You Got A Flag...

• Plasma Sunday
• I Give A Shirt
• I Get A Bike

Sunday, I went and sold plasma.

I wound up walking quite a ways.

The 115 bus, I hopped off of at the spot where I thought it came closest to the plasma place, the way that planet Mars is now as close to the earth as it will get this year, and which in fact will be the third brightest object in the sky right after sundown tonight.

The bus then turned in the direction of the plasma place, and I walked along in its wake.



The last time I rode the thing, though, when it came to that spot where it would either turn towards the plasma place or not, I had asked an older black man: "Is this as close as we get to Wal-Mart?"

"No, man, it stops right in front of Wal-Mart," he had said.

The bus then took the turn away from the Wal-Mart and began to serp its way through the neighborhoods of Gretna, coming out onto the main "General Degaulle" highway, before disappearing into the labyrinth of another low income neighborhood, then back onto Degaulle.

A thought occurred to me.

"Are there 2 Wal-Marts?" I asked the same older black man.

"No," he asserted, figuring out what I was getting at. I hadn't specified which Wal-Mart. I was starting to think that there was another one located way (way) on the other side of town that the bus might stop at.

"Well, there is," he corrected himself, but then reiterated that the bus we were on was going to stop right in front of the Wal-Mart that we had been not too far from when I had asked.

Then, as we went further and further away from Wal-Mart, I heard the guy mumbled something out of which I heard: "...changed the routes, or something..."

After an almost hour long tour of Gretna, the bus did indeed stop in front of the Wal-Mart, having made a huge convoluted circle around it then approached it from the opposite direction of what I was used to.

The poor old man had been squirming in his seat and mumbling to himself the whole way. It seemed to either bother him that he had given me bad information, or he was bracing himself for me to say something like: "That's the last time I ask your dumb ass about anything," and was perhaps preparing a rebuttal such as: "They must have changed the schedules, how was I supposed to know they did that? I've been riding this bus for years, and it always turned there and went past the Wal-Mart!"

When I finally got off, having lost almost an hour, but still in time to make it to the plasma place before it closed, I just smiled to the guy and said:
"It's all good. I actually got a nice tour of the city. Now I know where a lot of stuff is that I never knew was here.

So yesterday, not wanting to make the same mistake, I got off the 115 at that same spot a half mile away from the Wal-Mart. The bus then turned and headed in the direction of the Wal-Mart like it used to do before they changed the schedule. It must depend upon the day of the week which way it goes.

I just had to smile and shake my head over how it seems that a trip to the plasma place is cursed, with at least nine out of ten things that could go wrong going wrong, as I began a half hour walk to the plasma place.

It was some consolation when I caught up to a couple who had stayed on the bus and gotten off at Wal-Mart who were headed towards the same place.

Yes, the bike was something that I had been taking for granted, I thought, as I walked through the hundred degree temperature.

If I ever would have considered how much time and aggravation it had saved me, I would have pulled the thing into my apartment every night.


It was the last of my five fifty dollar donations. The money was on the card by the time I checked the balance from the first bus stop I got to, and then the bus arrived just as I was texting for its schedule. A rare example of things falling into place and working just like a Swiss watch, in Gretna.

The way the driver just stared at me like he hated me after I had said: "I was just texting for the schedule when you pulled up" reminded me that I was there, though.



I dallied at the Uxi Duxi until it was almost midnight and all the stores in the area were closing.

I wanted coffee and cat food, and started to kick myself over having lost track of the time, but then it occurred to me that I could just stay on the street car past my apartment and then shop in the Quarter, which is what I did.

It dropped me off with a half hour to walk the six blocks to the Rouses Market where I got the cat food and a Yerba Mate energy drink for a couple bucks.
Treva asked me where I had been.

She suggested that I buy a huge bag of dry cat food, enough to last a month, at the Family Dollar where I always go.

I told her that I had tried that cheap brand, and Harold had snubbed it.
She told me that he would eventually eat the stuff when he got hungry enough.
I bought a 32 gram bag of kratom at The Unique Grocery, saving me 40% off of the Uxi Duxi price.

I then ran into David the water jug player, and we hung out. I tuned his guitar, which is a pretty decent one, a far cry from the toy guitar he had been recently playing.

Up walked a young shirtless Jamaican looking guy who had a guitar and was strumming as he walked along with a friend.

I recognized him from having seen him about 3 months prior, at a bus stop on Broad Avenue. That time, he was playing his guitar, which he doesn't seem to have a case for, something that encourages a lot of practicing, to put a silver lining around not having a case. Also, having it out of the case can lead to money making because it's easy for a drunken tourist to say: "Play me something," and not have to wait for you to unzip and shoulder and perhaps even tune up the guitar.

I made at least fifty bucks that way, back when I didn't have a case and would be ready to jump right into a Neil Young song for someone before the street light changed, or something. A quick five bucks can be gotten that way; five bucks to go towards the purchase of a case; and an argument for leaving the case at home at the same time...

So, the Jamaican kid recognized me and, pointing me out to David, said that I was the guy who had taught him whatever it was on the guitar "And I still use that..." he added.

Then David became pretty animated, saying: "I know, he's taught me many, many things on the guitar, I've been knowing Daniel for years..." and it had the tone of an argument over who I had taught more to on the guitar.

David did ask me if I was "smoking on anything," to which I told him that I had packed up all my music gear, to include whatever little bud I had, and had left it all at the apartment, ready to go, but had decided to make a quick run into the Quarter for coffee, kratom and cat food without it.

I enjoyed hanging out with David on Canal Street, which is where he busks. He enjoys the social scene there, and in the couple hours that we hung out, he was able to get a few groups of people to mention the guitar, whereupon he jumped up and serenaded them with one of the two songs that he knows and get a dollar or two from each.

Canal Street is a one dollar at a time market for the busker. There is just too much going on there for the tourist to not want to divide his money up into very small little bits, one for everybody, from the lady twerking at the corner to the "beer please" guy with the sign, to David the water jug player who pours his heart into singing "What A Wonderful World," the Sam Cooke I think it is, song. James Taylor and Art Garfunkel did a version which is the one that I'm most familiar with, in the early 70's.

David's other song is "Stand By Me," the Ben E. King classic.

He is just passably talented, with the number of songs he knows commensurate with the amount of chords he knows, and he gets his one dollar from every hundred people who pass through sheer passion.

The Shirt Off My Back

I finally got on a street car for home, after having let a couple hours worth of them pass by.

I was actually enjoying hanging out with David. I guess I'm a social animal to some small degree, I just can't hang out with skeezers.

David is an antidote to any of the craziness of that particular block of Canal Street, which probably makes people who are from different ghettos around the nation, feel at home. He doesn't hesitate to raise his voice a bit and give a firm: "Have a good night!" to anyone who might walk over and start to strike up any kind of conversation at all upon seeing that David has a white guy that he was probably skeezing, and wanting to get a piece of the action.

A lot of times, if a second skeezer walks up, then the first skeezer has his hands tied as far as not being able to yell: "Beat it, this is my mark!!" without alerting the tourist to the fact that he is a bone of contention, and why is this guy who I thought I was just having an interesting conversation with suddenly so possessive of me? type of thing.

So, a skeezer can, and usually does, approach us and start to say anything: "Hey, do you know if the Pelicans won tonight, I was..."

"Have a nice night!!!"

End of discussion about the Pelicans.

The Shirt Off My Back!

The trolley made a stop after a couple blocks and there the Jamaican kid with the guitar attempted to board, but was told that he couldn't without a shirt on.
For some reason, I had packed an extra shirt in my backpack, I think intending to use it as a towel after swimming with Lilly the day before, and it was still in there. It was clean, and I fished it out of my bag.
I went to the front of the car with it, showing it to the driver, which got him to re-open the door.
The kid got on and, after sniffing it, put it on, inside out.

I was trying to remember what kind of logo was on the shirt, or if it was the Pink Floyd one that I have in the same color as I wondered if he had intentionally turned it inside out.

It was a greenish gray and matched his black and white shorts printed with a fancy pattern, and his black sneakers.

At one point, an older black man said to the kid, pointing towards the shirt: "You got a flag."

I took that to mean that he was telling him the shirt was inside out, with the "flag" being the tag which was consequently visible and which might be seen as a flag to warn a person of such, as he inspects himself in the mirror perhaps.

That is a good example of the words that I often try to recall that black people have created and added to their vocabularies.

Calling a car a "whip" is one that I remember, but I have forgotten so many and that annoyed me one time when I thought about making a dictionary of the words that black people have apparently invented.

A whip is not one of the more intuitive ones. A whip is fast; a car is fast?

A whip is a symbol of the wielding power, a car is too?

A whip is used to get horses moving faster; a car get your life moving faster?

But, I could see where "You got a flag" might mean: Your shirt's inside out. Or the guy might have been trying to say "tag."

But, the Jamaican kid shrugged and said defensively: "Oh, I don't know, bro, someone gave me this; I just put it on, I don't know what it is..." and it occurred to me that he might have been reading even deeper into the old man's words and thought that he was telling him that he was now wearing a shirt that was going to be like a flag, telling the whole world that he supported white supremacy, or something.

No, I mean a tag. Your tag is showing, your shirt is inside out, calm down.

So, this morning, or rather right before 4 PM, I went to the office area to see if Tim my caseworker had gotten the message that I had left on his machine to the effect of: don't let them erase the video from the weekend yet because my bike was stolen.

That lead to he and Dorothy, another caseworker who is assigned to a different subset of skeezers, to give me the yellow bike shown in the photo. They said they had been baby sitting it as it sat in Dorothy's office, waiting for the right opportunity to give it to someone. And that someone was me.

"I know your not going to sell it," said Dorothy.
 
They seemed to be trying to dissuade me against pursuing the prosecution of whomever stole my Specialized Rockhopper. Almost as if they feel sorry for the pathetic person who snatched it in the throes of craving another hit of crack. The totally out of control kind of stuff that lands crackheads in jail.

As I came out of the building with my new yellow bike, I caught one particularly sketchy guy doing a double-take and staring at me and the bike with wide eyes. It could have been that he knew about my bike getting stolen and was planning upon enjoying seeing me on foot and hopefully looking miserable, and was even looking forward to asking: "Where's your bike?" with a dopey mocking grin on his face, as I walked by.

But, it could also be that he had seen the same bike sitting in Dorothy's office, and was outraged that she should have given it to me, when he had probably, just as a knee jerk reaction asked her if he could have it. So he could sell it.