Man it's a nice feeling when you play and at the end of the sessions it's like, "Hey I just got grocery money for the week" -Alex In California
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| My biggest, and only, fan... |
Somehow the "nice feeling" for me becomes anxiety over: Should I just spend the whole 50 bucks on a brand new
Suzuki Harmonica, a purchase that would wipe me out to the point where I don't even have toilet paper (excuse the pun) but is going to have people telling me I sound nice and tipping my income up to the $30/hr. level that I have gotten to before, when playing brand new strings and a new harmonica?
Or, should I make sure I have cat food, kratom, tobacco, coffee and pot and toilet paper, then go out with my rusty old harp and play my rusty old strings and accept the 18/hr. that that would spawn?
So, often there is a dichotomy between the two.
I have never regretted spending my every last dime on equipment, though, as
the Gig Bag Story illustrates well...
The Gig Bag Story
I have told this before, it's in my blog archives.
Once upon a time, back in 2013, when I drank, I needed a new gig bag for my guitar, because the one I had, had disintegrated into a big flap of unruly canvas with totally useless zippers attached to it, that I had to keep "closed" by wrapping a bungee cord around, to keep the guitar from falling out.
I had something like 37 bucks on me. I called
Paul, at
Webb's Bywater Music, who told me that he had gig bags for 35 dollars.
With the tax added, I had just about enough.
Er...but not if I wanted to take a bus the 3 miles there and back.
But, more importantly to the alcoholic I was back in 2013, not enough to get drunk and still buy a new gig bag.
I called
Paul back. "Would you sell me one for 35 bucks flat, without the tax? Otherwise, I'll have to walk there, I mean, I
will walk, cause I really need a new bag, but..."
I'm sure the
Alcoholics Anonymous people have a pat term for that kind of laying it on thick (bus, my ass) in order to connive a way to consume alcohol; perhaps they even have a cute rhyme or mantra (..."my stinking thinking led to my stinking drinking" is one I once heard that kind of stuck with me) on the subject.
Paul: "Sure, I can do that."
So, I had really fooled myself into thinking that I was trying to avert the major hassle of walking 6 miles through the humid July
New Orleans atmosphere, and had even clung to that image as I was pleading with him to let me slide on the tax, but, having had my bus fare paid for that way, I breathed a sigh of relief and then thought:
"You know, I think I'll just buy a 25 ounce Hurricane malt liquor (alcohol 8%) and casually mosey along sipping it...and doing some sight seeing along the three mile route..
.yeah, sightseeing
; that's what the doctor ordered; haven't seen the railroad tracks that run pretty much straight to the Bywater in a while...."
There's another AA term for that, too, I'm pretty sure.
I got there and bought the gig bag, zipped my guitar into it, and then decided to spend my last $1.25 on another can of
Hurricane malt liquor and see if the tracks had changed any over the past hour.
It had been a bitter pill to swallow, coughing up 35 dollars, for something I "needed" while that other part of me, which cautions against impulsive spending was telling me:
Why can't you just continue rigging up bungee cords, duct tape, gorilla glue, and other things that can become "do it yourself" solutions? Save yourself 35 bucks?
I walked back to the Quarter, taking
St. Claude Avenue to
Rampart Street, because I wanted to stop at my sleeping spot across from the
Saenger Theater, to retrieve the heavy objects that I had jettisoned before embarking upon the six mile walk.
Things like the hard cover book that I was reading.
The Steve Miller Band was playing that night at the Saenger.
There were people standing out front waiting for the gates to be opened, most of them around my age.
As I walked past them, one guy in a group of 7 saw my guitar and asked: "Hey, do you know any
Steve Miller?"
I unzipped the 35 dollar bag and took my guitar out of it for the first time ever, and started to play
"Big Ol' Jet Airliner," by that worthy gentleman. The group began to sing along.
Just as I was getting to the part of that song that I don't know (the little guitar riff in the middle) the gates opened in a "saved by the bell" gesture; cigarettes were flicked onto the sidewalk, and people started pouring into the theater.
The group of guys that I had been playing for each handed me a five dollar bill -a total of 35 dollars in all.
So, the first time I ever took the guitar out of the bag, it took just one song to get back the money I'd paid for it.
The End.
A New Book, and I Need To Write More Like This Guy
When I spent the dollar on one of only three Grisham books that I haven't read, at the
Goodwill Store, it was one of only 2 dollars in my pocket.
That was Saturday, and I pictured myself coming home after playing that night and laughing at how I had let a dollar make me waver over purchasing a book that I am pretty sure I will very much enjoy, for maybe even a whole week, depending upon the speed at which I read it, which is itself dependent upon how much weed I smoke...
I would be laughing if I was coming home with 50 times the cost of the book in my pocket. So, I went ahead and bought the thing, hoping for the best; which was validated by me making the 48 bucks that I did that night.
If you don't snap them up, then someone will come along within a day with a smartphone app and they will scan the barcode on the back; and up will pop a window with the information that a hardcover
Grisham book in excellent condition should fetch enough on the Internet to justify them spending $1.09 on the thing. To hell with anyone who might like to read it and enjoy it very much.
Flash Of Genius:
This just gave me the idea of selling it through
Craigslist New Orleans, as soon as I am done reading it. As a matter of fact, why don't I list all the titles on my bookshelf. I could even deliver them on my bike to the NOLA area and pocket any "shipping" charges.
If I avoid spilling coffee laced with kratom all over it, then, why not? I'm not going to read it twice.
I could see it going to an invalid or a shut in type person who only takes their walker to their mailbox each day and rarely further. Never to a used book store, type of thing.
It would make an excellent gift for a prisoner!
The Grisham Book Story
This one, I have not told yet.
When I was incarcerated in
Jacksonville, Florida on charges that fell under the umbrella of "fraud," back in 2005, I got hold of a Grisham novel. It was
The Brethren.
The Brethren is a book divided just about equally into two sections, the first half is set in Jacksonville, Florida and then the second, in Charlottesville, Virginia.
I was familiar with both places, as we shall see.
Through driving a
Yellow Cab in
Jacksonville, using a phony license, I became familiar with the nooks and crannies of the city in general, and I was amused to be able to picture, from having actually seen them, the places described in the story.
I had dropped passengers off several times at one particular pool hall, the name of which Grisham got right but which I now can't recall, where a character meets another one to discuss some really high stakes deal.
And then, the guy leaves the pool hall to walk up the street to use the same ATM machine (where he discovers that his account has been drained, or something) that I used to go to, to deposit my cash when I was working "the beaches" area.
So, it was pretty cool to be reading a story set in such a familiar location; and it certainly made it easy to envision the scenes in the novel.
Since I was caught in
Jacksonville, using a
Virginia license obtained under a different name; the geniuses of criminal justice realized that, the gravest charge they could give me for it in Florida would be akin to some college kid using a fake ID to get into a bar. Possession of an invalid ID, or something.
But, up in Virginia, they viewed it as a crime against the state (read: them) and were particularly offended that I had hoodwinked their system into validating that I was indeed
Mark Palermo, instead of
Daniel McKenna, and issuing me a pretty nice license, the photo in which I was wearing a necklace of tiny sharks teeth that shows up nicely against the black tee shirt I had on.
Something like a dozen of the 19, or whatever it was, hijackers
involved in the 911 attack had gotten their fake licenses in Virginia
(the rest, in Florida, making my being caught in each state more ironic)
because all you needed to have was a notarized affidavit stating that you were the guy applying for the license, etc., and that had been an embarrassment to their deputy registrar.
So, what happened was, Jacksonville held me long enough for a couple of plain clothed FBI guys, one of them named Sullivan, I recall, to make their way down to Jacksonville to get me.
I had just gotten to the end of a chapter and marked my place in The Brethren, with one of the main characters about to board a plane to visit his father, a former judge who was incarcerated, when the metal bars of my cell clanged open and the metallic voice of an officer informed me to pack up my stuff, the FBI guy and the Federal Marshall were here.
So, I was flown to Charlotte, North Carolina on a commercial jet, sitting between Sullivan and the Marshall, with my handcuffs concealed from the other passengers by a winter jacket. Then, we connected to a smaller plane that landed at the Charlottesville Regional airport and after a short drive, I was booked into the Culpeper county jail, a small facility outside of Charlottesville.
I had arrived with a paper bag containing whatever I had grabbed from my cell in Jacksonville on my way out, including the book, which was starting to get interesting and which I hadn't wanted to part with.
After I got situated in my cell and resumed where I had left off, the next chapter began something like: The 727 touched down at Charlottesville Regional airport at 8:30 AM, and...
The character in the book had seemingly followed me from Jacksonville to Charlottesville, having landed at the same airport as I just had.
The rest of the action in the book took place in and around
Charlottesville, with places that I knew well being mentioned.
When I was living in my car there in 2002, for example, I had found a good spot to park and read. It was on one of the little streets that dead end into the pedestrian mall.
There was a bright floodlight type thing that I would park under, which made a great reading light.
It was on the side of a bakery, and illuminated, besides half of the block, a staircase that led to an upstairs apartment.
That same character that had flown to
Charlottesville eventually rented that very apartment above the bakery, and the fact that his staircase was well lit was mentioned. In that particular scene he was in a hurry and was glad to see that no car was parked in front of his place -where, in real life, I often parked and sometimes read
Grisham novels.
A lot of the legal stuff, speaking of Grisham, is going to be put into future stories.
In The Year 2000
The reason I had been driving a cab in Jacksonville as Mark P. was that there was a nationwide manhunt for Daniel McKenna, because George Beteh, Florida State Attorney and "the third guy from the top" (of what, I never knew) really wanted my testimony in a particular murder trial that was very high profile, and through which George, who was as Indian looking as Beteh sounds, was trying to impose the death penalty upon one Bobby Quesnel, a guy I happened to know; just from hanging around with white trash, I guess. He was the boyfriend of the oldest daughter of the couple in whose house I rented a room for a couple years from 1994 through 1996, near Jacksonville. I had met the couple through selling weed to them, when I was a student at U-Mass, Amherst, before they moved to Florida.
So, I had critical testimony to give.
The reason I had critical (to George Beteh's political aspirations, at least) testimony to give was because Beth had told investigators that I had been there when the suspect said something about grabbing his gun and going out to "do what I gotta do" to get some money.
And she had said that Bobby had been asking me questions about the Dominos Pizza place where I worked, specifically about the bank deposits that were made at the end of each shift. How much money is there usually, and that type of thing.
So, George had to find me. So, I could tell a jury first hand what Beth told them that Bobby had asked me, and what she told them I had said in reply, etc.
I didn't necessarily want him to find me.
It was my testimony that was going to be used to push for the death penalty, as it proved that the crime had been premeditated, and not the result of Bobby and his cohort having gotten a hold of some bad GHB which made them temporarily insane and unaware that they were robbing a Dominoes Pizza place and killing someone.
George would ultimately drain the coffers of Florida of around $85,000 in exchange for my ten minutes of testimony.
I didn't, and still don't, believe in capital punishment, and so I preferred to stay out of sight. And, I did a good job of that, considering I was, at least, on the FBI's top 20 most wanted list.
George would ultimately drain the state of Florida's coffers of something like $85,000 in exchange for my ten minutes of testimony.
He had sent more Floridians to the electric chair than any other prosecutor, a fact that would later find out he was proud of.
He had me declared a suspect in the murder, and not a potential witness.
This gave him the power to call upon every law enforcement agency nationwide to form a dragnet to bring me in, as would befit the suspect in the high profile murder of a husband, and the father of an innocent looking (and blown up on the front page of the
Florida Times-Union) blonde haired, blue eyed girl of about 4 years old.
She would never see her daddy again; the community was outraged;
George Beteh had vowed to find the guy and fry him in Ol' sparky (the nickname of the electric chair at Starke Prison, Starke, Florida) and was willing to go to no ends to get the death penalty imposed; my testimony was crucial to him and that seemed to be all that mattered to him.
So, I certainly dusted off the license of my dear old deceased friend,
Mark Palermo, which I had gotten at one point so I could continue delivering pizza for the Dominos I worked at in
Massachusetts in the early 1990's. Back then it had been as simple as going to
Maine and checking "no" in the box that asked "is your license to drive currently revoked in any other state?" This was back before identity theft had become as rampant a problem as it would.
Any agent of the local or state police, the
FBI, the
Internal Revenue Service, or the
Secret Service (I kid you not,
Beteh got them all involved) who came across
Daniel McKenna would receive a star on his forehead after his computer screen went bonkers and lit up like the fourth of July after he scanned my ID.
Then, I would be taken into custody, where I would be known to the other inmates as the guy who probably killed that little girls daddy. I didn't want to be that guy.
I knew that
George Beteh would not care about keeping me locked up in the
Duval County Jail for as long as it took, in order to secure the ten minutes of testimony he wanted out of me, as motions dragged on, witnesses were located and deposed, and the trial date got set back a month here, a couple there. I had nothing better to do, right?
I could watch the newspaper, while living and working as
Mark Palermo right under their noses, to see when an actual trial was looming. I could then walk into
George Beteh's office a couple weeks before it was to go off, and say "I'm
Daniel McKenna, you wanted to see me?" or something.
They already had
Bobby pretty well convicted. His first
mistake had been to park his
Honda Civic with the $3,500 set of gold
rims, and the
Massachusetts plates, in the lot of some apartment complex
near the
Dominoes. They attracted a lot of attention.
People
probably wondered which of their fellow residents were being visited by
someone from
Massachusetts who seemed to have a bit of money. Any one of
them could have taken up a position on their front porch to watch the
car, just to satisfy their curiosity in that regard, or someone else
might have been licking their chops, wondering if they could steal the
things, if the owner of it was going to be sleeping in somewhere.
But,
there certainly were eyes upon it when
Bobby and his cohort came
running like hell (his second mistake) from the direction, and at the
approximate time of, a crime that was going to be splashed all over the
headlines and would lead off every TV newscast the next morning.
It
took the police about 8 hours to locate such a car, parked outside of
the apartment where I had sat, listening to
Bobby asking me questions
about the
Dominoes Pizza place that I worked at and, like, how much
money is usually in the bank deposit bag at the end of, say, a Friday
night?
So, they were going to get their conviction. I was just going to be used to up the charge to capital murder.
After being named a suspect, and becoming
Mark Palermo, I was able to go to Phoenix, Arizona, live in a cave, drive a cab, and see
Jeff Beck at Symphony Hall.
Then to travel to
Flagstaff, then briefly
Las Vegas and eventually find my way to the woods of
Federal Way, Washington, after having accepted a ride from a guy named Grant Sanford ("just take me wherever you're going") of
Federal Way, Washington, in exchange of me paying off the fee of $180 that was keeping his car impounded in
Cedar City, Utah. Where my own car had stalled, and none of the mechanics seemed to know how to fix.
I loved it in
Federal Way, Washington. I was living in the woods, hiking around every day with a big and fairly expensive backpack and drawing no derisive looks. A backpack where there are mountains and waterfalls and trails everywhere is a good thing. In the inner city, it sends a different message.
The jobs through the labor pool were so plentiful that one could work a shift, sleep one, and then go back on another job 8 hours later.
One particular "meth head" whom I found camping in the same woods as me, whose name was
Mark "also," did just that. He would work a 7 til 3, and then an 11 to 7. And the jobs paid 50% more than equivalent ones in
Jacksonville, Florida.
So, if you are going to be homeless, people, do it where the wages are the highest, because your rent isn't going to go up commensurately.
And, to think: I would have been sitting in jail in
Jacksonville, as a material witness that whole time I was breathing the air of freedom nearby
Mt. Ranier.
One of the repercussions of being a "federal fugitive" for so long was that my parents in
Massachusetts were terrorized by Federal Marshals who implied that their son was "involved in a murder," and that they could subpoena their mail, ransack their house and arrest them for obstruction of justice if they didn't divulge my whereabouts.
They really pissed me off, by taking that tack.
I guess they don't attach memos to arrest warrants stating; this guy is really only wanted as a witness, but he is hiding from us so we made him a suspect so we use you to look for him. They looked upon them as the parents of a murdered.
And, in the meantime, homicide detectives were combing all of my known hangouts, nationwide, stopping into my favorite watering holes and coffee shops and flashing my face in front of them with their homicide badges gleaming. "Yeah, we know him. Why, did he kill someone?" type of thing.
It's amazing how "The homicide detectives were looking for you," can become like that pebble tossed into the ocean that causes waves to eventually go all the way around the world.
The whispering behind my back, the no-hire label that seemed to become affixed to any job application that I put in in
Jacksonville after the trial...
Plus, I was exposed to the additional risk of being fried in the electric chair myself, incurred after
Bobby's
lawyer decided that his best hope of getting his client off was to pin
the crime on someone else.
"Do you consider Beth
(Bobby's girlfriend, whom he would rob and kill for, in order to keep in
fancy jewelry and Dewars Scotch) attractive?"
"Yes."
"Have you ever had a crush on Beth?"
"Yes." (when she was 16, I didn't add)
"You've worked for Dominoes Pizza for quite a while, haven't you?"
"Almost ten years, at different locations"
"So, you kind of know the ins and outs of the business."
"Sure."
"Isn't it true that, a couple of weeks after this crime occured, you left Jacksonville, and went to Phoenix, Arizona?"
"Yes."
"Is it true that you dyed your hair a different color right before you left?"
"Yes, a reddish color."
"And, you were driving a cab under an assumed name, using a fraudulent license, and living in a cave in the mountains?"
"Yeah,
I had a lot of fines to pay off before I could get my regular license
reinstated, and I couldn't get a job in order to make that money without
a valid license, so yeah, it was like a Catch-22."
Another bizarre coincidence had occurred.
While I was driving a cab in
Jacksonville, I picked up a black lady, aged 28, named
Angela.
We became friendly, and soon started dating, and not long after that, I had moved into her apartment.
She was "in between boyfriends" at the time, because her boyfriend,
Maurice, was in jail, and would probably be in there for a long time, because the charge was first degree murder.
Maurice had been
Bobby's cohort.
"Where do you live now?"
"With my girlfriend in Mandarin."
"What's your girlfriend's name?"
"Angela."
"Is it Angela Washington?"
"Yes."
"And do you stay with her in apartment 1501, at 3990 Sunbeam Road, Sunbeam Apartments?"
"Yup."
"Did you know that that is where the co-defendant in this case was arrested?"
"Yeah, she told me about that, it's quite a coincidence, I guess."
"Sure, quite a coincidence. You just happened to move in with the girlfriend of the co defendant and you used to babysit the girlfriend of the defendant. I have no further questions, your honor.."
So, both sides were ruthless bastards that didn't give a shit about someone like me, as long as they could get their conviction, or get their client off the hook, by putting me in the electric chair instead.
He was preparing to argue that I somehow masterminded a way to get these guys out of the way, so I could go after their girlfriends. I guess that could raise a reasonable doubt in the mind of at least one of the jurors that were all staring at me at this point, as if ready to believe anything.
I wasn't worried because I knew what was coming.
Tatiana Rati , the prosecutor stood up, saying "I have only one question on re-direct, your honor," then looking at me, uttered the classic line, right off the script of
The Perry Mason Show:
"Where were you on the night of October 16th, 1998?"
"I was right here in the Duval County Jail, on a probation violation." (you can check the records).
A long sigh of exasperation from the jury box, and heads shaking in disbelief, probably over their time having been wasted, was about all I noticed, as I was being led out of the courtroom, and back to the holding cell, where
George Beteh's assistant basically told me "good job," and added: "I think you'll find that that fraud charge is going to be swept under the rug when you come back to court."
I was brought back to court the following morning where any charges that they had been ostensibly holding me on (so they hadn't had to put me up in a hotel and give me an expense account for food and other necessities while the trial proceedings dragged on) were summarily dismissed.
By that same afternoon, I was back in
Angela's arms.
Had I known what I do now, I would have opted for the electric chair, over
Angela Washington, but
The Angela Story will have to wait, for now.
