a prayer: “Please, Lord, Buddha, Abraham, well whoever it is that calls the shots, let’s not let things get to that point.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><h2 style="text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></h2><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-2Nks1dt3DOi4wlaCuAZ2RPaoTzsOohEqBmf-sb0L2PgSQdvRNDiKq-HfFxWKxH70onf7MGoCh_yw-Vsuvr7wltHYLczqGOyKhDqOLtqGj8QWaIbfc_ckpiGJ6d8jJKeozIOn19FSGUY/s1600/IMG_1206.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-2Nks1dt3DOi4wlaCuAZ2RPaoTzsOohEqBmf-sb0L2PgSQdvRNDiKq-HfFxWKxH70onf7MGoCh_yw-Vsuvr7wltHYLczqGOyKhDqOLtqGj8QWaIbfc_ckpiGJ6d8jJKeozIOn19FSGUY/s320/IMG_1206.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><h2 style="text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></h2><h2 style="text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt;">Chapter 11 </span></h2><h2 style="text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt;">Reunions and Rebirth</span></h2><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Into Southeast Tennessee, winding down the road with the Smokey Mountains up to the right and cool-running creeks running to the left. Lincoln Log cabins and the smoke and clouds hanging almost low enough to touch. I stood on top of a mountain with one foot in North Carolina, one in Tennessee, and the Appalachian Trail running through it all. Before I could fully take it in, a torrential downpour came down in true rainforest fashion. It was all blue, blue, blue. I followed the hundreds of Harley riders racing around the corners, down into the Cherokee Indian reservation with the casinos and countless tacky tourist shops with souvenirs and wooden statues of chiefs in the front. They provided a strange paradox to all of this beautiful nature. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">I arrived in Asheville to visit a friend of mine I’d met in Portland and was greeted with cold beers, burgers, squash, salad, and Rice-Krispie treats. When it comes to food, they sure do it right down South. I requested more BBQ and everyone got giddy with excitement as I was taken the next day to probably the best Q I’ve ever had. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">In an art/industrial part of Asheville near the French Broad River sits 12 Bones. You walk into the little place that’s only open for lunch and read the board with the different rubs: Blueberry Chipotle, Brown Sugar. Meat falling off the bone and melting in the mouth, corn jalapeño grits, potato salad, all served on a big aluminum dog pan. A huge glass of sweet tea, and, for desert, a deep-fried Twinkie. I suppose the true sign of any good meal is immobility, and for the next six hours I lied down in a park downtown like a beached whale, unable to move, listening to a violin player across the street playing for tips.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Asheville was a nice, quaint, hilly town up in the mountains that I only knew as the hometown of Thomas Wolfe. It reminded me a bit of Portland with the whole hippypunkart vibe and large number of breweries, but it seemed to have a sense of Southern charm also. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Two days later, I arrived back in Washington D.C. I was a bit tired from the trip, but relieved I’d made it in one piece without any major catastrophes. My friend Matt, guitarist from Crispus Attucks and owner of Smash Records and who I’d lived with years ago, was nice enough to split his basement with me until I figured what I was doing. I had to laugh how things sometimes have a way of coming full circle as we found ourselves in a similar living situation (sharing a room, large punk house with lots of roommates, listening to old bands) over a decade later. I hung out in his store in Adams Morgan and watched the young punks walk into the door, excitedly looking for records and CDs. It was then that a sense of nostalgia came over me. I was a little jealous and yet happy that my friend had his own business, one in which he was doing something he had a passion for. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">I hung out with another old friend, guitarist, and bandmate from SCRM, Dave. He was now a big time DJ in the world of house and electronic music. He finds himself constantly on the road, playing clubs in Australia and Amsterdam and Canada and throughout the U.S. for thousands. We met in a hip bar from what I remembered to be a not-so-nice neighborhood. Times had changed like they do in every city and now, as I mingled with the young club scene, </span>I was referred to as the old punker dude who knew and toured with Dave way back in the day. Yes, at the whopping age of thirty-three, I was a grizzly veteran. <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">I had to laugh as I sat at the table, sipping a drink and watching everyone come up to him as if he was some sort of celebrity. He was very humble, though, knowing many of them from various shows. I couldn’t help but think that if anyone I knew was going to “make it big,” Dave was the one. Although I was unable to stand the monotony of the music, I enjoyed the scenery of beautiful younger women shaking all around with that good, get-down feeling, as they say. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">New York was calling me and I knew it was the time to go. For the next two months I hopped around subletting small rooms and venturing around Brooklyn and Manhattan. I took the subway to Coney Island and to Harlem and to points in-between. I found myself walking hours on end through the streets of Manhattan, eyes fully exposed, often times lost, filled with a strong case of sensory overload with the carnival of New York parading around like it did every day. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Often discovering musicians playing in the subways and out on the streets, it was then that I started to really toy with the idea of playing music for tips. The money I’d spent months saving was dwindling and no jobs were coming in, so one day I took my guitar to Central Park. I sat down in a tunnel that looks out upon the Manhattan skyscrapers and plucked some tunes. I made it two hours before I realized that I was too lazy to stand and that the first thing I needed to do was go out and purchase a stool. That afternoon I came away with twenty-five bucks, a wealth of compliments on my playing, and some kids dancing. All in all, as first forays go, I considered it a success.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><h2 style="text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: normal;"> </span></h2><h2 style="text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt;"><br />
</span></h2>Seth Swaaleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02442058078452795462noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4913178434267411633.post-48635219670217210042011-01-03T09:41:00.000-08:002011-01-03T09:41:19.342-08:00High, Low, and In Between<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiL3tt_Is64jAm8d8IvPQxsa7NiCSbEsnOJX_sb9DIVjUMMyVDmx1hZB61x_spchilJV-vMfH0WWyiWUDsmpzCugpgyPFb2ennRSdw4h7_xMd979ZGG50mRjX4VwB8kxfg0A6ROwGaaZF8/s1600/IMG_0649.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiL3tt_Is64jAm8d8IvPQxsa7NiCSbEsnOJX_sb9DIVjUMMyVDmx1hZB61x_spchilJV-vMfH0WWyiWUDsmpzCugpgyPFb2ennRSdw4h7_xMd979ZGG50mRjX4VwB8kxfg0A6ROwGaaZF8/s320/IMG_0649.JPG" width="320" /></a></div> <style>
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<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><b>Chapter 7<span> </span></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><b>Monkeys, Dog Shears, and the Muse</b></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><i></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="text-indent: 0in;">There was another small place off of Glisan called the Coconut Café I did a few shows at. The place was owned by a quite entertaining and talkative Canadian named Allen. He’d spent most of his years in carpentry, ended up in Columbia where he got married. Then, on a whim, he decided to open a coffee shop in Portland. It was in another more desolate part of Northeast. He fixed up the place real nice with new paint and art on the walls and patio tables. He was hoping the neighborhood would make a change for the better, but again, hardly anyone was ever there. I felt bad because I really didn’t know enough people to bring in and the few I did often flaked out at the last minute. Times were hard, the economy had gone downhill, and people just weren’t going out as much. </div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="text-indent: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">The first time I played there was for a crowd of three eating dinner. An older Asian woman watched me and tapped her feet with a stuffed monkey dancing on her lap. At one point I caught a quick glimpse of her nipple and she looked like she was about to breast feed it.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">I couldn’t help myself. “Damn, lady. You’re really digging that monkey.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">“Yeah, you know who it is?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Suddenly I had a flash back to my youth and a similar stuffed creature sitting on my dresser.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent2" style="margin-left: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">“Curious George?”</span></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent2" style="margin-left: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">“Yup,” she smiled and then George waved his arm at me and said, “More music! More music!”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Yes, the guitar was opening me up to a world I otherwise would have no connection to, and I’ll admit, despite the little money I was making, I was having fun.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Needless to say, I played a few more shows at the Coconut and my entire crowd consisted of Allen and some gypsy selling stuff out of his car on the street. A month later, Allen was going through his own troubles with the wife. He was spending all of his time at the café and where was the money he promised her and the other night she threw all of his clothes on the lawn.<span> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">“Does that mean no more empanadas?” I asked him. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">“Yeah, no más,” said Allen dejectedly.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">He was all out of sorts, so I let him have the guitar. He played half of my set, singing insanely depressing ‘70s glam rock acoustical songs about love gone to the bowels of the crapper. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">I tried to get gigs at the better clubs around town, but had no luck. Maybe it was the music. Maybe I just didn’t know the right people. Either way, I took the shows I could get. The following month I played at a video store/coffee shop in a small town on the way to Mt. Hood called Estacada. It was often referred to as “Incesticada” by the folks in Portland in regards to its small town vibe. The downtown spanned about two blocks. My first time there I got quite an animated crowd. People in Portland had all kinds of places to see similar music, but despite being thirty miles away, musicians rarely came out here. At one point, I had a little chubby kid sitting on the couch no more than a few feet away feet from me. He was digging the music, humming along his own words to the songs. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">“What you singing?” I asked him.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">“About the flying monkey,” he said, shyly.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">What the hell monkeys and my music have in common I can’t say, but, lyrically, I figured he already had me beat, so I made a deal with him. <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Most people were sitting in the background, talking to one another, not paying much attention. I told him I’d play instrumentals and he could sing all about flying monkeys. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Later on, just as I was packing up, a family walked in the door. “What, where’s the music?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">The mom was a little drunk and was telling everyone how she’d cut her high school-aged son’s hair with dog shears the night before. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">“Dog shears. What kind of woman are you?” I asked her, jokingly.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">I then started playing the twelve-bar blues and told her to sing about it. She howled away about how her son worked at the Chinese restaurant and had that long, nappy hair (“I ain’t having no kid with a mullet!”). She was sick of looking at it, so she shaved it all off. We called the song “The Dog Shear Blues.” Needless to say, this was probably the best show I played in my months in Portland and the folks made my trip up into the mountains more than worthwhile. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvBCgOBNJmWWSULQVQMzI0G3iLvi10qDfQhxA8lA79vAGQUMY6hDnBIrShw33dBr4ZC5k3myp-wgC2GvbPfAK8PbpmxH7buNOq34aGZbHEH5SwIpxcyuworjiSYzg3FpOmBWym6uG9IEw/s1600/IMG_0800.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvBCgOBNJmWWSULQVQMzI0G3iLvi10qDfQhxA8lA79vAGQUMY6hDnBIrShw33dBr4ZC5k3myp-wgC2GvbPfAK8PbpmxH7buNOq34aGZbHEH5SwIpxcyuworjiSYzg3FpOmBWym6uG9IEw/s320/IMG_0800.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="text-indent: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="text-indent: 0in;">In other news, work had slowed down considerably. I’d seen the newly built condos all along the Willamette River lay vacant for months and couldn’t help but wonder if that wasn’t a sign of the times. Riding unemployment, I practiced more and more with the guitar and compiled a book of about fifty various songs I wanted to learn. I’d go down to the park downtown off of Burnside and Broadway and play for the people from the halfway houses. Folks were all dealing with their own struggles, whether it was mentally or with drug addictions or poverty, but I’d become a bit of a hermit and didn’t get out much. I found them to be a lot more entertaining conversationally than most of the people I otherwise came into contact with. The music seemed to be the starter in conversation, a symbol for some sort of connection, and then I’d be there hours later, the guitar long packed away, listening to them tell me their stories. </div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="text-indent: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">With the time off I also decided to take a trip back to the East Coast for the first time in over five years. I hung out with friends I’d lost touch with in D.C. and visited New York. I’d been flirting with the idea of dropping the whole electrician thing and moving back there, but I wanted to see if it was even possible. I’d visited New York a handful of times, played shows at ABC No Rio and nearby on the radio at WFMU. I’d crashed in friends’ insanely expensive studio apartments, roamed the streets in utter confusion, marveling at the masses and the sheer enormity of everything. I’d always enjoyed my time there, but, truthfully, I found the place to be a bit intimidating. I’ve always thought there was just too damn many people and that, with my lack of skills, I’d never be able to afford it. But there I was sitting on a park bench in Central Park, quietly strumming my guitar (case closed), not quite ready to delve into the street musician life. The vibrant springtime crowds were all around and there was music every which way you turned: DJs, sax players, violinists, operatic Fellini-style performance artists. I knew instantly then that New York was the place I needed to be. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">I was reminded of a simple quote by Che Guevara: “An expedition has two points; the point of departure and the point of arrival. If you want to make the second theoretical point coincide with the actual point, don’t think about the means.” It really wasn’t a matter of how or why; it just was. So I got back to Portland, worked on and off for a couple of months, and then in July I gave the landlord my thirty days. I quit my job, resigned from the union, and hit the road once again.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><h1 style="text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal;"> </span></h1><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkMbo8Y62r677aAdQTxjFwRnwgkyxGXTrzShjihC1hNO-lwMMqBVcKGyFyXwJ_LOQYQfUtzVDImaA-zSwoFmOLnkBj6EYzSnzuQxSa3LeIAsHfspkiF-r8c8nWPFKXUCBOEZ25LfmDD6o/s1600/IMG_1093.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkMbo8Y62r677aAdQTxjFwRnwgkyxGXTrzShjihC1hNO-lwMMqBVcKGyFyXwJ_LOQYQfUtzVDImaA-zSwoFmOLnkBj6EYzSnzuQxSa3LeIAsHfspkiF-r8c8nWPFKXUCBOEZ25LfmDD6o/s320/IMG_1093.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><h1 style="text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal;"> </span></h1><h1 style="text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal;">Chapter 8 </span></h1><h1 style="text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal;">Looking for Lily </span></h1><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">My arm is out the window, wind in my hair, reality and dreams roaming across the landscape. Back and forth to places I’ve been, to places I’m going. There’s excitement, and yet there’s also a strange sense of peace driving towards the unknown. These wheels take me through the forgotten parts of this country: Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming; green planes interspersed with rolling hills and cows… cows… cows; everywhere you look. Just mulling about. Munching on grass. Heads bowed down in black and white uniformity. The deer join them close by, setting quite a picturesque scene of the Wild West. This is the land of abandoned freight cars and barren houses that look like they were vacated one day never to be returned to. Yet, somehow, after the test of time, through the harsh winters and whatever storms good ol’ Mother Nature has had in store, they’re still standing. They’re a little slumped to the side, the wood now decayed to form a dark gray, but still desperately holding on to whatever’s left of the past. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">I made it as far as Rawlins, a hundred miles west of Laramie, Wyoming that night and slept in the parking lot of a Taco Bell. The only places open downtown after nine were the tent revivals; otherwise the place was a ghost town. It was another rough night as far as sleep went. I also came to the conclusion that at some point I was bitten by a spider, the gargantuan bump on the left side of my nose the next day being my marker.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">The following morning I arrived in Laramie, sky early blue and the sun just rising. It was like a vision of a dream I’d had, except it wasn’t really a vision or a dream, more of a strange reality coming true. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Months earlier, I was sitting in my house and I don’t know how or why—I think the Clint Eastwood film <i>Outlaw Josey Wales </i></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">may have been on while I was sleeping?—does this take place in Laramie, Wyoming? I don’t know. I know nothing about Wyoming, but I woke up and wrote down the lyrics that night to a song I called <i>My Days at the Prairie Café</i></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">. In truth, it stemmed from an image I’ve had for a long time: a diner waitress living in the Midwest, maybe late forties, during the lull of mid-afternoon. The place is empty, aside from maybe an old regular sipping coffee at the counter. The waitress is staring stoically out the window and I’m wondering what’s going on through her mind. I wrote a song about her and a young homeless guy living in his car who visits town. I named her Lily; no particular reason other than that it seemed like a good waitress name.</span> Usually you write the song from past experience, but in this case I was turning the tables; writing the fiction and then visiting the reality, figuring there’s nothing better than a little twist on the order of things. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Suffice to say, it was surreal as I rolled into the early morning streets of Laramie’s old downtown. The sun <i>was</i></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> just rising. The Union Pacific <i>was </i></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">roaring down the tracks of the Wild West, just as it had done for the past hundred and fifty years, and down at the end of 2<sup>nd</sup> St. laid the Prairie Rose Café. It was a name I’d stolen from some research I’d done. It looked just as I’d pictured it: a non-descript diner with a few booths and counter seats. The smell of greasy bacon and home fries filled the air. I went in and ordered a lumberjack breakfast. If an old waitress named Lily serves me, I’ll just have to say screw New York and stay here, I thought. I mean, the powers-that-be can only tell you things so many times in mysterious ways before you have to stop and listen to what they have to say. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">But Lily was nowhere to be found. There was just a young blond college student named Emily taking my order. As I devoured the bacon and eggs and biscuit, I realized what a close resemblance that name had rolling off the tongue: Em-ily… Li-ly. Maybe I should consult an etymologist? But there was nothing startling that morning. There was a list of other waitresses who worked there on a board, but no Lily. Farmers in the back talked about the weather. A beer-bellied old guy with a John Deere cap asked me about my breakfast. I wanted to share my travel story with him, how I was off to New York with everything packed into my truck. I’d written a song about this place and now, crazy as it sounds, here I was, sitting in this stool, right at the counter, drinking stale coffee next to him.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">“You see, sir, I’m living out the life of the characters.” </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">But I didn’t say anything. This was an early morning, much like any early morning in Laramie and in the world, for that matter. People woke, took a piss, shaved, put on makeup, ate some breakfast, went to work, walked to school, came home, flipped on the television, made love, slept, dreamt, and then did it all over again. Who the hell cared where <i>I </i></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">was going?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWfdA7sEt_fdXZ6_rRrq7U8WdNOBMqo8aqFJsQCgVtf0ScUjNlmGZ1uTTJ64SDxOuMGakQLFj9o6Azu5Zi3znbxEvKo5gdw8n40HN3JA39ksYqjM40QjpB2Oq6L9qRymsmCk56n0p12mY/s1600/IMG_1576.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWfdA7sEt_fdXZ6_rRrq7U8WdNOBMqo8aqFJsQCgVtf0ScUjNlmGZ1uTTJ64SDxOuMGakQLFj9o6Azu5Zi3znbxEvKo5gdw8n40HN3JA39ksYqjM40QjpB2Oq6L9qRymsmCk56n0p12mY/s320/IMG_1576.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Despite my silence, my spirits were up. With belly full, I walked around town some more. I considered going into the Buckhorn Bar, but figured eight a.m. was a little early for drinking. I grabbed my guitar and sat next to the railroad tracks and played some tunes. I thought about all the greats before me who had done the same and the train-traveling songs of Woody Guthrie and Jimmy Rodgers came to mind, so that’s what I played. Some people looked at me oddly; others smiled and wished me a good morning. Later on, I went to a music store and jammed with a metal dude. He said there weren’t any metal bands in town, just country and bluegrass. He had no one to play with, so we sat down and he played and I tried to accompany him with my acoustic. Honestly, it just sounded like a lot of noise, but it was fun. I thought about sticking around Laramie, but once I got back to the truck I decided to head on.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieC59gZSlKw8PYPHD_0i9A3f5Ouudry61A7dYS6WsEh_PyHWCfgE7tN3e6QNLMs8BuFP5nt9u2NIShnMRoKpQ4L4h5E5ifK0oV2nZYMHtP1t112IbmE4T6f4lSRLoRs5uxahnAig56VEM/s1600/IMG_1531.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieC59gZSlKw8PYPHD_0i9A3f5Ouudry61A7dYS6WsEh_PyHWCfgE7tN3e6QNLMs8BuFP5nt9u2NIShnMRoKpQ4L4h5E5ifK0oV2nZYMHtP1t112IbmE4T6f4lSRLoRs5uxahnAig56VEM/s320/IMG_1531.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><b>Chapter 9 </b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><b>I-70 and the Simplicity of Solitude</b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="text-indent: 0in;">East through the frontier, past Cheyenne, true cowboy and cowgirl land, where the biggest rodeo in the world was taking place. The streets were packed with tight wranglers and Stetsons and waddling couples. I took a pit stop, enough to snap a few pictures, and then headed South through Denver and on East towards the Kansas border. </div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="text-indent: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Kansas seems to be long stretches of nothing: flat land that carries all the way into the horizon and somewhere beyond. Grain and corn crops and every twenty miles a tiny town with a silo, a factory, an old rusted freight car that just called it quits one day, a few homes, maybe a gas station, and a café. A half hour later, you see the same exact town and the mind has been drifting some and you’re thinking, wait a minute, </span>am I in some strange repeating vortex of Midwest farmland? <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Is this some sick joke where the miles on the odometer are moving but I’m just rolling down an endless road of eternal repetition? Or, maybe this is a <i>Twilight Zone</i></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> episode, yeah, that’s it, the last man on earth or the psychic in the coffee shop. The image of Rod standing in the corner with his slick hair and sick, yet enamoring, smile. A huge John Deere kicks up dirt on the road next to the interstate as the owner’s brown lab runs alongside, tongue hanging out, with the blood red orange sunset behind him. A pink Cadillac that has no reason being on a grassy knoll has a sign next to it that reads: “WELCOME TO FLAGLER.” </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Time goes slowly with the wheels on the road. I make up songs that I forget an hour later. I talk to the cows but they seem to be occupied in their own form of reverie. Kansas City: 400 miles… 320. I pass the birthplaces of Bob Dole and Walter Chrysler. I see a sign for the world’s biggest prairie dog at some sort of freak animal farm. I laugh to myself and say, </span>“I’ll show you the biggest prairie dog.” <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">It’s then that I miss touring with friends and bands and the stories and joking in places like this to pass the time and how different that type of traveling is compared to this. The truck sputters a little and I take that as laughter, not wanting to think of the alternative. Soon, with the sunset upon me, I’m in another city, with the hope that some fantastic surprise lies around the corner. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Thirty minutes later, I take a wrong turn off the freeway and find myself in an area known as the Bottoms. It’s an old industrial warehouse neighborhood that lies below the hilltop that Kansas City sits upon. It has an apocalyptic feel to it and reminds me a bit of a run-down Hollywood movie set. The streets are empty for the most part, but I notice a few lofts and spaces where I imagine the artists and punks and adventurous entrepreneurs have set up in. I think back to when this place was bustling with commerce and workers and trains rolling through and ponder about the existence of time and the stories it tells.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">More importantly, my first thing on the list was to eat some BBQ and what better place than Kansas City? Thus a lengthy scavenger hunt ensued, all in the search for a place called Arthur Bryant’s. I suddenly felt like I was in the South, as I was sent all over the city. You know, “Make a left when you see the tree,” type of directions. I stopped in an arts district and asked a couple if they knew where the place was. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">“Oh, yeah, shit hunny, where’s that place at? Hold on, man. Let me call my buddy. He’ll know.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">“Really, it’s all right, I’ll find it.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">“No way, this guy’ll know good BBQ.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">This went on for a good ten minutes as he dialed all of his friends. Everyone knew the place but couldn’t member the street it was on. I thanked them for the effort and told them I’d find it somehow.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Another lady told me it was just “up the road a bit.” I ended up in the old jazz area where the negro baseball hall of fame is. I threw an imaginary pitch in salute of Satchel Paige. I walked all around, found myself in some projects a few blocks back, but there was no BBQ to be found. Then I asked this older gentleman who was out in the summer heat, sweating good and wet in his purple basketball jersey, purple shorts, purple shoes and purple hat. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">“Oh yeah, just one block up that way. On Brooklyn St. Just right there.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">I didn’t see anything but apartments where he was pointing. When I got to the light, the street sign said Woodlawn St. Later on, a local told me everyone in Kansas City is partially deaf. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">An hour and a half later, I found the place five blocks away. There was a long line out the door, and too hungry to wait, I drove on to another place called Gates. It was one of those small cafeteria-style joints in a non-descript mall. Grab a tray, order some meat, and devour. I looked a bit like a deer in the headlights, not quite sure what to order, but, thankfully, the girl behind the counter was quite nice and pointed me in the right direction. She then shouted at the top of her lungs back to the cook, “BEEF ON A BUN!” Minutes later, I sat alone at a booth. All of the sudden, those thousands of miles of witnessing endless plains of cattle came to fruition as I stared at the brisket covered in sauce. I received a dirty look and comment from a local for using a fork, so, </span>not one to offend when it comes to local customs, I dug my hands in, the sauce and meat seeping underneath my dirty fingernails. I gave him a nod and licked my fingers clean. <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">I won’t say it was the best BBQ I’ve ever had, but it was quite good, and, overall, I walked out of the place more than satisfied. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">After a long walk around downtown, I thought that Kansas City seemed to have a close resemblance to Baltimore. The old gothic architecture of the business district and then the newly built-up commercial section where all the weekend crowds hung out. Just blocks away were desolate, abandoned, boarded-up apartments and stores that gave it the feel of a ghost town. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Trying to keep up with the western theme of the trip, I later that night found myself at the Stagecoach Inn, a small dive bar with a vast selection of stomach-turning beers—Schlitz, Old Style, Milwaukee’s Best, that sort of thing. Soon after, free shots of some vodka concoction kept coming my way from the bartender. I had a lengthy discussion with a guy working on a crossword who said he’d been a bartender at some of the strip joints years ago in New Orleans. He told me some punk rock stories and something about G.G. Allin running around the French Quarter covered in blood. But his memory wasn’t so good. He told me it was because he did a shit load of LSD. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">I went back to my truck parked in a church parking lot only to be woken by the local police around four in the morning. Squinty-eyed, I looked into the shadowed face of the officer and his massive Maglite. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">“What you doing here?” asked the officer. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">“Uh, sleeping.” </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">“You can’t sleep here. You know, there’s motels and hotels around here.” </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">“Uh, does it look like I can afford a hotel?” </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">“Is there anything in there I should know about?” the light now shining bright through the inside of the car. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">“I do have a knife on the seat.” </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">“You been drinking tonight?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">“Oh, just a couple of beers,” I lied. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">“Well, just so you know, this isn’t a safe area.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">After driving around town earlier, it was definitely lot safer than some of the other parts I’d been through. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">“You can park on the street, but not in this parking lot. It’s private property.” </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I always thought churches were open to the homeless, but maybe not in Kansas City. <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">I was too tired and drunk and know the rule of thumb is don’t argue with the police, especially when you’ve got out-of-state plates. I pulled the truck in reverse, over the curb, out the driveway, and straight into the first spot on the street. I covered the windows with my sun shade and the police car was still there. Soon after, I was fast asleep. </span></div>Seth Swaaleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02442058078452795462noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4913178434267411633.post-40749443661156872222010-12-27T11:47:00.000-08:002010-12-27T11:47:24.758-08:00High, Low, and In Between<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhznmTB4FuLeeCXyFK5dd4PB56DXsUvnepcGJ3oJKYFvvejt_M0Ud5MIKyI4FHKqrfSMyU6BlK3Ls3R_c_C1z7eRKb5xHBWGvT3qSc5eebkV4Lw4vdeFZQa_tTsFlMvnmiRm0xKOv1SZXc/s1600/car+in+snow.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhznmTB4FuLeeCXyFK5dd4PB56DXsUvnepcGJ3oJKYFvvejt_M0Ud5MIKyI4FHKqrfSMyU6BlK3Ls3R_c_C1z7eRKb5xHBWGvT3qSc5eebkV4Lw4vdeFZQa_tTsFlMvnmiRm0xKOv1SZXc/s320/car+in+snow.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div> <style>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><b>Chapter 4 </b></span> <br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><b>Old Hat, New Tricks</b></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">For the next six months, I lived in a small studio in the basement of an Orthodox Jewish family in North Hollywood. They were nice folks, but rather drab conditions for what I was paying and what I’d been used to. I pretty much went to work, came home, and watched them build make-shift homes in the backyard for religious holidays. I read, listened to the countless kids above me run around, and slept. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="text-indent: 0in;">It was during this time that I started getting back into the guitar. I had my dad’s old acoustic for years, a weathered Yamaha that I had borrowed permanently, but rarely played. Towards the days before the breakup with my girl, I had tried writing songs.<span> </span>Aside from a couple of jam sessions in New Orleans, and since the days I was playing in Super Chinchilla Rescue Mission, it was the first music I’d played in nearly five years. The songs were awful, though: sappy, depressing lyrics about lost love. I even bought a banjo, but everything I played sounded like the soundtrack for an old kung-fu movie. </div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="text-indent: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">I’ve always had a pretty diverse appreciation for all kinds of music, whether it be classical or jazz or punk, but, gradually, I found myself getting more and more into old acoustic blues musicians and lesser-known country folks artists: Reverend Gary Davis, Blind Blake, Doc Watson, Lightnin’ Hopkins, John Fahey, Mance Lipscomb, Mississippi John Hurt, Woody Guthrie, and The Carter Family. Then through these I somehow stumbled upon the folks that followed in their footsteps, artists like Townes Van Zandt, John Prine, and Guy Clark. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">With the old blues players, often times, it’s as if two people are playing at once, providing the bass and the melodies simultaneously, and the words, sung rough and mumbled, hit straight to the bone. In a way, these folks helped me keep my sanity in a time when I found myself teetering on the edge. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Prine sings about his father’s hometown in Muhlenberg County, Kentucky: “…sometimes we’d travel right down the Green River, where the air smelled like snakes and we’d shoot with our pistols, but empty pop bottles is all we would kill.” </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Guy Clark tells the story of a man who, since he’s been young, has always jumped off his garage thinking he was Superman, “…he’s one of those that knows that life is just a leap of faith, spread your wings, hold your breath, and always trust your cape.” It struck a chord with me. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Van Zandt sings songs so true to love and loneliness and despair—“days up and down they come, like rain on a Conga drum, forget most, remember some, but don’t turn none away… everything is not enough, and nothing is too much to bear, where you been is good and gone, all you keeps the getting there.” Listening to these words, one can’t help but wonder if he isn’t channeling the words of some long-lost angels and spirits from some other time.<span> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">All of these guitarists were fingerpickers, which is pretty foreign to the whole bar chord punk rock style of playing I or anyone else I’ve known has played. Despite what any die-hard punk musician says about Bob Mould or Greg Ginn or J. Mascis (musicians I admire in their own right), what the old fellas were playing was a heck of a lot harder and original. Emotionally, it was raw and true and it had more of an affect on me. So, in that little basement I started to put in the hours of learning on the guitar what they were playing.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjY3BUYWXLXQLM_N1Q6xMTSHmPDFcxiUkWYPnHkFW-_4UDAp45de9UEBkAIvMNqo3KU-Yt4DtgSQxaEDGSc1n1pxR1G0PAgRnkKFZrkbIhNpoGfFWEYwe8A1j9x7_mbctXpcjfAsJeMLPI/s1600/IMG_1133.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjY3BUYWXLXQLM_N1Q6xMTSHmPDFcxiUkWYPnHkFW-_4UDAp45de9UEBkAIvMNqo3KU-Yt4DtgSQxaEDGSc1n1pxR1G0PAgRnkKFZrkbIhNpoGfFWEYwe8A1j9x7_mbctXpcjfAsJeMLPI/s320/IMG_1133.JPG" width="240" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">I’d grown tired of Los Angeles, though. I just couldn’t let go of the wandering spirit. After living on the East Coast and down in New Orleans, Southern California, despite being where I grew up, just seemed so foreign to me. I looked around into trying to move and keep doing the electrician thing. Portland, Oregon was one of the few places that would take me into their union. Truth be said, I really wanted to let go of it all. I just wanted to hit the road, you know, let the chips fall, but I felt like I had to finish something for once. I always seemed to be leaving things before I ever finished them, whether it was school or music or relationships, and this was going to be the one time I could say, “I did the time. I graduated.” It took six months of paperwork and flights to and fro for five-minute interviews. Once again, I was sitting across from electrical big wigs and telling them what they wanted to hear. Before I knew it, I was renting a good-sized house with a big yard and huge trees and all of the neighborhood stray cats hanging out on my porch. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
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</div><h2 style="text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt;">Chapter 5 </span></h2><h2 style="text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt;">Talking Fishing Blues</span></h2><h2 style="text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></h2><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">In every way possible, Portland seems to be the complete and utter opposite of Los Angeles. No concrete jungle or graffiti or unending suburban sprawl. No yelling motorists sitting in rush hour traffic. No bright lights. No glam. A thirty-minute drive and I could be hiking in the mountains of the Columbia Gorge, standing underneath gorgeous waterfalls and cliffs that had been carved for thousands of years. I could be fishing with a roaring river from the runoff of Mt. Hood all to myself, the hawks circling above, deer and bear somewhere close by. I’d never really spent much time in nature and I certainly wasn’t any survivalist by any means, but I found it all new and exciting. Soon, I would have a cabin and a pond and do my own hunting and refuse to pay taxes and continue in the tradition of great nature writers. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9uGBJYwj8sye8dD8hiCmR3OltRXiytap32OXZsgOgaSw8pPEVjQ_GnZ7brJUtwvYVUSxEDKv4hblwvEoTauURdJ5oU1xn_E-_ovGwjp0bntzNxpYNFKJU80YyzWovFmYLjhAJdhrcXEo/s1600/eddie+%2527s0302.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9uGBJYwj8sye8dD8hiCmR3OltRXiytap32OXZsgOgaSw8pPEVjQ_GnZ7brJUtwvYVUSxEDKv4hblwvEoTauURdJ5oU1xn_E-_ovGwjp0bntzNxpYNFKJU80YyzWovFmYLjhAJdhrcXEo/s320/eddie+%2527s0302.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="text-indent: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="text-indent: 0in;">My first job I got sent out to a “tank farm” where they store gasoline and ethanol. It was a highly dangerous environment in an industrial area on the outskirts of northwest Portland, where, at times, one small spark could cause the whole place to explode. Hours of paper work were necessary for even the most menial tasks. It definitely wasn’t a job for the nervous at hand. It was mostly outdoors, rugged and dirty, and dealt more with control wiring and valves and processing machines. It was a completely different world from the typical commercial work that I knew.</div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="text-indent: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">There was a lot of down time, sitting around, waiting for various jobs and okays by managers. After a month there, I felt like I had very little in common with the guys I worked with. These were folks whose vacations consisted of driving out to Idaho to hunt for elk. They all knew how to fix their cars and build their houses. They were accustomed to the harsher elements of nature, and, for the most part, it seemed like they married the girl from their high school, got a job with the union when they were young, had kids, and never left the town they were born in. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">As we sat around on breaks in the maintenance room, the conversation more often than not centered on guns, which, unfortunately or fortunately, depending on how you look at it, I know nothing about. </span>Often I stayed quiet, occasionally feeling the brunt of derogatory comments about the “California Boy,” and maybe the fact that I was gay because I wasn’t married and didn’t have any kids yet. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">“Did you get a gun yet?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">“Nope.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">“When you going to get a gun? You know, there’s a gun show coming up next week. Hell, my son’s twelve. He’s even got a gun. He’s even killed his own elk. What are you, gay? Who the hell doesn’t have a gun?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">They were kind of kidding and kind of not. Aside from an extremely intelligent journeymen my age who I actually quite enjoyed working with, these were folks who thought Obama was going to steal their weapons from them. These were tough, small town men who had stored up their ammunition in the days leading up to Y2K and it really bothered them that I didn’t have something to defend myself with.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">“It’s your God-given American right, for Christ’s sake. Haven’t you ever read the Constitution? You lived in L.A. and New Orleans and didn’t have a <i>gun</i></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">? Are you fuckin’ crazy?” </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="text-indent: 0in;">When I told them all the places I’d lived in the past ten years and all of the various jobs I’d worked, I was granted with mystified looks and shaking of heads, as if I was some foreign creature. And how the hell could I be away from my family? What the hell kind of son was I? </div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="text-indent: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeI1RaPCRQDn6jNH2izYnvQQMJvLGl12cuvocSyPh2sw7MspPkx2FHFMZyS8_gInLyOBgL6NlRB4vEfjT2nI5ZwU_zjUMfOwgT36GgZN3ZxjzQyq3hIbgXRySufbt58zV_GraR3t9nPRQ/s1600/IMG_1228.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeI1RaPCRQDn6jNH2izYnvQQMJvLGl12cuvocSyPh2sw7MspPkx2FHFMZyS8_gInLyOBgL6NlRB4vEfjT2nI5ZwU_zjUMfOwgT36GgZN3ZxjzQyq3hIbgXRySufbt58zV_GraR3t9nPRQ/s320/IMG_1228.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">One day, I brought up fishing, although I really don’t know much about that either. I would just go up to the Clackamas River, out to some desolate area off the road, and throw my line in. I’d drink a six pack, strum my guitar, and never get a bite. I was quite complacent sitting on my beach chair with the quiet and solitude. I’d come to the realization that if you went to the river and sat on a rock, you were deemed crazy, but if you had a pole in your hand, well, then you were all right.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">“What did you fish for?” asked Frank, a very good electrician who was always high-strung and most likely bipolar. One minute, he’d be smiling and laughing with you, the next he’d be screaming bloody murder how you were an idiot: </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">“<i>You ain’t in no damn California no more and how long you been an apprentice? You don’t know how to do that? Boy, you and me goona’ be buttin’ heads. What the hell are they teaching you at that school?”</i></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">“Trout,” I lied. It was pathetic. I didn’t even know what I was fishing for. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">“Yeah, well, what did you use?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">“Powerbait.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="text-indent: 0in;">“Well, what color?”</div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="text-indent: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">“Chartreuse.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">“’Attaboy.” </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Frank was all smiles. There were a few nods from the other electricians. I was then considered okay, if nothing, for a brief few minutes, and given privy to the good fishing holes outside of Portland. I’d hate to have seen what the ramifications would have been had I said yellow.<span> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><b>Chapter 6 </b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><b>Freight Train! Freight Train!</b></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="text-indent: 0in;">Portland is a relatively quiet place, despite what anyone there would tell you. It’s a small city, not necessarily in size, but culturally and geographically. There’s an active music scene, but, for whatever reason, I felt myself disconnected from it. I tried to go to punk shows but I never could get into any of the bands. Maybe I just didn’t know the right ones, but it seemed like a lot of the bands I came across covered up their lack of originality with loud music. Over time, my visions of living the life of Thoreau dissipated and my restless spirit seemed to resurface. I suppose you can only hide the true self for so long. The place just seemed too damn safe for my blood. And here I had the nicest house I’d ever lived in, a decent paycheck coming in, and I still wasn’t happy. I may have been an entry-level working bum before, but at least I was around good people. I was playing music. I was writing. I was creating and was surrounded by people doing the same. </div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="text-indent: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="text-indent: 0in;">Portland lacked the danger and action and creativeness and spontaneity that I was used to in big urban cities like D.C. and Baltimore and New Orleans. The personalities were different. Whereas in those other places, I felt like I got a good idea of what someone felt instantly, whether it was good or bad. In Portland I always felt like folks weren’t really being honest with me. I think it’s just the way people were. They have a more reserved nature about them. Maybe it was just my own sense of social awkwardness, but I found myself becoming more and more of a recluse. Sometimes I was hit by long waves of depression, spending more time alone with the walls. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">I still didn’t think I was any good at playing compared to what I was listening to, but I saw minor improvements. I was able to pick out songs a little easier and, gradually, I began to learn a handful of old traditional folk and blues tunes. I was also writing my own songs—using past stories as the basis for most of them—trying to work together a theme of sorts with various characters. I wrote a song about Carson McCullers <i>The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter</i></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">, then another about a street musician from New Orleans. I wrote one about a bum wearing a toga roaming around New York during the spring who’s convinced he was once a Wall St. millionaire. One from the point of view of Travis, the character played by Harry Dean Stanton in the movie <i>Paris, Texas</i></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">. Another about a married woman who leaves Alaska dressed as a pinup girl, driving a Mercury Comet. She meets an eighteen-year-old Indian in Sioux Falls: an affair ensues across the landscape. I even wrote some instrumentals. It was nice to feel like I was creating something, nothing new per se, but a little piece of life. I found myself with a productive fever, trying to catch up for the previous years I felt like I had wasted. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Eventually, I put together a demo CD and started playing shows. My first one was at a metal/punk bar in a desolate part of 82<sup>nd</sup> St. in NE Portland. There was nothing much out there at night aside from some cheap motels and a few roaming hookers and meth addicts. I went on after a really bad cover band. There were maybe ten people there and as I sat on the stage, I couldn’t help but miss the days of being in a punk band. Even as the lead singer, I wasn’t the complete center of attention. I had other friends along with me to throw in the funny jokes or liven up the crowd who, more often than not, were also good friends. Blast the guitars and bang out the fast beat. Who cares if the PA works?<span> </span>Next thing you know, everyone’s jumping around and beer is spilling and we’re having a good’ ol’ time. This was a whole new world of performing for me. As I finished each song, I was greeted with blank stares and a few kind souls who clapped. It felt a little strange. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJ284htQyefJmbfT0B1nrbiJn6cfXG3dXw_5NmoZK4d-HIcCX-B4Lxe8RyORu-ciqF2CwDVnNDVNMDMUHXe3g67vTX7CdsmKPZWpap_3U1RvznCrSC5QAAUefUINfYVEh9acHtI15wG5c/s1600/IMG_1628.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJ284htQyefJmbfT0B1nrbiJn6cfXG3dXw_5NmoZK4d-HIcCX-B4Lxe8RyORu-ciqF2CwDVnNDVNMDMUHXe3g67vTX7CdsmKPZWpap_3U1RvznCrSC5QAAUefUINfYVEh9acHtI15wG5c/s320/IMG_1628.JPG" width="240" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">A month later, I got a gig playing Fridays at a Polish café. The owner had the right intentions: Polish food, music, cheap foreign beers, but hardly anyone ever came to the place. The first time I played there, my crowd consisted of a good friend of mine and two little kids and their parents. With chocolate ice cream covering their faces, I played Elizabeth Cotton’s song “Freight Train” for them. When I was done, the kids were yelling, “Freight Train! Freight Train!” I concluded that maybe next time I would wear a conductor’s hat and bring little toy trains for them to play with. I came away from that show with a mere five bucks and a few pierogies, but it was then that I had the feeling I was on to something here. I liked playing for kids. They seemed to innately feel the emotion of the music, more so than adults, and though what I was playing was entirely different, it reminded me of that same feeling of old basement punk shows I’d been at and played in years before. </span></div>Seth Swaaleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02442058078452795462noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4913178434267411633.post-3636642396518363592010-12-25T19:51:00.000-08:002010-12-25T19:51:48.837-08:00High, Low, and In Between<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrbBjQalOK4jy0sYGjrLsE6Yt2_CqApcvYtp9Bb7nIi1FGpEamYmh9U925I25DRErPBQz10P-aHzlTWCHnLcMEbtw_2SNQ8zmbP4J59LkG7ovMqTI_qscucXF-6qzPJKfsfDqzizvJXhA/s1600/portland08window-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="208" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrbBjQalOK4jy0sYGjrLsE6Yt2_CqApcvYtp9Bb7nIi1FGpEamYmh9U925I25DRErPBQz10P-aHzlTWCHnLcMEbtw_2SNQ8zmbP4J59LkG7ovMqTI_qscucXF-6qzPJKfsfDqzizvJXhA/s320/portland08window-1.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
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</style>Chapter 1<br />
<div class="MsoBodyText2" style="text-indent: 0in;">Overture to a Ramble<br />
<br />
<b></b><span style="font-weight: normal;"></span> <br />
<div class="MsoBodyText2" style="text-indent: 0in;"> The truck was loaded down with guitars, records, books, tools, and some clothes. There was a tent, a sleeping bag, a toothbrush in bad need of a replacement, and a crusted Colgate tube; the last drop of toothpaste rolled up like it was some long-lost relic that I just couldn’t part with. I had a large crowbar underneath the seat (just in case), along with whatever other bare essentials required to make a cross-country journey. Looking at the truck—the back bumper barely touching the rear tires, the front pointed upward much like a spaceship—it looked more like I was taking a trip into orbit rather than down some interstate. </div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="text-indent: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="text-indent: 0in;">My house was completely empty; the smell of cleaning spray still hanging thick and nauseating in the air. As I stared into the glistening oven that I’d managed to burn myself badly on the prior week while endlessly scrubbing the grime away, I was going through the various memories and emotions attached to a home: all the dreams and aspirations one is filled with in the beginning; and then soon some furniture goes here, some furniture goes there, a mattress and the TV, hang the pictures, paint the walls, and a year later you’re heading off to the Salvation Army, slowly depleting your material objects and hitting the road. You realize, standing there, that after doing this too many times to count, this is just a shell of sorts—some wood, plaster, paint and a roof, land in the back and big trees and the wailing of crows in the morning, and a shack with some tools in it. In a few days, other people will come in here with similar dreams and put down their furniture and sit on the porch and make friends with the neighbors and start the whole life cycle over once again. </div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="text-indent: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="text-indent: 0in;">On this particular day, though, there were more important things on my mind. Mainly, I was still dealing with a vicious headache and hangover due to going out for “a beer” the night before with a lawyer friend of mine from Kentucky and her beautiful redhead friend from San Francisco. I spent the entire night desperately—like some pimple-covered high school boy in heat—trying to get her to go to bed with me, all to no avail. One thing led to another. Cell phones were broken on stranger’s heads. Ping-pong paddles were stolen. Open tabs were left unpaid. Memories were forever lost to the dark recesses of the mind, and I was left with the all-too-familiar scene of waking up emptywalletalone on a couch in someone else’s home. Now, as I stood in my house, head in a vice, I could hardly find the energy to go to the bathroom, let alone get in my truck and drive some three thousand miles East. </div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="text-indent: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">I passed out on the carpet floor in my bedroom for maybe half an hour when I heard my name being called. At the screen door stood Jack and Karen, my retired neighbors from next door. They were the only folks I ever really talked to in the neighborhood in the year and a half I’d been there. Karen sometimes brought over food for me. Maybe she could see the countless cardboard boxes of frozen pizza in my trash and thought—well aware of my lack of visitors and bachelor existence—I could use some good “home cookin’.” Regardless, I was always more than thankful for her generosity. Jack, an ex-diesel mechanic and regular old handyman wizard, fixed a bicycle of mine, loaned me car parts, and always took my trash bins in for me when I was at work. Married for over fifty years, not only were they extremely nice and what seemed like still very much in love, but, together, they were a marvel in landscaping. Their lawn was immaculate: flowers and roses in full bloom, bushes cut precisely, not a yellow-flowered weed in sight. It was quite the contrast from my overgrown and pine-covered yard. Yes, I was <i>that</i></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> neighbor. Too cheap to purchase a real lawn-mower, I had the rusted push mower provided by the landlord, which, in a place like Oregon, where the grass grows like wildfire and is always wet, is about as productive as using a pair of kindergarten scissors.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">“You all right, Seth?” Karen called.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="text-indent: 0in;">“Aarrggghh,” I mumbled from the back.</div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="text-indent: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">I walked to the front of the house.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">“Oh, we’re sorry; didn’t mean to intrude. We just saw your door open and the truck still outside. Thought you were leaving this morning. Just wanted to make sure things were all right.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">“Oh, yeah. Long night. Think I’ll probably leave in a couple hours.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">“Golly. Awfully late to be leaving, isn’t it? Well you be careful, now. Do you know where you’re going to sleep?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">I pointed to the truck.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">“Wow, to be young and single. I remember those days. You remember, Jack? I say go for it. Do it while you can.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">“Yup,” said Jack. He was a man of very few words, the type who would listen to my rants about man’s existence over the fence, then give me a big smile, raise his shoulders, and say, “Hmm, well, it’s all going to shit.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="text-indent: 0in;">“We’re going to miss you. You were such a good neighbor,” said Karen, a little solemn pout to her lips.</div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="text-indent: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">I squinted and smiled, trying to put the two of them into focus. Karen and I embraced in a warm hug, and Jack gave me a firm handshake in which I felt the thick calluses of a lifetime of hard work.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">I then proceeded to go back to the bedroom and sleep for another two hours. By the time I left Portland, it was after seven and dark.<span> </span>It wasn’t exactly a good time to be starting on the road in as desolate an area as middle and Eastern Oregon, but, like the man said: so it goes. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMBOJ60Mb5rmPx2Vz1cvmnqVX_ke_fT3X_c94P-S9rhznISOHAqVQ8j65Ht3Qjlll8lkWUQlw1hIz76W8YIHXciMub2tr4tKvSteH8uCsaKjIQVAwr1sYRGi1MXXlsia836HgZf-P8v9I/s1600/IMG_0965.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMBOJ60Mb5rmPx2Vz1cvmnqVX_ke_fT3X_c94P-S9rhznISOHAqVQ8j65Ht3Qjlll8lkWUQlw1hIz76W8YIHXciMub2tr4tKvSteH8uCsaKjIQVAwr1sYRGi1MXXlsia836HgZf-P8v9I/s320/IMG_0965.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><h2 style="text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></h2><h2 style="text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></h2><h2 style="font-weight: normal; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt;">Chapter 2<span> </span></span></h2><h2 style="font-weight: normal; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt;">Shots in the Dark</span></h2><h2 style="text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></h2><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="text-indent: 0in;">Into the darkness, East along 84 on the two-lane interstate with the semi-trucks and the soft light of the moon hugging alongside the snake-like path of the Columbia River. After Hood River, the lush forests and trees of the Columbia Gorge disperse and the landscape resembles a desert; the terrain rough, tough, and desolate. Unable to get anything but static for radio stations, my thoughts roam. I try to picture Lewis and Clark and all the folks following along after them in their wagons, struggling across the frontier, before the age of cell phones and cars and electric tools and magic pills and all of those other mystifying things that have made us part of the “great modern society.” The stars shine like sporadic reflections of broken glass, illuminating the river and the stillness of the night. I make it as far as Pendleton before I pull off. </div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="text-indent: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Pendleton was like any other non-descript Midwest small town: flickering lights of TVs shining from windows. A few high school kids cruising around in beaten-up cars around the same three blocks all night long. Dogs barking in the distance. Main St. closed by six o’clock and the night was filled with the metallic smell of rusted industry. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I settled down in a bank parking lot. Any romantic notions I’d had about the road were quickly dispelled as I tried to get comfortable in the driving seat of my truck. <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">The passenger side was packed and it was impossible to lie down. I leaned my head against the window with the steering wheel in my gut. It was right then a police car pulled in behind me. He stopped for about a minute and then drove away. Shortly after, I heard a shotgun being fired in the distance. The cop car peeled out and raced down the road. The same ordeal took place about fifteen minutes later and, figuring that at this rate I wouldn’t get any sleep, I drove around town and settled on a spot behind a semi-truck next to the Wal-Mart parking lot. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">I had my windows cracked, but not fully down, and my knife at my side; you read the papers and you watch those crazy cable documentaries about murderers in small towns and maybe it’s just paranoia, but you get thoughts about places like this. Five minutes later, a woman appeared out of the shadows of the railroad tracks like some hobo ghost of the Union Pacific. She circled around the truck. I had the sun shield up and a shirt covering the side window for some sense of privacy, but through the cracks I could see her out there looking in. Eventually, she left. Around four she was back, her shopping cart wheels scraping along the asphalt to let me know of her arrival. At this point I had to laugh, raising my hands up; a little sleep, that’s all I’m asking here. Is that too much? But, truth is, I’ve traveled enough to know that the road is unforgiving; it could care less either way, and whatever plans and months of preparation you’ve made leading up to this moment all go out the window once you’re out there, once you’re in the thick of it. So, realizing the idea of sleep was nothing more than a cheap illusion, I stuck the key in the ignition and headed towards the Idaho border. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMbqlAhVKbK17aI8lMKbsGDARN7_e103j_5qzNgKEN7COc_LTI2SEUN0_4ZhTscxpeE9OVBH9figc4kUcfgih8nmwK-H-qgmQlhUhyzQzyXTXd8-s4vDlbWo_ANmPUNu4I5ew5l766Su0/s1600/IMG_1322.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMbqlAhVKbK17aI8lMKbsGDARN7_e103j_5qzNgKEN7COc_LTI2SEUN0_4ZhTscxpeE9OVBH9figc4kUcfgih8nmwK-H-qgmQlhUhyzQzyXTXd8-s4vDlbWo_ANmPUNu4I5ew5l766Su0/s320/IMG_1322.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">As I drove straight into the early morning sunrise, I had plenty of time to reflect on what had transpired over the past few years. It was an entirely different journey in itself, one I often times felt trapped inside of. Now, here I was in the middle of the summer moving to New York on just a whim and a dream. Maybe it was crazy. Maybe it was half-ass-backwards. I don’t know. I gave up a long time ago on trying to put too much faith in what makes sense. I won’t say it hasn’t gotten me anywhere, and I guess it works for some folks. It’s just that sometimes you have to go with your gut and that little voice in the back of your head. As far as everything else; well, in one way or another, it all falls into place.<span> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><h1 style="font-weight: normal; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal;">Chapter 3<span> </span></span></h1><h1 style="font-weight: normal; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal;">Life as Sparky</span></h1><h1 style="text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal;"> </span></h1><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgc9NP4SVsjCPcpiROdDskt0A2GirOCIUSHsf2dZAfrs5Kqzv1jKgdLONed970c7oLEKdXYUUMBf-LBcuVeQSkTglDcTy7PyGWQmaC-dVSPcXhWIUc1f3QB7mS2cQEpjhX7QEh41CGBx98/s1600/IMG_0952.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgc9NP4SVsjCPcpiROdDskt0A2GirOCIUSHsf2dZAfrs5Kqzv1jKgdLONed970c7oLEKdXYUUMBf-LBcuVeQSkTglDcTy7PyGWQmaC-dVSPcXhWIUc1f3QB7mS2cQEpjhX7QEh41CGBx98/s320/IMG_0952.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="text-indent: 0in;">How I ever became a union electrician still baffles me. Having no handyman traits and never being one of those monkey wrench types, I randomly fell into the trade. I’d been back in Los Angeles for about six months after moving from New Orleans (feeling a sense of guilt after being away from my family for nearly ten years), thinking that maybe I ought to finally settle down. Once again, though, with my lack of any “real skills,” I was roaming from job to job. </div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="text-indent: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="text-indent: 0in;">I did a few months driving a FedEx truck around Hollywood, mostly for the movie studios and rich folks in the hills during the holiday season. When that dried up, I was back in the temp world, doing everything from night inventory of Toys“R”us to picking up women’s garments and putting them back on the hangers at Nordstrom. Without a uniform, all the women shoppers looked at me as if I were some kind of pervert as I put the panties and bras on the racks. I was never more thrilled at doing a menial job than when they moved me back to the shoe warehouse to sort through boxes.</div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="text-indent: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">I then did a couple of weeks in the film business, working as a location scout for a Febreze commercial. My mission was to find an older two-story house with a large attic. With a small camera and no credentials, rich people in Pasadena let me into their homes. They sat me on their couches and showed me all their prized processions and told me the history of their homes, all in the hopes that their place might be seen on television. I thought about how easy a gig this was and that, if I ever became hard up and decided to enter a life of crime, I knew how to go about it. But the company never used any of my contacts. Two weeks later, I got a little check from a sketchy Italian in a non-descript office off of Ventura Blvd. Once again, I was out of work. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Resumes were sent out, applications filled. A month later, I got a job at, of all places, a porn company in Studio City. My job was handling the mail and keeping inventory of movies with cinematic gonzo titles such as<i> Chubby Chasers</i></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">, <i>She-Male Strokers</i></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">, and <i>Horny Hairy Girls</i></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">. By the second month there, I was doing quality control, editing movies before they went out for final pressing. It was a strange job, given that staring at dicks and pussies and hearing moaning and grunting coming from various computer monitors all day wasn’t typical, everyday fare, but as much as I could, I got used to it. One time, the UPS guy came into the mailroom just as I was finishing the final touches to <i>Cum Swallowers 18</i></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">“Man, isn’t it weird, watching this shit with women right in the other room? Do you ever get a … you know, while you’re sitting there?” </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="text-indent: 0in;">“I wear baggy pants.”</div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="text-indent: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="text-indent: 0in;">A couple of months prior to this, my friend and I, on a whim, had taken a test for the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. My girlfriend at the time’s old roommate was a union electrician and he mentioned they were hiring, that the pay was good, and that we should try it out. I didn’t really know what would come out of it, but I took a test involving mathematics and mechanical theory. Somehow, I was one of the twenty-five percent who passed, and a month later I was being interviewed by some important, life-long electricians. Sitting at the end of a long table, they peered at me with judgmental eyes, jotting down random notes about whether or not I had the willingness and commitment to put in five years of schooling and training to be a certified journeyman. I put on the mask and told them I had all it took. I would make the union proud. Sure, I had no experience. A drill motor? Of course I know how to use a drill motor. A Sawzall? Come on, what do I look like? Electrical theory? Uh, the hot, the ground, well, hey, let me work on that, but don’t you worry, you’ll see, you won’t regret it, look at these hands, strong hands, warehouse hands, I’m telling you. I’m ready to stick put. Those roaming days are over: family, kids, stability, all on the horizon, sir, I mean, brother, I mean, brothers. So, where do I sign?</div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="text-indent: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="text-indent: 0in;">It wasn’t much long after that that I got the phone call from the union to report to a job the next day. With that, I bid farewell to the adult entertainment industry and was now an apprentice at a new elementary school being built in Echo Park. I knew nothing about electricity, aside from the fact that if you touched a wire when it was on, it probably wouldn’t feel too good and that, sometimes, you die. </div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="text-indent: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="text-indent: 0in;">I won’t attempt to go deeply into the inner workings of unions, and, truthfully, I can only write about what I was exposed to, but I suppose a little background is needed. Within the union is a whole hierarchy that closely resembles the military. There is an order to things, a structure, power in numbers, and, at the bottom of those numbers, lies the apprentice. You start off doing labor, and, gradually over time as an apprentice, you’re shown the tricks of the trade. If you make it through five years, pay your dues, and haven’t managed to electrocute yourself or fall off a high rise or gone half mad, you get your ticket. Above the apprentice are the journeymen, then foremen, then general foremen; all, for the most part, well-skilled and educated electricians who have gone through the same schooling and rite of passage, so to speak. </div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="text-indent: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="text-indent: 0in;">I tried to go all in, learning as much as I could. I worked during the week and went to school at night, studying for hours on end.. I plastered my truck with union stickers on the bumpers and the windows. I told myself the union was the best thing that had happened to me. Here I was, finally at a place where workers had some sort of power; you got your breaks, you were paid for overtime, got raises twice a year. This was the good life for honest, hard work. After countless jobs that were going nowhere, I would have a skilled trade. My punk rock buddy, already months into the program, regretted giving up his computer desk job for the grinds of construction, and said it was all shit: “Just get through the school, get the card, and get the fuck out.”</div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="text-indent: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="text-indent: 0in;">I can honestly say, despite the kind words of most of my fellow workers as I progressed through the apprenticeship, I never was much of an electrician. Sure, I always showed up and worked hard, but it really wasn’t out of any sense of pride. It just made the day go by faster. What else was I going to do and where else was I going to make twenty bucks an hour? What other job was going to give me full health benefits and pension and annuity and all of those wonderful things in the world we supposedly strive for? </div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="text-indent: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="text-indent: 0in;">Now, I’m not saying I didn’t have any pride in my job, because that just wasn’t the case. No matter your skill level, you can’t help but feel a sense of appreciation when you’re a part of something being built. You start out with an empty plot of land, only the iron columns standing, maybe some metal decking. Then pulling string lines where walls will one day be and, over the months watching it all—the concrete being poured, the studs being raised, pipes ran, wires pulled, transformers mounted, lights hung, deadlines, failed inspections, pipefitters, iron workers, carpenters, laborers, plumbers, crane operators, rod-busters, tin-knockers, painters, grunting and screaming at other trades. Under the glaring eyes of raving and ranting foremen and general contractors, what were ten guys on a site grows to be two hundred. There’s bad weather and no material and faulty blueprints—but after doing this at a couple of jobsites, you know, in the end, that no matter what, it will all eventually come together. Months later, where there was just dirt there will be a school or a library or a warehouse, maybe a waste treatment plant or a bank. People will be in there doing their work with no thought or care of how it came about, but you will look at that building every now and then when you’re on that side of town, thinking you had a small hand in making it come to life. Honestly, you’ll feel quite good about it. </div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="text-indent: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="text-indent: 0in;">All said, you get moments in your life when you know—not necessarily those bad feeling days that come around here and there—but where you come to the full realization that at that particular place in time that this is not what you want to be doing. I had had these questions leading up to this, but was struggling with the whole idea of what else I would do. I was thirty and, despite the way I’d tried to live my life, I couldn’t help but feel the pressures of having a good job. It’s just what you did.</div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="text-indent: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="text-indent: 0in;">My memory takes me back to one brutal summer day working in Van Nuys. It was a hundred and eight degrees. I did the morning shift up on the roof, making a hundred holes in the metal decking with a plasma gun. Frantically racing around with a large compressor and hose, I was trying to beat the noon-time sun. Later that afternoon, I was hunkered down in a six-foot deep ditch of dirt, running twelve four-inch PVC pipes that would months later carry the 4160 volt feeders into the main electrical room. A crane lifted iron bars directly overhead as ironworkers walked the columns like monkeys, bolting and welding the structure into place. Even later, I was helping lower and rig a transformer that weighed five tons down into a basement and found myself nearly pinned against a wall. By the end of the shift, I was yelling like a madman at a carpenter who had stolen my extension chord I needed to charge a scissor lift with. Placing my tool bag and hardhat in the gang box, I took a good long look around me and shook my head. How had I gone from touring in punk bands and thinking I’d be a writer and world traveler to this? It was just a typical day-to-day, part of the chaotic orchestra, the grinds. It was something I truly respected from my co-workers, but when I got home later, exhausted, slumped on my couch, my girlfriend at my side but too tired to say or do anything, staring at the TV like a zombie, I couldn’t help but wonder exactly where my life was heading. Me and my friend Andre, six years my senior, who hadn’t bought into a lot of the union life as much as I had, would often jokingly bitch to one another about our lot. What the hell had we signed up for? We’d get drunk and make up stupid punk songs about “The Union!” </div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="text-indent: 0in;"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Still, I did my best to stick with it. I only had two years left until I got my ticket. Things with my girl at the time went south though. They had been for quite some time and were spiraling down into nights of screaming matches and too much alcohol and tears. We’d briefly make up under the sheets only to start all over again a few days later. I wondered, how did you get back what you had in the beginning, when it was all new, when it was all laughter and love and dancing to the Pogues until the early morning hours? The truth was, it just wasn’t there anymore and it wasn’t going to be. I guess you could say the thrill was gone, so I moved out of the house. </span></div> <b><br />
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</span></div>Seth Swaaleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02442058078452795462noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4913178434267411633.post-68436024129237231442010-12-22T07:03:00.000-08:002010-12-22T07:03:27.780-08:00City of Refuge (Part 5)<style>
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<div class="MsoNormal"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdRR9Lv3pevp7KmX6ix9pSW_3xTKyP3KSN78sW2xgGRnStyv0EBbQy5xLfnMyWPw9t5fVjQTltLGpBZkRq43HeRKnX-HTzb73CumLNnPcmK4Qaz6xEQCNTAx_j2oB8ymwBdyT_tTK16PM/s1600/bird.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="232" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdRR9Lv3pevp7KmX6ix9pSW_3xTKyP3KSN78sW2xgGRnStyv0EBbQy5xLfnMyWPw9t5fVjQTltLGpBZkRq43HeRKnX-HTzb73CumLNnPcmK4Qaz6xEQCNTAx_j2oB8ymwBdyT_tTK16PM/s320/bird.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
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My introductory to construction work came about in New Orleans. The neighbor at my first place I stayed in did jobs around town and hired me as a helper. I’d done quite a bit of manual labor over the years, but nothing with much skill involved. My boss Pete was a good carpenter and plumber, often drunk and in a bad mood, but he taught me a few things, like hanging sheetrock, painting, fixing bricks, how to carry a 500 lb clawfoot tub up the smallest set of stairs imaginable. It was all under the table and paid decent, and I didn’t really know what I was doing, but I worked hard and I showed up on time, two traits that seemed to be lacking in much of the workforce that was down there. I did some temp jobs here and there, and then I worked with Eddie about three months. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Eddie painted a lot of houses and did carpentry around the Bywater neighborhood. He needed help on a home over on Poland; sanding, trim work, so I did that for about a week. We then got some work over at this house, a fixer-upper that was bought by the son of Wille Morris, a famous novelist who at one time had been the head editor of Harpers Magazine. Originally the job was to just paint a few rooms. It turned out the many of the studs and beams behind the old barge wood walls and burlap were rotted. The foundation that held up the house was also eaten away by termites. The bathroom was a mess. Windows had to be replaced. The electrical wiring redone. <br />
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We spent a good couple of months there, building temporary walls, painting all of the rooms, redoing the bathrooms, hauling crap out to the backyard. It was a good gig since it was only two blocks away. We’d walk to work with a bucket of tools, go home for break, maybe have a beer and a sandwich, take a nap, and then we’d head back and finish the day. It was so much different than the large-scale, sometimes quite stressful, union construction life I’d later be exposed to, but as I look back on it, they were good, simple times. Eventually, the job was finished, work dried up, and I got a job washing dishes in the French Quarter.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Me: I can’t help but laugh when I think of us riding around with a bucket of tools in it.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Eddie: Well, I couldn’t drive. Actually, I saw everybody else around with bikes so I went over to French Quarter Bikes and got a basket. I bought everything smaller, got a smaller nail-gun, and when I needed something bigger I’d hire Harold’s brother in law that had a truck. It was actually cool. After you left I got my license back and I was driving all the time and I was like, fuck, it was cool to drive around, but I felt a lot healthier riding my bike around and in the neighborhood. Folks identified you with it. I liked riding to work and people would say (In 9<sup>th</sup> ward accent) “Hey Painter!”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Me: Hey Painter!</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Eddie: “Hey Painter! Wud up man? Where y’at?” I loved that. I was part of the neighborhood. I wasn’t some rich guy with a truck. It made me more connected.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Me: You remember that guy sanding in the bathroom of the house we worked on?<br />
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Eddie: Oh jeez. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Me: I swear he was in that bathroom sanding for over a month. Must have been on some good shit.(Laughter) </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Eddie: There’s so many people you didn’t even meet. Right around the corner was this cop. He used to try to get me to do cocaine with him. He’d come over sometimes before he got married. His deal was he used to drive down to Mexico and have half of a gas tank un-welded and put half gas in it and then use the other half to put pot in. Then he'd drive back to New Orleans and then unweld it and sell all the pot to the neighborhood people. He couldn’t have really had that much. It was something he did for bragging rights. It wasn’t like he was doing pounds. I don’t know. I don’t know what he was doing. It seemed like a waste. He just liked to have something to tell people, be part of the community.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Me: You have to some kind of fixture. I was just kind of there.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Eddie: You actually came at the right time. It was safe enough, but still had all the elements of insanity. All the cool people were there. You had Indians, Blacks, whites, Puerto Ricans... </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Me: There was that fat plumber always over at BJ’s with his son.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Eddie: They had a towing company, were plumbers by trade and made all their money selling cocaine.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Me: Father and son. They’d try to sleep with the same chicks.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Eddie: Along with their brother. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Me: Those guys were scary. Not the son, but the two older ones.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Eddie: The fat one would knock on my door, really late, I’d have the light still on. I’d open the door and he’d say (in nasaly Louisiana accent) “Hey Painter, let me use your mirror.” He’d sit in the front room with the mirror laid out with this huge rock of coke for about twenty minutes and chop it all up and put in bags. He’d say, “You want any?” And I’d say, no man. “Well, here’s forty bucks.” He’d do that and then go back over to the bar. They were all jacked.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Me: I forgot about it, but now that I think about it, if I was to walk into BJ’s, I would think jesus, everyone’s on so many damn drugs.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Eddie: Oh yeah, the booze was just to mellow them out.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Me: Here I’ll meet people, maybe they’ll go do coke in the bathroom, but down there it was something else.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Eddie: That girl I used to date that bartender there, she’d be all coked up.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Me: And the girl that looked like Olive Oil. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Eddie: Yeah, they’d be all wacked out, but you know, it was fun to be around them.<br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal">Four years after Katrina I finally made it back to New Orleans. My cousin, who had spent years living in Nepal, helping to build schools and hospitals, was getting married to a New Orleans native. They had a beautiful Tibetan style wedding in Mid City next to the old dueling area. It was led by a monk chanting, and friends and family from all over were in attendance. And of course, who was playing the reception, but no other than Kermit Ruffins. There’d had been questions of whether or not he’d show up. His dad had died the night before, but true musician he is, Kermit proceeded to play three gigs the following day. Kermit blasted his horn in Louis Armstrong fashion, with that same friendly grin I remembered. Little kids and old folks danced around. Gumbo, seafood, jambalaya, ribs, and endless amounts of beer were had. I couldn't have imagined a better wedding.<br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal">I spent most of my time with my parents and relatives, showing them around the French Quarter. I tried to play tour guide and give them what little history I could remember. I went into the café I used to work at and surprisingly, some of the same people were still there. I walked into the kitchen and found Paul, my old manager, huddled over the grill frying some eggs. "You know how it is down here. Shit don't really change that much. My boy's 5 now though."</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">On Sunday before my afternoon flight I woke up around seven. I got a cab and had the driver take me along St. Claude, past the seafood shacks and the run down hardware stores, the old Baptist churches, and abandoned homes, the Saturn Bar, the dilapidated schools. He dropped me off at Poland next to the canal. It was still early. The neighborhood was most likely just settling into their drunken dreams. I was hoping that maybe I’d come across a familiar face, but I hadn't really kept in touch with anyone I knew there. I heard so many stories of people leaving, new people coming down, and now I was regretting that that life was so far away from the world I now knew. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I walked by my old place and was pleased to find “Stay off, fuckin’ hipsters,” on the front steps. There was now a trailer home in the driveway of the Christian ladies home and Horatio’s house was boarded up. <br />
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I walked over to Burgundy and Lessups and stood in the weeds in front of Vi’s placefront of the shotguns across from BJ's. Vi was a beautiful spirited traveling artist, who I’d always wished I’d kept in touch with. I always remembered the time she took me out to Lafayette for a Cajun party in the middle of the swamps that run alongside the Atchfalyan River. In the middle of nowhere with friendly French folks, polka music, amazing food, drinking endlessly and dancing with the trees. Years later, I’d find out that she lived in Brooklyn, had been a writer for Harpers, and then tragically, died in a car crash on a visit down South. I remember that day, just staring at the computer in shock. It didn’t seem right. And yet, when I came across the pictures of her funeral - an army of rag-tag 9<sup>th</sup> ward locals, young and old, dressed as if they were in some 30’s carnival parading down the street, then torching a boat and sending it out to the Mississippi, I thought, only in New Orleans.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I then got to thinking about the younger girl from Minnesota that lived in the shotgun next to Vi's. We used to spend a lot of nights listening to Dolly Parton and Patsy Cline on an old portable record player and drinking lots of wine and boos. She dressed rather dirty and professed to be a lesbian, but with me she made an exception. She hung with the younger punks and gays and squatters and sometimes I’d follow her around in search of other worlds I knew nothing about. We’d ride our bikes in zigzags through the streets of the 9<sup>th</sup> ward late at night, and once a week we’d end up on the second floor of some club on Bourbon St. where you got popcorn and 3 movies for 5 bucks. We’d find ourselves drunk, making out on the sidestreets, and then back on Burgundy. Often times we'd lay in her broken down car out front, putting in on a tape of Otis Redding, blaring it loud, climbing on top of the roof, staring at the stars. We'd have the windows rolled down, listening to the regulars over at BJ’s, sometimes fumbling around in our nakedness, sometimes arguing, but then turning up “Try a Little Tenderness,” and all was right with the night. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">People come. People go. In. Out. Back again. I walked down Burgundy and Royal St. I saw the remnants of Katrina still close at hand in a number of homes. The spray-painted circles with symbols for gas leaks and the number of people dead were still marked on front of homes. Some had even been repainted and kept these. I guess it was a reminder. I tried to picture what it must have been like to go through the flood and I really couldn't. I had an uncle that had been in the center of it all, working in Charity Hospital at the time, and I could remember when I first saw him months after, and him explaining what had happened. The intense look on his face as he described the people he'd seen dying, the water rising, the snipers guarding him on a parking garage roof, the insanity of it all. Part of me was thankful that I hadn't had to go through it all. I wondered what I would have done, what would have happened. I thought about how different my bond and ties to that city would be. <br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The neighborhood looked bad, the streets cock-eyed, the lots abandoned, but parts of the Bywater had looked like this when I had lived there so I wasn’t sure just how much had changed. There was something that resembled gothic folk art placed on the side of Fradies, a staple neighborhood convience store on Dauphine and Piety. It had a scary looking man with a black eye. Around him were the words, “Beware, there’s a mugger in the hood.” It then listed the addresses of separate incidents. I wasn’t sure what to make of it. Maybe it was folk art, but I had a feeling this was the locals version of neighborhood watch. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I reached the train tracks along Press St., and then passed Elysian Fields, through the Marigny and into the French Quarter. Everywhere I seemed to go held some sort of memory, all distant and jumbled, but beautiful at the same time. I wanted to cry, but it wasn’t crying for longing or sadness, nor really for happiness either; just that crying you get when you’re filled with emotions that don’t have definitions, crying because it’s the only outlet that makes sense. Crying because it’s probably the most human of all emotions. I thought about the times I had, good and bad, in such a short amount of time there. It was strange to think that later that night I'd be sitting in my quiet home in Portland, in my relatively mundane life. I stood out in the hot morning sun, trying to understand the strange realities of time, and the stark contrast with that life and the one I had before.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I can see what Eddie means. It’s a hard thing when memories get disturbed. We find ourselves standing in a place that is no more. That time is gone and the fact that we can’t get it back is a hard thing to deal with. But at the same time, I suppose it’s a good thing. It reminds us of who we are, the places we’ve been, and the beautiful people we’ve been fortunate to come across in our lives. Sometimes, if we're lucky, maybe it tells us where we’re going. Hell, maybe we're not supposed to try to figure out. Maybe it's as simple as the words to that old Neville Brother's song, "Let's Live." Y'heard me?<br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal"> </div>Seth Swaaleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02442058078452795462noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4913178434267411633.post-11304701775694476762010-12-09T12:31:00.000-08:002010-12-09T12:31:58.395-08:00The City of Refuge (Part 4)<style>
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<div class="MsoNormal"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDemCjGqIYi9RaKCQwqWSG00IoUcz4vyAkKPPUMT6Yv-UV9wnPCgku7XXF_PpGXSwEq7eA_QleV5Qm6XxeWWjudFuf4_a6igeR6x8aF4pJqw-WpeepoBiF-X4JRUuuP2zsEUNwu87oQcc/s1600/576.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDemCjGqIYi9RaKCQwqWSG00IoUcz4vyAkKPPUMT6Yv-UV9wnPCgku7XXF_PpGXSwEq7eA_QleV5Qm6XxeWWjudFuf4_a6igeR6x8aF4pJqw-WpeepoBiF-X4JRUuuP2zsEUNwu87oQcc/s1600/576.jpg" /></a></div><br />
For a couple of weeks I got a job at a daily labor place in the Skid Row area just off St. Charles by Lee Circle. On the way there I’d walk by where The Hummingbird, a divey hotel that used to have a diner on the bottom floor, had been. It was now all boarded up. I’d always get a little sad looking at that place. It brought up old memories from years before. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I could remember the old, haggard woman at the front desk, the dilapidated T.V. that only got one station, always something with Charles Bronson in it. The smell of pure greese and grill wafting up the stairs, the hotel looking more like a prison with imposing doors, and only one bathroom at the end of the hall with a busted lock. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Half of the residents were just out of OPP. Nearly everyone was constantly drunk and on drugs. And somehow I had this beautiful girl by my side by way of Baltimore. We were spending all of our money going from bar to bar in the French Quarter, one never-ending drunk only to pass out on the stained sheets under the strange glow in the dark constellation that was painted on the ceiling by a previous resident. Then I’d think back to how times can change so quickly. Life alters in strange ways. I’d remember the fire in the rooming house in the Treme the week after we left the Hummingbird, the old man dying as we screamed for him to jump off the balcony. The firetrucks and the news stations. I’d remember us boarding that Greyhound with a couple of black trash bags filled with burnt clothes and I’d just see us looking out at the window, maybe West Lousiana, or East Texas, staring out, not saying anything.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I’d stand out there on St. Charles, still in the darkness of morning, now years later, thinking about that other time, about that other life, and I’d wonder about that girl. I’d heard she’d gotten married. That’s all I knew. But I wondered if she ever thought of me. I’d wonder if she thought about that time with regret. Maybe it didn’t even pass through her mind. And then I thought about where my life was. How, despite years traveling, and countless jobs, I hadn’t really changed much. I was still hard on my luck, scrounging for work, just barely making it. Seemed as though I hadn't learned a thing. Damn, The Hummingbird, just the site of it really got me in a bad place, brought up all kinds of old emotions. I’d then walk into the labor place and sign my name on the sheet for the day.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal">Dressed in our blue jumpsuits (we looked like jailbirds and out of the eight, I was the only one that hadn’t done time) we’d catch a van at 5 a.m. that would take us out to swampy area across the Mississippi where we worked at an oil-rigging yard. We’d get out to the yard and they had me and this young kid named Lamar from The Treme working with me in the recycling area. We’d take old computers and other metals and recycle them according to whether or not they were copper, iron, that sort of thing. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
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All day long we’d stand at the table, an awning keeping us from melting away, listening to dirty south hip-hop that’s lyrics that seemed to center around death and guns and bitches. Lamar tried to act tough and didn’t say much. His mumbling was hard to understand, and when he did talk, he’d say something like, “Yeah, going to try to fuck me a white bitch. Oh yeah.” I’d fight with him over the radio stations, “Look, at least some Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, what the hell is this other crap?”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">One day Lamar showed me all the gunshot wounds he’d received. He displayed them for me as if they were a badge of honor. Street cred. Three in his leg, one in his arm, another in his side. He couldn’t have been more than eighteen. He’d seen a side of life I never would and he talked tough, acted tough, not because he was, but because it was what he knew. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Well, one morning he showed up for the van and he was crying, all out balling like a little child. He went limp in another one of the guy’s arms and the man held him for a good minute, tears dropping onto the sidewalk. We all looked over, but didn’t say anything and he turned his eyes away, ashamed. We knew someone close to him had died. Mom, brother, friend, we weren’t sure. I worked another week out at that place and never saw Lamar again. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal">Eddie: I lived there a really long time. I was scared at first. I lived in New York in the early 80’s, in the East Village when it was really rough, but New Orleans made New York look like nothing.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Me: I think New York pales. As far as the violent factor and the proximity of it all.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Eddie: The year I first moved to New Orleans there was 352 killings. It was crazy. It was surreal. I’d go out to work and come out and there’d be another two people murdered.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Me: Were you the one that said people used to put their guns on their bar?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Eddie: Oh yeah, BJ’s was like that. When I worked at Café Giovanni. We’d have the night when the two black football teams would play. The Bayou Classic. Everyone would close early. All the restaurants. Because what would happen everyone would run through New Orleans robbing people, rape, killings. That day we’d have to check our guns in. Make sure no one would start firing them off.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Me: The Wild West.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Eddie: Yeah, we had to do that every year.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Me: Otherwise, everyone’s carrying guns around?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Eddie: Yeah, we all carried guns for a long time. I never did like it. I had a license for mine. I fired out at a range where the cops used to go. I never told anyone though. It was around the fourth year when I got shot at and I pretty much said, “You know, I don’t like when I can’t shoot back.” I didn’t want to hit anybody, but at least I could shoot at a garbage can and watch him run off. It was pretty tripped out. I never told anybody. I never brandished it, but I always had one on me.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Me: I figured everyone in our neighborhood had a gun so I didn’t need one.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Eddie: Oh yeah. I just never told you.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Me: Oh, I knew you had guns.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Eddie: Yeah, when I rode my bike around. It’s just one of those rules. You can’t brandish your weapon. It’s against the law. Of course, once I got a gun no one shot at me. It was the weirdest thing. I should write a book about it. How petrified I was before I didn’t have one and then I got one and never had to use it. It was weird. I can’t even explain it. I didn’t even need it. I don’t know if I changed or what.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Me: Maybe you had a sense about you that you didn’t have before.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Eddie: Yeah, you don’t really know, because everyone else has them. Maybe they can tell about your demeanor subconsciously because they grow up that way. I worked with guys and had to tell them, hey, you got to put that on the ground, you can’t drop that when you’re working on a ladder, it was weird, I didn’t like guns. But you don’t want to be there with no way to defend yourself.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal">Me: What happened with my place after I moved in. Didn’t the guy after me kill somebody?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Eddie: The gentlemen that moved in after you left was this high yellow black guy. Had a really nice job, fancy car. He was gay. His family was the rich, lawyer kind of prestigious family. He liked white boys. He’d get these crazy white boys over. Heavy-duty in the drugs. I’d hear them fighting through the walls. One time I think he killed somebody. Some other guys came and carried a body out. That’s why I moved over to France St. Things were getting crazy. I heard after the hurricane the cops got him for killing somebody. I don’t think it was his first time.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Me: So a multiple murderer was living on my side of the shotgun?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Eddie: A neighbor came up to me because I wasn’t there after a while and they said something was going on. They’d seen some guys carry a big rug out late one night. He had ties to some highfalutin people. I left because I didn’t want to get involved. Harold was like, “Oh no, you’re supposed to watch the house, you’re my partner.” I told him I didn’t want to shoot nobody. I was like, thanks Harold, you kind of saved my life, but I’m not going to die. </div>Seth Swaaleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02442058078452795462noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4913178434267411633.post-54430393522795083302010-12-08T18:35:00.000-08:002010-12-08T18:35:31.988-08:00City of Refuge (Part 3)<style>
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</div><div class="MsoNormal">“Hey, my friend, how ‘bout a dolla’ for da’ cold beah?”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">This was Horatio’s daily greeting for me as he would hobble by my house and over to BJ’s across the street. The man was always drunk and had senile tendencies. His legs were all busted up, his clothes ragged, and he smelled something god-awful. Burn marks covered his arms and neck and legs. It was hard to ever make out much sense of what he was saying. Usually I’d keep quiet around him just because once he got started talking he wouldn’t stop. A lot of folks in the neighborhood didn’t like him. I felt bad for Horatio so sometimes I’d let him sit on the stoop with me. Eddie would always give him a couple of bucks.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“That’s a good man dare, a good man. He always treat me a good. You know what I’m saying?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“This neighborhood used to be rough. Oh yeah, I remember it was all de Spanish. Yes, we use to have da cookouts and drink da’ cold beah. Dangerous heah. I remember the bar got robbed, day shot someone right on dat corner. Stealing cars. I saw tree of da felas take the wheels off a car. Yeah, it was a good neighborhood. I take care of da neighborhood. Everyone call me Amigo. I take my gun and point it at that that guy over dare. I almost shoot him too, but I say, no way, I’m too old to go to jail. Ellis Island. Eighteen months. After dat, I never go back. You a good man. You quiet. You don’t say much but you a good man. Thank you for da cold beah. Say, my friend, I need to get da bus. I go over to Canal and hang with my friends. I don’t know, my leg all busted. My friends, dey good people. Always give me a couple dollas’. They say, ‘Amigo, where you been?’</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I gave Horatio a dollar and watched him walk straight over to the bar.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal">Me: What was Horatio’s deal, besides being totally insane? Hadn’t he at one time been a merchant marine?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Eddie: Yeah, he was a merchant marine. He was a steward in the union. I guess what happened to him was he kind of went crazy. That’s why you’d see him walking out in is sleeping drawers. At one point he’d been all around the world. He’d show you swords he’d gotten from Portugal. I think he was addicted to drugs. Or maybe he had some kind of major breakdown. I talked to his sons a few times and they were all scumbags. Word was he used to party a lot, smuggle drugs, anything to make some money.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Me: Was he black, Cajun, Indian?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Eddie: He was Indian.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Me: One time I woke up and saw him leaning over the porch peeing on that lady’s house next to us.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Eddie: Yeah, the Christian. I’d seen him walk down the street with his ass out. Dirty ass.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Me: He smelled like shit.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Eddie: The guy was gonzo. I don’t know, they probably took his house away from him. He’d always come up to me and ask me how much a repair would be and then he’d hire these people that would rip him off. Gutters, anything, “So how much ‘dat be Eddie?” I’d say “Well, you’re looking at probably 3400. Maybe four grand.” “Four Grand!” </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Me: Yeah, but “How ‘bout a dolla’ for da’ cold beah?”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Eddie: Oh man, you couldn’t get by him without giving him something. The weird thing was he’d tell me interesting stories. I liked him, but he started smelling bad after you left. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Me: Oh, he smelled bad when I was there.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Eddie: He never washed himself anymore, kind of sad.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Me: Who was the Vietnam Vet across the street?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Eddie: That’s a freaky one.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Me: Weren’t he and Horatio once pointing guns at each other?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Eddie: Yeah, the little short guy. He lived with that girl. They were on a lot of drugs, coke and pills. He was getting money from the government. His leg was fucked up. Think he had Agent Orange. He was in Vietnam and I think he was into some heavy shit. Special Ops. He was just too crazy. There was something about him.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Me: His hair was like Thomas Jefferson and he was all frail and walked with that cane.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Eddie: That was a wig. He didn’t have any hair. That weird hairdo thing he had, that was a wig. I’ve seen him without it on. I always thought that was his hair.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Me: The next to him there was the guy next to him, Red?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Eddie: Yeah. (laughter) </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Me: He was a drug dealer and he also drove the horse carriages down in the Quarter, right?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Eddie: Yeah, well Red, I actually liked him. Always jacked, always yelling at the top of his lungs, but with a weird sense of humor. You know what I mean, a lot of the time he was tweaked out of his brains. He was never quiet. I’d see him at the bar and he’d gamble a lot and he’d buy me beers. He couldn’t talk normal. Always loud. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="MsoNormal">Me: And then there was that quiet older Mexican guy that lived with them, I guess his lover.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Eddie: Yeah, man, that’s the thing about New Orleans, it was so far from normal.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Me: Let’s see, I also have Okra Man. I don’t know if I remember him. Just vaguely.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Eddie: Oh, there’s a movie about him. It’s about him getting up every morning and buying his stuff, all the vegetables and what he did to it, and walking around with a smile because people liked him. He was sort of a fixture. That’s the thing about New Orleans. They back stuff up. Especially if it’s entrepreneury, crazy, things that give color. They promote it. It’s kind of weird. Anywhere else no one would talk to a guy like that, he’d be shut down, but down there they like it. (goes into voice of Okra Man yelling through a blow-horn). “I got some Okra, I got some green beans.” You do that here in San Francisco, the cops are all over you.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Me: You’d be in the mental ward.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Eddie: Yeah, in New Orleans they celebrate it. I mean, shit, I’d have a hangover, passed out on the floor from drinking all night, and then I’d hear that fuckin’ screeching voice going by with that busted pa. It was like being inside a dixie can.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Me: Sounds like a Tom Waits song.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Eddie: It was. (makes screatchy noice that sounds like poor radio static). And then there was the religious guy with all the iron work on his car. That guy would come by talking about the bible. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Me: I don’t remember him.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Eddie: He came out sometimes. He’d always talk about crack. How the bible changed his life.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal">Me: How would you say the neighborhood changed from when you first got to there to when you left?<br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal">Eddie: Oh, it totally changed. People were scared when I first moved there. There was maybe six white folks. The rest were all high yellows. First five years I started seeing people coming down from New York checking stuff out. Then about eight years into it the whole neighborhood was changed. It was weird. I wish I would’ve kept a journal because there were some wild things that went on back then. I just can’t remember a lot of it.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Me: It was really rough back then?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Eddie: Yeah, over at the store on Poland, the one we used to get beer from, there’d be shootings every day. They’d sell crack and heroin. Then you’d see those guys walking towards the pier to deal. There was nothing over there except for the Naval Base. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4U_cxZ2kTVnRRoPSEaqo3ozE61V3d-oiCoevqO2b7EKE1H17ibUuyo8G7eeQ1ZCi45C5NTFlyYE1fQUPAWIZQxpftT1oUCceIrgxM2_x-d41Gu9g8Fa_PKPFOCQoW-U5s_35qe4SLKrk/s1600/IMG_1277.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4U_cxZ2kTVnRRoPSEaqo3ozE61V3d-oiCoevqO2b7EKE1H17ibUuyo8G7eeQ1ZCi45C5NTFlyYE1fQUPAWIZQxpftT1oUCceIrgxM2_x-d41Gu9g8Fa_PKPFOCQoW-U5s_35qe4SLKrk/s320/IMG_1277.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal">Me: By the canal.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Eddie: It was pretty desolate. Most of the places were empty, full of squatters. Then the city did this program where you could get a house for about 10,000. You’d have to prove you were working, give the city 2 grand, and then after a while they’d re access the house, and you’d pay it off. It was so bad. If you don’t pay the city for water, garbage, then the police don’t show up. Once the better people moved in and actually paid the bills, the police actually showed up. It became more gentrified. It wasn’t stable at first. There was shootings. There were bullet holes in your house. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Me: Didn’t it get weird after I left?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Eddie: After you left that other guy moved in and that’s when I got out. I still had my place, but I moved over to France St and moved in with that actor guy. I don’t know, my mom got sick and I left for California a few months later. Katrina hit and I’ve never been back.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Me: What do you say, well, what’s your first thought when someone asks what it was like to live in New Orleans. What do you think about?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Eddie: Honestly, it’s like your own hidden secret because anyone in the real world wouldn’t be able to understand it. New Orleans is not like America. Maybe like Cuba or Haiti or something. The culture is African. The ideology is African. Then the French incorporated their ideals. A different mentality. A different personality. A different set of rules. I don’t know, vibrations. It’s bright. It’s beautiful. It’s dangerous. It’s like looking at a crystal ball, shiny and it attracts you, but it’s like looking at a gutter at the same time. It’s very free. In the south it’s where you go. In Hawaii we’ve got this thing called the City of Refuge. If you didn’t fit in, if you were weird, if you couldn’t fit in with regular society, if you were an artist, you’d go to the City of Refuge where people were like you. That’s kind of what New Orleans is like to me. Beautiful culture. A lot of freedom. Almost too much. A lot of self-gradulation. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Me: Sometimes I thought of it as a fantasyland, in a weird way.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Eddie: It is, like the Wizard of Oz. It has nothing to do with America. It’s in own entity. You don’t even feel like you’re in the South.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Me: I remember watching the news, right after Katrina hit. They showed this clip and they were trying to get people to evacuate their homes because they were flooding. They showed four or five people, somewhere in St. Bernard, and they were dancing Mardi Gras style and the people I was watching it with out in California were watching it thinking these people were insane. I was watching it thinking, maybe they were a little crazy, but that at the same time that was how it was down there and I couldn’t find the words to explain it.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
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Eddie: I mean I loved a lot of it. I loved the food. The music was cool. At first I didn’t appreciate it, but I didn’t really know the depth of New Orleans. If there wasn’t New Orleans there wouldn’t be modern jazz. If there wasn’t New Orleans there wouldn’t be a lot of the rock n’ roll we have. I know it’s horrible how we abducted Africans and brought them to America, but without the African community we wouldn’t have punk rock. You know it’s tripped out. <br />
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Me: Of any place I’ve ever been, I’ve never had a city where when you meet someone that’s from there, you don’t even have to be from there, but if you lived there and you know the places, it’s totally different than any other city. If I meet someone from San Francisco and I say, Hey, I was in San Francisco, you know Haight and Fillmore, well it’s something totally different.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Eddie: Well, if you look at cities and the humanity of them, New Orleans is the most human because it has people that save people in the middle of gun fights, it has people that sacrifice to help other people because they have to, life and death, human beings kind of work better that way. Whereas here (San Francisco), it’s so mundane. After you get some money, you get on the bus, a black guy walks on the bus and everyone stares at him. Everyone’s got their Armani jeans or whatever they wear around here. Staring into their new Iphones, acting like their big wigs, talking about money, but, yeah, they got 10,000, 20,000, 200,000, but that’s no money. More money than we got, but that’s not money. Money’s like 6 million dollars. You name yourself after a park, that’s money. In New Orleans you could have nothing and still dance around and enjoy it. You don’t have that here at all. I was in Voodoo Lounge here, a New Orleans bar to watch the Saints in the Super Bowl, man, when I walked out of there I was so in spirit, I felt so good, people were jumping around, saying all that crazy shit, there was something really wicked magical, something magical in it.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="MsoNormal">Me: I remember watching the game going crazy and the people I was with didn’t have any real connection to it and they didn’t seem all that into it.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Eddie: Well, the Saints were the Aint’s for a very long time and I got pictures to prove it. The bags. I’d go to the games with my friends, but you wouldn’t’ even watch the games, you’d go to get drunk and push each other into the isles. I mean how many times can you go and watch them miss a field goal at the last second?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Me: I remember being in this bar in the Marigny. It was called Smitty’s. Had to get buzzed to get in. I was watching a game there and they fumbled just as they were about to score a touchdown and lost at the last second and all five people in the place went nuts. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Eddie: Yeah they filmed a Travolta movie in there.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Me: They did?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Eddie: Then across was the Kitty Kat Lounge where everyone dressed in Kitty Kat outfitis. That place sucked. They didn’t have any beer so you had to go over to Smitty’s. It was a white-power bar.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Me: That’s not the same bar.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Eddie: It’s not?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Me: No, Smitty’s was down near Elysian Fields. It was the small, old dive bar that had stairs inside that led to the apartments upstairs. The owner was an old guy that had one of those voice-automators that he’d put on his neck when he talked. He had emphysema. It was real small. One of the bartenders was a writer. I forgot who I met her through.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Eddie: Oh, I remember. I introduced you to her. She knew all the vagabond types. She was actually published in a major book.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Me: The first time I went there I sit down at the bar and some guy next to me says, (in E.T. voice) “Hello,” and then I find out he’s the owner. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Eddie: That bar creeped me out. I never wanted to go in there.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Me: Then this other guy next to him had just broken his neck, fell off a roof, and he had the metal halo on his head. He was drinking, popping pills and freaking out about the Saints game. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Eddie: That bar was weird, something that director from Baltimore would be into.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Me: It was a John Waters type place.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Eddie: And then we’d go to that soul food restaurant next to the bar. There’s nothing going at the bar and there’s a random soul food place in the back. We’d get breakfast there. I mean, I loved New Orleans. Sometimes you don’t want to, I don’t know, I get sad...I loved it there so much. I guess I don’t want to see the memory disturbed for me. I want to take it to the grave. My experiences there, you know, I’ve seen bad, I've seen people in jail, ladies shot, I got shot at, all kinds of things, but as many times as I said, Eddie, all right, I’m going to get the fuck out of here, something really wonderful would happen that kept me there.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Me: I suppose it's the extreme of both worlds. For me, I don't know that I could handle it for too long, but I could appreciate it for what it was.</div>Seth Swaaleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02442058078452795462noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4913178434267411633.post-38934652355491697172010-12-07T12:49:00.000-08:002010-12-07T12:55:08.427-08:00The City of Refuge (Part 2)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguBN_YfauI4EB0TB0JorYpmema2o85ZH0Yz3-YZwjmb0EJ88WI5u8qZP2mfhDS11n5Cc_axPeyVFITPEgc-BIoy31q2o4iMewGp4svgxz0W8odFnhrJC94Y6PRbTnG9J2sqiU19rPFFRI/s1600/boy+throwing+stone+miss.riv.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="224" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguBN_YfauI4EB0TB0JorYpmema2o85ZH0Yz3-YZwjmb0EJ88WI5u8qZP2mfhDS11n5Cc_axPeyVFITPEgc-BIoy31q2o4iMewGp4svgxz0W8odFnhrJC94Y6PRbTnG9J2sqiU19rPFFRI/s320/boy+throwing+stone+miss.riv.jpg" width="320" /></a></div> <style>
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<div class="MsoNormal"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div>I’d been in New Orleans for about two months, subletting a house over in mid-city. It was a nice neighborhood by most standards, but it kind of lacked the grit I was looking for at that time. One night I ventured back into the 9<sup>th</sup> ward and found myself over at Vaughan's, a small juke-joint type bar on Dauphine St and Lessups. The 9<sup>th</sup> ward had a reputation for violence, yet seemed to be where much of the city’s art and music was coming from. With the sounds of Kermit Ruffins and the BBQ Swingers and the wild carnivelesqe mix of bar patrons I instantly fell in love. One of the best jazz trumpet players, Irvin Mayfield, showed up and battled Kermit. There was hootin' and hollering and jazz rhythms bouncing off the walls. Drugs and booze, red beans and rice, beautiful women and much laughter and dance. I was mesmerized by it all and wanted to somehow be close to it. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">For the next week I drove all around the streets of the upper and lower Bywater looking for a place I could afford. Then one day I was sitting in a dark, gothic-type bar next to Vaughan's and saw a flyer that was advertising a shotgun 1BD for $400 two blocks away. I called the number on it and by that late afternoon I was drinking bottle after bottle of wine with Harold and Holly, my new landlords, at their home off of Louisa St. Though they were in their mid-fifties they seemed to have the energy of a high-school couple. Harold was wild and electric, dressed in his surfer shirt and Bermuda shorts, cloud-white hair and beard and little lightning eyes. Holly seemed to be just as animated, a little more refined and intellectual, but fun to talk to. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Harold and I found ourselves later that night at BJ’s, the dive bar across the street from my new place. It reminded one of an old living room rather than a bar. It seemed like the type of place where everyone knew everyone and if they didn’t know you they were going to make sure they did real soon. Harold was bouncing all around the bar, throwing quarters in the jukebox, pulling women off their stools to dance. He would kneel down on the floor with an invisible microphone, doing some bastardized Elvis impersonation, as the sounds of Fats or Ernie-K or the Neville Brothers played on the speakers. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal">He brought me over to the Triangle later that night, a small warehouse by the railroad tracks a few blocks back. Inside were broken-down VW bugs and computers and records and paintings and stacks and stacks of old suitcases. There were all kinds of different cameras, a huge barber’s chair, and a make-shift kitchen and a mattress. Out of those suitcases he pulled large black and white photos he’d taken years earlier, all of them mostly documenting the punk/new wave/art scene in San Diego in the late 70’s and early 80’s. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">To this day, I consider them to be some of the greatest photographs I’ve come across. Why they’re not sitting in some museum or never made it to the pages of LIFE magazine is beyond my understanding. His portraits of girls with Mohawks, men being ripped down to the ground by policemen, Asian cooks in front of old diners, seemed to beautifully portray a different time and place that is no more. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">He also once gave me a memoir type piece he wrote about the origins of punk rock in San Diego during the late 70’s. At the time he was a struggling jeweler living in a house with hippies and then punk/new wave bands started to pop up: The Penetrators, The Dils, The Zeroes. He writes about their first shows put on in VFW halls and small clubs. Tragically, much of the scene came to a crash just as fast as it started. Violent crowds took over shows, cops were shutting down clubs, and before he knew it, much of that era was gone. What he wrote isn’t necessarily the best in form, but the feeling of longing and missing of what once was a time of rawness and freedom of music and art, comes across in a rather beautiful way. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal">Me: How did you meet Harold?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Eddie: Actually, that’s a weird story. I kind of met him years and years ago when I was a punk rocker living in California. He used to have a magazine in San Diego. He had a little space where bands would play. He doesn’t really remember it, but I remember him. He was kind of eccentric and weird and I was more of kind of a straight punker. I wasn’t into that side of the scene. You know that wave, arty stuff. He was a genius to talk to though. We'd talk about art. He was incredible. He used to build his own 360 cameras. Just a genius. His story is his dad died. His dad owned a lot of land. San Diego a long time ago was mostly military and really small cottages and there wasn’t much of anything but there was a lot of farmland that took care of all the navy personnel. His dad owned one of those and he died and he gave Harold and his sister a few million dollars. That’s how he was able to buy all those houses. When I first knew him he made jewelry.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Me: Didn’t he have a store in the French Quarter?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Eddie: Yeah, he had a store in the French Quarter when I first moved there. And Holly was a semi-famous sign painter in San Diego. She did a lot of signs. She was the first person I ever saw do wallpaper, but in a way that was like painted art. She’d do all that high brow, multimedia shit. She made a lot of money doing that.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Me: I actually have a memoir type piece Harold gave to me all about punk rock starting in San Diego in ’77.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Eddie: Yeah, he was a punk rocker in that area.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Me: He talks about the Zeroes and The Penetrators.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfYNLBWkvYePwGBSUg-fGwePgNjfEMBXPXsSjEZcfpdplQbSCklUc5SNoY1YSQj92pzkXz8nzHmHHK35OC5x_lkTtZA5JRDW7IViLDe_GMgpRiyiESuKgjdAfV3vM6hXA6aI4G6mUyTSY/s1600/bj+worker.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="251" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfYNLBWkvYePwGBSUg-fGwePgNjfEMBXPXsSjEZcfpdplQbSCklUc5SNoY1YSQj92pzkXz8nzHmHHK35OC5x_lkTtZA5JRDW7IViLDe_GMgpRiyiESuKgjdAfV3vM6hXA6aI4G6mUyTSY/s320/bj+worker.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
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Eddie: He was a punker and a surfer. What happened was I was living up on Magazine and Tchopotoulis, by Tippitinas, over by Grandma’s Place and My Mother’s place. I’d hang out at this place called The Nest . There was a bunch of punk rockers, artists, and musicians that hung out there. I’d broken up with my girlfriend and one of the guys that lived there was a painter and knew I also did some painting. He told me there was this guy across town that had a house that I might want to know about. So I met up with Harold and it turned out we’d known each other 15 years before, but we weren’t great friends. I worked on the house and he let me stay there. He kind of knew me from the past, but honestly, I was kind of scared of him. He was sort of like a father figure though. I was in a bad place at the time, and in a financial way, he kind of picked me up, you know what I mean, kind of my savior, actually.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Me: What was with the little warehouse he had over by the railroad tracks? </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Eddie: Him and Holly had been married since they were really young. And they were going through some problems. She was a little overbearing and he wanted a place where he could go study, do photography, get back into it, listen to his records. It used to be a repair place for printers. And he bought it for nothing. I think maybe $40,000. I’d step out and visit him over there. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Me: I remember he had all of those broken down VW bugs in there.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Eddie: Yeah, he had a VW affinity his whole life.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Me: A bunch of records.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Eddie: Oh yeah, a great record collection. From punk rock to blues to jazz. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Me: I remember all of the old suitcases with the black and white pictures from San Diego. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
Eddie: Yeah, he had all kinds of suitcases from the 1950’s that he kept them in. He also had that doctor case. With doctor intials. It was made of Buffalo hide, tan black. He was a genius, but I kind of stopped visiting him. When he moved into the Triangle he got kind of weird acting. Girls would come around and he’d get drunk and go right up to them and touch their boobs. Not in a cool way though. Reckless acting. I’m not really sure what was happening, but he kind of scared me.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
Me: Yeah, I liked him though.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Eddie: I loved the guy. I have nothing but full respect and admiration for him. I don’t know where I’d be without him. He was such an incredible artist. Almost too good though.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Eddie’s probably the only artist I’ve ever known and respected that also knows how to frame a wall. Who knows how to raise a house from its foundation and replace the beams. Who’s hiked in the dead of winter and slept in the mountains of Canada. Who’s crashed on people’s floors for months at a time and who’s constantly roaming the earth. Survivalist is the word that comes to mind. At one time or another he’s lived in D.C., New York, Portland, San Francisco, Los Angelas, England, the small towns of Northern California, Hawaii. Tell him he’s a great photographer and he’ll just laugh at you. His last set of camera gear and lenses got stolen out of his jeep years back when he was hiking and he’s not like those other rich kids with other people supporting him. I tell him he needs to get back into taking pictures and he laughs and says, “You got twenty grand to give me?” </span></div><div class="MsoBodyText"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOMhDoFE96vDtjQtG8K-1pnAGe4_7EdA6WIj9ukJoqowBMwtfW_m55-HP_ovnIE1R92FP3NmHQ8ag9XVFT_iy75GYz3y4migmDz5Grh0zIWv5HeepxaspgqsDE9OeZSQYguqfT7JDzSrQ/s1600/0536769-R1-004-0A.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="216" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOMhDoFE96vDtjQtG8K-1pnAGe4_7EdA6WIj9ukJoqowBMwtfW_m55-HP_ovnIE1R92FP3NmHQ8ag9XVFT_iy75GYz3y4migmDz5Grh0zIWv5HeepxaspgqsDE9OeZSQYguqfT7JDzSrQ/s320/0536769-R1-004-0A.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: normal;">He’s an aging punk rocker from back in the day living somewhere in the strangeness of the modern world. Some of his friends have either gone on to be quite successful, artists, businessmen, screenwriters. Some of them still popping pills and supported by the government. Some of them still playing the same three-chord songs from years ago.</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText"><span style="font-weight: normal;">He's an artist, but you’ll never see his work in any museum. You won’t even see it on the walls of the coffee shop. If you lived in the Bywater you might have come across him roaming around with his camera. Maybe you’d wake up to find a picture he printed out stuck in the shutters of your front door. Art for art’s sake. There’s thousands of them. Mardi Gras Indians. Street musicians. Cheifs eating Fritos. Funeral Marches. Hawaiian cemeteries. Kids fishing. Spanish moss and the swamps of Lousiana. Shrimp boats. Abandoned cars in the snow. Torn women drinking whiskey in junkyards. A man in camaflogue who spends his life walking from the south of California to the north and then back again. A local band playing in a bar to a crowd of blow-up dolls. </span><span style="font-weight: normal;"> A fat man standing over a pot of gumbo. </span><span style="font-weight: normal;">Tent revivals. Snow in New Orleans. Beautiful women in innocent moments. The list goes on and on.</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText"><span style="font-weight: normal;">He can take things that sometimes at first glance are perceived to be ugly and make them beautiful. A polished keyhole into the underbelly of America. He’s got that ability to capture irony and certain moments that put words to images. He has very little need for trickery or fancy camera angles, but when the pictures are blurred there’s a reason, there’s a sense of poetry and style to it. When you look at his pictures you don’t get the feeling he’s just walked up and snapped a photo. No, he's known all of these people in one way or another. The camera was second thought and because of that, the photos tell stories. If that’s not art, I don’t know what is. But, the world can be a fucked-up place. The real artists struggle without a dime to their name and it seems as though a lot of the time the losers get most of the fame.</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText"><br />
<div style="font-weight: normal;">In the end, Eddie’s got a good heart. Through a lot of ugliness he sees the humanity in folks. I suppose it can be frustrating at times, but its’ something that should be admired. He spent ten years living in New Orleans. Before Katrina hit I was there for a year. One night I decided to turn the tape recorder on and let it roll. Is there any wonderful insight, any magical quotes? No, probably not. This is just an hour long conversation of two friends talking about our memories of a time and a place. </div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Me: What was the story behind Poland St? Was it haunted?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Eddie: Well, Poland has a really weird history. At one time everyone on that street committed suicide. Everybody in every house committed suicide all the way up to the wine place, which used to be a carriage house and also was a place where they stored ammunition during World War II. Everybody from St. Claude, all the way to the Poland Pier, every single house there had a suicide. Isn’t that bizarre?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6Ja3P8kYAZ7i85Wmgmf8CHn-chNDGZz3LEhh-iwn4VSSO2AcHqPn2P1-sUQyc4mFWAQEK_z64tlQT-L2jIAP0xSAnRlc78q3E3Y6Oox1Kp6fQBPRLtstcyAxNa6EnKtKogELAHreSSKA/s1600/blue+kids+super+sun..jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="220" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6Ja3P8kYAZ7i85Wmgmf8CHn-chNDGZz3LEhh-iwn4VSSO2AcHqPn2P1-sUQyc4mFWAQEK_z64tlQT-L2jIAP0xSAnRlc78q3E3Y6Oox1Kp6fQBPRLtstcyAxNa6EnKtKogELAHreSSKA/s320/blue+kids+super+sun..jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
<br />
Me: And what did people in the neighborhood say?<br />
<br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Eddie: Well, for a really long time they said it was haunted from back in the slavery days. The houses were really beautiful at one time. If you look at him they’re really big.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Me: Yeah, the lots were huge.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Eddie: They all had carriage houses in the back for the slaves. Our section was more blue collar. That section was more expensive. I always liked working on the French homes. Some guys I worked with would be digging out old bottles from under the house, but I’d always go under the front door and find old coins.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Me: Damn, all I ever found was an old Budweiser can. So back to Poland, no one knew why it was haunted?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Eddie: I guess if you look into it you might find something. I just remember what they said. I know when I lived there was one person that killed themselves. But I don’t really know what was going on.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Me: I remember sitting on the steps with you and the neighborhood seemed to be changing and lots of gay yuppie couples were looking at houses to buy over there and we were kind of laughing, wondering if they knew the real story.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Eddie: Who knows, maybe they’re all dead now. France Street had some really wacked out stuff that was happening. At one time there was a lot of Mafia dudes and then it turned into a gay mafia, these guys from New York, I forget the name. The something Ferries.</div>Seth Swaaleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02442058078452795462noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4913178434267411633.post-67031890609503303192010-12-03T13:41:00.000-08:002010-12-03T13:41:49.361-08:00The City of Refuge (Part 1)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSlCiJcr2krrFJQUZLwj9gHQNY6ySUYnwylrp0SsNCrL0MDU3B-zXfblA_kxaAhw_czVwUveVZ9Xv94dgVlSdjRI1VHNsJgeA9wOXWjPgEJYgCtngRm0GDCNRGiRgK4NXOacDNDNeANqs/s1600/5665559-R1-036-16A.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="216" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSlCiJcr2krrFJQUZLwj9gHQNY6ySUYnwylrp0SsNCrL0MDU3B-zXfblA_kxaAhw_czVwUveVZ9Xv94dgVlSdjRI1VHNsJgeA9wOXWjPgEJYgCtngRm0GDCNRGiRgK4NXOacDNDNeANqs/s320/5665559-R1-036-16A.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
<br />
<br />
(Intro note: From 2003-2004 I spent a year living in New Orleans. It's a hard place to explain to people. Often when I try to describe what it was like to live there, it seems as though jumbled words get in the way. The first two things that come to mind with most folks that have never been there are Mardi Gras, and of course, the tragedy of Katrina. Those two aspects are entwined deep into the culture, but there's so much more to the city. It's unlike anywhere else I've ever spent time in. I only saw a small glimpse of what was there, but I'm thankful for the time I had. Even years later I have to laugh as I look around my apartment. A fleur-de-lis sits on my bookshelf. A record of Rebirth Brass Band in the front of my collection. A picture of a street musician playing a guitar on Royal St hangs in my bedroom. <br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div>A while back I decided to record an interview with my friend Eddie who captured a lot of the spirit of New Orleans with his photography. Basically we just let the tape roll and talked about the people and the times we had, some good, some bad, with the city and the part of the 9th ward we lived in.) <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Early sunrise cutting in through the windows…the sound of the rhythmic beat of drums and a trumpet, a trombone, a tuba, out there wailing somewhere in the distance, gradually becoming louder, like an approaching freight train gathering more steam. Carol is out on the corner of Lessups and Burgundy in her short shorts and flip-flops, drinking gin out of a large softball mug and screaming profanities to the ghosts of morning. She’s the Bywater’s rooster. It has similarities to the familiar Cock-a-doodle-doo except down here in the 9th wooard the rooster screams “You stupid shit motherfuckers!” The older fat man at BJ’s is dressed in his pajamas and rather oblivious to her, sweeping the sidewalk and bringing out the bottles from the night before.<br />
<br />
Much of the neighborhood is still asleep as I open the front door of my shotgun and pull back the shutters that just barely hang on to the hinges. The music is now crossing St. Claude, coming back from the ghettos like a restless thunder, a slow wave, a heart-beat, the bright notes lifting into the air and being blown by the soft hot wind in the direction of the Mississippi. <br />
<br />
Down Burgundy I see a crowd approaching, mostly high-school age black boys and mothers who look too young to have children. Behind them a brass band. They now take up the whole street and are dancing chaotically over the cracks in the asphalt and sidewalks, waving their hands around, hopping onto cars. One boy is holding up a stick. On top of it sits a large-sized photo of a boy who can’t be more than fifteen. R.I.P. Another brother dead. There’s no eulogies or prayers or packed churches to cry over with his senseless shooting. Music and dance and a fair amount of booze. This is how New Orleans sheds tears. <br />
<br />
The funeral march continues and a couple of kids jump on my car no more than a few feet away. We stare into one another’s eyes and there are no words to be said, just an acknowledgment, a sense of remorse, a feeling of pain and the release necessary to keep moving on. Breaking free. I do a little nod of the head and one the boy’s just stares at me. He then hops off the car with no damage done. The music follows along as the crowd parades down to Poland St. and then turns towards the direction of the river. <br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhB_lOH2LewC586Ig6nUG5T9CCRpGHftlmT8axRbkEgz61dBwj4MsarPbVRP0ChxDPkb-9bapyS4sbTPugxjB0OcfY6ZewYHZ3oI_7txfUaTWz-SxoT02YjhcCtA9toyxoFBtckDfrB14U/s1600/2986259-R1-044-20A.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="216" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhB_lOH2LewC586Ig6nUG5T9CCRpGHftlmT8axRbkEgz61dBwj4MsarPbVRP0ChxDPkb-9bapyS4sbTPugxjB0OcfY6ZewYHZ3oI_7txfUaTWz-SxoT02YjhcCtA9toyxoFBtckDfrB14U/s320/2986259-R1-044-20A.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
As the music fades and the fog thins, out comes the sun. It’s a reminder of awakening in the wake of death and how way down here the two constantly walk hand in hand; with light, with movement, with life. Down the street comes George, the 9th ward’s thrift store on wheels. The spokes of his bicycle creak and as he balances a large television set on the handlebars. Like the man on the trapeze, with the greatest of ease. He’s brown-bagging it with his other hand. George looks over at me with his contorted face and mouth that seems to stretch all the way up to the bottom of his eyes. He smiles and gives me a big one, bright and full of color. He shouts, “Heya’ Pyaaainter!” “Heya George,” I shout back. He brings the 40 to his lips and miraculously still keeps a hold on the television set. I marvel at his dexterity as my emotions transform from sorrow to laughter. I wave and then watch him drift off towards the French Quarter.<br />
<br />
Me: You remember George?<br />
<br />
Eddie: Yeah, he was staying in a little old house behind his mother’s house. His mother was a nurse. She was really religious. He was too and sometimes he’d stop what he was doing and I’d see him because I worked at that house over on Poland for that writer lady.<br />
<br />
Me: Yeah, what was her name?<br />
<br />
Eddie: I forgot.<br />
<br />
Me: Mary?<br />
<br />
Eddie: Harriet Swift. She helped write a Vampire book. She was a ghost-writer. Anyway, I’d be working inside her house. I’d periodically go back and forth and I’d see where George lived and sometimes I’d see him on the ground praying. He was really trying to change his life around, but then you’d see him coming and going with something on the street he’d find.<br />
<br />
Me: I’d always see him with his big bottle of beer, riding down the street.<br />
<br />
Eddie: Yeah, he’d try not to drink around his mom, but.she would go to work and then the party was on. Hah hah hah.<br />
<br />
Me: He pretty much sold everything, right? TV’s, books, chairs?<br />
<br />
Eddie: Yeah, anything he found on the street. You remember when he picked up that chair and rode around on his bike with it on his head? Those people saying, “Now George, how you gonna carry that?” And he said, “Just watch me.” He’d do that all the time. I seen him with coffee tables, you know, and he’d come back and sell it to somebody, a big old lamp or something and then he’d be drinking his 40, all smiling and happy. (laughter)<br />
<br />
Me: Didn’t he work in the French Quarter somewhere?<br />
<br />
Eddie: He told me he did, but I don’t really know exactly where. I know he did some sweeping for a store, think some antique place, but I don’t really know. Sometimes he did gardening. I saw him with gardening tools.<br />
<br />
Me: Do you remember why his face was so messed up, you know the way he talked?<br />
<br />
Eddie: I’m not really sure. I don’t know if he was in a fire or what happened to him. He never really talked about that. I sat down with him. You remember how he’d sit down with you and have a beer? He did the same thing with me sometimes when I got off of work. But I never really asked him about his face. I don’t really know.<br />
To be honest, I was always a little cautious of that guy. If he was your friend you knew your house wasn’t going to get robbed so that was kind of cool. (Laughter). Oh, oh, I remember one time he came up to me and said, “Hey Mr. Eddie man, what’s with all these bones in your backyard?” This was before you moved in. The guy who was living in your place went to a slaughterhouse and got a bunch of skulls and types of, you know, cows and stuff.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqslHRjhYUNlreiGjRHWG6CX_PzJDYEUgbQeC9EI1vV6vllsOS7AhxYweyb_WgT53XrYs5ZMBY5V0wQdYCWBOFmbBn2tblTxwtPsFSQq8s5GUHTja9hiomyZjGJ_RhTjTeydr8fJUPtps/s1600/DSC_16.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqslHRjhYUNlreiGjRHWG6CX_PzJDYEUgbQeC9EI1vV6vllsOS7AhxYweyb_WgT53XrYs5ZMBY5V0wQdYCWBOFmbBn2tblTxwtPsFSQq8s5GUHTja9hiomyZjGJ_RhTjTeydr8fJUPtps/s320/DSC_16.JPG" width="212" /></a></div><br />
Me: Like Voodoo shit?<br />
<br />
Eddie: Yeah, like voodoo shit. This lady that lived in the back told him to do that. She told him she did the same thing and that people worry about going back there. So he says to me, I had the long dreads back then, “You’re into that Voodoo shit and stuff, aren’t ya?” but I didn’t say anything because I was kind of scared when I first moved there. To the day I moved out he thought I was into Voodoo.<br />
<br />
Me: Well you were.<br />
<br />
Eddie: I know. Isn’t it weird? He’s not the only black guy that said something. I’d walk by some other folks and they’d say, “He’s into Voodoo.” It’s weird how they’re scared if you’re involved with it or they think you’re into it.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Me: What about Mr. P? You remember him, shuffling all around the neighborhood? “Hay, hay, hay.” (shouted in high-pitched nasaly voice)<br />
<br />
Eddie: Mr. P. Everybody treated him like royalty. I know he’d been in the neighborhood forever. That guy was cool. He always had younger women around. He must’ve been 98 years old. <br />
<br />
Me: For some reason I have boxer and bluesman with question marks. It was a mystery of who he really was.<br />
<br />
Eddie: Yeah, he must’ve done something. I remember when he went into Vaughn’s because everyone would buy him beers.<br />
<br />
Me: BJ’s too.<br />
<br />
Eddie: Yeah, they’d get up off the stools and let him sit down. (Mystified)I really can’t, man, it’s weird you brought him up because to this day, I don’t know what he did.<br />
<br />
Me: (laughter) A man of mystery. I remember he lived around the corner down by the railroad tracks.<br />
<br />
Eddie: Yeah, I don’t know what he did. I don’t know what he was about. I’d ask questions and no one would really tell me. A black guy over at Vaughn’s told me he was somebody at one time, but he never really put it into detail.<br />
<br />
Me: Ah, maybe he was nobody.<br />
<br />
Eddie: Nah, too many people knew him. I don’t know what the hell he was. Maybe he was a player at one time.<br />
<br />
Me: He was a pimp.<br />
<br />
Eddie: Yeah, he was a pimp. He was a pretty cool guy though.<br />
<br />
Me: All I remember ever hearing him say was (in high-pitched voice) “Hay, hay, hay.”<br />
<br />
Eddie: “Hay, hay, hay, hay,” like Fat Albert. “Hey Mr. P, Where y’at?” (laughter.)Seth Swaaleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02442058078452795462noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4913178434267411633.post-37579032933799340262010-10-13T12:05:00.000-07:002010-10-13T12:06:00.114-07:00You Ever Heard of Kelso?“Fall off a cliff and die Dominguez! Fall of a cliff and die! Any other jock and 'dat horse woulda’ been ten to one!”<br />
<br />
I look over thinking this might be the same Puerto Rican I saw about a month ago at the OTB a few blocks from Times Square who grumbled to the TV after losing on a turf race, “Castellano, your mother is a whore.” Yes, rrrr’s rolled and all. <br />
<br />
Well, it’s not, but this man dressed in army fatigues frustration shares a striking similarity. He leaves the grandstand full of anger and I can’t help but wonder what he’s going to sound like by the time we get to the ninth race. I’m taking it he didn’t have money on Keechi Bullet. I don’t see what the big surprise is. Ramon Dominguez has had the best winning percentage at Belmont for years and, even with average horses, he’s at the top of his game on a muddy track. <br />
<br />
It’s a quiet, sunny Wednesday in September out at Belmont Park just after a night full of rain. The horses and jockeys are covered in mud; stuck in the elements as we sit comfortably under the sun and blue sky, studying and marking up our racing forms like Bibles, searching for unknown truths and wagering small dreams on two-dollar exactas, trifectas, and Pick 3’s. In the third I keep it simple and put ten dollars to win on Wishful Tomcat, watch him run a perfect race, and come back with twenty-five. <br />
<br />
The stands are rather empty, hollowed remains of what once was. The pictures of Secretariat, War Admiral, Seattle Slew, Bill Shoemaker, Sunny “Jim” Fitzsimmons above the tellers remind us of a different era. Still, a few folks come out. I hear the senior couple next to me planning on the next race. The husband, his eyes hiding behind a huge pair of black sunglasses, looks through the past performances and gives a detailed description of each of the races and the conditions. The wife says she’s going for the four horse. Four was her mother’s favorite number. The husband laughs, but knows she’s got just as good of a chance as he does. <br />
<br />
Mystery Man, dressed in slacks and a tie and straw hat, shows up and takes his usual seat at the lower part of the bleachers. Meticulously, he wipes down his seat over and over with a napkin, trying to get rid of any leftover germs and bad fortuity. He then sits down, crosses his legs, pulls out his notebook of numbers, and gracefully chews on a yellow apple that fashionably matches his shirt. He surveys the track and the tote board with the air of a man that knows what he’s doing. In the three months I’ve been coming out to Belmont I’ve never heard the man speak a word to anyone and I’ve always watched him leave by the seventh race. He must be winning.<br />
<br />
A man with very few teeth, dressed in what appears to be a mechanics uniform and the nametag, Gus, stands next to me in the back of the stands. He looks at my notebook with random notes on each of the horses running. Despite hours of research and systems, it really hasn’t done me any good. <br />
<br />
“You keep records of all this shit?”<br />
<br />
“I try, but I’m starting to wonder.”<br />
<br />
“You got any tips?”<br />
<br />
“All I know is don’t bet the horse out in front first and the one likely to get on the rail.”<br />
<br />
“Oh, the track’s biased. The rail’s bad, eh?”<br />
<br />
“Seems so. If they get stuck on the rail, it’s like they’re running in quicksand, they don’t have a chance.”<br />
<br />
“I hate an uneven track. There’s no way you can win. Hell, a closer like Kelso couldn’t even win on an uneven track. You ever heard of Kelso? Yeah, one of the greatest horses ever. I was here to see him. I’ve been coming here since 1953 and I ain’t never seen anyone win out here. Not one. You can’t. How can you win when you bet a hundred dollars and you’re already down to seventy-five?.” (He’s referring to the twenty-five percent the track automatically takes out from exotic bets.) It’s impossible. Where’s my program? I’ll show you.”<br />
<br />
Gus goes rummaging through a bag of what looks like newspapers and oranges. “Ah, where’s my program? What a schmuck, I left my program at home. Can you believe that? Shit, I’ll see ya.”<br />
<br />
“Good luck.”<br />
<br />
“Yeah, right,” he says, lacking any sense of confidence.<br />
<br />
The races go on and Tom Durkin sits in his spot up top, his voice resonating on the speakers, giving us the play by play. “And…they’re off.” I watch most of the regular denizens throw their tickets to the ground as their horses fail to come in. Some go running around the crowd, shouting, “Easy Money!” and then head for the tellers. I spot the closest to a sure thing in the fifth with That’s Rich. I put ten to win, five to place, and a little two-dollar exacta. All three of them hit and after losing thirty bucks I’m up a hundred for the day and feeling a little better. <br />
<br />
I get to talking to a small, Italian that’s wearing black-rimmed glasses. He looks a lot better than most of the folks I see at the track. You might mistake him as a college professor. He’s telling me these small bets are just a waste of time. The only way you’re going to win is if you put the big money down. Play the pick 3’s. He’s got one ticket for fifty bucks and another for thirty in his hands. Says he already hit one for 220.00. Not bad for most of the odds on favorites coming in. There’s no way to win with just single race bets, he tells me. He then covers the racing form over his face giving me secret words of wisdom he doesn’t want the other folks to know about.<br />
<br />
“I don’t listen to Andy Serling or read the Daily News picks. I don’t listen to what any of these guys out here are saying. You have to know what’s really going on. Trainer angles. Jockey moves. Shippers. I’ll show you. You’ve got to break it down to three or four horses and then bet with those. It’s just like the stock market. Value for your dollar. That’s the name of the game. I know a guy who does well out here. Just to be in the action he plays 10-15 to win or place on races he doesn’t really care about. He does o.k. with those, but that’s just play money. Then when he sees something he likes, boom, he lays a couple hundred down. He wins a lot too. Dollar investment.”<br />
<br />
With only a couple of minutes to post I’ve enjoyed listening to the Professor, but realize I’ve been distracted and put twenty on Tar Beach who finishes up in the middle of the field.<br />
<br />
An unassuming, rather lanky, and soft-spoken man named Roger asks if he can borrow my form too look at the 7th and 8th races.<br />
<br />
“You got any tips?”<br />
<br />
“I don’t know. Seems like all the horses from the inside posts are winning.”<br />
<br />
“Oh yeah? Bet the inside. You got anything else for me? Anyone look good?”<br />
<br />
“Horses just off the pace are winning. You just got to figure out who the hell’s going to run that way. Honestly, I don’t know I’m talking about. Don’t listen to me.”<br />
<br />
“Yeah, this is a rough game. I met a guy one time out here that was real bad on his luck. Living out of his car. He was real depressed. Wife left him. Then he hit the pick 6 and won 80,000. Well, at least that’s what he said.”<br />
<br />
“Let’s hope he didn’t come back to the track after that.”<br />
<br />
“Yeah, you hear about these people that win big and than blow it all gambling again. Half of them go out to Vegas. Not me. I’d just take a trip somewhere. Maybe go down to Florida. Take a cruise. Well, I don’t want to take any more of your time.”<br />
<br />
We part ways and place our bets. The sun is starting to fall low as we head into early evening, casting shadows along the infield. The birds are circling and somewhere in this crazy world winning tickets are chanced upon. <br />
<br />
I watch the eighth race unfold and for the first time all day a closer actually gains ground. Bhangaloo Ruby gets up in the front towards the final turn and bursts down the final stretch. She’s the first outside horse of the day to win and paying decent at 5 to 1. But that’s not what everyone’s hooting and hollering about. It’s the fact that following her is Fivefifteen at 42 to 1, and Yo Karakorum at 32 to 1. For all the wild long shot players who toil through winless months, this is their day. The exacta pays $366.00 and the trifecta pays a handsome $3,281.00. And who’s riding the winner, but none other than Castellano. <br />
<br />
A large, jolly looking, black man is running back towards me with the most wonderfully animated expression. He’s so excited he can hardly get the words out.<br />
<br />
“I knew it! I just knew it! I was sitting at the machine and I don’t know why, but I picked all the outside horses. You know, my dad always came out here and that’s how he’d play. Always betting three horses in a row. He never won a dime doing that. I used to tell him he was crazy for betting that way. I said, you’ll never win. Damn, I knew I should’ve played the trifecta. It’d be the same thing for 12 dollars. Oh man! Three thousand dollars? Oh man!”<br />
<br />
“Hey, 366 ain’t bad. Be thankful for that,” I say, quietly crumpling my ticket and letting it fall to the ground. I’m a little jealous, but I’m happy for this guy. At least someone’s winning out here.<br />
<br />
“Oh, I know. It’s crazy, something told me to do that right at the last minute.”<br />
<br />
“Maybe it was your old man looking down on you.”<br />
<br />
“I think so. It had to have been. Oh boy, that just paid for the year.” He looks up to the sky, as if to thank pops.<br />
<br />
Roger walks back over to the two of us.<br />
<br />
“Hey, you said the inside of the track. Your 6 didn’t even show up. The 7 looked good at the paddock, but didn’t run worth a shit.”<br />
<br />
“You should know, always bet the opposite of what someone tells you. I guess it was time for a change. Bet the outside.”<br />
<br />
“Yeah, I guess. Hell, I’m out of here.”<br />
<br />
The jolly man comes back after telling someone else about his big win. He’s still beaming. He looks over at Roger as he leaves and says, “Damn, you look like my father, I mean, you’re like the spitting image. Jesus, this is weird.” He then runs toward the victory circle. I wonder if there’s some kind of spirit channeling going on right before my eyes. Stranger things have happened. I wait around for the ninth just to see if some kind of miracle takes place, but no such luck. The favorite Fastus Cactus blows away the rest of the field and everyone heads home. <br />
<br />
The old woman with the smoke wrinkled face of a Sharpei that’s probably been sitting in the general admission booth since they opened the racetrack bids us a good afternoon. Her small, beady eyes and sharp smile have a beautiful resignation about them. I imagine she’s got more than a few stories to tell. I follow the regulars out to the parking lot and count what I’ve got left in my wallet. It’s about nine dollars less than I came with. I figure it’s hardly much of a price to pay for a day of small victories. I’m quickly brought back to reality though, as a swaying drunk a few feet away mumbles to himself and pisses in the open for all to see. I’m thinking it’s probably been a while since he picked a winner. <br />
<br />
.Seth Swaaleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02442058078452795462noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4913178434267411633.post-48049266234359396022010-10-13T11:47:00.000-07:002010-10-13T11:47:28.367-07:00Books on the NightstandRoughing It by Mark Twain<br />
Complete Essays of James Baldwin<br />
Essays of George Orwell<br />
Essays of Aldous Huxley<br />
Granta Journal<br />
Side Show: My Life with Greeks, Freaks, & Vagabonds by Howard Bone<br />
The Complete Guide to Thoroughbred Racing by Tom Ainslie<br />
Various short stories and plays by Sam Shepard<br />
Long Days Journey Into Night by Eugene O'NeilSeth Swaaleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02442058078452795462noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4913178434267411633.post-13515272959494086522010-09-19T10:24:00.000-07:002010-10-03T21:56:30.020-07:00"And, they're off!"<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEja8ndeWMRYZgNFtzqt8X6-42WmbJqy6asnF4fcb0OUg5V0r0cdharPrEr8bR6egq61GVLUV7jmrQaexTXF5A8ePuZkggVUZFE2ReSbsowkmdy593JAxKbuKhyWuYYWByRtAQtEvxVsJms/s1600/IMG_1738.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEja8ndeWMRYZgNFtzqt8X6-42WmbJqy6asnF4fcb0OUg5V0r0cdharPrEr8bR6egq61GVLUV7jmrQaexTXF5A8ePuZkggVUZFE2ReSbsowkmdy593JAxKbuKhyWuYYWByRtAQtEvxVsJms/s320/IMG_1738.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5519876250016466994" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Well, it's been quite a while since I put anything on this site so I'm figuring, it's about time. Life plugs along in the big city and I have no complaints; things are good. The dog days of summer seem to be over. There's a slight breeze, blue skies and hints of the leaves changing right under the eyes of the sun. On the way to move my truck earlier walking over a rickety industrial sidewalk littered with trash and foul odors I heard the sounds of guitar and somewhat off-tune wailing from the Iglesia the size of an apartment above a little warehouse. I stood outside a while unable to see through the windows, but listening to what I imagined to be a short Spanish woman, eyes closed, arms raised, feeling the power. I walked a couple blocks down the street and saw the aftermath of a storm that recently hit New York. Trees were resting on power-lines, sidewalks broken apart, and an enormous tree, now uprooted, was lying in the soccer field. Two boys were playing on top of it, climbing far up the base and onto the branches. What had before been an imposing form of nature was now part of a neighborhood playground. As I watched them, I couldn't help but think of how life, even in destruction, transforms, into something else, and sometimes, if we're lucky, becomes beautiful in its evolution.<br /><br />...The police blotter from the local paper is rather bland these days. A few muggings, a knife here and there, but for the most part tales of stolen IPhones seem to fill the pages. I can't complain about violence in the neighborhood if these are most of the crimes. I suppose if these people were looking up from their phones they might be able to detect the shady characters zoning in on them, but whom am I to judge? <br /><br /><br />The mind wanders. To and fro. Bare with me...<br /><br /><br />Aside from work, I have no woman exploits to brag about, and this joke of sporting mustache's for the month of September at the restaurant isn't helping any. Just the other night I tried to hit on a pretty twenty-one year-old coming out of the hoochie-jersey club next door and found myself being slapped multiple times. I don't blame the girl. She probably thought I was some sick perv. So, in between entertaining friends and relatives visiting, I've spent my off days amongst the male-dominated senior-citizen, large sun glass wearing, denizens out at Belmont Racetrack just outside of Queens. It's my hidden spot for vice and meditation and when I mention to folks at work that I bet on the ponies, they look at me a little curiously, thinking, I think my grandpa used to do that shit. <br /><br />In my travels over the years I've found myself a few times out at the horsetrack. I remember years ago taking a train from Greenbelt, MD over to the Laurel Track. The whole car was filled with old men, hacking up their lungs, wreaking of cigarettes, forms out, making notes. The whole thing seemed so mysterious and I had no clue to any of the terminology they were using. Exactas. Boxes. Trifectas. Win. Show. Place. The chalk. Sucker horse. I don't even know if I bet that day. I saw a lot of war vets hobbling around, putting their retirement checks to good use. Later I stood waiting for a train home as a small Chinese man raced around with a fifth of cheap boos. He had plastic cups and kept yelling, "Whiskey! Whiskey!" and was giving away free drinks. Maybe he'd hit it big, but now, looking back on it, he probably didn't. I've been to the dying track in Portland a few times and in my foggy haze, I recall an afternoon at Fair Grounds in New Orleans. <br /><br />Fast forward years later and I seemed to continually come across horse racing in a number of writers I admire. A lot of people point to Charles Bukowski when literature and horse racing comes up, but honestly, he was just following the path of a lot of other writers he was influenced by. William Saroyan. Nelson Algren. Ernest Hemingway. Sherwood Anderson. All wrote about different aspects of "the life," well.<br /><br /><br />This past April I found myself out at opening day at Belmont. I came prepared this time. I taught myself how to read The Racing Form and I checked out a stack of books from the Brooklyn library. I read everything from the study of horses, interviews with the people on the backside, trainers, grooms, jockeys, owners. I read books by math majors that have gone on to make a living betting. Formulas. Statistical analysis. Track Biases. Trainer angles. Horses on grass. Horses on dirt. Front-Runners. Stalkers. I've amounted stacks of numbers on just about every aspect of a race. The list goes on and on. An insane never-ending portal into god knows what. During the two months I had some good days, a couple hundred bucks, and some bad days, a hundred loss. I'd venture after about twenty races I most likely came out a couple hundred under. The past two months the horses went up to Saratoga for the annual, top of the class, racing, but now they're back in New York until the end of the year.<br /><br />Belmont is a huge, imposing place, stadium seating with the stands nearly entirely empty. You can't help but wonder what this place used to be like and the pictures of great horses, jockeys, and trainers above the tellers gives a little hint of an idea, but those days seem to be a distant memory. Still, the races go on. We watch the horses in the paddock as if they were Wall Street investments and not living, breathing, beautiful animals that sometimes feel like running and sometimes don't. The whole idea of it all is a bit odd and foreign, but I guess that's what attracts me. And the challenge of somehow knowing something the other guys you're sitting next to don't. <br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGn2wZpMw5PvbyiOArH6Z1AcdGMRsZXMp7pZgg6TR27J9ouozA4v9G9UcPEd57ht4mWkrwrrmrihFuh-ee50_lyQW3O5SohbHINnLgiB-GELQhiq3FPU3747DW3FUtbCMk27Nt84QZ1UA/s1600/IMG_1726.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGn2wZpMw5PvbyiOArH6Z1AcdGMRsZXMp7pZgg6TR27J9ouozA4v9G9UcPEd57ht4mWkrwrrmrihFuh-ee50_lyQW3O5SohbHINnLgiB-GELQhiq3FPU3747DW3FUtbCMk27Nt84QZ1UA/s320/IMG_1726.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5519877106346741314" /></a><br /><br /><br />I won't lie, I like to make money despite the overwhelming odds that you won't, but the big attraction for me, is observing the human condition. In all it's ridiculousness and deformity. The track puts a lot of this on full display. It's true, there's a lot of ugly aspects to the sport. There's the down-and-out gamblers who've spent everything they own begging for a couple of bucks. There's the guy in the mens room cursing that he just blew $2000. There's another picking up tickets off the floor, and then running them all through the machines looking for a winner. There's the men staring up at the TV's that simulcast the races coming from the fancy tracks like Del Mar and Santa Anita, to the rundown tracks like Arlington out of Chicago and Colonial in West Virgina. Staring big-eyed into the races so that all you hardly see are the whites, slamming their forms against their legs and shouting numbers and jockey names. Reaching up towards the horse as if they were the jockey and that that extra push might get their #6 across the line by the neck. Coming around the final stretch, looking at those horses as if in this one race lied all the answers, the prophecies, the eternal truths. Then groans, cursing, maybe one lucky soul, letting everyone know about it as he walks back over the floor of crumpled tickets. Then there's the guy next to me at the computer teller that says, "Gotta' play this mutha' fuckin' track and I hate it!" as he places twenty dollars in the machine. I can't help but think, that's got to be bad luck. <br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEix9HK5YWH2fFkWqExdE7zr4Q-3DqXVwJLTv25OmbY2PQSGlgumbXAfTPhouqIk40i-vCuRAEIHgHHONrzSfLeyXbrBHp1ioufUGtCL2Em5xqi5z3KQ2kdYd932NVlFA2CBbnm8RSRUfr0/s1600/IMG_1723.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEix9HK5YWH2fFkWqExdE7zr4Q-3DqXVwJLTv25OmbY2PQSGlgumbXAfTPhouqIk40i-vCuRAEIHgHHONrzSfLeyXbrBHp1ioufUGtCL2Em5xqi5z3KQ2kdYd932NVlFA2CBbnm8RSRUfr0/s320/IMG_1723.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5519876605524094530" /></a><br /><br />But don't worry, it's not all glum. There's the fun fans, drinking six-packs, out for their once a year visit to Belmont. There's the old couple, hunched over, all wrinkled up and still in love, celebrating over their horse coming in. Whether it paid $3.00 to win or $10.00, it's still a small victory. And sometimes small victories are enough. There's the little girl or boy resting on their dad's shoulders as they look at the horses with fascination and wonder. And despite the cruelty of the sport, the abuse it takes on the only ones that don't have a voice, you can't help but admire the sheer beauty and definition and size of these animals. You've got the older black guys all together in the grandstand, betting on longshots in trifectas, one of them always yelling, "Don't be scared grandpa. Don't be scared." Then the conversation switches to Michael Jordan and why doesn't Scottie Pippen have a statue? Lebron James and Tiger Woods, and how that girl took him for all he got. There's a big fat Italian yelling for all of us to hear, "Lights Out Lisa! Easy Money." She comes in at 12 to 1 as the rest of the crowd shakes their head studying the form for something they missed. <br /><br />I take my losses and wins with little emotion. If you're smart, you'll come out on top. If you make stupid bets, follow the hoards, you'll go home with your wallet empty. <br /><br />This past Wednesday I was out at the track for the first time in a couple of months. The horse I'm back and forth betting to win on the first race is going off at 9 to 1, good odds for a horse that run just a length behind the odds on favorite in the last race. I've got 0-30 wins on the turf for the trainer so I shy away from making any bets. Of course there's always a first time for everyone and today's it. Fourth Chapter comes in paying $18.80 on a $2.00 bet. A long shot follows him up with the exacta paying $260.00. The favorite, Opera Heroine, is nowhere to be found. A missed opportunity and the track makes you pay for it. The rest of the day seems to follow like this and I can't pick a winner for the life of me. I've had some pretty good days at Belmont, but I realize by the 6th race, today isn't going to be one of them. I keep the bets minimal and leave $60.00 under and head back to the parking lot, not cursing under my breath, just considering it entertainment of a sort, and maybe next time.<br /><br /><br />...On the writing front, I always feel like I'm not doing enough, but there's a few things currently in the works. Up on www.razorcake.org is a long travel piece I wrote. It's called High, Low, and In Between. A new chapter is posting every couple of weeks and when it's done, I'll most likely put it on this page. I've also got a short story that'll be on Mr. Beller's Neighborhood, a well-done site with various New York stories. www.mrbellersneighorhood.com.<br /><br /><br />...A year and a half ago, I put together a demo cd. I made a few copies, sold what I had at a few shows in Portland and that was about it. Since coming to New York I really haven't played them. I mess with the guitar every now and then, but find myself easily distracted. It's always a matter of the art and whether it's good enough. I suppose that's part of the struggle. I don't think the music matches what I had in mind, but the lyrics tend to read like poems and stories, at least that was the intention of it all. A concept, a bigger story about various characters, some real, some made up. A lot of them down and out, living in the underbelly, but all in search of something. What that something is, if we only knew. Anyway, thought I'd throw them up here. <br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">My Days at the Prairie Cafe</span><br />(For a long time I had the vision of an older diner waitress sitting in an empty coffee shop in some small town in the Midwest. I also pictured a younger man living in his car and just roaming around and the relationship of these two different people. A year later, strangely, I would put the words into reality and find myself sitting at the counter of The Rose Prairie Cafe in Laramie. Breakfast was decent, but unfortunately, there was no Lilly there.)<br /><br />Well the sun is just rising in Laramie<br />as the Union Pacific rolls down the line<br />they built these tracks in 1868<br />and the books tell of the Long Brothers back when this was a lawless town<br /><br />I came to Wyoming with a hundred in my pockets<br />and just a shell of a name<br />I did my best to live the good life<br />but no matter how hard I tried<br />I just couldn't play the working man's games<br /><br />now I'm driving through bullet-thin shadows<br />giving my songs to the wind<br />in the carnival land of dancing highways<br />if only to be young again<br /><br />I've been sleeping in a station-wagon I picked up in Denver<br />got it parked behind the old paper-mill<br />Lilly at the diner gives me coffee<br />says I make her laugh<br />but I can tell she's been lonely for such a long time<br /><br />so she visits me late at night<br />and we lay on the hood<br />and listen to the far off sounds from the open plain<br />and for the first time since I don't know when<br />I don't want to be anywhere else than right here<br />and that's where I am<br /><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">The Man from Paris</span><br />(I wrote this after watching the movie Paris, Texas. Any time I watch this movie I end up in tears. Harry Dean Stanton's role as Travis, the loner man who's riddled with guilt and trying to make amends, is a character I see parts of myself in. I pictured words from his point of view.)<br /><br />Four years in Texas walking where I don't know<br />a slow trail of sadness going down to Mexico<br />my memory is shot and I got holes in my boots<br />swallowing my words 'cuz I don't know what to do<br />I got a little boy with my brother in L.A.<br />but I just keep on walking<br />day after day<br />some folks get married<br />I guess they live the perfect dream<br />but things didn't work out that way<br />with me and Darlene<br /><br />outside of 'Frisco an angel from the sky<br />down and out<br />and crazy old<br />I guess the lucky guy<br />the first few weeks how our love was strong<br />nights of dancing laughter<br />and the rooms full of songs<br />but I had a thirst for liquor<br />jealous and mean I became<br />more than any wife or child could ever stand the pain<br />so one night I rolled off<br />never once looking back<br />'till they found me in El Paso<br />lying on the railroad tracks<br /><br />a wise man once told me<br />regret grows longer with age<br />and now here I'm sitting in this chair<br />and you're dancing on that stage<br />it's a strange life we lead<br />and I know words can kill no wrongs<br />but there's this boy in the parking lot<br />he hardly knows his mom<br />so when you see me leaving<br />don't think i'm not thinking of you<br />it's just my mind's so tired<br />and I got figuring to do<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">The Disciples of St. Paul</span><br />(The first apartment I got on my own was on St. Paul Street in Baltimore. It was a divey studio I think I paid 200 dollars a month for. I had just dropped out of the U. of Maryland creative writing program and moved out of the punk house I'd been living in for the past two years. I had no idea what I was doing. I just knew that whatever I was looking for wasn't going to be found in the safe confines of collegiate life. They were insane times, maddening, sitting for hours with a typewriter, working shit jobs, far too self-absorbed, spending countless hours at the library, sometimes lonely, sometimes with lovely and beautifully crazy women, walking the streets at night with the rest of the derelicts. I lived among crack-addicts, drug dealers, drunks, and schitzophrenics. It was an apprenticeship of sorts. I can't say I'd have any desire to go back to those days, but I'd be lying if I said there aren't times when I miss "the action." As much you age and move on and change, some places and times always remain with you. This is one of them.)<br /><br />Elenore stands with her innocent gun<br />and points it clockwise towards the settin' sun<br />some folks here they fell for the fix<br />in the alleys of this world's dirty tricks<br />so we dance on the corners like fallen clowns<br />on the crumbling steps, we just hangin' around<br />shots in the dark, they drift through the night<br />and King Charles is on the hunt for another dead pipe<br /><br />The barbershops are filled with bald men<br />telling war stories from way back when<br />I've been shaking hands with the solitary man<br />and the fire-escapes tell what's left to understand<br />the mountains got a way of tellin' tales<br />and poets drive down highways with stolen names<br />ride on through you dreams, all my chosen ones<br />if we can't find what's lost, it's all just the same<br /><br />so raise one up high for the good times<br />let the morning come in its own disguise<br />cheap motels and an East Coast summer<br />time drifts slow down on St. Paul St.<br /><br />Roger has a cheap suit for sale<br />and the kid in 305 is still in jail<br />the drags parade down the avenue<br />and love can be strange, yet beautiful too<br />so hold your ears tight to the blue dreams<br />and listen well to the good ol' soft breeze<br />think well of all the girls you once knew<br />let good faith determine all that you do<br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiO6FldL_5G2z432PG_p1k49eh7UCZIdjtx_umKPL2z0KWVggG2FB87_SctemGsjF-j9qVMKCi7U3ReV5nG2rdmbkvqVmokOeRdbJuu-umVPoH5ZdDAKCagYb-TYIuvjNP-p87zA91X5Gg/s1600/billplayingvanesbar06.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 203px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiO6FldL_5G2z432PG_p1k49eh7UCZIdjtx_umKPL2z0KWVggG2FB87_SctemGsjF-j9qVMKCi7U3ReV5nG2rdmbkvqVmokOeRdbJuu-umVPoH5ZdDAKCagYb-TYIuvjNP-p87zA91X5Gg/s320/billplayingvanesbar06.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5519881248849358946" /></a><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">New York in the Springtime</span><br />(I was sitting in Central Park while on a vacation to New York. I was still living in Oregon, but I'd come to the realization that New York is where I wanted to be. I was just kind of watching the scene and talking to what appeared to be a homeless guy, sitting next to me. He wasn't dressed in a robe but he inspired this.)<br /><br />I'm the modern day Cesar<br />yelling through the crowd in an old tattered robe<br />tourists throw change in a bucket<br />just a little too dumb to know<br />I was once the king of Washington Square<br />I used to run on Wall St.<br />a suit and tie millionaire<br /><br />tattoo all my thoughts<br />on the hands of the dancing girl's smile<br />drawing pictures of the carnival<br />in the corner of the New York Times<br />man sits on a bench and he gets lost for a while<br />I guess what they say is true<br />maybe I haven't been right for quite some time<br /><br />diamonds shine through the windows<br />all along Madison Ave.<br />and the Broadway lights play with the neon nights<br />and the Bowery pushes straight on through<br />New York in the springtime<br />It’s a sight for all of us to see<br />so come along my friends<br />grab my hand<br />take a long walk with me<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">The Ballad of Big Mama</span><br />(Big Mama was a street musician who used to play in the French Quarter in New Orleans. The last time I was in the city I didn't see her around. She was one of those, unique, one-of-a-kind Southern characters, that was either bound to cause confused raised eyebrows, or beautiful laughter. I wondered what Big Mama's story was.)<br /><br />She came from a small town<br />somewhere east of Tennessee<br />a poor little fat girl<br />filled with starlit dreams<br />well down in Hollywood<br />the neon lights are bright<br />but there ain't no movie stars<br />just lonely midnights<br />she got a room off of Sunset<br />place called the Mark Twain<br />but L.A.'s no city<br />for a southern girl to go insane<br /><br />across Arizona and New Mexico<br />truck-stop-tricks when there's no place to go<br />a Grehound Texas<br />running straight down Ten<br />Louisiana<br />that's where she begins<br /><br />spent her money on a Casio<br />and started banging on them keys<br />down on the corner of Royal St.<br />way down in New Orleans<br />stockings high purple feathers<br />and an old straw hat<br />she couldn't keep a tune but sure loved Fats<br /><br />late one August the rains and floods came<br />she pulled her dress over her eyes<br />things would never be the same<br />so these days you'll find her down an abandoned dirt road<br />her stage a wooden porch<br />a roaring crowd all she knows<br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8MSGz9PLtJM48lgFZck47FGYNj0nIHpI7Iq5RD1npr9n3VqNrlQiOY9PMfoLjzGsRjImpPh_mAS3tuztzL1XdzGcdFY4K45RvwTP2ltx17Dm4UcWQw3o8UKsHv26FRJEeL5m-bQzcIAY/s1600/IMG_1638.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8MSGz9PLtJM48lgFZck47FGYNj0nIHpI7Iq5RD1npr9n3VqNrlQiOY9PMfoLjzGsRjImpPh_mAS3tuztzL1XdzGcdFY4K45RvwTP2ltx17Dm4UcWQw3o8UKsHv26FRJEeL5m-bQzcIAY/s320/IMG_1638.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5519879917849545170" /></a><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Mick Kelly </span><br />(a tribute of sorts to Carson McCullers best novel, "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter." The fact that she wrote this at the age of 22 after moving from the South to New York to become a musician was quite amazing. Years ago I took a road trip down South and into the delta/blues region of Mississippi. Traveling down 61 from Memphis towards Louisiana, I felt as though I was in a different country set apart from ideas of time. Carson's portrait of this region and the people that inhabit it is my idea of art, true to form. )<br /><br />Young boy<br />weathered dog<br />memories in disguise<br />youth shines through September sun<br />an empty church<br />an open plain<br />the gas station's long gone insane<br />Jesus don't come around here anymore<br /><br />Mama sings her courthouse blues<br />Singer walks under the morning moon<br />the hands of time hang on faded signs<br />engines roll down rusted roads<br />and the trains come in as fast as they go<br />and the truth of dreams is only as strong as your word<br /><br />I was 14 when I first fell in love<br />it was the summer of '53<br />Mary-Ann made a man out of me<br />it was next to an old oak tree<br />in the cemetery feeling free<br />under them flashing skies we laughed with the dead<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">The Cross-Eyed Prodigal Son<br /></span><br />(I worked a job for a couple of weeks in a warehouse in the outskirts of Baltimore. It was just me and an older fella' named Maurice. All day we would tug at these rubber tubes, adjusting them to proper measurements. Maurice had a lot of stories to tell and I liked listening to him. He had a way of making the job seem not so miserable. The last time I saw him we were leaving a bar after just being laid off. We parted ways a little drunk and wishing each other the best. I wonder where life took him.)<br /><br />My name is Maurice<br />I was raised in East Baltimore<br />always dress in fatigues<br />but never been to no war<br />you can find me downtown<br />always talking to myself<br />just another crazy fool<br />drinking his way to hell<br /><br />in the mirrored visions of my childhood dreams<br />I travel to all them places you only see in magazines<br />some say a good life can hold the weight of gold<br />sit down and read the good book son<br />you do what you're told<br /><br />I've got my billboard sign on the corner of 'ol Lexington<br />Muslims are dressed in bo-ties<br />looking like butler's at a party with no friends<br />my jumbled words scrawled all about<br />and I know no one understands<br />that I'm the cross-eyed prodigal son<br />living among the weakness of man<br /><br />they got me in the industrial wasteland<br />the sad side of town<br />and I can recite the words of Shakespeare<br />like some 16th century clown<br />I try to keep up with the numbers<br />but I guess I'm too old<br />got this kid covering for me<br />as I stare out into the cold<br /><br />so I'm going to take what little i got<br />and sail for the Red Sea<br />go mine for diamonds in Africa<br />a place called Guinea<br />and maybe I'm talking straight nonsense<br />what's wrong with a good story<br />five grand is all it takes<br />come on best you follow me<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Goodbye Alaska</span><br />(pure imagination)<br /><br />Ray worked the boats, four months out to sea<br />Ruby had a job over at Myer’s Cannery<br />It was that time of the year when the sun don’t never sleep<br />Twelve hours on that line her thoughts were running deep<br /><br />The neighbors talked when Sunday came around<br />That was the day Ruby drove the Comet right on out of town<br />She bought some earrings and a necklace with shiny pearls<br />Pedal to the floor with the look of a 50’s pin-up girl<br /><br />She thought about San Fran but the engine said Midwest<br />A rosary hung from her mirror, with it she was blessed<br />At a gas-station in Sioux Falls she spotted the kid<br />Crooked nose and all of 18, he was half-Indian<br /><br />She bought a sucker, licked it right then and there<br />Pulled her dress down a little to give the two of them some fresh air<br />“Kid, I got room for you out there in my Mercury.<br />You can sit behind that counter, but it pays nothing to be free.”<br /><br />Flyin’ on down that open road<br />Singing along to the old-time blues<br />The kid kissed her on the back of the neck<br />She said, “We’ll get there, but we ain’t there just yet.”<br /><br />Outside of Detroit, they got a room at the old Palm Tree<br />Her eyes told the kid, if you want, you can have all of me<br />They made love enough to kill any sense of time<br />And smoked Lucky’s for three days straight, in the thick of summer’s wine<br /><br />Ruby knew he had a girl, the kid knew about the man<br />But there was something true and innocent in the way they ran<br />Throughout the small towns, across the wide landscape<br />It made as much sense as anything in this world could ever make<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Bud the Barber</span><br />(When I lived in New Orleans I'd drive about 20 minutes to the other side of town and get my hair cut at a small place off of Oak St. Bud was the only barber and had owned the place for over fifty years. I pictured a man like Bud dealing with life after the death of his wife.)<br /><br />Well the man you see<br />oh no it ain't really me<br />and tommorrow all these scars be turning 83<br />I went off to the Pacific<br />when I was just a little kid<br />came back an old man 22<br />and I've lived here ever since<br /><br />living long hanging low<br />come on Lord<br />take me home<br />Mary-Ann sing a song for me<br />and put them healing hands in mine<br /><br />remember how we used to spin them tales<br />in the shadows of the night<br />and even in the darkest days<br />things with you felt so right<br />but it seems as though you were much too big for life<br />so your soul flew on away<br />I took you out to Canyon's Grove<br />it was there I dug your grave<br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhb3ffOAyXPju9Ys0ACrp0qlKiXQ88TGiwsWlu4_6bKktgyLKgry9NAU4ExhlbLxrGs6ForozTCFW9RAOZHpuivALT0xSxst2VQmYrBJfBpc00GeYcG4Z9MzS_P21HVVWzKnvP-fuiSZQA/s1600/2986259-R1-044-20A.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 216px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhb3ffOAyXPju9Ys0ACrp0qlKiXQ88TGiwsWlu4_6bKktgyLKgry9NAU4ExhlbLxrGs6ForozTCFW9RAOZHpuivALT0xSxst2VQmYrBJfBpc00GeYcG4Z9MzS_P21HVVWzKnvP-fuiSZQA/s320/2986259-R1-044-20A.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5519882025239541874" /></a><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Jimmie Boyle Rides Again</span><br />(The past. Love lost. Love found. Redemption, dreams, hope, and whatever lies around the corner. All themes and aspects of life that seem to follow myself, and I suppose, most folks, around.)<br /><br />Red suitcase yellow letters<br />they tell me who I really am<br />fumbling through these stories<br />like an upside-down man<br />words fall through my hands<br />good job<br />big house<br />they say I'm doing ok<br />but come this time tommorrow<br />I'm going to throw it all away<br />no sense in painting lies<br />I'll play my guitar<br />and make all them stars mine<br />drink to this moon<br />with a bottle of hundred-year-old wine<br />yeah I'm gonna tie one on<br /><br />even with all of our love<br />I wondered how things could last<br />this road leads back through you<br />and all of our stumbled past<br />they tell me you got a good man now<br />dusted books and Chinese poems<br />and there ain't no wrong nor right<br />following these wing-clipped angels<br />into the middle of the night<br />my memories go running<br />all around this landSeth Swaaleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02442058078452795462noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4913178434267411633.post-19180053488060730982010-07-06T17:16:00.000-07:002010-10-03T21:55:21.671-07:00Sitting at the Round Table<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqEXDuOfq_xUmuQLrSt-5zV0uHbSh4fgv0jVqfk5pd-kyZlBOouCtM2QZMPim2_x2NLeRMOSlnlh0vxdgbY3mugzCWYZKX1L49wPVZEKPQPN2BSQdC7FSwiV6YocdE-Wnb_Rs4RYrTbjc/s1600/IMG_1281.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqEXDuOfq_xUmuQLrSt-5zV0uHbSh4fgv0jVqfk5pd-kyZlBOouCtM2QZMPim2_x2NLeRMOSlnlh0vxdgbY3mugzCWYZKX1L49wPVZEKPQPN2BSQdC7FSwiV6YocdE-Wnb_Rs4RYrTbjc/s320/IMG_1281.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5490957602442549954" /></a><br /><br />From the outside you’d never know our apartment was any different than the other brownstones that lined the streets of Baltimore’s Mt. Vernon neighborhood. The bricks were a bit weathered, the front steps cracked and tilted to the side, but otherwise, the place looked like something you were more likely to come across in the nicer neighborhoods of New York or Boston. <br /><br />What set 822 Monument St. apart from the others wasn’t something you could necessarily put your finger on; it was more of a strange vibe, a sense of twisted reality, a feeling that things weren’t quite right. The first time I walked into the building I felt it. Maybe the darkly lit hallway with the flickering lights or the sweating plaster that seemed to always be peeling off of the walls had something to do with it. Maybe it was the strange creaking noises that came from the empty basement or that musty smell that had one thinking they were inside a two hundred year-old bookstore.<br /><br />I’m not sure why I decided to live there. I’d like to say it was because it was cheap or because the landlord had been kind enough to overlook my bad credit; but I’d be lying. I suppose part of me was curious and the other part of me was just plain old out of my mind crazy and didn’t give a damn. And now that I look back on it, nearly all of the people that lived in that dingy place were crazed in their own right.<br /><br />There was Gomez, the big Mexican with the lost look in his eyes who never said anything and would climb up the walls in a panic if you walked past him in the hallway. Rumor was that his parents gave the landlord a check for the entire year of rent every January 1st. Then Old Man Pops on the floor above me – his underwear always half way out of his pants – standing outside of his door pounding on his chest and yelling, “You took my beer!” Gary and Lilly down on the first floor, friendly as hell when you saw them on the street and then arguing and beating each other up every night. <br /><br />But at the epicenter of that madness and that unexplainable year of my life was Arthur.<br /><br /><br />I had apartment #6 on the third floor and Arthur lived in #5, directly below mine. With the freckles, the enormous brown bug-eyes, and ring-horn Afro, the man looked like a carnival clown that had fallen on bad times. He also happened to be a heavy drinker and nightly crack-smoker. What set him apart from the stereotypical street-walking crack head was the fact that somehow, despite hardly any sleep, every day of the week he would wake up at six and put in ten hours working at the laundry mat a few blocks away.<br /><br />About a month after I moved in Arthur and I were sitting out on the front steps. We were just hanging, drinking beer, catching the last glimpses of summer and spouting off to one another our own versions of gutter philosophy. As the afternoon wore on I noticed Arthur getting pretty drunk. He made a few trips upstairs and it was obvious by the look in his eyes when he came back, that he wasn’t going up there to use the bathroom.<br /><br />I’m not sure exactly what spurred the change in conversation that day, but suddenly, with a straight face, Arthur explained to me how he’d lived through five different lives. He was four shy of a cat. A lot of the details weren’t clear, even to him, but he was absolutely certain of it. He was sort of this immortal spirit that hopped throughout time from body to body. Arthur new it was hard to fathom for the average person like myself, but he swore on his mother’s grave; this wasn’t no bullshit.<br /><br />In a nutshell, Arthur experienced what he referred to as Life-Forces. He had the magical ability to see things beyond our control. Basically, the man was blessed with some strange form of telepathy, something that went far beyond the realm of simple, everyday coincidence. Randomly, he received messages from up above. Whether those voices were from God, Saints, Angels, he didn’t know.<br /><br />I remember staring Arthur directly in the eyes, trying to see if he was messing with the new guy, and then saying, “Man, you’re fucking crazy, you know that?”<br /><br />Arthur put his hand on my shoulder and laughed aloud, the elder statesman, dismissing my foolish response. “No way, Larry. You see, crazy people don’t know they’re crazy. Like that guy that walks up and down Charles and always knocks three times on the trees and speaks all that gibberish. Now that guy’s crazy. And he don’t even know it. But see, guys like you and me, well, we already know we’re crazy, so we ain’t crazy.”<br /><br />In the following months I had a handful of wild nights with Arthur, but the closest glimpse I actually got into the interior of that man’s twisted mind was when he gave me a book of journals that he had been compiling for the past five years. In those wee hours of the night, when the drunks were staggering home from the neighborhood bars, when the drag queens were hustling over on Calvert for a score, Arthur was busy finding his muse.<br /><br />Arthur had mentioned the journals to me a few times before. He told me he was creating a modern day masterpiece, a work of art that was well ahead of its time. Inside of those journals lied eternal truths, prophecies, the answers to all of man’s deepest and most profound questions. One day he would get it published. He was going to make millions off of it. <br /><br />I’ll admit I was actually kind of looking forward to delving into the literary mind of Arthur. If you were able to catch him in a relatively sober state, which wasn’t all to often, you’d realize he was a fairly intelligent guy. He swore by the works of the old classic writers, guys like Montaigne, Socrates, and his favorite, Machiavelli.<br /><br />I made it as far as thirty pages into his masterpiece and to this day I still have no idea of what those words he had written amounted to. As far as the style of writing, the closest explanation I can come up with is unintelligible biblical verse. There was the constant use of thus and thou and begot this and begot that. The problem was that none of it made any sense. Large asterisks and all caps denoted what I assumed Arthur considered the more important quotes. Taking up half of page 12 was: <br /><br />“A MAN IS MAN. BUT ONLY OF A MAN.”<br /><br />On page 17:<br /><br />“WALK THE CORNER AS SCREAMING WALLS.”<br /><br /><br />In some of the left-hand margins Arthur had written an entirely different language. It resembled a cross between mathematical symbols and Egyptian hieroglyphics. It was written so meticulously that at one point I almost wondered if these were the words of those voices he told me he received from above. Maybe there really was some truth to that whole Angels and five different lives business. Hell, maybe those religious people had Jesus all wrong. That good-looking tan guy with the long hair and compassion and healing powers and amazing carpentry skills was just a scam for all the suckers to buy into. Maybe the real Jesus was sitting down at his cluttered desk in the middle of Baltimore, burning the midnight oil and putting down the mighty word.<br /><br />Five hours into the journal I had to stop. I couldn’t read any more. All I came out of the experience with was a vicious headache.<br /><br /><br />A few days later I gave the journal back to Arthur. He asked me excitedly, “So what do you think man? Pretty deep shit, huh?”<br /><br />“Uh, yeah, little hard to follow, but it’s good,” I said. At the time I didn’t really have it in my heart to tell him that it was the most insane thing I’d ever tried to comprehend. <br /><br /><br />Well, the weeks passed by and then one day I looked out my window and all of the trees were dead and naked, the streets covered in a blanket of white. The ferns that covered the walls of the church across the street had disappeared and the sun was a distant memory. Winter had hit. It was a brutal one too; the most snow the city had gotten in over a hundred years. Driving around town I noticed a strange look in people’s eyes. Everyone seemed on edge. For the most part, I tried to stay away from them. During the day I went to my job driving a van delivering mail and at night I kept to myself. My life wasn’t very exciting.<br /><br />Arthur was still up to his crazy antics. He hadn’t gone completely overboard, but he was getting there. A couple of times a week he’d come up to my apartment at ridiculous hours of the night. I awake from a deep sleep around three in the morning to the sound of his secret knock.<br /><br />I’d open the door, my eyes barely open, my hair shooting out ten different ways.<br /><br />“Shit, Larry, didn’t wake you, did I?” he’d say, his eyes lit up like a Chinese New Year.<br /><br />“Uh, no, what’s up?” I’d mumble.<br /><br />“Hey man, got me a lady-friend down three, if you know what I mean. Got to ask you a favor. I need some milk. Cooking oil. Oh yeah, and ten bucks!”<br /><br />I wouldn’t even try to put together what those things amounted to at this ungodly hour. I’d stumble over to the fridge, shaking my head in disbelief, dig through my wallet, and hand him the goods.<br /><br />“Damn, thanks Larry! You know I’m good for it. I’ll get you on Friday. Say, I can bring her up here after I’m done. You know, she’ll suck your dick for five bucks!”<br /><br />“No thanks. Think I’ll take a rain check on that one.”<br /><br />I’m not really sure why I put up with Arthur’s wild ways. It would’ve been easy for me to not open the door. Pretend to be asleep. I could’ve just stuck to my own boring, solitary life and been all right. But when it comes down to it, that way of going about things has never really worked out for me. For some reason, I happen to always find myself in the most unordinary circumstances. Really, I don’t go looking for that life; it just has a strange way of falling into my lap. <br /><br />In my younger days I had dabbled here and there with the drugs, some coke, acid, that sort of thing. Maybe I tormented my neighbors a few times too. That said I also new that at some point the drugs begin to wear on you. It’s just the natural order of things. Arthur was close to fifty and the ill affects of that lifestyle, compounded with sleep-deprivation, was beginning to show. His sense of reality was quickly evolving into an extreme sense of violent paranoia.<br /><br /><br />One Sunday morning I woke up to a skirmish going on outside of my apartment. I had no intention of opening my door, but I had a feeling Arthur was involved. Suddenly, a sad yelp echoed against the walls, then a gasping for breath. I could just picture it: someone’s little beady, red head doused in sweat, their eyes popping out of their skull. Then came the sound of Arthur’s deep, roaring voice. He sounded like a lion in a dark tunnel. <br /><br />“Luke 6:31: And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise!”<br /><br />Poor Arthur. He’d really lost it. As much as I didn’t want to be involved, I couldn’t let him murder someone. I didn’t want to have something like that on my conscience. I was just about to open my door when I heard Arthur throw the person down the stairs. <br /><br />“Now get the fuck out of here! I said get the fuck out! And next time I see ya’ I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you!”<br /><br />Coughing, heavy breathing, and then scurrying steps followed down the two flights of stairs. Then I heard the front door open and slam shut. Arthur went into his apartment and turned his radio on full blast so that everyone in the building could be blessed with the awe-inspiring power of the Gospel. As I lay in bed the rest of the morning for some reason all I could picture was some old Baptist granny, nodding her heading saying over and over, “The Laud show works in mysterious ways.”<br /><br /><br />It’s strange how things have a way of working out. You know, it’s like there’s nothing really going on in your life. You exist, physically, mentally, spiritually so to speak, but there’s no point to it all. You wake up, go to work, come home, flip on the television, listen to the neighbors bring down the walls and you’re thinking, is this all there is? You keep going over and over it in your head until you drive yourself straight up the doorsteps of the nearest ward or you give up. Sometimes you take long walks around the city. You sit in parks watching the sun go down and try to clear your head. You see the mother’s pushing their children around in strollers and then you sit off to the side in the restaurants and see the couples, young, old, they look so happy and maybe they aren’t all that way, but you’re just sitting there, chewing on your tongue, going plum out of your mind. <br /><br />I guess sometimes you got to hit rock bottom to luck out.<br /><br /><br />I met Sophie at a coffee shop downtown. I had twenty minutes to kill between deliveries and I hadn’t slept at all the previous night and was in bad need of some kind of pick me up. Normally, I never go into those places. Something about those pseudo-intellectuals with their laptops and their Café Lautas, or whatever they call them, trying to look like they’re doing something important, but probably playing Solitaire or mulling over how to spend the next five years in college. Not my crowd is all. I just wanted some coffee.<br /><br />Once I saw her I knew. I don’t know how to put it; there’s just this warm-blooded good feeling you get. It’d been a while since I last had it.<br /><br />Sophie looked completely out of place amongst the heard. She was wearing a bright, shiny blue blouse with small nipples pointing out of it. She was skinny as hell, all bones, and her hair was black and choppy and almost looked like someone just put a mop rag on her head. A large scar cut deep into her skin, starting on her forehead and ending down the middle of her nose. Her green eyes were big and crazy and seemed to instantly give off this sense of unique beauty, a friendly warmth. I can’t say exactly what it was, but right away I was nuts about her.<br /><br />That first day we just made the typical small chat. I could tell I was kind of nervous and fumbling over the words, but I was trying to see if she was giving off anything. I took my double espresso, downed it right there in front of her like it was a shot of whiskey and headed towards the door. Almost outside I heard her yell, “Hey, I’ll see ya’ tomorrow?” I turned around and saw her standing behind the counter looking like some kind of angel gypsy. I gave her a smile full of wrinkled scars and waved.<br /><br /><br />It was all so exciting and new in the beginning. Sophie was a wild wandering spirit. She was an artist, a poet, a spiritual healer. She’d traveled all over the world. Thailand. India. China. Scotland. She’d ridden on elephants outside of Bangkok and fed monkeys from hotel balconies. She’d hiked the Himalayas by herself and had slept with Shamans in villages I couldn’t pronounce the name of. Somehow her travels had taken her to Baltimore where she was just hanging around until the next adventure came along.<br /><br />I didn’t know what Sophie really saw in me. I was a pretty plain, boring guy who didn’t have much going on. I’d moved around a bit and had lived in big cities like Chicago and L.A., but I didn’t know anything about all those crazy places she’d been to.<br /><br />I spent a lot of the next couple of months at her place. Her apartment was vibrant, full of color and life. There were blue Picasso prints and framed Chinese poems by guys with short names like Li Po and Tu Fu, and it was all foreign to me, but I felt comfortable there. Sometimes she’d bug me about how she’d never been to my place, but I’d always try to change the conversation. Things were getting strange back at the apartment anyway. There’d been rumors of a gun going off one night and in the past week the cops had been over a couple of times.<br /><br />I was coming back from Sophie’s when I ran into Arthur. It was freezing and Arthur was looking batty as hell. He was wearing a Russian fur hat with flaps around the side and a cigar that looked like it’d been dead for over an hour was dangling from his lips. I hadn’t seen him for a while and now I was realizing why.<br /><br />“Larry, what the hell you doing out here? It ain’t safe around here at night. There’s crazy fuckers running all around this neighborhood! Things ain’t like they used to be. These are hard times! Thousands people are out of work! They’re not in the right mind.”<br /><br />I looked past Arthur and stared into the lights of the cab cars running up and down Monument. Despite the chill, the Queens that always came out after ten were still wearing their glittery bootie shorts and doing their best to make a buck. A couple of Bohemian looking kids sat on a stoop a few buildings down. <br /><br />“Hell, you’re a nice fella’ Larry. I know. Remember last summer when we sat on the steps talking about The Prince? And all those times I knocked on you’re door and you gave me shit. You never asked me for nothing. That means something. But things are changing around here. You know that guy Eddie? He’s all fucked up! Been doing stupid shit! Do you know he broke into Dianne’s?”<br /><br />Dianne was in her early thirties. I think she was studying to be a lawyer, but she was always nervous, scared when she walked by anyone else in the place. I never quite figured out how she ended up in our building. Eddie on the other hand was sketchy as hell. He was the neighborhood dealer. Sometimes I’d run into him at one of the local bars. Occasionally he’d say hi to me, but he was always jittery and running all over the place. I usually kept my distance.<br /><br />“You remember what I told you when you first moved in the building? How this was our home and how we need to make sure it stays safe? Now look at it. That fucker Eddie’s been living in the basement, cutting all his coke down there with some other dudes. Do you know he was sawing up through the ceiling into Dianne’s bedroom? I told him the next time I see him around I’m going to kill him! I will! And now we got that damn ho who keeps sneaking in the building. Hanging with Gomez in #3. Everything’s going to shit!”<br /><br />It was about twenty degrees and my fingers were going numb. At least now I knew who Arthur had been choking that one Sunday. I wondered if the landlord knew anything about what was going on. I thought about mentioning it, but Arthur was charged up. Ready to serve and protect. He was a man of justice; noble, despite the fact that everyone he was talking about were at one time people he’d been friends with. I guess that was the life; in one minute, out the next.<br /><br />Arthur would’ve gone on for another couple hours, but I calmly told him I’d watch my back and walked towards the apartment.<br /><br />I lay in bed for a couple hours, but I was feeling pretty restless so I went back over to Sophie’s. She could tell I was a bit out of sorts. As much as she’d seen, and as many places as she’d been, I didn’t really get the feeling she knew anything about the kind of life I surrounded myself with.<br /><br />That night Sophie turned off all the lights and lit a bunch of candles. She put on some weird music with sitars and chanting and gave me a Reiki session. I sat down Indian style and she told me to hold my palms face up and she placed hers a few inches above mine. I was skeptical about the whole business, but it was real important to her so I went along with it. After a minute Sophie stopped. She backed away with a frightened look in her eyes.<br /><br />“What,” I said.<br /><br />“I don’t know. That was really weird. I’m getting a real bad energy from you. I’ve never felt something like that.”<br /><br />“What the hell does that mean?”<br /><br />“Larry, let’s just stop. Forget we ever did that.”<br /><br />We hardly talked the rest of the night. It was obvious whatever Sophie had seen wasn’t good. I pried her on it for a while, but she wouldn’t tell me anything. God, I had crazy spirits floating all around me. Palm-reading angels and psychic junky demons and I was just wondering where I fit into it all.<br /><br /><br />The next day at work I was in a daze. I drove around the city in a cloudy fog, my thoughts roaming, unable to form any concrete images. I liked Sophie, but maybe things would be easier if I just kept to myself. Less complicated. Bad luck had a way of following me around and hurting the people close to me. The girl I had lived with in Chicago was now in a mental hospital. The one before her was paralyzed in a boating accident. Call it intuition, but I just had a feeling.<br /><br />I didn’t talk to Sophie for a week. She left a bunch of messages on my answering machine, but I didn’t call her back. I’d go to work, come home, and drink to the point of near retardation. I felt like I had to tune everything out.<br /><br />If I could do it all over again I would’ve kissed Sophie the second I saw her standing on the front steps. I would’ve taken her in my arms and told her I was sorry for being a fool. We would’ve kept walking up the stairs straight into my apartment. Wrestled under the sheets for hours and then laid in bed listening to the night. Maybe we’d blast the stereo and parade around the room like naked fools. Sometimes I wonder. <br /><br />I was sitting on the couch going dizzy staring at the walls when the buzzer went off. I went down to the front door and Sophie was standing there. We just looked at each other, all silent for a while, and then she said, “So, you going to ask me in?”<br /><br />“Yeah, yeah, “ I said, still out of it.<br /><br />On the way to the stairs I noticed Sophie curiously surveying the dilapidated interior and I made some kind of joke. “Well, welcome to my own private dump.” We both laughed and I felt a little better. We were almost to my apartment when Arthur opened his door and came up to us.<br /><br />“Hey Larry. Oooh, lookie here. Didn’t mean to interrupt. Who’s this cute thing?”<br /><br />“Sophie, this here’s Arthur,” I said.<br /><br />“Hi,” said Sophie. She stuck her little hand out and Arthur shook it with a little too much force, though I knew it wasn’t done purposefully.<br /><br />“Well, damn Larry. That’s why I never hear you around. Say, I got a new friend staying with me. I want you to meet her.”<br /><br />“Huh, who is it?” I asked, not really feeling up for Arthur’s antics.<br /><br />“Just come on in.”<br /><br />We walked into his apartment. Lamps, torn-apart stereos, empty cereal boxes, and dirty clothes were scattered all over the floor. Long sheets of aluminum foil were hanging from the ceiling and computer monitors were positioned in each corner. There was an army banner hung on the wall. The place kind of had an Apocalypse Now thing going on.<br /><br />“Ruth! Ruth! Come on out!” Arthur yelled.<br /><br />A pit-bull slowly walked out from the bedroom. She was black and white with cherry-veined eyes. Sophie and I took a step back.<br /><br />“Don’t be scared guys. She’s totally harmless.”<br /><br />Yeah, harmless if she wasn’t getting that second-hand action. I figured that stuff Arthur smoked was bound to make a mouse violent.<br /><br />“I’m just babysitting for the next couple of weeks. Say y’all want a beer?”<br /><br />I couldn’t tell what was going through Sophie’s mind at that minute, but before I could say anything she said, “Sure, thanks.”<br /><br />“Well, all I got is Old E. Think I’ll have some too. Hah hah, don’t mind if I do.”<br /><br />Sophie grabbed my hand and smiled. I guess this was all new for her.<br />Next to the ashtray on the cardboard box that worked as a coffee table I saw the glass pipe. Beside it, a zip-lock bag filled with little white rocks. Arthur came back from the kitchen with three cups of beer and sat across from us on the couch.<br /><br />“You don’t mind, do you?” Arthur said to Sophie.<br /><br />Sophie shook her head. Arthur filled the pipe and brought it up to his lips. He lit it with a Zippo, closed his eyes, and took in the smoke. He held it for a while and then blew it out. The room had the smell of burning plastic. <br /><br />Twenty minutes later that bag was getting pretty empty and Arthur was talking nonsense. He was walking all around the room, waving his arms every which way, going on his crazy rant about keeping the neighborhood safe shit. I don’t think Sophie knew what to say. Ruth started circling Arthur. She kept her own distance from us, but I knew how animals were always the first to sense when something strange was about to happen. That dog was making me nervous.<br /><br />I’m sitting there thinking, I’m going to grab a hold of Sophie and we’re going to get the hell out of here. We’re going to get out before anything happens.<br /><br />A couple of seconds later there was a knock at the door. I glanced back and Sketchy Eddie stood in front of Arthur. He was looking like the Grim Reaper. He had big black bags under his eyes, like he hadn’t slept in a month. Arthur let him in. I took a good look at both of them and they were all jittery: a couple of Chihuahuas. I didn’t get it. A couple of weeks ago Arthur was telling me how he was going to kill this guy. He’d nearly choked him to death on the stairs. Now they were hanging out? It didn’t add up.<br /><br />I whispered into Sophie’s ear, “Finish your beer now.”<br /><br />Eddie nervously said hey to the two of us and followed Arthur into the kitchen. I didn’t hear what started it, but two of them were arguing. “Look man, all I’m saying is to chill man. Chill! I’ll get you the shit by tomorrow.”<br /><br />Eddie was walking out of the kitchen when I saw Arthur come up behind him with the gun.<br /><br />In the movies it always takes forever. There’s this build-up and then the back and forth dialogue and the guy with the gun says something witty and then the other guy says something equally witty like “Go ahead and shoot me,” and then the guy with the gun has a real serious, squinting look and then the gun finally goes off. It was nothing like that.<br /><br />It all happened so fast, and yet, at the same time everything felt like it was in slow motion. I wanted to get up and stop it, but there was this uncontrollable force keeping me pinned down. It was like some crazy nightmare, where you want to scream but no matter how hard you try no sound will come out of your mouth.<br /><br />Arthur grabbed a hold of Eddie’s shoulder, spun him around, and bashed him across the face with the butt of the gun. Sophie screamed, but in a matter of seconds, she was silenced by two gunshots to Eddie’s head. His body was slumped halfway behind a table. I couldn’t see his face, but I saw the blood splattered all over the walls. I watched his leg twitch a little and then go still. Ruth leaped from where we were and sunk her teeth into Eddie’s puny arm. Arthur stood over him screaming out:<br /><br />“So rejoice, O sons of Zion, and be glad in the LORD your God! For He has given you the early rain for your vindication! And He has poured down for you the rain, The early and latter rain as before!”<br /><br />I didn’t really have time to think. I grabbed a hold of Sophie and made for the door. Before we reached the stairs I quickly glanced back and Arthur was still standing in the same spot, eyes popping out of his head, his gun in one hand, the other raised in the air.<br /><br />It must have been three blocks before we stopped running. Sophie’s face was pale-white. She wasn’t crying or nothing. Just blank-eyed and out of breath and as I stood there looking at her with nothing to say I knew that all the Reiki, aligning of the stars, moon signs and auras in the world wouldn’t have prepared her for something like that. We held each other on that corner for I don’t know how long. I could hear the sirens in the distance.<br /><br /><br />I didn’t go back to the apartment for a couple of days. I didn’t want to have anything to do with the place. The day after it all happened there was a blurb in the paper. It was on one of the back pages of the Metro section. They mentioned the murder and how the police had shown up with the suspect sitting on his couch with his dog in his lap. Arthur didn’t put up any kind of fight.<br /><br />The cops came around asking questions, but no one else in the apartment would come forth about hearing anything. I didn’t even know if anyone had seen Sophie and I leave. I called the landlord and told them I was moving out.<br /><br />I tried staying with Sophie, but things were never the same after that. She never <br />wanted to talk about what happened up in Arthur’s apartment. Neither of us did. I told her I understood if she went to the cops. She didn’t. We didn’t talk for a few weeks and then one day I went to her work. They told me she’d moved away.<br /><br />For months after, that night went over and over in my head. The whole year in that apartment. Utter insanity. No one would ever believe me if I tried to tell that story so I didn’t. For a while all that went through my mind was what if this, what if that. These days though I try to think about other things. I picked up more hours at work and even joined the gym. Sometimes I take weekend trips out to the Chesapeake Bay or down to D.C.<br /><br />I still live in Baltimore, but I stay clear of my old apartment. Every now and then though the company has me do a delivery or pick-up at one of those lawyer’s offices off of Monument and I have to pass by the building. I look up at what used to be my bedroom window and then I look up at Arthur’s wondering what the hell he’s thinking about in that jail cell. I see Sketchy Eddie lying there like a piece of meat and that pit with that stupid name all lock-jawed and Arthur waving his arms around and speaking a language I don’t even think God understands; and it’s strange, because part of me goes running out the door, but there’s this other part of me that’s just standing there, curiously watching the whole thing take place. I don’t really know what to make of it, but what it comes down to is that I guess I really want to see how it all plays out.Seth Swaaleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02442058078452795462noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4913178434267411633.post-79876082168733552262010-04-24T22:52:00.000-07:002010-10-03T21:52:35.950-07:00Fragments<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5tCgENERz00Ko_CkfZjRK-3K3uZ1DV7Fxg8HFud4dqtTL9c-I72MOBuxYdEJjfd-8yvQhwCrbBpqlN80uoWgoLBWwBJXwSrID4TEFI1UM8jaKThwipzHsJUGZLnTon2bTF9qjM4-0isc/s1600/IMG_1705.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5tCgENERz00Ko_CkfZjRK-3K3uZ1DV7Fxg8HFud4dqtTL9c-I72MOBuxYdEJjfd-8yvQhwCrbBpqlN80uoWgoLBWwBJXwSrID4TEFI1UM8jaKThwipzHsJUGZLnTon2bTF9qjM4-0isc/s320/IMG_1705.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5463966087966387714" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_8JUqv-IyefFn91X9P4uAcbTSK9yNy1XTAOgnOMWVnltUSGmwFAD2rOnJu5aHKkMLdA5a7epdGOMxA-KK_Lm5qSlcLhgWjz2FGvzZ2_oNahiFX2pWM3LZFfxX0KV06GmPp7hVRmIt3y0/s1600/IMG_1698.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_8JUqv-IyefFn91X9P4uAcbTSK9yNy1XTAOgnOMWVnltUSGmwFAD2rOnJu5aHKkMLdA5a7epdGOMxA-KK_Lm5qSlcLhgWjz2FGvzZ2_oNahiFX2pWM3LZFfxX0KV06GmPp7hVRmIt3y0/s320/IMG_1698.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5463965709332618466" /></a><br /><br />I had such a vivid dream last night. It involved, of all people, Art Tatum. Yes, back from the dead was one of the world’s finest jazz piano players, who, at one time, the classical composer Antonin Dvorak considered to be the best piano player in any musical genre. The fact that he was nearly blind was even more remarkable. <br /><br />I was in some park and there was lots of grass and trees, green all around, and two or three people sitting in chairs next to me. There was someone I knew, but I couldn’t quite place who they were. Art Tatum was sitting behind a piano out in the open, but I don’t remember music. Just a big black jolly man in his youth with his fingers on the black and white keys. The whole time during this dream, I’m thinking, my God, it’s Art Tatum. Then I was walking with him and it was all so real and true and warm and beautiful. He grabbed on to my hand, not to hold it, but just feeling it. He said I had rough hands though I don’t think I do. We were somewhere walking across a bridge and then, like some curtain crashing down, everything faded. There was a lot more somewhere in there and I wanted to get up from the bed, grab a pen and paper, write it down, but I just laid there and soon fell back asleep.<br /><br />If only we could lose memories of all the bad thoughts and keep our dreams. I’ve never been too into over-analyzing too much of what goes on in the subconscious mind. I think a lot of it escapes the world of science and reason. I’ve read Freud and Jung, but always taken their studies with a grain of salt. But still, after I woke up I couldn’t help but think of the meaning behind the dream. <br /><br />I see a lot of blind people when I get off the F train at 23rd and 6th Ave. There’s a school for the blind somewhere around there and I see about three or four people walking around with canes. I think about them a lot and what their life is like. They tap their canes against the steps as they walk up the stairs and I wonder if they’re counting the steps, if a lot of their life revolves in numbers, steps to the light, steps across the street. Then I was talking to my mom the night before. I was asking questions about my grandfather who died when I was thirteen. I wanted to know what he had done in the military, where he worked afterward, where he was born. Then today I remembered that the Art Tatum records I have were my grandfather’s. I found them in a closet in my grandmother’s house years after he’d been dead. I’m also in the process of dictating an interview I did with a friend about living in the Bywater neighborhood of New Orleans. My grandfather’s favorite music to play on the piano just happened to be Dixie. I decided to put on my Tatum records as a sort of homage to the old man and wondered if he was somewhere listening. I’m not really sure if I believe in a heaven or a hell. Maybe the dead just spend eternity in the land of dreams.<br /> <br /><br />* * *<br /><br />I ride the subway often late at night. Restaurant life is a world of odd hours and usually I don’t get out of work until one or two in the morning. The majority of the people on the train are drunk or asleep or sometimes just really tired and getting off of work like myself, but sometimes there’s just really sad and lonely people. I came across one tonight. <br /><br />The train slowed down for a little bit. The computer-automated voice on the speaker said, “Due to traffic ahead we are being held momentarily. Please be patient.”<br /><br />Down the bench my attention was diverted from the book I was reading.<br /><br />“If I wanted to be patient I’d move to New Mexico! Let’s go! Let’s go!”<br /><br />I looked over to find a middle-aged man, partially bald with the comb-over. He had a bunch of bags all around him and was pouting, a full-scale scowl painted on his face. He looked like a child that had just been told he couldn’t have anymore chocolate. He had headphones on, but I got the feeling there wasn’t any music coming out of them. His pants were high up to the middle of his protruding belly. He looked so lonely and upset with the world and was continually moving in his seat. Just couldn’t get comfortable. Even with all of this, I couldn’t help but laugh at what he said. Yes, I suppose the Southwest is a place for patience. Beautiful sunsets across open space and lots of time for meditative thoughts and solitude. <br /><br />When I got off at Smith and 9th I looked back at the man. He was still scowling and then I noticed he also had a violin case. I walked towards the stairs trying to remember if I’d ever seen such an angry violinist and realized I probably hadn’t. I wondered where life had gone wrong for him.<br /><br /> * * *<br /><br />I spent most of my Saturday afternoon in Coney Island. Went and checked out the Circus Sideshow, an old time ten act freak show. Human blockheads and sexy, large-breasted sword swallowers and tattoo covered fire breathers and Donnie Vomit providing much of the humor. It was a good time. <br /><br />I visited the museum and walked among the antique remains of the old Coney Island (an old board with ride names like the Silver Streak, Shngrila Ha Ha, Roto Jet, Tilt a Whirl) which conjured up visions in my own imagination. There was also a really interesting exhibit about Freud who had once visited Coney Island and one man in particular, Albert Grass, who ran what was called "The Amateur Psychoanalytical Society." He and his colleagues were avid followers of Sigmund Freud. What was interesting was the story of how this man had a vision to reopen the Dreamland Amusement park which had burned down in 1911. This time though he wanted to make the amusement park a real living and subconscious play land of the dreams of a child, rides with ids and egos, he had all kinds of drawings that depicted the concept. Throughout the park would be a miniature railroad which would be called "Train of Thought." Came across another quote of his in a letter in which he was proposing his concept. "We will open our darkest dreams to the bright light of reason." Unfortunately, it never came to be, but I found myself engrossed in the various letters and drawings of his that they had on display. <br /><br />When I got outside the barker on the small wooden stage was shoving a screwdriver into his nose. He then went into a spiel which he repeats for most of the day.<br /><br />"They're here, they're real, and let me tell you what I'm going to do folks, for the kid in all of us, and really, we're all kids. I'm going to make you this special offer, that's right, for the next two minutes, yes two minutes, anyone that comes in will be charged the price of a child's ticket. Yes, two minutes, step right in. We have blockheads, we have Heather Holiday, the sword-swallowing sensation from Salt Lake City, Serpentine, the Mad Twister, Ezactamora, that's right, 10 acts in one, a real-life sideshow, all ten, incredible live acts. Bring mom and dad, bring the whole smorgasbord. If you're under three feet tall and you're an adult not only will you get in free, we'll give you a job. Last call! Last Call!" <br /><br /><br />I left the barker and then walked around the boardwalk and out to the Steeplechase pier. I saw an enormous, tough-looking guy, gold chains, 300lbs, bad tattoos, with a crew of others that looked like they just got out of Reikers. There were no children around and what is he doing, flying a kite. I then saw a Puerto Rican man dressed in a Harvard jumpsuit catch a sting ray. He explained to another Spanish speaking person how he was going to cook it like carne asada and the way to cut it. Next to him an old lady found no need for a fishing pole or gear. She had an empty plastic coke bottle, some string, and a hook. Watching her cast her line into the ocean was classic and I was pleased to find the couple standing next to me also saw the beauty in it.<br /><br />On the way back I decided to go check out the Verrazano Bridge. I always seem to see it from a distance from various parts of Brooklyn, but didn’t realize how massive it was until I stood underneath it. Architecturally, I’d guess it was fashioned after the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. I stood there for a while, stared out at the water and the barge ships and Staten Island which sits on the other side. <br /><br />I walked thirty blocks back through the Irish and Italian and Middle Eastern sections along 5th Ave. The bars were filled with Yankee fans watching the game. Looked into the Arab restaurants and saw the men way far in the back smoking hookahs and probably talking of the old country. I had to take a piss and for the life of me couldn’t seem to find a place to take care of my business. I wasn't even hungry, but I stopped in for a Sicilian slice at Original Pizza somewhere around 65th in front of the R train stop. Behind me at one booth was an Arabic woman in full shawl with her young boy. In the next booth was an old Italian man. The boy was leaning over his mother’s shoulder, some pizza in his mouth, curiously staring at the man. <br /><br />The old man smiled and said to him, “How you doin’? Yeah, you like Frank Sinatra? You like Frankie boy?” <br /><br />The mother smiled back, kind of shyly, but didn’t say anything.<br /><br />It’s funny, women look at young children and talk in strange baby-like voices. I guess old Italian men talk to children as if they were another one of the fellas' sitting across from them at the card table of the local social club.<br /><br />* * *<br /><br />I woke up around eleven today and walked over to the bodega for some coffee and an egg on a roll. Anytime I go in there I usually end up in a rather lengthy discussion with Moussa, the owner. He’s Arabic by way of Chicago and Louisiana and has a rather interesting accent mixed with intermittent Arabic. He’s very animated and talkative and has a cast of interesting regulars coming in from the neighborhood: construction workers, drug addicts, young kids, old, Puerto Ricans, black, white, Italian, Arab; a wild colorful amalgamation of Brooklynites. <br /><br />Today I notice he’s added a small counter/table outside. He needs a permit from the city for any real patio type tables so he made this one. Of course his only customer is Crystal, a rather large red-haired woman with a thick Brooklyn accent. She walks in and I get a closer look at her face and hands and then I realize she is a he. Later on I learn from Moussa’s wife, who spends a lot of her time at the bodega working, that Crystal has had the surgery for down there and often tells her of her sexual exploits. One involves another man that likes to pee on her. Ah, yes, I say to her, the golden shower.<br /><br />“Fuckin faggot!” Moussa says to me.<br /><br />Crystal is standing in the doorway. “Oh, lookie heah, wings and fries. Five dolla’s. Wow Moussa, I never soaw that. And burger and fries too. Dat’s a good deal. I always look in one direction. You know as a kid I oohalways fell into holes because I never looked down. I only look straight ahead and den you know one day I look up and say, wow, look at all of deese buildings, I didn’t know dey were heah.”<br /><br />“Hey Crystal, don’t you got somewhere to go? And put your food in the trash.”<br /><br />Moussa rolls his eyes and says to me, “She been here since seven this morning.”<br /><br />I get the feeling he’s starting to think this outside table might not be a good idea. Then again, it might be since now he’s at least got Crystal outside. I just laugh as Crystal stays put, talking about her cell phone’s pour reception as neither of us is really listening.<br /><br />A guy from the barber shop next door comes in asking Moussa for change. Moussa yells at him, “What, I look like a fuckin bank? I got no change. Get outta’ here. How you have a barber shop and have no change? I tell you, go to the fuckin’ bank.”<br /><br />I part ways with my big coffee and Crystal says, “Have a nooice day.”<br /><br />A block away in the triangle park, well not really a park, just a triangle with some benches where a lot of homeless and shifty-eyed people (most of them from the clinic across from my place) camp out during the day. I notice a man that I’ve seen a few times with a journal on the ground with handwritten words. This time around he’s reading a book called “23 Ways to Hell.” In his other hand is a bible in which he’s highlighting passages. I want to stop and ask him which way he’s leaning, but I think better of it. Seems like everywhere you look there’s the humor, the irony, and the sadness of life. All mingling aside one another. I take a little bit of each in and then I go on my way.Seth Swaaleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02442058078452795462noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4913178434267411633.post-80244738343746852582010-04-08T09:39:00.000-07:002010-10-03T21:54:13.174-07:00Sunday's at Leo's<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMEbLQ9B8LSW_EQZbnk6jxbnLLAlc2P9q2BgTJgP5mjgjTGIKbCPuoC7dh0kfxuszKYLC_zRTYUcV04KNBp8hPCa9zLtMzOUTarEL20E8EqvbBD0iqdz5xt8m3C7wbyhD-10ZSS84NfYc/s1600/3238870-R1-012-4A.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 216px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMEbLQ9B8LSW_EQZbnk6jxbnLLAlc2P9q2BgTJgP5mjgjTGIKbCPuoC7dh0kfxuszKYLC_zRTYUcV04KNBp8hPCa9zLtMzOUTarEL20E8EqvbBD0iqdz5xt8m3C7wbyhD-10ZSS84NfYc/s320/3238870-R1-012-4A.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5519882842300391282" /></a><br /><br />“Hey John, the usual?”<br /> <br />“No, just give me a cranberry juice,” said Big John.<br /> <br />I was a little surprised since in the three months I’d been working at Leo’s, Big John had always ordered cherry brandy. Like most of the clientele that came into Leo’s, he was old and he was a heavy drinker.<br /> <br />I poured him a glass of cranberry juice and placed it next to the napkin full of breadcrumbs that he always saved for his birds at home.<br /> <br />Big John was in his late seventies. He came in every Sunday at eleven in the morning always dressed in the same black suit. With the nice red lapel and black and white striped tie he looked like he had just walked out of church. Though he was Irish, I think he was far from being the religious type. Hunched over, he was about six-two and he probably weighed at least two-fifty. His head was enormous. It looked like a massive watermelon. When he laughed you could see his decayed and jagged teeth on full display. His cheeks and eyes were all baggy and puffed out and all the fat seemed to reside in his double chin.<br /> <br />“You wouldn’t believe what happened to me last night,” said Big John.<br /> <br />“Oh yeah, what’s that?”<br /> <br />“Well before I went into bed I went into the bathroom. So I was peeing and at first everything seemed normal. Then, all of a sudden, this big gush of blood comes pouring out of my dick. I mean it was enough blood to fill that catsup bottle over there. Hah! I couldn’t believe it. I’ve never seen anything like that. All that blood floating around in the toilet. I tell you, it was dis-gusting.”<br /> <br />“Jeez, did you call the hospital?”<br /> <br />“You’re damn right I called the hospital. Jesus Roy! I lost a pint of blood! The ambulance came and they took me to the emergency room. They had all these tubes going into my arms. Amazing!”<br /> <br />“Damn John.”<br /> <br />“Doctor says I’ll be all right though. It was just a little hemorrhage. They gave me all kinds of drugs. Now I feel like a drug pusher. A drug pusher! As long as I stay away from the booze I’ll be fine.”<br /> <br />“Yeah, that’s probably a good idea.”<br /> <br />Big John lowered his eyes into the Sunday newspaper and I walked back to the end of the bar and straightened up the bottles in the cooler.<br /> <br />About a half-hour later Jack walked in. Jack was another one of the Sunday, suit-wearing old-timers. He was a little younger than Big John and always wore a blue suit with a black top hat that had a red feather tucked into the ribbon.<br /> <br />He sat down a few stools over from Big John and I put a mug of Bud down in front of him.<br /> <br />“Hey Jack.”<br /> <br />“Hey Roy. Hey, how goes it John?”<br /> <br />“Ugh,” grumbled Big John, not looking up from the paper.<br /> <br />Jack was a retired card dealer. He did fifteen years in Vegas and then twenty up in Atlantic City. He also had a penchant for always passing out at the bar. The strange part about it was that it only happened when he was on the fourth beer. All of the sudden, you’d look over and he’d have his face flat on the bar, his big white mustache right in the spilled beer, snoring away. I’d usually let him sleep for a couple minutes and then I’d bang my fist down on the bar and say, “Wake up Jack! This ain’t a hotel!” Every once in a while there’d be a few people in the bar and they’d laugh and then Jack would open his eyes, lift his head, and in one fluid motion, he’d grab the glass of beer and resume drinking.<br /> <br />“Say, Roy, get John a drink for me,” said Jack.<br /> <br />“I’m not drinking!” screamed Big John.<br /> <br />“What’s wrong John, you going soft?” goaded Jack as he winked at me.<br /> <br />“Why you…I’m sick of your talking, Jack. You know, you never know when to shut up.”<br /> <br />Big John’s eyes looked they were going to pop right out of that huge head of his. I never could quite figure out what Big John had against Jack. Maybe it stemmed from something way back in the day. He turned towards the window and covered himself up with the paper.<br /> <br />“Oh, come on John.”<br /> <br />“Just shut up, Jack!”<br /> <br />Jack looked at me and shrugged his shoulders. I thought about filling him in on the whole blood incident, but I figured it really wasn’t any of my business. I walked back to my stool in the corner and looked out the window. Families all dressed up were coming back form church. People were jogging and walking their dogs. I noticed Jack had a deck of cards in front of him and was shuffling them.<br /> <br />“Hey Roy, come over here and shuffle this deck.”<br /> <br />Jack had done his card tricks for me a handful of times. I didn’t mind. They were pretty amazing and even after carefully studying his hands, I still had no clue as to how he pulled them off.<br /> <br />I shuffled the cards about four times and then put them down on the bar. Jack had me cut the deck and then he shuffled them once.<br /> <br />“Here he goes again with those damn card tricks,” grumbled Big John. I noticed he had now moved from the Metro section to the comics. Maybe that would lighten his mood up a little.<br /> <br />Jack got up from his stool and walked over to the far side of the bar.<br /> <br />“Now I’m going to call out each card as you flip it over. There’s no way I can see the cards from where I am.”<br /> <br />“All right,” I said.<br /> <br />Jack yelled out for the Four of Clubs. I turned the first card over and it was the Four. He then called out for the King of Hearts. I turned the card over. Sure enough, it was the King. Jack stood by the bathroom, moving farther back, smiling as he tipped his hat. “Eight of Diamonds…Queen of Spades…Six of Hearts.”<br /> <br />I must have gone through half of the deck and he knew every single card. <br /> <br />Jack walked back to his stool. “I got another one for you.” <br /> <br />He shuffled the cards and I watched him intently, waiting for any slight of hand movements. Nothing. <br /> <br />This time he had the trick worked out so that every time I pulled four cards in a row they’d out as a straight. The whole damn deck came out straights. <br /> <br />“So, you were a card shark or a card dealer?” <br /><br />Jack smiled, drank down his beer, and said slyly, “Dealer.”<br /><br />“Well, if I ever make it out to Vegas I think I’ll stick to the slots.”<br /> <br />Roger, a Korean War vet who owned a refrigerator repair shop, walked in half way through the trick. <br /> <br />“I knew this guy who was a card shark in Vegas. He got caught so many time that he started dressing like a woman just to disguise himself. Even got away with it for about a year before they found out.”<br /><br />Big John, who had been awfully quiet, waved me over. “Roy, get me a brandy.”<br /><br />“You sure John?” I asked.<br /><br />“Damn it, one drink isn’t going to kill me.”<br /><br />I figured he was right. Besides, you get to that age with that kind of liver and <br />really, what difference does it make? I placed the drink down on the bar.<br /> <br />“Say, I’ve got a trivia question for you,” said Big John.<br /> <br />“All right, shoot.”<br /> <br />“How does a baseball team with no men on base hit a grand slam?”<br /> <br />I thought about it for a minute, but couldn’t think of the answer. “I don’t know John.”<br /> <br />John kept me hanging for a minute with a big jowly grin. His eyes got all big and electric as he prepared for the punch line.<br /> <br />“It’s a girl’s baseball team. You get it? It’s all girls on base. It’s true. I saw it once when I was a kid. Up in Pennsylvania. All the men were in the war so they had girls playing. Oh man, haha, a girl’s baseball team.”<br /> <br />“Yeah, that’s a good one.”<br /> <br />Down at the end of the bar I heard something that sounded like a cat choking on a hairball. I looked over and Jack was passed out, the side of his face drowning in the beer foam. Big John shook his head in disgust and said, “Just look at him.”<br /> <br />Despite the awful sound coming out if his nose, Jack looked so peaceful, like a little baby. He was far far away in dreamland. I walked over and motioned to slam my fist down, but at the last minute I held back. I figured I’d just let him stay like that for a while.Seth Swaaleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02442058078452795462noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4913178434267411633.post-43681393795601845902010-03-25T08:22:00.000-07:002010-10-03T21:53:40.097-07:00Winter Wonderland<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7GwDNk66eF4xY4w19GBFbe-uqbi4G-17MkWCETTXQMa528y08h7ye_9Yh0bbKa8ml5E3XGPylJNxhjX8-Yo2o1NsbpZVv6cxrzPB6M-Mx64e_C6qdxXezcHwMTvwlyLsRcBLOIN6BdB0/s1600/IMG_1675.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7GwDNk66eF4xY4w19GBFbe-uqbi4G-17MkWCETTXQMa528y08h7ye_9Yh0bbKa8ml5E3XGPylJNxhjX8-Yo2o1NsbpZVv6cxrzPB6M-Mx64e_C6qdxXezcHwMTvwlyLsRcBLOIN6BdB0/s320/IMG_1675.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5452594783479236498" /></a><br /><br />The snow is beautiful and magical as it begins to come down in light flakes in the early morning hours of late February. The roads and sidewalks are still manageable, the seagulls playfully carving the air a few blocks away from the Hudson, children throwing snowballs, people out walking their dogs. As the hours pass the snow continues to fall into evening, now heavy. The wind is kicking and blowing right in my face and suddenly, as I carry a full load of laundry down Court St., I slip and fall on my ass, and I’m thinking, all right, so maybe this winter wonderland isn’t quite as romantic as I originally pictured it. <br /><br />New York is now a blanket of white. These are days when I should probably stay in the house, drink spiked cider, watch Hitchcock movies, but this is my one day off from work and I’m restless. I phone a friend that bought me a dinner a few weeks back and tell her I’m craving sushi, my treat. She asks if I really want to come from Brooklyn into Manhattan on a night like this, but I say, yeah, no problem. <br /><br />After getting on the subway at Smith and 9th the train makes it two stops to Bergen St. when the voice on the loud speakers which is hardly audible - we all know this voice, the one that, despite millions of dollars in MTA upgrades, still sounds like an eighty-year-old wino with his hands over his mouth yelling through a forty-year-old blow horn. Following this announcement there’s the questioning look and raised eyebrows of all the passengers looking to one another. "What the hell did he just say?" Before anyone has any time to think the doors close and the train continues on. <br /><br />It turns out there's a power outtage in Manhattan, and now this train is staying in Brooklyn. It’s running on the G line. Suddenly I’m on the platform at Hoyt-Schemerhorn racing towards the map, looking for another route. I take the A-train, briefly whistle some Ellington, and sit in the same spot without moving for about twenty minutes. I’m beyond late at this point. My fellow passengers are starting to huff and puff and in the far corner of the car I can hear the moaning snores of a chalk-legged homeless man from underneath an oversized jacket. Then the wino’s back on the speakers. He seems to have hijacked our conductor. <br /><br />“The F train is not running due to a tree falling on the tracks at Rockefeller Center.” <br /><br />All right, I know there’s a snowstorm out there, but I’m trying to picture exactly how a tree has managed to plunge three or four stories through thick concrete. It’s baffling, but then again this is New York. Stranger things have happened. After much confusion, it turns out we’ve all mistaken tree for debris, and suddenly I feel a little more relieved. <br /><br />Eventually the train proceeds to go one stop and somehow miraculously now the F train is running once again, slowly, but it's plodding along. I can't use my phone underground and an hour later I'm thinking maybe I should just get out and walk from 6th Ave. to 1st Ave. and everyone's a little frustrated and late for whatever engagements we have or pretend to have, and I shouldn’t be up in arms; it’s to be expected in this sort of weather, but their agitation and grumbling is contagious and I find myself cursing under my breath, muttering like an old woman, “This is just ri-diculous. I mean, really.” <br /><br />We're racing down the mezzanine of the 14th Ave. station like a hoard of suburban soccer moms power-walking and then I get down the stairs and I hear music blasting and echoing against the walls down at the bottom platform. It sounds like a Motown group down there. I follow the music, thinking, wow, amongst this madness the Four-Tops are hanging out giving a little winter concert. But when I get to where the music is coming from all I see is a fat, chubby-faced, raggedly dressed older man sitting on a bench. He’s got his Yankee hat on sideways and has a huge p.a. speaker next to him and a little portable cd player on top of it. My Girl is blaring throughout the tunnel. <br /><br />I've seen this type of thing before, the whole karaoke deal, or with the fella trying to sing a cappella on the train, but usually it’s just some guy that can't sing at all. The difference this time is that this guy's good, really good. He has a high soul voice, like Sam Cooke, smooth and soulful like Smokey Robinson, and he's singing along with The Temptations, but off the vocals, ad libbing in an Otis Redding gospel style. His lips are pursed to the side, smiling, shaking around, nodding his head with a little wink of the eye, doing a little shimmy shuffle, moving his hips and arms around. A big crowd is forming around him, transfixed. <br /><br />Amongst us sits this Laughing Buddha, singing away, having a ball, feeling it. Even the rats along the tracks have stopped to watch. He gets to the last verse of the song in which The Temptations sing "I don't need your money..." but instead he throws in his own words, "That's not true, I need your money, ooh yeah!" In a matter of seconds this man and his music has managed to transform a crowd of frantic subway riders into one filled with beauty and love and laughter and everything that’s great in life, everything that’s magical about New York.<br /><br />A guy who looks to be in his late twenties next to me takes off his earphones as tears fall from his eyes and down his cheeks.<br /><br />A girl next to him says, "My god, you're crying," <br /><br />He smiles big and wide. "I don't know, it's really beautiful, isn’t it?" <br /><br />She laughs and places her hand on his shoulder and agrees it truly is and I’m standing there, thinking how quick the human emotion can change, how trivial our idea of time is, but before I can form any deep, profound thoughts the L train comes along, "Next stop 3rd Ave.!" <br /><br />So we leave our soul man all to himself, still singing his heart away, music blaring above the sounds of trains. The doors close and we're all shaking our heads and a woman with an accent miles away from New York says aloud to whoever's listening, "Gotta’ giv’ it to him. He sho’ do bring a smile to yo’ face." A minute later the laughter subsides, headphones back on, books and newspapers out, eyes close, and a strange, yet familiar silence fills the car.<br /> <br />I get out at 1st Ave., walk up the slushy stairs and now on the streets I’m greeted with the loud sounds of sirens and honking horns and taxi cabs and finally I get to the sushi restaurant over on 18th St. My friend's back at a booth completely complacent and sipping on some martini with a fancy name and some weird fruit inside of it that looks like a yellow slug, so of course, I order one too and then tell her, "I know I'm late, but I swear, I got a good story for you."Seth Swaaleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02442058078452795462noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4913178434267411633.post-89026194117807602052009-11-17T20:58:00.000-08:002010-01-05T19:02:48.291-08:00Playing in Portland<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3Ns6tXFcmlzO6iBbYE9fmtszPM9XaupSIZtT0qoUFGph5NEweTBvRbCw5ciSG4eRAwzpM-nrZHsd1Ss_R7C7BSO17MGU8mqk3ucuIwjmz0GczPsTRqlkJ2DEW54-YwMmNI4wgCfdvES0/s1600/2867539-R1-024-10A.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 216px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3Ns6tXFcmlzO6iBbYE9fmtszPM9XaupSIZtT0qoUFGph5NEweTBvRbCw5ciSG4eRAwzpM-nrZHsd1Ss_R7C7BSO17MGU8mqk3ucuIwjmz0GczPsTRqlkJ2DEW54-YwMmNI4wgCfdvES0/s320/2867539-R1-024-10A.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5405313797327796402" /></a><br />June 2009<br /> <br />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….<br /><br />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.” <br /><br />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.<br /><br />“What kind of guitar is that?”<br /><br />“A Martin.”<br /> <br />“Wow, is that a good one?”<br /> <br />“Yeah, it treats me good.”<br /> <br />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.”<br /> <br />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.<br /><br />"You mind if I play?” <br /><br />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. <br /><br />“So what do you like?” I asked. <br /><br />“Oh, old country, some rock.” <br /><br />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. <br /> <br />"Yeah, he’s got that song “some humans ain’t humans.” Hell of a song. Great fingerpicker, good sense of humor.”<br /> <br />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. <br /><br />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. <br /><br />“No.”<br /><br />“Well, what is it?”<br /><br />“It’s JJJJaack,” he said, hanging his head.<br /><br />“You sure it’s not Jon? I don’t think you’re telling me the truth. When were you born?"<br /><br />He gave some date, think it was June 1951. Then they asked him again. This time it was July.<br /><br />“You wait here,” the woman said to the other two cops. <br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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. <br /><br />“Oh yeah, that’s a nice sound there, nice sound.” <br /><br />I continued playing, and hid behind the sunglasses smiling as her face was about six inches from mine.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />“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. <br /><br />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.“ <br /><br />“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.”<br /><br />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.Seth Swaaleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02442058078452795462noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4913178434267411633.post-1637776655014214732009-11-16T10:07:00.000-08:002010-01-05T19:02:48.293-08:00Paradox Road<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7w5akDsT_9SnysDNXfCp-gTU_EnmiQKLrZMMhddbdsGg6B-onTtuEB_Q7I7wMIMyTWmrG4dmj-hdCgjIUe5lTuK5fOs_3W1Q5bnEysS6a9HJkpA3lDMxWPyA4pcPbPssvyzN2j1af5vg/s1600/4063939-R1-011-4.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 216px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7w5akDsT_9SnysDNXfCp-gTU_EnmiQKLrZMMhddbdsGg6B-onTtuEB_Q7I7wMIMyTWmrG4dmj-hdCgjIUe5lTuK5fOs_3W1Q5bnEysS6a9HJkpA3lDMxWPyA4pcPbPssvyzN2j1af5vg/s320/4063939-R1-011-4.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5404766209573770674" /></a><br /><br /><br />I was sitting on the couch, naked and reading Turganev, beads of sweat dripping from my chin down onto the yellow pages. It seemed that with each passing minute the heat became more and unbearable. Louisiana summers weren’t no joke. I tried to do my best in ignoring this fact, and undertook the illusion that if I could somehow escape into the dinner table conversations of Russian intellects, my life might suddenly make a change for the better.<br /> <br />Carol lay stomach down on the sheet-less bed with a magazine in front of her. She wore a blue slip hiked up to the bottom of her ass, and a badly stretched white tank top, loosely displacing each of her breasts out of the shirt.<br /> <br />Held by two screws, and dangling like the root of a loose tooth, the ceiling fan blew gusts of hot air across my face. Armies of flies lay dead; belly up; buzz-less; melting into the dust-caked carpet. Empty cigarette cartons were strewn across the room. A half pint of whiskey stood at the edge of the couch. I took a sip. It was room temperature. I could feel blue flames dancing on the back of my tongue. I spit the whiskey out on the floor. Steam shot up to the ceiling like an exploding gieser. Just a hallucination. Caused by dehydration. Yes, that was the logical explanation for it.<br /> <br />Here we were in a dirty rooming house in New Orleans, Thursday night, and the weekly rent due the following morning with five dollars to our names. Hastily, I found myself raising an imaginary fist into the air; cursing the South, money, unemployment, God, humanity, and anything else I could foolishly label as the cause for our unrighteous suffering. I conveniently blocked out the fact that we had partied in nearly every bar in the French Quarter for the past three weeks, oblivious to any thoughts of work or income. <br /> <br />Catching myself in between thought, I came to the realization that it was too late to be thinking like this. I was only wasting my time. I opened the book and continued reading about nihilists rambling page after page.<br /> <br />A couple of minutes later I noticed what had been a regular occurrence since we first arrived in New Orleans; a roach the size of my palm was casually making his way from one side of the room to the other.<br /> <br />Grotesque as these insects were, I was willing to let them be. After a week I’d learned that no matter how many you killed, there would always be a second regiment marching full steam ahead, pulling up the ranks. True soldiers. Hell, they even roamed around the homes of the rich. Carol, on the other hand, was determined to have every last roach in New Orleans brutally murdered. She considered them to be vile, ghastly. She wanted them all dead. In a desperate hope that the roach might go unnoticed, I pretended to read.<br /> <br />“Ahh! Oh my God! Look at that thing! Get him! Kill him! Get him! No, he’s getting away!”<br /> <br />Carol stood straight up on the bed screaming. The cooking magazine flailed around in her left hand while her right index finger hysterically pointed in the direction of the roach. She looked like an army scout that had just spotted a spy crossing into foreign territory.<br /> <br />“Oh, come on, let the poor guy go,” I said calmly.<br /> <br />“Let him go? Let him go? What are you crazy! Get that bastard! Get him!”<br /> <br />If I didn’t kill the roach I was only setting myself up for an unnecessary futile argument. Plus I was mostly to blame for this mess we were win. It was my idea to come down here in the first place. I put the book to the side and grabbed one of my tennis shoes. I proceeded to get down on the carpet on all fours like a bloodthirsty predator. I thought about taking the shoe to myself and calling it good.<br /> <br />Creeping up behind the roach, I raised my arm back behind my head – with an uncanny similarity to those twisted evangelists one sometimes comes across alone in late-night hours of TV channel changing – and with what little strength I had, brought down upon him my non-existent vengeance. I lifted the shoe. Unscathed, the roach darted towards the bed.<br /> <br />“It’s sill alive!” screamed Carol.<br /> <br />“I know!” I yelled back.<br /> <br />Like a hyperactive child yet to learn the world on two legs, I chased after the roach and slammed the shoe down again. Despite missing half of its body parts, the roach made a desperate attempt for the dresser. With the last hit I took all the life out of him. You had to admire one’s tenacity for survival.<br /> <br />Carol, now sitting on the bed with her legs crossed Indian style, hardly resembled the hysterical woman I’d just had to deal with. Her eyes had that glassy look of tranquility, and a partial smile was emanating from her thin lips.<br /> <br />“Baby, you got him. I’m sorry you had to do that. You know much I hate those things,” she said.<br /> <br />“Sure, no problem,” I said, nearly out of breath, stretched out on the floor.<br /> <br />For what seemed like an hour, but was probably only a few minutes, we sat alongside one another on the bed. We said nothing and stared straight ahead in a sad state of lost-eyed wonderment. Restless thoughts bounced back and forth in my brain. I found myself questioning how, in a matter of three weeks, after moving from Baltimore with the excited hopes of starting over, we’d managed to blow all of our money and couldn’t find any work. We were down to saltine crackers and a jar of peanut butter for lunch and dinner. <br /> <br />Carol placed her hand in mine. All the life was now gone from her eyes. The bright green that surrounded her pupils was fading away. It hurt me just to look her in the face. <br /> <br />Breaking the uncomfortable silence, Carol asked me, “What are we going to do?”<br /> <br />“I don’t know,” I said.<br /> <br />“No, seriously, we don’t have anything. How the hell are we going to eat?”<br /> <br />“Maybe one of us will find a job tomorrow.”<br /> <br />“We haven’t found a job in three weeks. We’re not going to find one tomorrow. I don’t even want a job now. I hate it here. I hate it”<br /> <br />“Yeah, but where are we going to go? We’ve got nothing.”<br /> <br />As if she was about to burst into some unwanted form of hysteria, Carol said, “Oh God, I don’t want to be homeless. We’ll be stuck here.”<br /> <br />“Maybe you can call your mom, have her wire out some money.”<br /> <br />“What about your parents.”<br /> <br />“I can’t.”<br /> <br />“Well, I can’t either.”<br /> <br />“I know, I know.”<br /> <br />The conversation made an abrupt halt, and suddenly I found myself ready to run out the door. I couldn’t cope with the reality of the situation. I’d been wandering aimless around for quite some time, town to town, job to job. I’d come to the realization that I’d probably never settle down. But then I met Carol. We’d been together for three months now. I’d somehow convinced her to move down to New Orleans with me. I told her this was the city where wild things happened. I told her about the magic of the Big Easy, despite the fact that I’d never even been there. All I had to go on was the books I’d read. But now, finally sober, I felt a need to be responsible, to find ourselves a way out of this mess. Instead, I grabbed a hold of her hand, dragged her outside, and walked towards the Mississippi River. I convinced her that what was needed now was some fresh air and a place where we could think clearly.<br /> <br />As we walked down Esplanade Ave. and past the million dollar mansions on the border of the French Quarter I looked into the immaculate living rooms with a sense of disdain. The only word I could think of was opulence. I wondered if those people that lived there had actually worked to buy those homes or if they had been passed down by their parents. Were they just the offspring of all the old plantation owners that ruled so much of the south? What difference did it make? Here we were, struggling to find some kind of sense in life, and ten feet away, comfortably at the dinner table and living room couch, sat the representation of what I thought to be, distorted success. These people didn’t have a clue as to how us on the other side of the street lived, nor did they care to. I found myself filled with a somewhat violent and jealous anger.<br /> <br />Finding a bench along the river, I wearily put my head on Carol’s lap. What would Twain do? I let my eyes drown in the sight of the small ripples in the water and the reflection of a half moon. <br /> <br />Resting her fingers on the top of my head, Carol asked me, “Do you think we’ll ever be happy?” <br /> <br />I stared out at the water and watched the ferry cross the river over to Algiers. I also thought this is not a good sign when the girl you’ve been with for three months is asking this kind of question. I don’t know if it was the moon or the Turganev, but I started to talk nonsense. <br /> <br />“I don’t think you’re ever just completely happy. I mean overall demeanor. It’s just more of something that comes and goes. You don’t really have any control of when it’s going to hit you or how long it’s going to last.”<br /> <br />“I mean I love you, but it seems like I always feel sad. I didn’t like Baltimore. I don’t like it here. I’m starting to think wherever I go I still won’t be happy. I feel like the more I’m around people I can’t stand them. Why do they have to be so stupid?”<br /> <br />“I don’t’ know baby. Maybe we should find a cabin in the mountains. I’ll hunt rabbits, go fishing naked, and read Thoreau and Whitman. You can cook deer meet over a blazing fire. We’ll brew our own beer, sit on the roof every night, get blind drunk, and scream at the unforgiving moon.”<br /> <br />We sat silent for a couple seconds and then joined in an uncontrollable fit of laughter. It was a strange sounding laughter. The kind of laughter that seems to have stayed idle for countless years, nestling in the gut of one’s stomach in solidarity. Bottled, pressurized, waiting for one good, hard, unleashing twist of the hand. All of my bodily functions went numb and I fell to the ground. I wiggled feverishly. Lying on the cement with my legs and arms in the air, I looked like an old dog scratching its flea-infested back.<br /> <br />Finally the laughter died and that all too familiar silence took a hold of us. The depressing thoughts of just seconds before came back to me. At that moment I was overrun with the desire to somehow – with a magic wand I suppose – reverse the earth, planets and cosmos into a chaotic orbit; back to the time of my birth, or just prior to. All of these actions would cause the path of my life to be altered. After a few seconds of closed eyes and puerile meditation, nothing had changed.<br /> <br />I took Carol’s hand and walked back to the room. We stopped at a convenience store and bought a couple of sodas and a pig tongue bringing us down to two dollars and change. <br /> <br />When we got back to the room Carol headed over to the bed, undressed herself down to her slip, and put her head on the pillow. I sat in my regular spot on the couch with my hands in my hair, and stared at the carpet.<br /> <br />Seconds later, Carol walked back and forth across the room. Her nose was raised and a curious expression painted her face. She smelled something burning. I was unable to smell anything besides the distinct malodor of our room. I dismissed it as someone who might have burned some food in the kitchen on the second floor. Either that or someone was hitting the crack pipe hard.<br /> <br />Nearly everyone in our building was using crack. There were the regular users and then the recreational, weekend types. It didn’t bother me. I just didn’t want any part in it. Most places I’d stayed in before had their share of drug users, but everyone in the Treme seemed to be hooked on crack.<br /> <br />Now it was a little after midnight. Soon the landlord would be banging on the door for money we didn’t have. I asked Carol if she wanted to go for another walk, but she declined.<br /> <br />I was just about to put on my shoes and a tee shirt when Carol leaped violently out of bed. She said something about seeing a flame from above shoot down on to the street. We ran out the front door and around the house. We looked up at the room above ours, and there it was.<br /> <br />On the balcony a man was wrestling with a mattress half engulfed in flames. The room lit up like yellow madness behind him. Carol and I stood there, stoically caught in a brief moment of shock. The whites of Carol’s eyes filled with flames. The man yelled into the night, “Somebody help me! Help me dammit!”<br /> <br />Carol rushed over to a payphone and dialed 911. I didn’t have any words of wisdom to the man on the balcony so I ran back into the house and pounded on the doors of the other two rooms on the first floor. I shouted, “Fire! Fire!” I stood at the bottom of the staircase and yelled as loud as I could to the people upstairs. My neighbors leisurely walked down the stairs. Most of their eyes were half-open and bloodshot. As each one came down, they said, thinking this was some kind of surprise party, “Eww, it’s a fire drill, a fire drill!”<br /> <br />“No!” I screamed back. “This place is burning down!”<br /> <br />I ran outside with the other roommates and looked up at the second floor. The man with the mattress was gone, the room all flames. I felt the powerful heat of the fire on my cheeks. Windows shattered. Pieces of wood flew out into the street. A luminous torrent of red and yellow flames shot up in the air. The thick black smoke devoured the night. All of us stood there like horrified spectators.<br /> <br />I thought everyone had made it out of the house safely, but suddenly, my attention was drawn by the blood-curdling scream of the woman next to me; “Oh shit!” <br /><br />Trapped in the last room on the second floor was a quiet older man I’d often seen sitting on the front porch. I’d say he was close to eighty and senile. Every time I walked by him I thought how horrible it must have been to be that old and to have to live in this kind of dump. Faintly, I could see him looking out the window at the flames. The fire blocked the staircase. The only way to escape would be to make the twenty-foot leap.<br /> <br />The old man opened his door to find ten-foot flames no more than a few feet away from his room. He looked confused, still half asleep. Everyone yelled for him to jump off the balcony. He stood there looking down for a couple seconds. <br /> <br />“Jesus Christ! Jump man! Jump!” the frantic crowd yelled.<br /> <br />He didn’t move. His face told you all there was to know. He realized this was the end of the road. All over. Not much you gonna’ do. He walked back into his room and closed the door. In my belief, he lay gently down on his bed, inhaled a big gulp of smoke, and closed his eyes. Maybe death was easy for him.<br /> <br />Woman screamed. Two men next to me pelted the old man’s door with rocks. Carol turned her back to the fire and covered her eyes. I watched it all like it was a surreal movie playing before me in slow motion; the flames shooting into the air, the stupefacted look in everyone’s eyes, the mouth’s wide open like dead fish on ice at a Saturday market, the people running in circles like headless turkeys. It was chaos at midnight and as I stood there expressionless, I consigned my emotions by violently pulling on my hair. The room went up in flames. We stood there like frozen statues. The stars went dim. The moon turned Halloween orange. The cosmos fell off the merry-go-round. Behind the curtain the sun let out a reverberating laugh. Purple flames. The whole spectrum. Just darkness. It was all fucked up.<br /> <br />You could hear the sirens in the darkness. When the fire trucks arrived three rooms were destroyed. The fire took on a schizophrenic life of its own, switching back to the other side of the house. The whole neighborhood was out in the street. Soon complaints began to arise about ruined stereo equipment and furniture being destroyed. These same people just moments earlier were crying, “That poor old man. Stuck up there. All alone.”<br /> <br />Struggling to find some kind explanation for all of this, I slumped against a wall and cried. I just couldn’t control it.<br /> <br />There was a group of us standing out in the street, helpless and not knowing really what to do. I noticed a woman that looked completely out of place for this neighborhood talking to various people. Countless layers of makeup caked her face, giving it an appearance of plasticity. I realized that she was a reporter from one of the local stations. She would place her hand on someone’s shoulder and say, “Yes, I’m sorry this happened. I know how you feel. Yes I understand you don’t feel like talking about it, but did you know the man? But I was just wondering if I could have a little word with you on camera.” I knew she was just doing her job, but I had a great feeling of disdain for her right then. A few of the crack heads liked the attention and obliged. The others stared at her coldly and kept quiet. The reporter made her way over to me. She wanted me to tell her what I knew. I said nothing.<br /> <br />At this time the cameraman set his camera up off to the side. He was determined to focus in on the group in an attempt to capture the morbid and sorrowful look on each of our faces; that if he angled the camera just right, he might find his award winning work at the beginning of the morning news. For whatever reason, I was set on doing all I could from allowing this to happen. I unbuttoned my shirt, placed my hands on my hips, and fully exposed my pale-skinned beer belly. I proudly displayed the cigarette burns that marked my stomach from previous nights of drunken boredom. The cameraman gave me a dirty look, covered the lens, and turned the camera off. <br /> <br /><br />Hours later the sun made its way into the strange and humid morning sky. The smell of smoke and ash was everywhere. <br /> <br />Late that morning Carol and I were allowed to go back into what was left of the house. As we walked through the downstairs hallway a light layer of smoke visibly floated beneath the ceiling. We opened the door to our room. Inside it resembled a southern swamp. Black, murky water a couple inches deep flooded the floor. Ash, wood, and drywall were scattered across the room. The few things we owned were somewhere beneath the rubbish. I attempted to lift a large slab of drywall covering my clothes, but painfully watched it dissolve into a milky substance and fall back to the floor. It was hard to believe this was the same room that just hours before had harbored our ruminations of failure and disgust. <br /> <br />All I wanted were my books. I’d given up on the idea of the typewriter still functioning. Carol wanted her jewelry that had been given to her by her grandmother. We found both of our wallets under a piece of wood. I was determined to cover one book in particular. Saroyan’s Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze. Scraps of wood and wall flew every which way. “Come on Willie, where the hell are you. Ah, not Willie!” I could feel the smoke melting into the pores of my skin. The stinging in my eyes became unbearable. I don’t know how firemen do it. I gave into the fact that finding Saroyan was not only hopeless, but quite idiotic. I’d tortured Carol enough. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”<br /> <br />We gathered what we could into a trash bag. At the time of the fire all Carol had on was the tank top and a slip. I had no shirt and a pair of shorts that had a rip going all the way up to the waist. A couple kind souls from across the street donated some of their clothes to us. Carol was given a red and yellow flowered muumuu dress fit for a 250 lb woman. I was given a flannel, knee-high stockings, and a pair of battered, paint-stained penny-loafers. We looked like two deranged clowns that had escaped from the local mental ward.<br /> <br />We were given a voucher for two nights by Red Cross in a slum motel across town in the 9th ward. Shortly after boarding the bus an older woman stared at us, completely baffled at our appearance. I couldn’t help but say something. I thought if I didn’t, this poor woman’s going to live a life of quandary, all of it tracing back to that one Friday bus ride. I told her the place we were staying at had just burned down. These were the only clothes we had. Suddenly her perplexed face transformed – all in the drop of the eyebrows – to that of sympathy. The woman said, with a bobbing up and down of the head that made me think of a jack-in-the-box, “Oh, I saw that on the news this morning.”<br /> <br />Our voucher was for two nights, but we had no plans of staying more than one night. Carol made a phone call to her mother in California and I left a very distraught message on my father’s answering machine. We had enough money wired out to cover two Greyhound tickets to Northern California. <br /><br />So, with our trash bags in hand, we embarked on a sixty-hour bus ride west. Through this may sound like a case of extreme paranoia, we thought if we stayed in New Orleans any longer, a hurricane would strike, pick us up off the ground, and with its tumultuous tongue, spit us in the trajectory of the Gulf of Mexico. Years later I would watch this unfold on television as I sat in my house in Los Angeles, a different woman at my side, old memories and tears in my eyes.<br /> <br />Shortly after we boarded the bus Carol was fast asleep. She looked peaceful and exhausted. I half-consciously stared out at the window as the bus crossed through western Louisiana and into the mundane vastness of Texas that seemed to stretch incessantly beyond the horizon. <br /> <br />I tried to put some order to my thoughts, some kind of logic. Sobering up was a bitch. It killed the illusion that you like to believe is your life and forced you to really look at things. I’d seen most of my friends go on into career jobs, they were all financially stable, most of them married, and here I was still living life on a whim. I thought it was romantic, and truth be told, it really could be, but like anything, there could be dire consequences. It was one thing to do the crazy writer thing, but I felt like I sort of had to get my shit together; or something close to whatever that meant. If I didn’t Carol was going to leave me. <br /> <br />By the time we got to San Francisco Carol and I were completely out of our minds. Sleep-deprived, traumatized, broke, we wrapped towels on each of our heads in the fashion of Hindus and yelled to imaginary people we saw running alongside the road out the window. Our laughter filled the entire bus. We kissed. We hugged. We felt each other up underneath the blanket we placed on our laps and passed out on each other. <br /><br />I didn’t really know what the hell to expect. Maybe we’d make it. Maybe we wouldn’t. What was done was done. Onward and upward, as they say. <br /> <br />As the cab pulled up to the ranch home outside of Petaluma Carol said, “Ah, we’re home.”<br /> <br />“Yeah, home,” I said.Seth Swaaleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02442058078452795462noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4913178434267411633.post-67832509407085335322009-11-12T14:18:00.001-08:002010-01-05T19:02:48.295-08:00The Barber Shop<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiujW1czeIVzx8TD5nCGxLMfNjuywkCm59yeXJKyP5ICoi8CfJDeFGkdlDv8GcHwi-ziUgRb4XpQCCx-D8ICkOsYFH83qKOR7gOHctueAMgWcK5yxtR_9JiRVYHXopFxJKPcgGrJNBTiT8/s1600-h/DSC_0016.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 268px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiujW1czeIVzx8TD5nCGxLMfNjuywkCm59yeXJKyP5ICoi8CfJDeFGkdlDv8GcHwi-ziUgRb4XpQCCx-D8ICkOsYFH83qKOR7gOHctueAMgWcK5yxtR_9JiRVYHXopFxJKPcgGrJNBTiT8/s400/DSC_0016.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5403346215579585602" /></a><br />I’ve always been a sucker for the old style barbershops. I don’t know quite how to put it; there’s just something about the places that I love. It really doesn’t have anything to do with the quality of haircut either. When I walk into an old musty place I get the feeling I’ve suddenly stepped back in time, back to an era long before the fast-paced technological short-speak corporate strip mall world we now live in, back to a time when just sitting around and telling stories meant something, when the second hand on the clock wasn’t even a passing thought. I don’t really ask much of this life; just give me an old barbershop on a hot Saturday afternoon and I’m pretty happy.<br /><br />Now don’t get me wrong; I’m not necessarily preaching the glory glory hallelujah of all the old barbershops, because believe me, I’ve been to a few that I probably wished I’d never set foot in. Take for instance the time I saw a boy of five be given a mullet cut and a duck tale, on his free will mind you, as his camouflag-toting father watched the news and said, “Hey guys do you know why there’s no A-Rabs in Star Wars?” Blank stares all around. “It’s because they’re not in the fuuu-ture!”<br /><br />Yeah, let’s give it up for modern man. I mean, you never know what you’re going to get, but personally, I’d rather take my chances with the old guys than pay fifteen bucks to have me hair cut in a teeny-bop mall by some depressing middle-aged woman who goes by the name Bumpy.<br /><br />Anyway, the other day I looked at myself in the mirror and thought, it’s time man; you’re starting to look like one of those terrorists on the infamous most-wanted Iraqi deck of cards. Since I had recently moved to New Orleans I had no idea where to go. After about an hour of driving in what seemed like an endless maze of winding streets (If you’ve ever spent any amount of time trying to navigate the city outside the French Quarter, you know what I’m talking about), I lucked out on a place over just off of Oak and Carrolton. I saw the blue-white-red spinning rod and a sign that read “The Family Barber Shop.”<br /><br />Inside there were three other men waiting in chairs in a small room. There was one chair and one hunched over bald barber cutting another old-timer’s hair. A few flags were stapled to the walls, but besides that the place was pretty plain.<br /><br />“Say, Bud, I came by here Wednesday and you weren’t around,” said the guy getting his haircut.<br /><br />“Oh yuh’, closed on Wednesdays now. Gradually workin’ ma’ way towards closing the shop. Next it’ll be just Fridays and Saturdays. Yuh’ know.<br /><br />Bud had one of those deep Southern drawls, the kind you’re more likely to come across in the small towns of Mississippi and Alabama. His eyes were big and round and the wrinkled skin sagged down onto his cheeks. Each time he talked you could see his leathery skin flab around. Slowly he trimmed the man’s hair, occasionally glancing up at the television that was showing the latest turmoil in the world.<br /><br />“That girl not around no more?”<br /><br />“Nah,” said Bud. “She jus’ up and left. Don’t understand it. Not a word. Jus’ startin’ to work out too. Was givin’ her forty percent of what the shop was takin’ in. Hell, on them real slow days I jus’ gave it all to her. Her momma’s been callin’ up, askin’ if I seen her. She says the girl don’t want nothin’ to do with her now. I’d understand if she had some problem, if she’da let me know, but to jus’ up and leave. Now I can’t understand that. Dunno if it’s drugs or drinking or what.”<br /><br />“Yeah, that’s a shame Bud, she seemed like she was going to work out all right.”<br /><br />“Ya’ jus’ never know. Hell, I’m gettin’ too ol’ for this.”<br /><br /><br />About an hour and a half later Bud called me up to the chair. I’d been sitting off to the side going through the old Times magazines and watching the lazy flies move about. Maybe a lot of folks wouldn’t stick around that long for a haircut, but down here, life moves along a little slower than it does in other parts. It’s not to say anything bad about the people, it’s just the way it is. I figure, we’re all going to die either way, so what’s the rush?<br /><br />“How ya’ wahnit?” Bud asked me.<br /><br />“Just short, but not too short, not a crew cut or nothing,” I said. <br /><br />Bud started to work away at my hair with a buzzer and through the mirror noticed me staring up at a framed Army certificate hanging on the wall.<br /><br />“That’s from when I was in the Pacific. I was twenty. Remember every single name of the eight other guys in my unit: Jimmy, Frank, Leonard, Ray, Joe, Bobby, Dave, Vinnie. Yah’ know, lotta’ of them didn’t make it out alive. Lotta’ times I didn’t think I would either. Leonard was only eighteen. Jus’ a kid. Not a day goes by I don’t think about those guys.”<br /><br />Bud trimmed the hair hanging over my ears, every now and then stopping and staring off into blank space, as if the thought was too much for him.<br /><br />“Got back when I was twenty-two. Four years latah’ I bought this shop. Eighty now. Hell of a long time.”<br /><br />I pondered all the heads of hair he’d come across during that time.<br /><br />“I wish I could tell some of those fella’s, hey, at least you didn’t have to see yourself go bald.” Bud let out a quiet laugh and tapped the top of his pale-skinned head.<br /><br /><br />“My wife was always convinced she was gonna’ die young.” Her mother died at fifty-two, heart attack got her and my wife didn’t think she’d make it past sixty. And now you oughtta’ see her. Seventy-Eight. Jus’ went ta’ the doc for her check-up and he said she’s as clean as a whistle. Well, the way I figure, it ain’t really up to us. The guy up there,” said Bud, pointing his scissors towards the ceiling, “decides how long we stay or go.”<br /><br />I don’t put a whole lot of faith in religion, but the way Bud put it made sense.<br /><br />Sitting in the chair in front of me was an old, frail man. He looked to be Bud’s senior by a good fifteen years. He was all bones and his shirt and pants were three sizes too large. Poor guy looked like he was going to drown in those clothes. His eyes were squinted as he tried to read a magazine. For some reason I couldn’t stop staring at his foot. He had these sandals on and wasn’t wearing any socks. Purple, varicose veins were shooting every which way and running up under his pants. As Bud cleaned the back of my hair, I sat there thinking about the mystery of age, how the body wilts away.<br /><br />Eventually, Bud pulled away the apron and said, “How’s that?”<br /><br />I glanced at myself through the mirror. To be honest, the cut was a little lopsided and I looked like I now had an unwanted pompadour. But I didn’t say anything. I said it was good, got up from my chair, and paid Bud eight bucks and left him a couple for a tip. <br /><br />“Next.”<br /><br />The old man attempted to get up without his cane, but he fell back into the wall. Bud and I each took an arm and walked him over to the chair and boosted him up. <br /><br />“Hey, what you say Larry?”<br /><br />“Hey Bud.”<br /><br />“How goes it?”<br /><br />“It goes. You hear about Frank Jippers?”<br /><br />“Nah.”<br /><br />“Had a stroke last week. Got out of the hospital yesterday. All paralyzed from the left part of his body. In a wheelchair now.”<br /><br />“Ah, too bad. So you wahn’ it the same Larry?”<br /><br />As I was walking out the door and into the hot New Orleans afternoon I heard the old man say, “Yeah, Bud, same as always,” as he brushed his hand through what little hair he had left.Seth Swaaleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02442058078452795462noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4913178434267411633.post-66100839299344676312009-11-10T17:38:00.000-08:002010-01-05T19:02:48.297-08:00Baltimore: A Memory<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOutCocS1tszoRZbv5POthuIxLxog3LaaW7Dboiwfc6PjwZZZ0c6Aktr31nEPG-Cx2fNQNxN3ucHesmk-F-oL_g5EmSrjIE9LVY73vY6__7ADnzBa2Of44W0F88tWmY8vchveur3BNCqk/s1600-h/0711461-R1-021-9.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 216px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOutCocS1tszoRZbv5POthuIxLxog3LaaW7Dboiwfc6PjwZZZ0c6Aktr31nEPG-Cx2fNQNxN3ucHesmk-F-oL_g5EmSrjIE9LVY73vY6__7ADnzBa2Of44W0F88tWmY8vchveur3BNCqk/s320/0711461-R1-021-9.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5402687071378717778" /></a><br />It’s the middle of March on a Friday afternoon in Baltimore. I’m standing on the corner of Howard and Lexington in that loose, fragmented realm of solitary mind; watching the forty-hour work-week crowds stumble by, listening to the rhythmic beats of hip-hop echo against the old store fronts, staring at the sewer smoke as it floats above the streets rusted potholes. The light rail slowly plods along and all the while I’m thinking, damn, I’m really back in this crazy old town. It’s been three years since I set foot here and to be honest, I never thought I’m make it back, but life is funny like that, and so here I am, figuring what have I got to lose, nothing like one more go around.<br /> <br />I’m holding up a brick wall across from one of the dollar stores that line Lexington St. when I see a homeless looking man – thick red beard, dark drunk eyes – stumbling towards me. He’s got one pant leg rolled up above the left knee and a big, purple-yellow scar that takes up half of his leg. It looks all infected. It’s gradually eating away at the bone and I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s some form of maggot nestled somewhere in the fine cracks. It’s disgusting to look at, and yet, for some unknown reason, I just can’t keep myself from looking. I know it probably sounds strange, but I think there’s a strange beauty, a sort of comic sadness in the most grotesque of things. The French artist Henri Toulouse-Lautrec once wrote, “Everywhere and always, ugliness has its beautiful aspects; it is thrilling to discover them where no one has noticed them.”<br /> <br />And there we are: this bum and me. Two roaming souls, meeting eye to eye for a brief split second. Then in a husky voice he says, “Damn! It’s hot today!” That’s it. Nothing more. No startling truth. A simple observation. My only acknowledgement is a silent nod and there he goes, limping upstream and disappearing behind the faded eyes of the crowd.<br /> <br />I walk towards Lexington Market and wait for the light to change. An older man is sitting behind a table of various colored vials selling skin oils. A tall man dressed in a black suit with a checkered bow tie and top hat with a purple feather in the brim passes out Muslim newspapers. Across from him there’s a ‘fella that’s about as animated as a crack head at 2 a.m. Three men stand guard in front of him dressed in purple and black robes. They look like Arabian knights. The man yells into the blow-horn about Isiah and how the “righteous shall prosper.” Now he’s waving his hands in the air holding a book, a bible I presume. He’s going into gesticulations, screaming about the White Man and true origins of the Black Jesus. A small crowd looks on, nodding their heads in approval.<br /> <br />To go along with all that religion you’ve got shady characters with crooked teeth and nervous eyes lining up and down the street. They’re trying to hawk their stolen goods; everything from socks to batteries to headphones to bootleg videotapes to nose trimmers. Yeah, how the nose trimmer guy gets any sales is beyond me. People wait for the busses, cigarettes dangling from their tongues, cursing the damn schedule. Somehow I find the whole scene a bit comical and so my laughter drifts along with the unexplainable, strange rhythm of it all.<br /> <br />Lexington Market is one of the few places you can enter and feel like your really seeing Baltimore for what it is. It’s been standing here since 1782. Here you’ll find all kinds of different people from different parts of Baltimore that otherwise wouldn’t normally be seen together. It’s sort of like the city’s temporary melting pot. On a Friday afternoon you’ve got construction and factory workers covered in dirt standing along side of businessmen with tacky ties and brown collars. There’s wandering bums with their food stamps and fat mothers trying to keep track of their children. Everyone is talking, laughing; a brief worry-free interlude with their cashed paycheck in one hand and a cheap beer in the other.<br /> <br />There’s food vendors from every place imaginable: Greece, Italy, China, Japan; fruit stands, meat butchers selling everything from rabbit heads and ribs to maroon slabs of liver and pag maws, and to be honest, I haven’t a clue what a pag maw is, but it looks pretty tasty. There’s various dead fish on ice and oysters and fresh crabs sitting in wooden buckets; greasy fried chicken and gizzards and chitterlings, bakeries with their carefully assorted displays of cakes and cookies and pies.<br /> <br />I stumble around passing the food stands, listening to the various catcalls, unable to decide exactly what is I want: a two-dollar corned beef on rye or a crab cake? Maybe a greasy dog at Polack Johnny’s (How can you go wrong at a place that has the slogan: Polack Johnny’s is our name, Hot Dogs are our game.”) But in the end I always head over to that same Soul Food stand, order my plate of bbq chicken, two heaping sides of Mac ‘n’ cheese and yams, grab a cup of beer and a newspaper, find a table of my own, stuff myself, all the while constantly looking around at this curious constant bustle of life that surrounds.<br /><br /> <br />And then I’m back on the streets, filled with a sense of renewed strength and spirit. I continue north up Howard St., past the closed-down shops and vacant buildings that were once department stores – that decaying part of Baltimore the city always talks about renovating but never does. I’ve seen the pictures of what this area used to look like back in the early part of the twentieth century. Old Fords lining the streets, men dressed in suits and top hats, the women all done up in sleek dresses and high heels. At one time this was the center of shopping and entertainment, but unfortunately those days seemed to be a distant memory. <br /> <br />There’s the Mayfair: that abandoned theater with the gothic building façade and the faded billboard painting of Billie Holliday and some Benny Goodman-looking group. How many times I used to walk by that building with the urge to take a crowbar and pry open the front doors, my imagination dreaming up what jazz ghosts I might be able to summon up from the past. Thinking about it now, the place has probably been infested with hoards of roaches and rats and ever other vermin imaginable for years, and whether or not any big names ever played there I don’t know, but still, it’s the thought…<br /> <br />Mt Vernon Park: I use to idle away countless hours in this park, smoking the tongue dry, staring at the stupid pigeons, watching the couples walk by, hand in hand, all in love. My friend Katalin would often sit with me and we’d watch the sun go down behind the old mansions that line Monument St. We’d go on for hours talking about every damn thing we could think of: art and religion and love and the places we wanted to see, all the places we wanted to go, how crazy and fucked up and confusing and amazing and unexplainable this world is. And now Katalin, there you are, off in India and here I am, three years later, sitting on the same bench, puffing on a lost dream, and yeah, I guess you could say some things never change.<br /> <br />Go down Madison, take a right on St. Paul, pass the nice red brick building on the corner, and you see that apartment with the ugly gray bricks, the one with the lopsided cracked steps leading to the front door and the “NO LOITERING” sign. 712. Home to six months maddening, lonely and drunk as hell, fist cursing nights. You got to take the three flights of stairs up to 301. Watch out for the deaf lady that’s always sleeping on the stairs. Usually all doped up and passed out in lala land. One small 10 by 10 room with a puke colored carpet. Five dollar chandelier dangling like a loose tooth. Two lights burned out. One window looking down on the back alley and fire escape ladder. A fridge with dead roaches belly-up in the butter section. By no means was it high class living.<br /> <br />The couple next door would argue every night; 2 a.m. screaming matches going lost into the night. There were the crack-heads upstairs and the heavy-set guy downstairs that wore neon parachute pants and blasted Madonna every Sunday afternoon. And then there was the mysterious schizophrenic who was constantly cursing at his television. You heard multiple people in the apartment, but after a month I realized it was just him.<br /> <br />And there was Wendy and her five-year-old son Joe Ross who lived next door in 300. Wendy always had a strange group of people visiting her and through the walls I’d often hear Joe Ross singing to himself in the bathtub and I remember that one afternoon when I sat on the front steps with the two of them. Wendy shared her cup of vodka and orange juice with me and she told me how she suffered from bipolar disorder. She was being treated over at Johns Hopkins. Joe Ross, little angel of a kid who has these wild, magnetic eyes, all full of jazz and light, and I’m sitting there, looking at him, dreaming about the wonder of youth and how strange time is, and there’s Joe Ross, all two and half feet of him, taking a hold of my finger with his little, innocent delicate hands, saying in a high-pitched squeak, “Look, there goes the tour bus, the tour bus…” and I’m looking down the street and I don’t see any tour bus, but there he is excitedly grabbing on to my hand and I smile and say, “Yeah, Joe, I see the tour bus.”<br /> <br />St. Paul and Madison, watching the cabs and cars and busses and people go by with these thoughts, staring up at this ugly façade of what once was a home, struggling to put where it is I’m heading into some form of coherent thought. But it’s all jumbled images, lost days and nights, somewhere a conversation, and hell, now I can’t even tell if these are things that actually really happened or if it’s just my crazy mind writing out its own historical fiction.<br /><br /> <br />Corner of North and Charles: dirty liquor stores, alley ways full of trash and the CVS is all boarded up; but you’ve still got the fried chicken take-out place and the gospel church across the street. A couple blocks up there’s a bar over on 20th. No sign on the outside. Just a building with the paint peeling off. Besides the non-functioning Budweiser neon sign, you wouldn’t even notice it. This is a dive. Not in the cool, modern sense of the word “dive”, you know, those bars where the drinks are cheap and all the kids that are convinced they’re artists or outcasts but really haven’t gone through shit go to hang out. No, this is the kind of dive you mention to someone and their eyes light up, their eyebrows raise, the lines on their forehead shoot out, and they say, shockingly, “You mean you’ve actually gone into that place?”<br /><br /> You got to get buzzed in by the bartender just to open the door to the bar, and it’s not the cleanest place, but it’s really not that bad. Predominantly a black joint. Threre’s a pinball machine, an old shuffleboard, a jukebox with modern r &b and hip-hop and small selection of dirt-cheap alcohol. It’s a good crowd here though. I order a twenty-two-ounce bottle of beer and find the empty corner. I’m not really here for camaraderie or to get drunk. I’m here purely for the sake of nostalgia, hoping to maybe wrestle up a few comic demons on the way.<br /><br /> 4:30 a.m….lying in bed…naked….drunk….listening to Beethoven’s Overture to Egmont on repeat…room floating around me in some hovering form of cluttered haze. Phone rings. Beautiful wild and amazing girl who somehow, through my wave of loneliness and insanity, I’ve stumbled upon, is on the other end. Her and her friend are drunk and they’ve got a bottle of Jack. Want to know if they can come over. And so the night, or day, begins. The lights are back on and there we are, parading around the room…tripping over kitchen table and chairs…spilling boos left and right. I’m digging through a stack of papers and reading aloud a poem about a duel between a spider and a cowboy. There’s music and laughter, and sure, we’re all poor as hell….scrounging up the pennies and nickels up off of my floor…digging underneath through the old receipts and crusted toe-nail clippings…tossing away the dirty clothes and bread crumbs and the whiskey’s all gone and we’re thinking what’s open at this time. So we head up to North Ave., not the safest part of town, but it’s the only bar we know that opens at six a.m. We’ve got our Big Gulp filled with change and we’re standing outside the Magnet Bar, ten till, screaming for them to open the door, surrounded by this menagerie of carnival bums and druggies and drunk insomniacs. I’m off to the side with a guy that has rotten gums and foul-smelling breath, asking him if he knows Sam Cooke’s Bring it on Home and what the hell do you know, he does. He starts singing, and he’s good, I mean damn good! Not only he does have the soul, but he’s got the range to go along with it. Everyone is thinking, what the hell are these crazy kids doing on North Ave. at this time, but drink enough and logical explanations lose their worth, so finally they open the door and we bum rush in, empty our cup of change on the bar and say to the bartender who looks like he’s still half-asleep, “What can we get for this?” And next thing we know we’ve got three beers and three shots of Beam. Down the hatch…my girl runs for the bathroom…I gag and roll my eyes until all I see is white…the friend is over at the juke box putting in “Dancing Queen,” for the third time in row. And it’s all insane, the three of us free and drunk and my girl and I dancing and whispering stumbled thoughts of love into one another’s ear and I give her a good hard twirl and underneath our feet spins the black and white checkered floor and the bartender can’t help but shake his head and laugh and somewhere the sun sits under the horizon, somewhere lies the rest of the city, resting under a blanket of dreams.<br /><br /> Three years later, staring at my own reflection and whatever happened to that girl and those crazy times I can’t really say. All I’ve got to show right now is a dead cigarette and a thick layer of sunlit smoke that hovers above and I’m wondering why the hell I even came into this place. Yes, I’m getting sentimental.<br /><br /> An old guy with a derby cap is struggling to bring a can of Coors up to his lips and a few seats over is a lady the bartender calls Miss Lou. She looks to be around fifty, dressed in a janitor outfit. She’s got a lazy left eye and she’s mumbling to herself and drawing on the newspaper headlines. I take a glance over. She’s got George bush neatly marked up with a Rollie Fingers style mustache and devil horns. She takes a big sip of King Cobra and yells out, “That capitalistic mother fucker! No one else around the bar seems to pay any attention. I suppose it’s an every day occurrence.<br /> <br />Anyway, so there we are, starting at the television all comatose-like as Judge Judy tears into some kid who’s being accused of stealing his girlfriend’s stereo system. And Miss Lou’s yelling out, “Defamation of character! Defamation of character! She then stares directly at this couple across the bar who are arguing. I get the feeling Miss Lou knows what it’s about. The guy’s denying everything, says there is no other woman. Miss Lou laughs hysterically, mumbling something I can’t quite understand.<br /> <br />Miss Barbara, the bartender, frail-looking old woman with a midwestern accent, says to me, “Don’t worry, she’s totally harmless”<br /> <br />“Oh, I know,” I say. “I just wish I knew what the hell she was laughing at.”<br /> <br />Miss Lou scoots on over to the jukebox and puts a couple of bucks in. Suddenly the bar’s blessed with slow r and b. Whitney. Mariah. Other modern classics like “Get Your Freak On,” and “Shake That Ass.” She puts the beer down and sings and dances along to the music. She knows all the words. Her smile is big and bright and radiant. She seems like she’s truly content; almost as if she’s some free-floating soul, oblivious to the world around her, as if she belongs in some different time, in some different place. <br /> <br />Suddenly, I find myself laughing out loud, unable to take my eyes off Miss Lou. She does a circle around the barstool, and now she’s really getting down, every part of her body’s feeling the music and the other people sitting at the bar can’t help but look. She’s even got the guy in the derby cap’s attention and now we’re all a bit drunk and laughing and I’m even starting to tap my foot to this ridiculous beat.<br /> <br />Miss Barbara flashes an old cracked and wrinkled smile and asks, “Do you want another?”<br /> <br />I know I should really be going, but I take out a couple of crumpled ones from my pocket and put them down on the bar. “Sure, why not.”<br /> <br />Eventually the music stops. Miss Lou goes back to drawing on George W. The arguing couple has made up and is now over at the shuffleboard. The same stale smoke from an hour ago still sits under the ceiling. I put the beer down. Maybe it isn’t exactly the most poetic portrait of life, but hell, it’s something.Seth Swaaleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02442058078452795462noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4913178434267411633.post-51602585477967030612009-11-10T17:28:00.000-08:002010-01-05T19:02:48.298-08:00Straight Street Music<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGFugFS-tIiCjo4OO1lKvxwizz35yURFIvC6s3n6fYsu01YFD0XvFS2e2FZ588rbp-65j2-aau0_eMF77x031aX_66Qp_uiQnwuW7I20GoZjC3zWbP_mU4NM7q6PsP30GoVlBETuUgSR8/s1600-h/IMG_1032.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 344px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGFugFS-tIiCjo4OO1lKvxwizz35yURFIvC6s3n6fYsu01YFD0XvFS2e2FZ588rbp-65j2-aau0_eMF77x031aX_66Qp_uiQnwuW7I20GoZjC3zWbP_mU4NM7q6PsP30GoVlBETuUgSR8/s400/IMG_1032.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5402688551856737522" /></a><br />I can still vividly remember those early New Orleans morning rides to work as if it was yesterday. Even now, it’s almost as if it constantly hangs in my memory, like some free-floating, suspended dream. Leaving my house still half-asleep, and often in a hangover haze, I’d hop on to my beat-up bike and ride down Burgundy St. in the direction of the French Quarter. Cruising over those bumpy, pot-holed roads with open-eyed sun rising, with that slight breeze blowing in from the Mississippi River (where I’d spent many a sunsets tongue-drunk-silent sitting on termite-infested sinking docks, watching the barge ships file out towards the Gulf or out to Baton Rouge), surrounded by hundred-year-old Creole and Victorian houses, I would have the feeling that I was amidst a painting full of wild and beautiful movement.<br /> <br />From the Palmettos shading front-yards and the Oak trees that hung over the streets to the rusted railroad tracks that held the wheels of the Norfolk Southern every day and night; to those empty lots and old steel warehouses barely standing, with the faded traces of the days of dockworkers and longshoremen; well it all seemed a bit surreal. <br /> <br />Down through the Marigny and past Esplanade, the store owners unlocking their front doors and the city workers spraying down the sidewalks as the ferns from third story balconies dripped down on to their heads. The homeless would be passed out and lying in drunk stupor on steps and as I’d pull up to the back alley of the restaurant I’d greet the five stray cats that lived under the building and when I opened the back door the dream, well at least the romantic part of it, would start to fade.<br /> <br /> <br />For ten hours a day I’d stand in this kitchen the size of a hallway, huddled over a sink, hands in dirty dish water, watching the roaches poke their heads out from the exposed brick. I’d go out into the dining room and clean off the tables for your run of the mill tourists, overhearing rather drab conversations, often times wondering how it was that I always managed to end up at these bottom of the barrel jobs.<br /> <br />Anyway I’d be out on the patio bussing the tables, watching the crowds go by and I’d hear the saxophone coming from down the street. Sometimes it’d be a cheesy tune; something like the theme song from The Godfather or Sesame Street; maybe something by Elton John or Billy Joel. I figured he just threw those in for the musically uneducated tourists, because the other half of the time he’d play an old R&B hit, maybe Marvin Gaye or Otis Redding. Other times he’d really jazz it up with some Sonny Rollins or Parker or Coltrane. Even though I was a good block away I could tell this guy really knew how to play. <br /> <br />Every now and then I’d walk by him on my lunch break. He was a little ball of a fella’ in a wheelchair, maybe three and a half feet at the most if he was able to stand. He’d sit on the corner with a bucket in front of him and sometimes I’d see an older, raccoon-eyed guy with an ice-cream cart sitting close by. The first couple of months I never said anything to either one of them. I’d just kind of nod; every once in a while I’d throw some change into the jazzman’s bucket. <br /> <br />One day I decided to go on over to the corner and sit down with the two guys. As I was eating my sandwich the jazzman looked over at me and said, “This ain’t no free entertainment. What, you think you can just sit here and eat?”<br /> <br />“Yeah, pretty much,” I said, smiling.<br /> <br />“Oh, I’m just playin’ with ya’”<br /><br />The jazzman held the tenor sax in his lap and watched the people file down the street for a few minutes. He shook his head and said, “Lazy, lazy day. Man. Just don’t feel like sitting out here today. Wish I was out fishing.”<br /> <br />“Yeah, fishing would be pretty nice right now,” I said.<br /> <br />A few feet to the right of the jazzman was the guy with the ice-cream cart. He sat in a beach-chair with his eyes closed and his chin slumped against his chest.<br /> <br />“Hey Bob!” screamed the jazzman. “You’re sleeping on the job! You got business!”<br /> <br />“Huh, what’s that?” <br /> <br />Bob opened his eyes and stood up, still half-conscious. An older woman was standing in front of the vending cart. <br /> <br />“Oh jeez, so sorry mam’. It’s that sun, ya’ know. Just takes the life right out of you. So what can I get you?”<br /> <br />“I’ll take one of those ice-cream sandwiches.”<br /> <br />“Well, all right, you got it, one sandwich. One dollar.”<br /> <br />“Thank you mam, and you have a wonderful day now.”<br /> <br />Bob sat back down in the chair. “See Melv, you stop playing and I’m a goner.”<br /> <br />“What, cuz you’re bored you think I just gonna’ jump up and play a song.”<br /> <br />“Well, I know you’re sure as hell not jumping,” Bob laughed aloud, slapping his knee.<br /> <br />Melvin quickly wheeled over close to Bob, pointed his index finger at his face, and said, “Watch yourself Bob. Don’t get smart. I might just take one of those Popsicle sticks and shove it up your ass! Ya’ heard me?”<br /> <br />“Yeah, yeah, Melvin, I hear ya.”<br /><br /> <br />A couple days later I was back in my lunch spot. I made a couple of sandwiches for the guys, figuring it was an equal trade-off for letting me sit alongside and hang out.<br /> <br />It was Friday and the streets were packed. From what I could tell Melvin was doing pretty well. He told me he was up to eighty bucks. There must have been something go on that weekend, maybe it was just the magic of The Big Easy, but the beautiful women were everywhere and Melvin was having a tough time sticking to the music. One girl in particular was wearing a short red skirt, her big boobs popping right out of a thin black blouse. She had one of those wild-curved bodies that just screams out at you and turns the brain and muscles into a ball of mush. Melvin played two quick notes that sounded like someone whistling. The girl turned around, smiled, and then walked on.<br /> <br />Melvin’s eyes lit up. “Oooeeee! Give me that smile. Say, baby, ever been with a man in a wheelchair? Once you do, you’ll never go back to regulars.”<br /> <br />Bob and I broke out in laughter.<br /> <br />Seconds later, another woman, a little older, but still with that all-class, all-style look passed by. Bob stood up and yelled out. “Hey lady! Ever been with a fifty year-old ice cream man?”<br /> <br />This woman wasn’t so friendly. She turned around and gave Bob a deathly stare and suddenly it became obvious to me how unattractive, spiritually speaking, she was.<br /> <br />“Damn Melv, guess you can’t win em all,” said Bob. <br /> <br />“Yeah, some of these woman now, they ain’t got no sense of humor.”<br /> <br />“Wait! Hurry Melv, play that one song, you know the Egyptian…”<br /> <br />“The snake-charming one?”<br /> <br />“Yeah, yeah.”<br /> <br />Melvin put the sax to his lips and played the tune note for note.<br /> <br />“You ever been married?” Melvin asked me.<br /> <br />“Nah, I got a hard enough time keeping a girlfriend around. Not much love for the starving dishwasher artist.”<br /> <br />“Don’t do it. Believe me. It’s just a pain in the ass. You know what; the problem with women today is that hey just don’t know their place.”<br /> <br />Bob and I kind of gave Melvin a strange look, not particularly sure where he was heading with the conversation.<br /> <br />“Now, wait a minute Melvin…”<br /> <br />“No, listen, and I ain’t talking about no barefoot, pregnant in the kitchen kind of shit. What I’m talking about is inspiration. You see, it’s like this. The world is a pretty brutal place. It’s rough. It’s cruel. And every day a brother goes out into that world. He’s got all kinds of messed up shit he has to deal with. It drives him crazy. And when he comes home he wants to be around a nurturing, loving woman, a woman he can confide in, you know, share his love with. Not some woman that’s always yapping, always complaining about what he doesn’t do right. What the woman don’t realize is that’s what drives the brother back out on the street. Who the hell wants to come home to that? Like take my old lady. We been married over twenty years and she still won’t let me practice the sax in my own house. She says it makes too much noise. Too much noise! Ya’ see, what she don’t understand is that if I can practice I can get better. If I’m better I’ll make more money. That’ll make her happier. Ya’ heard me?”<br /> <br />Melvin was really starting to get juiced up. He was wheeling back and forth between Bob and I. He had the look of a preacher on the pulpit except he was sitting down. <br /> <br />“For instance, take Helen of Troy. You see. Helen was the wife of Menelaus who was King of Sparta. But she left him and went off to be with Paris, son of the King of Troy. So this Menelaus guy launched a war against the Trojans who refused to return Helen. Now they fought a battle for ten years. Over a woman! Over a woman! Now that’s inspiration. Y’all know the Taj Mahal?”<br /> <br />“Uh, the place in India?” I said, recognizing the name, but rather clueless as to how it all tied into the inspiration diatribe.<br /> <br />“Yeah, that’s the one. Have you ever seen the pictures of that building? Ornate architecture, painted ceilings, gold everywhere. It’s beautiful. And you know what. It took twenty-two years to build it. 20,000 workers. And it was all paid for by one man; Shah Jahan. His wife died and in memory of her he built one of the finest buildings in the world. Just for one woman. Love. Friendship. Ya see, what I’m talking about is inspiration. Ya heard me?”<br /><br /> <br />Everyday I’d look forward to those lunch breaks out on the corner. It helped me get through the monotony of dish after dish that stacked up alongside of me. I don’t really know how to put it, but there was just something about hanging out with the guys and sharing stories as the rest of the city paraded by, well it make some kind of sense.<br /> <br />So Bob was sitting behind the cart, looking bored as hell, an umbrella giving him a little shade from the blistering summer heat. Melvin had taken the day off to go fishing down in the Grand Isle and Bob was excited just to have someone to talk to. He was a pretty easy-going type. He’d always flash that black front tooth of his and give you a good ol’ smile. He was polite as hell with the customers, in a Southern gentlemen kind of way. <br /> <br />I was kind of curious how it all worked out with the cart so we got to talking.<br /> <br />“Oh, I get the cart for free. Company stocks it all up and then I get 40 percent of whatever I sell. Right not it’s slow, but when it’s busy, sometimes I’ll walk with two or three hundred bucks. It ain’t bad. Sometimes it’s a little boring, but hey, I’m pretty much my own boss. Work my own hours. Get to sit out here. Listen to Melvin. I use to work the Lucky Dogs stands. They’re the same people that own this one.”<br /> <br />Lucky Dogs were made famous in john Kennedy Toole’s Confederacy of Dunces, but anyone that’s spent a highly intoxicated night on Bourbon Street has probably seen one of the many carts that take up every corner. It’s likely they’ve also forked out the four dollars for the disgusting dog and then found themselves hours later, either vomiting or shitting their brains out.<br /> <br />“Man, no offense, but those hot dogs are gross. I met a guy in Jackson that said he was down here with a friend partying all night. Got a Lucky Dog sometime in the morning before they headed back home. About twenty minutes later his friend’s face was looking like a blueberry. Had to take him to the hospital for food poisoning.”<br /> <br />“Oh, jeez, you don’t got to tell me. You should see some of the guys. They don’t even replace the dogs from each night. They’ll just leave the leftovers in the water and then serve them up again the next day. It’s all about the bar crowd. After 3 a.m. they don’t know what the hell they’re eating anyway.”<br /> <br />Bob said years ago he’d bartended out in California and then for a while in Palm Beach, Florida. They were pretty good jobs, but at some point his wife divorced him, he got into some trouble (I didn’t really pry him on exactly what he did) and then, like a lot of people that lived in New Orleans, he just somehow ended up here.<br /> <br />Off to the side of us Big Mama Sunshine was sitting with her little Casio keyboard in front of her. Big Mama was a huge haunch of insane love-radiating woman. One could find her on a different street of the French Quarter a couple times a week, playing honky-tonk and fast blues, growling out words you sometimes could understand and sometimes couldn’t. She’d wear all kinds of wild dresses, always with the same panama hat that a huge red feather sticking out of the brim. Her big jowly face would wobble around as her chubby fingers bounced across the keys. <br /> <br />So Bob and I were sitting out there and I was kind of dreading going back to the kitchen and staring at those plates and dishes for the rest of the day, when I noticed two Spanish women walking down the street. One I guessed was probably in her middle forties. She was very exotic looking. She had this creamy olive-skin and long black-hair and there was this smooth and hypnotizing rhythm to her movements, like she was walking on water. The woman holding her arm, who I guessed was her mother, was very frail and you could tell it was a little hard for her to keep up. But there was a wonderful energy exuding from her face, this brightness in her eyes, a warm, youthful smile. You could tell she was digging it all: the music and the art and the old buildings and it was like she was a little girl all over again, as if she had that same sense of innocence and excitement. I could tell she was enamored once she caught site of Big Mama Sunshine.<br /> <br />The two women stood in front of Big Mama and watched her play.<br /> <br />“Hey there ladies! Owww! Where you from?”<br /> <br />The younger woman said something in Spanish to her mother.<br /> <br />The old lady smiled and said, “Venezuela.”<br /> <br />“Oh yeah, Venezuela. I know just the song!”<br /> <br />Big Mama pulled out a little book that I guessed had program settings for the keyboard. She flipped through the pages, put in some numbers, and then screamed when it wasn’t working right. A few minutes went by until she finally got the one she wanted. La Cucaracha. <br /> <br />“Bum, bum bum bum bah bum.”<br /> <br />“Ay,” shouted the old woman.<br /> <br />“Wait, hold on,” said Big Mama.<br /> <br />She fished through a dirty bag and came out with a tambourine and a pair of cha-chas. The woman had it all. Suddenly, the two Venezuelan women were dancing on the sidewalk, shaking their instruments, moving to their own beautiful rhythm as Big Mama banged on the keys and growled. They were stomping and swaying and dancing, all full of religion and sex and love. It was like the old woman had just been injected with some wonderful youth potion and had the energy of a ten year old. Bob I sat there, shaking our heads and laughing.<br /> <br /> <br />“You hear about the black drawers?” Old Creole asked me. Old Creole was occasionally Melvin’s runner. He’d get him food and drinks throughout the day. He was just a stick of an old man with tiny, bloodshot Asiatic-looking eyes. He’d always sit on an empty milk crate and he didn’t say a whole lot. When he did it was usually something perverted. We were all chewing on sandwiches I’d just made when Big Mama came into the conversation. Melvin was teasing Old Creole about how she had a thing for him.<br /> <br />“Nah, you talking about her underwear?”<br /> <br />“Yeah,” said Melvin. “He was teasing Big Mama the other day, saying how she was crazy and couldn’t play. So yesterday I got this big crowd all around me. They were really into it too, at least ten people standing there. So all of the sudden I see Big Mama Sunshine walking towards me. She was looking even crazier than usual. Wearin’ a purple dress with yellow stockings. So what does she do? Bends over right in front of me and him and lifts her dress up and screams, ‘Check out these black drawers!’ It was disusting. Man, everyone left right then. All my tips: gone. That crazy lady ran them all away.”<br /> <br />Old Creole slapped me on my knee, nodded, and said, “Dat woman crazy.”<br /> <br />“Shit, you never know man,” I said jokingly to him.<br /> <br />“Hell no. I tell ya’ this. I went to the nurse back in ’85. Had me some of that clap you know. So the nurse took one look at it and told me I better keep that sucker in my pocket. Haven’t let it out since. Not for no woman. Dat’s the truth. And I don’t understand. What’s with all this Viagra? Man, just last week my neighbor, he be knocking on my door in the middle of the night. I say, what the hell you want, and you know what, he asking me if I got any pills. And what kind of pills? He asking for Viagra. Viagra! I say what da hell you need with Viagra? Man, this place just ain’t the same. I remember it used to be speed. Heroin. No. Now it’s viagra.”<br /> <br />“Wait, hold on guys, did you hear that?” said Bob.<br /> <br />“What,” said Old Creole looking down the street.<br /> <br />“Shit, is that Big Mama? I think I hear her footsteps.”<br /> <br />Old Creole darted up like he was going to run around the corner. After a few seconds though he saw us laughing and realized we were all just fucking with him. He sat down on his crate, slapped my knee again, and said, “Laugh all you want, but dat woman is crazy.”<br /> <br />A few minutes later a woman walked up to Melvin and said, “Hey Jazzman, play me something good.”<br /> <br />Without a word Mevlin nodded, (as if it was rite of passage, as if this is what he was put on this earth to do) lifted the sax towards the sky, and belted out a high sweet-piercing E. I didn’t know the song, but the lady obviously did because instantly she was shouting out. “Yeah! Yeah!” She started to sway and snap her fingers giving the tune a steady beat. And now Melvin was really getting into it, the notes all electric and floating every which way. His cheeks were so puffed out that he looked like a jellyfish. The wheelchair even started to roll all around the sidewalk, as if it had a spiritual life of its own.<br /> <br />“Oh yeah, play it hunny, hmmmmmmm, hmmmmmm,” said the woman. She was shaking her hips like only woman with soul know how to do.<br /> <br />I glanced down at my watch and noticed I was five minutes late. Fuck it, I thought, those dishes weren’t going to miss me anyway. I mean there’s certain moments in life where amidst all the insanity things make sense, where you feel like you’re part of something special. This was one of them. I put my arms behind by head, leaned back against the fence, and as the sun lit the back of my eyes, I let Melvin and the dancing music of the street slowly carry us all away.Seth Swaaleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02442058078452795462noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4913178434267411633.post-26169848195954843272009-11-10T17:02:00.000-08:002010-01-05T19:02:48.299-08:00Old Stories Intro<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmJx9PzXQYg6dVeDVH18mSmwJ7r9bfhRo1ohoU90Hy12UrtHQf65Ny87SSJf04qRzwqEQ0VOUywBtrjnIp5IFn6HqmV2Q-f5oeCKy-jg6V09YZzcY6_ZYKB4GtwPOWjalxcfer6usnKL8/s1600-h/4014867970_243bc6c66a_m.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 240px; height: 160px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmJx9PzXQYg6dVeDVH18mSmwJ7r9bfhRo1ohoU90Hy12UrtHQf65Ny87SSJf04qRzwqEQ0VOUywBtrjnIp5IFn6HqmV2Q-f5oeCKy-jg6V09YZzcY6_ZYKB4GtwPOWjalxcfer6usnKL8/s400/4014867970_243bc6c66a_m.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5403225839629615954" /></a><br />From 2002-2005 I wrote a column for Razorcake magazine; about ten stories in all. I also did a story for a magazine called Verbicide and had a story published in an anthology called Punch and Pie put out by Gorsky Press. Then I got lost somewhere along the line and stopped writing for nearly four years. I'd like to say why this happened, but there's no real good explanation. I found myself living in Los Angeles, somehow stumbled into becoming a union electrician, got involved in a relationship that was sometimes wonderful, but more often than not, tumultuous and far too crazy for me to take part in (a good friend of mine says I was Arturo and she was my Camilla. Any of you John Fante fans will know what that means), and well, let's just say, I forgot about music and lost touch with words. Eventually those two parts of my life resurfaced. <br /><br />For me, a lot of the stories are old and yet, my memory isn't so great so sometimes their new. Often I wonder if they're made up from the figments of my imagination, was I really there? did that happen? I've done quite a bit of moving around and gone about things a little ass-backwards, but the truth is, nearly everything I've written has been taken from places and people I've known somewhere along the line. Words, no matter how well written, rarely live up to the real story, the actuality of "being there" but even a small glimpse into those other worlds, well, I figure it's my little contribution to this crazy lot called life. Enjoy.<br /><br />Along with these stories I've decided to throw in the pictures of Eddie Morgan. I've been a fan of his photography for some time and like any good artist, he roams the land and toils in penniless obscurity, but I thought I'd do what little I can to spread the all mighty word. For more of his work you can go to:<br /><br /><br />http://www.flickr.com/photos/40652638@N04/?saved=1Seth Swaaleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02442058078452795462noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4913178434267411633.post-60746689636474793752009-11-10T17:01:00.000-08:002010-01-05T19:02:48.300-08:00Day 20It’s been a while since I’ve been to the tunnel. I got myself a job bussing tables at a restaurant in Manhattan,; yes, money, the necessary evil we all have to adhere to, along with very cold weather, has forced me out into the streets of Manhattan begging for a “real” job. Luckily, I was able to find something. After a few days of work I had Sunday off so I decided to go to the park. It felt good to be there, setting the stool up, the guitar in my hands and the folks milling about. <br /><br />Once again, it was good times with the New York characters roaming around. Out of the four hours I was there, I probably played about two; the other time spent distracted. <br /><br />The day started off with a guy from Wales. Shaved head, stocky, he looked like those Hooligans that go to the soccer matches, but maybe that’s just an off-based stereotype. He told me he thought the music sounded great. He put a couple of dollars in the bag and then asked if he could video me playing a song and then saying hi to the kids back in England. I obliged, looked into the camera, fingerpicked a tune, and sent my greetings.<br /><br />“Can I tell you a story? Got to tell soomone. So I jus’ got to New York yesterday. I was supposed to go to London with me best mate. The misses needs a new car and me and my best mate were going together to get this car. Just so happens one of the best motorcyle riders in the world is going to be there, eh. So we’re gonna’ stop at the airport, take some photos of him y’know. But see I’ve got this other business that week, trying to set it up before the trip. But soomtin’ seems sketchy, dun’ know wut’, but soomtin’ not right, eh, a feelin’. I don’t tell the misses because I want to surprise her with the new car. But the night before I’m gonna’ leave she cooms up to me wit’ this strange look on her face, soomtin’ not right, you know that look. <br /><br />“So I say, ‘Woot’s the matta’ hun?’ She looks at me with that strange face y’know and says, ‘I have to tell ya’ soomtin’.’ <br /><br />“All right hun, woot’s on your mind, eh?”<br /><br />‘I don’t know how to say this love, but I’ve been very naughty.’<br /><br />“So now, I’m thinkin’, woot’s going on here. This is serious you know.”<br /><br />“Woot ya’ me mean naughty I say?”<br /><br />‘I haven’t been truthful with ya’ love. I’ve been a bit of a naughty girl.’<br /><br />“Jesus Christ loov, woot ya mean by all this?”<br /><br />‘Well, dun’ know how to say this loov, but me and your best mate have doon soomtin’ naughty behind your back.’<br /><br />“At this point my hearts pumpin’, sweating ya know, I mean, me and the misses have our fun with others, you know, a little fun here and there ay, but not with me best mate. So I say to her, “Well, spit it out loov. Woot’ve you done with me mate?”<br /><br />‘Well, loov, I bought you a ticket to New York. You leave from London tomorrow morning.’<br /><br />“What? New York? Ay, I thought you were going to tell me you were fuckin’ me best mate.”<br /><br />“I almost had a heartattack right there, I felt it pumpin’ good. So here I am, that’s my story. But tell me soomptin’, where can I find the real New York?”<br /><br />I’m caught a little off guard buy this question. I can’t think of one particular part of the city you could label as the “real” New York.<br /><br />“I’m talking where real New Yorkers are. Not all the fancy lights and the big buildings and the expensive restaurants and the foreigners.”<br /><br />I tell him I’m relatively new to the city, but from what I’ve seen New York is an amalgamation of many different neighborhoods and nationalities. I mean hasn’t this guy ever heard of Ellis Island? The city was built by immigrants. I tell him of Chinatown and Harlem, the East Village and the West, Chelsea, Hells Kitchen, the many different neighborhoods in Brooklyn, the Italians and Polish, the Muslims and the Jewish and Carribeans. He tells me he’s bothered by all the immigrants in the city. Says in the town where he lives back home only two percent of the kids that go to the schools are English. It’s a shame. Everything’s changed. I showed him a few areas on the map he gave to me, but whether or not he found the New York he was looking for, I don’t know.<br /><br />An hour later a crazy Italian, kind of a bastardized, slobbering version of Robert Deniro showed up in the tunnel. It was then that I wished the English guy was around. This was probably the New York he desired to see on his vacation. His name was Charlie. I was playing a Fahey tune when he walked by. The song I was playing is called Sunflower Splendor, a variation of Vestapol, an old instrumental a lot of old-time musicians did. Charlie was very animated.<br /><br />“Hey, you know The Hobo’s Lullaby?”<br /><br />I told him I did.<br /><br />I started to play the old Guthrie tune and Chalrie stuck his hands on his waist, chest pointed out, facing outside of the tunnel, and sang out in a deep baritone voice, “Go to sleep you weary hobo, let the town drift slowly by…”<br /><br />Then all of the sudden, with the people passing by, Charlie goes into a full operatic rendition of Woody. Then he throws in some of his own lines, “Yeah, yeah, tell me about it.” He was definitely the showman. I couldn’t help but laugh. After the song Charlie told me he was in the process of writing his childhood memoirs. Other people that had read parts of it told him his writing reminded him of Raymond Carver and David Sedaris, but he couldn’t stand those guys.<br /><br />“Fuck Sedaris, that clown was selling flowers, gets on the radio, and boom, he’s famous. Shit, I’ll be like Hemmingway, go to Paris with my ailing gay lover (Fitzgerald). I tell you what. You know the secret to writing? I’m gonna’ tell you right now. Think back to your youngest memories, kindergarten, grade school, a teacher, the beach. Now write five words, anything, any words, and then leave a blank space, then five more words and another blank space. Sit at the kitchen table and have another person fill in the blanks. I’m tellin’ ya’, it works.”<br /><br />“Hey, I wrote a song. You mind?”<br /><br />I hand him the guitar. He stands proudly, although without a strap it’s hard for him to hold the guitar. “From the shores of Carolina to the Blue Ridge mountains…” His guitar skills aren’t great, but it’s a great traveling country song, all about coming back to his true love in New York. Charlie even gets a couple of dollars from the passing tourists. “Come on, tell me about it, one more time now!” he shouts out and then sings the chorus again. <br /><br />We sang Freight Train together in wavering harmony. He seemed like one of those old types from the neighborhood, maybe a little too goofy to run with the tough guys, but all said the loveable Italian jokester from the “corner.” As he walked away he said, “You got it kid, you got it.” He then raised his arm in front of him, like something out of a Greek play, and did his best impersonation of Pavarotti.<br /><br />The day goes along, hours pass by, songs go unheard, change is thrown, some dollars here and there…when up walks Barry.<br /><br />“Oh Lord, all the crazies are out today,” I say jokingly.<br /><br />Barry points at me, then brings his fingers between his eyes, says something so deep and prolific that I can’t remember. I say, “That sounds like some Confuscious shit.”<br /><br />Barry says I ought to do Springsteen songs. I’ll double my tips. I tell him folks don’t want to hear dark songs about murderers roaming the Midwestern landscape with young girls when they’re strolling out in the park. He says maybe I have a point. He asks me if I’ve learned any Fred Neil songs and I tell him I haven’t gotten around to it. He tells me about a painting over at the Met by a Dutch painter, Vermier I think. It’s of an old woman pouring a pitcher of milk into a glass, but the painting is so true and real, he says it brought tears to his eyes. He stares off and I wonder if maybe he might shed a tear right there in the tunnel. But he doesn’t. The conversation’s short today, a large crowd of families approaches, and Barry walks away not wanting to distract me, “Hurry, play something,” he says and then he’s gone.Seth Swaaleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02442058078452795462noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4913178434267411633.post-87469149791141183992009-11-09T10:17:00.000-08:002010-04-02T10:47:17.375-07:00Other Folks in the Park<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjF4f4cC01ipPOSW8W4t5YGmna0xCduH0RbGNR6JMWLU8u_1MEvJSNUEpu_qKhFwWnPtpTE3ELW8-EYhO3JtwhDvfXanYZN0sMVTOCF_T2Z5tvb4Rcc2R_-opivezFGT7G0sj8Qd4-S3mI/s1600/IMG_1437.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjF4f4cC01ipPOSW8W4t5YGmna0xCduH0RbGNR6JMWLU8u_1MEvJSNUEpu_qKhFwWnPtpTE3ELW8-EYhO3JtwhDvfXanYZN0sMVTOCF_T2Z5tvb4Rcc2R_-opivezFGT7G0sj8Qd4-S3mI/s320/IMG_1437.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5455597871848840674" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7f0FP_5YfYdfAFvc5tB5mSdaH_2ANbmmjz3Gkxcadl6m7YnDOlEZW40KiLZtqJqV6uIZQPdUnDudVUigPbK_ELsxe5HPUSI-dGN4URG4hXpggsX0O-rT5wm8LvCeKQr-RrL4IfXtB9Co/s1600/IMG_1425.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7f0FP_5YfYdfAFvc5tB5mSdaH_2ANbmmjz3Gkxcadl6m7YnDOlEZW40KiLZtqJqV6uIZQPdUnDudVUigPbK_ELsxe5HPUSI-dGN4URG4hXpggsX0O-rT5wm8LvCeKQr-RrL4IfXtB9Co/s320/IMG_1425.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5455597589988780898" /></a><br />Boris plays sax around the corner from the tunnel every day from ten in the morning until two in the afternoon. After two Valentine takes his spot. Boris is ok as far as music goes, plays the typical pop tunes we’ve all heard a million times: Killing Me Softly, Elton John, that sort of thing. The problem with Boris though is that he always seems to be in a horrible mood. Every time he walks by me he has his head down, brooding, a frown on his face, the look of the desperate clown. <br /><br />For about five days straight he walked by me after his shift, always looking in my case to see how much money I had; then into the darkness he goes with his beat-up sax case and up the stairs and into the streets of Manhattan. I stopped him one day.<br /><br />“You play sax?”<br /><br />“Yah,” he said, in a tone that said, what the hell do you think I play? “Why you play here? No good. No money,” says Boris, angrily.<br /><br />I have about five dollars in the case, but another twenty in my pocket from earlier in the day.<br /><br />“Ah, you know, just having fun, I like the acoustics.”<br /><br />“No good. You shouldn’t play here. I play thirteen years here. I play ‘dis tunnel in ‘vinter. Cold. Dark. But here, no good. ‘Dis recession. No good. No money.”<br /><br />Boris walks away shaking his head. Since then he avoids the tunnel. One day he peaked from around the corner to see if I was there, then walked in a different direction. I ask Valentine what the deal with Boris is and he says he’s crazy. He does a really mean looking face and walks around in circles grunting. He says Boris is always angry.<br /><br />Valentine’s brother plays by the bathrooms and playground around the corner from Wollman Rink. Sometimes he goes into the tunnel over there. He doesn’t say much and speaks very little English and I doubt he really makes much, but like Valentine, he seems to enjoy himself.<br /><br />Not far from the Chess gazebo is an old Chinese man that sometimes plays something that looks like a one-string violin, but instead of resting on his shoulders, it’s held straight up from the ground. He also plays an instrument that resembles a lap-steel, except it has a bar that points up about a foot which gives the instrument a bending noise. He has an amp playing ambient music. I like the sound the instrument makes, reminds me of Kung-Fu movies, but it does grow very repetitive after a while. There’s another guy who plays something similar down in the Grand St. subway station in Chinatown.<br /><br />On Saturday’s there’s a guy that stands still on top of a box. He doesn’t move and he has balls in his hands. A sign with an open bag sits in front of him that reads, “Feed me and I juggle.” Personally, I think it’s a lame gimmick. I figure do your thing and if the people like it, they’ll throw in some money. Most people walk by not paying him much attention.<br /><br />Walking up towards the mall which leads to the Bethesda fountain. It’s one of the more picturesque and popular spots in Central Park. In a little courtyard is a violin player that plays standard classical pieces: Bach, Chopin, etc. She places the sheet music in front of her case. There is background music to go along with it. She’s very good as far as violin players, but rigid and serious, always bowing when she finishes. She often draws a decent sized crowd on the benches, folks enjoying the relaxed confines of the park.<br /><br />Not too far from her is the green pixie, good ol’ Tinker Bell. Another mannequin that stands on a box, wearing a bright green sparkling dress with green wings, toothpick-thin young girl with white-caked make-up and big blue eyes staring rigidly straight ahead. Her green gloves are folded eloquently to the side. To be honest, I’m not a fan of mannequins or mimes. As a kid I think I liked them. There’s an old picture of me as a child in San Francisco, on a stage with a mime; I look happy. Somewhere along the line something went wrong. Years later I was with a girlfriend of mine, on a wild bender down in New Orleans. We’d spent the past few days staying in a really shabby hotel, The Hummingbird in the skid row area off of St. Charles, roach-infested, prison cell feel. We were looking at 100 dollar a week adds for rooming houses out of the Times-Picayune and went to check out a place, it was in the Treme, a two bedroom house that looked like it hadn’t been quite finished, the lack of a floor and dirt in the kitchen being the sign. Anyway, we’ve got this sketchy guy showing us around in the place, but we notice all kinds of mannequins in wheel barrels around the place. There’s another room next to where ours will be.<br /><br />The conversation ensues.<br /><br />“Uh, who lives in the other room?”<br /><br />“Oh, he’s cool, real quiet, never around.”<br /><br />“What does he do?”<br /><br />“He’s a mime.”<br /><br />I look at my girlfriend and no words need to be said.<br /><br />“Well, thanks, but we can’t live here.”<br /><br />“What’s the problem?”<br /><br />“We can’t live with a mime.”<br /><br />“But he’s all right, he doesn’t even say anything.”<br /><br />“That’s the problem. He don’t talk.”<br /><br />A week later we got another place from this guy off of Esplanade: an old mansion rooming house filled with crack heads. A few days later the place burned down, but that’s another story for another time. Apologies. I ramble. <br /><br />So, back to Tinker Bell. Despite my distaste for mimes, I was in a good mood so I put a couple of quarters in the pixie’s leather bag and then walked away, but I heard something that sounded like a chirp and looked back. She had twisted around, robot-like, and her hand had moved. She had something to give me. I stuck my hand out was given sparkly green confetti. Interesting. I thanked her and let it fall on the ground around the corner. <br /><br />Walking down further along the mall, the benches on each sides, the trees perfectly landscaped, branches drooping across on each side to form a roof of sorts, folks milling about in a good spirits, it has the feel of Paris, or maybe England although I’ve never been to either. The paintings of Monet, Pisarro; that’s what it makes me think of.<br /><br />Then there’s the little kid performer. He’s maybe eight or nine years old. He juggles while riding a unicycle around the crowd, an intense look of concentration painted on his face. He rarely ever fucks up. He also has some kind of spinning thing that goes on a string. He throws it up in the air, twirls around, and then catches it. Most people are quite impressed with the act, but what I enjoy most is seeing other kids around his age watching him; they seem quite awestruck and fascinated that another kid can do what he’s doing. One day I heard one big Italian guy wearing a Yankee cap say in what sounded like a Long Island accent. “Fuck. That fuckin’ kid’s fuckin’ good!” Often I see the little performer counting his money inside the bucket and from what I’ve witnessed he’s probably making the most out of anyone in the park.<br /><br />Continuing on, to the area where the little Greek amphitheatre is. Sometimes there’s a sax player, shades, derby cap on backwards. He’s a lot better that the other Russian sax players I know. He plays a lot of hard bop, 60’s jazz style.<br /><br />Next to him are the skate-boarders all dressed in New York skate fashion: baggy pants, red and blue baseball caps, doing their ollie’s and kick-flips alongside the roller-bladers/Ice skaters who do circles in their make-shift rink, pirouettes with their headphones on, grooving to the music.<br /><br /><br />Sunday’s you’ll find Africans in their drum circles with their strange-sounding horns, shakers, repeating the same beat over and over, bongos, bass drums, people dancing in front of them, sometimes chaotically, sometimes in an easy rhythmic fashion.<br /><br />I suppose my favorite on the summer weekends are the roller dancers that lie west about fifty yards away. I remember roller-skating as a kid, school events in elementary school. I wasn’t much good, never could quite master the backwards deal, always looking around from the corner as every girl I had a crush on was already taken in the couples skate. That said, I had no idea that roller-skating still existed with adults, especially in this fashion, but hey, it’s New York, one can never be surprised. <br /><br />I would describe this as a straight-up roller-skating, carnival dance party with quite an array of characters, spanning from little kids to folks in their eighties. DJ’s spin 80’s New York hip-hop and r&b, plain ol’ get down fun music with a good beat. Round and round the skaters go, groovin’, spinnin’, laughin’, for hours and hours on end. Some folks don’t even have skates. They just get in the middle and shake it. <br /><br />There’s an old woman in tight black spandex with her Oakley sunglasses, white hair in a high bun, hamming it up with large crowd of on-lookers, tourists and New York natives side by side, her arms spread out like she’s some sort of Sparrow, or more like an Ostrich off of Broadway. She’s tireless and probably the fittest senior citizen I’ve ever come across. <br /><br />There’s the buff, chiseled, enormous black guy, shirtless, with parachute looking pants made out of towels. He looks like someone out of Arabian times. He balances water bottles on his head with an extreme sense of determination as he skates, sometimes as many as six at a time. He also does a slow-motion act in which he skates slower and slower until he finally stops. <br /><br />Next to him, prancing around is an old pirate drag queen wearing a white Southern dress with flowers. A colorful neon wig covers his bald head, bright yellow socks, a screaming blue purple parrot on top of his hat, he pulls the dress up and a little and sways it around. Sometimes he changes hats and wigs. He loves the crowd and posing for pictures, a pure natural and as I watch him, laughing aloud, memories of the beautiful menagerie of New Orleans come back to me. He has a baby stroller in which his pink and blue died poodle rests in. After much parading he leaves the rink and heads over towards the drum circles. <br /><br />There’s a cute Puerto Rican girl flying around the rink, people doing tricks on the side, flamers alongside of tough guys; Asians, blacks, Hispanics; a beautiful bouillabaisse of New York City. A man dressed in full Batman attire roams around the rink. He has a bike done up like the Batmobile. Anytime the Arabian buff guy drops a water bottle Batman runs over to “save the day.” When he leaves the rink he walks some kind of makeshift red carpet and stops to let everyone take pictures of him.<br /><br />Down the steps into the arcade that leads to Angel of the Waters fountain. A Mad Max/Renaissance violin player/opera singer/dancer combo, something out of a Fellini movie. Thoth is done up all Egyptian style, dreads, purple dress open at the chest, wearing all kinds of gold jewelry, shakers on his feet. The other violin player is round-faced, pale complexioned girl, a homemade dress, her bikini so loose you can see her nipples. She sings some sort of unintelligible opera and together they do a theatrical dance. Medallions and candles and stars lie around their instrument cases. It’s got that freak element to it, but the music drives me absolutely nuts, but of course, they do well with the tips and the foreigners seem to be into it. <br /><br />The other day I sat by the fountain and watched a very tall, lanky man on a bicycle with headphones ride around the fountain for a good thirty minutes. He waved his arms like he was conducting Beethoven's 9th, round and round he went in his own world. He was tireless.<br /><br />Lastly, I can’t leave out Leroy Hoops, probably my favorite of anyone I’ve come across in Central Park. This guy has the most fun of any of the performers I’ve seen. He is a bongo player, hula-hoop instructor, and drum teacher for kids; a singer and comedian, a regular vaudevillian joyous jester of the park. Sometimes you’ll see him set up on the Bethesda Terrace overlooking the fountain. Other days you’ll find him in a random part of the park next to a tree, little kids and their parents all around him. With his big eyes and smile he sings his own originals: “I’m that baby’s daddy, I’m that baby’s mama,” putting on a blond wig every time he says mama. Kids approach the miniature drum set he has next to him with an air of curiosity. Most times they just bang on it. Leroy stops what he’s doing and goes into instructor mode. The parents try to pry their kids away and apologize, but Leroy says, “No, no, it’s all right. But kid, you got to play soft and with the beat. A, B, C, D, E, F, G. See like that. Soft. Now you try.” The kid takes the drumsticks and continues banging on the drums. <br /><br />He’s also got a various assortment of hula-hoops all around, small ones for the kids, big ones for the adults. He’ll even jump up from the bongos and show you how to do it if you’re struggling. <br /><br />“Legs bent, like this, one in front of the other, smack that hoop right on the side, come on guys, front, back, front, back, you know what I’m talking about. And ladies, if you’re man don’t know front and back it’s time for a new man.”<br /><br />Suddenly there’s a full crowd of hula-hoopers.<br /><br />I’ve seen few people give Hoops some money, but he doesn’t have any basket out. I think he’s truly doing it for the love and joy of seeing other people have a good time. It’s quite a beautiful thing when you really think about it.Seth Swaaleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02442058078452795462noreply@blogger.com0