All I Can Say

Saturday afternoon saw the arrival of Sherman Jacobsen, my old friend from Baton Rouge, in a vehicle that I could picture even before he described it.
"I'm driving a box truck; a white box truck that has its...."
"I'm already picturing it, Sherman, where are you?"
"I got lost; right now I'm on Howard Street..."

"That's because the Universe is warping, and certain things are bleeding through from what we humans consider the 'dream world' into material reality; and the fact that your arrival coincides with my long planned trip to visit my old friend Howard in Gretna tomorrow to watch a rare football match-up between each of our favorite teams; and in fact puts that trip in jeopardy of not happening, dependent upon whatever urgency brings you to New Orleans, to drop in on me unexpectedly. The fact that you are lost on Howard Street is kind of a cosmic ribbing of me..."

"What?"

"Nothing; just find Canal Street, which will be relatively easy, given that it bisects New Orleans from Lake Pontchartrain to the Mississippi River, and if you choose correctly between east and west, you will ultimately encounter it. Use the fact that New Orleans, unlike Mexico City, has a 'skyline' composed of the tall buildings that you can use as a guide as to which way to go to find Canal Street, which a lot of them line."

I started walking towards the Uxi Duxi, rather than wait for Sherman to find the Dollar General store, two miles away from it, in his white box truck.

I walked those two miles to the hippie bar, and had additional time to finish off half of a double shot of "green bali" kratom before my phone rang.

It was Sherman calling me from about 9 feet away; standing in front of the place, apparently only seeing a reflection of the outside in the picture window that I was behind. I could hear his voice vibrating through the window, a bit out of phase with the signal coming from my phone.

"I'm on the corner of Canal and...I can't read the sign, but I'm in the 4900 block...I can't find this place; what's the name, Uxi what?"

"You're right in front of me, Sherman. Let go of your narcissism, and look past your own reflection and through the glass. That's what the Uxi Duxi is all about; seeing beyond..."

"Oh, there you are."

"I know, 'Uxi Duxi' is written in letters too large to be noticed on the front window...I have the same problem when I read maps and don't know which country it is a map of..."

Sherman conversed with me, in a way that I've come to expect from him, raising his volume level when voicing his concerns that large, powerful entities, such as the governor of Louisiana, are messing with him.

"Ours used to be a nice, middle class family, that did things together, in our little North Dakota town of 500 inhabitants, until we came to Louisiana, which destroyed our family." being a point that he touched upon.

In a way, the comparisons to Travis Blain were inevitable, especially as Sherman sat at the Uxi Duxi with me for an hour without purchasing anything, but having gotten a free glass of water at one point.

Sherman is a very frugal man, but not to the fault that Travis carries it to; the latter feeling that it is him against the world; and the world isn't going to get a cent out of him, if he can help it.

We had to leave the Uxi Duxi at exactly 8 PM, as the establishment had been rented to a couple that was to be married there, as soon as the weirdo and his friend left, and a cleansing voodoo ritual performed to remove any lingering resonances they might have left behind.

"Could You Please Leave?"

I was asked by Nathaniel the above question at exactly 8 PM, right after I had snapped the picture of the wedding altar and affects, as best I could using this laptop.

I couldn't help thinking that I might have crossed a line in capturing a photo of a "private" setup. That is a question for Miss Manners to answer, I suppose.

We got back to the apartment building, where I made a detour to Bobby's apartment to get a little bud out of the 11 bucks that I had made the night before, minus a dollar for a string of L.E.D. Christmas type lights, which came with several of the kind of batteries that power my guitar tuner.

The tuner's battery only needs to be changed something like once every 9 months, sort of like a smoke detector.

Once I got to the Uxi Duxi, though, I saw that the bride (the girl who sometimes wears equestrian boots to the Uxi Duxi) was in the process of stringing up a bunch of wedding lights of the very same kind that run off of CR 2032 "watch" batteries.

She was able to give me a few of the ones that were too mangled in her opinion to shine upon her wedding, and I had come into a 15 year supply of guitar tuner batteries just like that, only hours after having had concerns over the dimness of the display on the thing, and whether or not it would be worth walking out of the way to check the Dollar General.


I think that if I bought out the Dollar General of their supply of L.E.D. powered "fake" candles, for probably 200 dollars, I could remove perhaps 500 of those batteries, and then list them on E-bay at something like $2.39 each and quintuple my money. Shipping would be a minor concern with an item about the size and weight of a quarter.

One concern, though, would be the fact that the fake candles may have been made 20 years ago, and be older than the shelf life of those particular batteries and, to put it plainly, they might be weak batteries.


The "120 hours" of fake light guaranteed on the packaging is not reassuring in that regard, since I guess a battery can eventually go dead just sitting there. Why else would one brand boast about the "good for 10 years" (of shelf life) of their product?

I don't want people demanding their money back after they test them and find them to be weak.
My "rating" of 4 or more stars on E-bay may be all I have to recommend me to the world at some post Trump administration point in the future...

Plus, as Sherman and I were discussing; there are something like 7 billion people in the world, and so someone has "already thought of" buying up all the fake candles from Dollar General and re-selling the batteries out of them at a hefty markup. I had better stick to music.

30 Dollar Saturday ...or should I?

An 11 dollar Friday is very often followed by a decent Saturday and vice-versa.

Sherman gave me a ride to the Lilly Pad in his box truck which was everything advertised, and which was like a bull in a China shop in the French Quarter. Add the fact that Sherman was driving his new-to-him box truck gingerly; and that every other driver on the road soon became pissed off at "that fuckin' truck that's doing like 8 miles and hour, what is his problem?" and that I was propped up in the passenger seat like sitting on a Mardi Gras float, as if waving: "Hi, it's me, Street Musician Daniel; how is my friend's driving?" and it was a hell-ride for me.

"You can go now," I said to Sherman at one point. He had already technically "gone," but our top speed of around 8 miles per hour was drawing criticism from people with horns from somewhere, out of sight, behind the behemoth vehicle that was made in 1985.

"Go left here."
"Here?"
"Yeah, where you see pavement to the left there..it's a road...don't just stop in the middle of the street..."

Then, it was like "Good luck finding a place to park," with him dropping me off right outside Lafitt's and myself suggesting "along the river" as to where he might find free parking.
"I've been on foot for so long, I don't even pay attention to things like parking rates, speed limits and tow away zones..."
Sherman didn't materialize at the Lilly Pad for at least an hour.
He gave me ample room to breath, by not sitting right on the stoop next to me. I was thrown a 20 dollar bill while doing "China Doll," a Grateful Dead song, which is a favorite of some of the more tie-dyed-in-the-wool deadheads; as part of a 30 dollar night, in about 2 hours of playing.
There were certainly plenty of tourists still in sight on Bourbon Street at such a point that I decided that I had tortured Sherman enough by making him wait until I was through playing.
We walked back to where he had managed to park the box truck.
"Dude, if I had known that you parked all the way into crack town, I would have walked Royal Street back to the trolley. I live here and I read the papers and these addresses just a few blocks outside of the Quarter keep coming up under the headings of 'shooting,' 'killed,' 'robbed' and 'beaten.'"
"I'm sorry; I parked in front of a well lit building; and yeah, there were a few dark areas between the truck and the quarter, but it took me forever just to find anywhere the truck would fit..."
"Just get in and lock the door; and don't stop to see what this guy want's that's telling you to wait a second..."

It was when you started snapping pictures of girl's legs that you crossed the line, Daniel...