"No"bile, Alabama

Me Playing Along With Steel Drum Guy
There was a guy in the park playing a steel drum and singing over pre recorded stuff; and so I hit "record" on my Audacity and played my acoustic along with him and spoke and sang; then mixed in a little echo later...cool...

Since Howard and I got off the train 10 days ago; I have been rebuffed on several fronts:

First, the information about where the train actually stops, which I had gotten from a train hopping kid, the gist of which was that the train stops "at the end of Broad Street" was wrong, and we had about a 3 mile walk into town, instead of the 2 mile one that we would have had from the end of Broad Street.

Then, when I went to Save-A-Lot, I was informed that I could NO longer stash my stuff somewhere there, so that I could go inside the library. The librarys policy is that there are to be NO backpacks and NO musical instruments in there.

I then decided to take the free shuttle to the tracks and hide my stuff very well and return to the library. The shuttle driver told me that there were NO "big rucksacks" allowed on the free shuttle.

I walked instead.

I noticed then that the spots along the tracks where homeless people used to sleep all appeared spotless. This is probably because, as someone had told me, there is NO longer any sleeping outside allowed east of Broad Street.

I still hid a lot of stuff very well, and then went to Polmans Bakery, which had moved to a different spot in the same building, where I was informed that they NO longer take EBT cards as payment for coffee and baked goods.

The Episcopal Church sleeping spot (and the one that Howard gravitated to out of memory) had its water spigot locked, along with its electrical outlet. There would be NO more washing of clothes at night and hanging them in front of the hot air blowing vent from the HVAC unit which blows off and on all night and there would be NO plugging this laptop in to stay up all night, writing, reading or recording the sound of the huge bell in front of the church (which can be heard a mile away) being rung (I thought about recording the bell and then, using the pitch changing feature of Audacity, turning it into some kind of symphonic work).

A few days later, I went to Coopers Park and began to rinse out one of my shirts in the morning, until I was informed that there was now NO clothes washing allowed in Coopers Park.

Well, that just about covers the new developments in what has become "No"bile, plus the addition of the fact that, as of now, there is NO Howard. I am off to check the web to see if he is incarcerated.

Last night, I busked for a while. I made a few bucks, but only enough to cover my habits. I was, at one point told by The Man With The Hat, who runs Busabas Restaurant (see The Man With The Hat from prior posts) that I could NO longer play in front of the clothing store which is two doors down from his place. He said that he knows all of the business owners along that stretch of Dauphine Street and that they have all asked him to disallow buskers in front of their businesses. Since they all closed much earlier than his restaurant, he has been entrusted with this task.

I have my doubts about his claim, especially as, when I was packing up he stood nearby holding his phone and pretending? to talk to perhaps the owner of the clothing store...

I went to the acoustically superior spot and made some more money, but then decided to go to the sleeping spot at the tracks and eat my sesame mackerel and green pea salad concoction, which I did; then I lied down to take about an hours nap before hitting the street music again during the peak hours of midnight through 3 a.m. I wound up sleeping through until morning, a casualty of having started drinking too early in the evening, I would assess.

On The Other Hand...

Mobile has been very good to me in a lot of other ways.

Some anonymous person left that gift at my sleeping spot, and just an hour ago, I was amazed when I went to check upon my other laptop (the Samsung which just needs a power adapter).

The place where I had hidden it had been disturbed; things moved around.

The laptop however, was still where I had put it; and was even wrapped in a couple of plastic bags, along with the harmonica method book which I had left there with it; it being about the same size and all.

It feels like I have a guardian angel in Mobile; and it is not an entirely new feeling. It is only when I get so down that I stop believing in such things as guardian angels that they seem to disappear.

Tonight is Saturday night and if I make enough money, and if Howard is indeed in jail, then I will send Howard a letter telling him that I had to move on and that I will stay in touch with him via e-mail, and then I'm going to hop a train after flipping a coin. Heads: East Tails: West.

Or, I might put some fore-thought into it, I'm not sure...I haven't thought about it...

That's all from Cathedral Park....