Thing Still Imminent

Having gotten the stimulus check has had the somewhat predictable effect of putting my mind into a whirl, with the emotions that come with having spending money.
Balance that against the long suffering need for stability, and security, etc., and I decided to not cash the thing right away.
Instead I tried to maintain my frugal lifestyle, but started to write down things on a sheet of paper that I taped to my door.
The first item on the list was "scotch tape." I ran out of that item while using the last piece to affix the list to the door....
The second thing was toilet paper.
It will cost me about 100 dollars just to bring my apartment back to the condition it was in when I was busking regularly.
I had managed to run out of q-tips for cleaning Harold's ears, toothpaste, razors, toilet bowl deodorizing thing that you clip to the inside of the bowl...
I got a new knife, mostly for cutting up apples, these days, but the handle had fallen off the cheap one that I had been using for about 2 years, as if on cue; the day the check arrives, the handle falls off my knife.

Kevin Bape, to join us on drums(?)

I worked a little more on the story about "The Thing," at least getting to the part of the action where "the thing" actually takes place.
But, it is Friday afternoon, and my phone is chiming with news from Jacob, I imagine, about our planned jam today.
Supposedly Kevin Bape, a drummer friend of his, might join us. He is a hip hop artist, and so it could be interesting, or it could suck...

Thing On The Way

Am still working on the story about The Thing.
The problem I have been having is that I try to write an introduction to set up the story and that winds up being a couple thousand words and I am out of energy and haven't gotten to the story, yet, at that point.
It's OK because I am not going to advertise the stories existence until it is complete; by putting a link on Facebook, or something.

The Story of "The Thing."

In the fall of 1995, I was driving a Yellow Cab in Jacksonville, Florida.

It had been a very easy job to get. The "Drivers Wanted" sign in front of their sprawling property, that looked like equal parts taxi company and Crown Victoria junkyard, wasn't kidding.

3 of their drivers had recently been murdered, when I came along and got hired on the spot.

The story was that there was some new gang in town that had an initiation requirement that the prospective member have to murder someone in order to pass muster.

I guess the cowardly way that some of them hired a cab to bring them to the east side of the city, where there was nothing but a dock by the river, and then shot the drivers in the back of their heads, was not held against the new members "credibility."

That was the story from the Yellow cab people, at least. Not to worry, it's not generally a dangerous job, it's just that this gang is making it look so...

But, my mission was to drive the hell out of a cab until I had enough money to buy any kind of little 4 cylinder car, in order to go back to the relative sanity of delivering pizza, and possibly living in that car until the next goal of finding a place was realized.

I had a car in early 1995, before I had gone to jail for 28 days for growing marijuana plants on federal land. But that car had been stolen by the very person whom I had called from the jail to ask if he would go and retrieve it from the parking lot where it, and I had been sitting, when I got arrested.

I knew that the thing would be towed and impounded at one of several junkyards that contracted with the police -junkyards where the impounded vehicles, very frequently had had their stereo systems stolen out of them, somewhere between the spot where the driver was arrested and the junkyard -but not within the junkyard- despite the little pieces of audio wire laying right around where the vehicle is sitting in the junkyard. "You can file a police report..." type of thing.

So, I had taken a chance on calling my roommates at the time, after having signed paperwork to "release" my car keys to them, from out of the property that I had had on me when arrested.

They stole the thing, and sold it for cash to a neighbor, who was about to leave Florida (probably due to a warrant for him being issued) and head back to Rhode Island, where he, and his wife and 2 young kids, had come from. A car would be very helpful to him, once he got there.

These were my roommates, and friends (who had extended the invitation to me to live with them while I checked out Jacksonville, Florida and,"Who knows; you might like it here and decide to get a job and stay!" And if there is any viable defense for their actions, it might be that the "normal" penalty for cultivating marijuana on federal property started somewhere around 3 years and increased from there, depending upon the weight of the confiscated bud, and my friends could have conceivably thought that I was going to be gone for a long, long time, so, why not sell my car for cash to someone; it would mean a weekend, or maybe two of partying; beer, weed, barbecue pork, maybe a little bit of cocaine; hell yeah, sell the car!

So, my friends really might have thought that I would be locked up for a long time, and that my car would sit in their driveway the whole time, and probably wouldn't even start by the time I returned from prison.

But the very harshness of those penalties was what caused the state to not want to prosecute me for what had amounted to a half dozen one foot high plants, that I had scattered along a river bank in the Jennings State Forest, where I jogged along the sand roads frequently.

itself, even if there are scraps of audio wire laying about on the ground right around where the impounded car sat, waiting for its owner to get out of jail.

But, in the case of myself, I benefited from the fact that the charge of cultivating marijuana on federal property entailed a lengthy

I had a warrant put out on me after it was discovered that I was growing pot in the Jennings State Forest, which was right down the street from the house where I lived with the very guy and his family.

They had been my friends in Massachusetts, who had moved to Florida after the very same guy had slipped and fallen on some ice in the apartment complex where we lived, and then had enlisted the help of a very appropriately tagged "slip and fall" attorney, and had sued the place, to the tune of $25,000 dollars.

The same guy (who is a Facebook friend of mine, now 30 years later, and probably thinks that I have no idea to this day who stole my car, back in 1995, but I do) also had another accident, where he cut one of his fingers off, using a piece of equipment at the factory where he worked.

As he told that story, the business, which manufactured caskets, by the way, had just hired a new employee whom this guy was training to run this particular machine which chopped pieces of velvet into sections that were used to line the caskets.

He was in the middle of explaining to the guy how important it was to be very careful not to put his fingers too close to the part that did the actual cutting of the velvet.

"You want to be really careful not to put your fingers too close to the-" and then; whomp! off came the ring finger on this guy's right hand, serving as a very persuasive visual representation of what might happen should the new guy not heed his advice.

"The new guy quit right then and there," said the guy, whose name I am resisting mentioning. Although I might just do a "find and replace" of every instance of "this guy" and replace it with "Jesse" after I'm done with this story.

That particular episode netted him another $75,000 dollars.

He then decided to leave the state of Massachusetts, where lawsuits were the bread and butter of so many people, back in the 1980's, with people seeing that a jar of mayonnaise, maybe, had broken upon the floor of a major chain supermarket and then faking an accident, filing a lawsuit, etc. etc. etc.

Maybe they even had a partner intentionally drop the jar on the floor, as part of a tried and true system for getting over on the system.

It's amusing that the far left leaning Jean Broughey Dean, who has recently unfriended me on Facebook lives in that "bleeding heart liberal" state.

The term "welfare queen" may as well have originated there.

I lived in the same apartment complex as Jesse, and the apartment above me was inhabited by one Puerto Rican lady who had something like 11 children by about 5 different fathers, was married to none of them, and was collecting about $8,500 per month for her troubles.

Add to that the boyfriends who periodically came to stay with her, with payments of food and money and gifts being part of the deal -a lot of these guys with more of a sexual interest in her children, who ranged in age from infant to up to around 15- and this lady was doing pretty well, considering her apartment was free to her, as a single mom, struggling to raise a family.

Once her girls got to be old enough to have children of their own (12, or 13) then they siezed the opportunity to go out on their own, or to add their own kids to the role call of dependents for the mother.

The lady may just have been an illegal immigrant on top of it all.

She drove a Mercedes.

She would kick guys out if they ran out of money. Money that they had gotten for either slipping and falling, or after suffering some similar mis-fortune.

But they would have had a good run of staying in the apartment above me and having sex with the ladies children before it was time for them to get out there and slip and fall again.

This was the culture. Massachusetts was a very "liberal" state.

After The Donald was elected, I kind of smiled to myself at the thought of the Lejti's of the world (as that was her name, as phonetically close as I can get it) getting their just dues, for having had such a free ride and having screwed the system over so shamelessly for so many years. Her, and who knows how many other thousands of people.

While the U.S. born citizen paid the tab through higher tax rates, higher insurance rates and a higher instance of being victimized by her morally depraved children, which is a whole other slant, beyond the scope of this post.

It sure was a good opportunity for a pedophile to have sex with a 13 year old Puerto Rican prostitute though. Massachusetts was a haven for them. The guy wouldn't even need to wear a condom because there was no such thing as an unwanted pregnancy for these children of illegal immigrants, bend upon taking advantage of "the system" for all it was worth.

So, I sarcastically say that it is a shame that Trump is trying to build a wall to keep the Lettie's of the world out of our country (did I say "our?" I'm sorry; I didn't mean to sound white-ly supreme) and to deport the likes of Lettie. And to keep the 13 year old hooker offspring of the Lettie's of the world separated from their Lettie's in detention camps where they might be at risk of being raped, but not making a dime off it. That is just cruel...

Oh, but this is a story about "The Thing," and I have digressed.

So, my car had been stolen by my "friend," whose family I was staying with, in Florida, after they had invited me to move there, after I had called them to see how they were doing.

They were doing alright. They had bought a house, after putting 7 thousand dollars down on it.

That was 7 thousand dollars that was left out of the 100 thousand that Jesse had gotten in insurance settlements.

The couple had gone to Florida and, I guess while they were shopping for a house had gone through a lot of money, visiting Disneyland, getting a makeover for the wife, Donna, and using about 200 dollars a day in cocaine, to celebrate the blessing of money that had come into their lives.

After weeks of partying and champagne and caviar, it was time for them to get serious, and think about the future, and put 7 thousand dollars down on a $50,000 dollar property -a house, which kind of resembled a trailer without wheels, on a plot of land which was just one foot above being swampland; which had the scrub pines cleared off of it, and was 30 miles outside of Jacksonville.

There, they had begun their lives.

Then, I had called from Massachusetts.

I was living in my car.

And, though I had parents who were from a different generation; like the one that Archie Bunker sang "Didn't need no welfare state; everybody pulled his weight" about, and they had sent me to private schools at a great cost to them; I just hadn't gotten the full memo -maybe my folks were too politically correct to spell it out for me, but I just hadn't stayed the course.

I hadn't gotten a degree in chemistry or law and then followed through and landed a job with a good company; the "full time job; with benefits" that my father preached about, unless I had some other stroke of genius and thought I could do better.

But, I had this dream of being an artist and a musician and dwelling in a world that I would be in, but not of. Maybe I should have become a priest.

But, I packed up my station wagon on a cold November day in 1993, and headed south, to go live with my friends, who had moved out of Massachusetts after having successfully worked the slip and fall game in that most liberal of states.

OK, back to "the thing."

...driving a cab in the fall of 1995.

My car had been stolen by a guy who had been letting me live in his house, 29 miles outside of Jacksonville, and so, after I got out of jail, after serving 28 days for growing marijuana in the Jennings State Forest -an offense that could have been handed over to the federal court, with a lengthy prison sentence imposed, but wasn't, due to the very small amount of plant matter involved- I learned that the car had not been recovered by my friends and secured in their driveway, but had rather been sold by them. The guy wasn't a good liar.

Jesse, as that was his name, had indeed driven it to the house, after I had released the keys to it, out of my "property" that was being kept at the jail i.e. everything in my pockets upon being arrested that I wasn't allowed to have in my cell (not much use for a set of car keys in cell block C) but, after having gotten it to the house, and since he and Donna already had a car; they sold it to someone, most likely because the title to it was in the glove box because I had recently bought it; and really had no other place to store the thing, being "on the run" from the warrant for cultivating marijuana on federal property, and living in the thing; while I scrambled to acquire an ID in another name, so I could slip back into society.

I just wasn't into the slip and fall game and I certainly didn't want to work at some job which was high paying on the surface but which was brought back to earth by the high cost of living entailed by supporting the Lettie's that flocked there to have their children and become parasites.

offering me a room to rent rather cheaply.

"Who knows, you might like it here and want to get a job and stay," Jesse had said over the phone; when I called to see how they were doing.

I wasn't doing well in Massachusetts. Taxes were so high (for some reason) that the state had picked up the nickname "Taxachusetts" as well as insurance rates (for some reason) and rents (because those who paid them had to pick up the slack for all those on welfare) were so high, that it really wasn't a good state for a white man to live in, unless he had a college degree in chemistry or computer science. Plus, it got very cold in the winter.

But it was a Democrat state; probably the most Democrat of all fifty of them.

A white man, born there needed

with access to their pretty daughters, one of which was 12 and the other 7, with neither being the offspring of my friend; the one who stole my car.

and head back to the place of his birth, which was Florida.

He had come into enough money at that point to buy himself out of whatever trouble had caused him to flee the sunshine state and move up north in the first place; probably a lot of child support payments in arrears, and possibly some monetary restitution for whatever his other sins had brought upon him.

I guess it seemed like chump change to a man who had become enriched by over a hundred grand, in one fell swoop and another

It had been really easy to get a job driving a Yellow Cab, because 3 of their drivers had recently been murdered; part of some gang's initiation rite, is what the gossip was...

But, I was working in the middle to upper class neighborhoods, so I never picked up a fare in the ghetto and dropped them off along the docks of the east side, where the 3 drivers had been found.
Actually one of them survived and had severe brain damage as a result of his encounter; something that prompted the other drivers to comment upon how the company carried no kind of insurance against such a thing, and how the guy was shit-out-of-luck and at the mercy of whatever kind of health care is available to the poor huddled masses, in the greatest country in the world...

There were times when I picked up a fare in the nice neighborhoods, and transported them to the east side. But, after having conversed with me along the ride and determined that I was 
, which I also slept in, having strategic locations at all four corners of that largest city in the nation. One by the ocean, one by the zoo, another one , which is the largest in the nation; edging Phoenix, Arizona out, I believe.

It had been very easy to get a job working for Yellow Cab because 3 of their drivers had recently been murdered in the city. Supposedly there was a gang in the city that had, as one of its qualifications for membership, the requirement that the applicant have killed someone.
by whom they suspected were gang hopefuls, who were using the situation in order to graduate from their initiation process.  A particular gang required that

I would be sitting in my Yellow Cab cab, in the parking lot of Mandarin Trace apartments.
I delivered pizza out of the Mandarin Dominos after I had first came to Florida in late 1993, and it was only after some misfortune had befallen me that I would fall back upon the next best resource (behind the car) that I had, which was a valid license, and would drive a cab.
But, cab driving can be a dangerous job, but this is to a large degree a result of cab drivers trying to be all things to all people and working in zones in which they are like a shark out of water, so to speak.
There are areas where, a heroin addict, for example will have on his short list of where to get money when he was feeling sick and just couldn't take it any more, of, just call a cab, and rob the driver. A guy wouldn't want to lease a cab in Jacksonville, and then just work the entire city. The cab drivers who would not have to worry about this guy robbing him would be the ones who worked that "zone" regularly, and this would almost certainly be because that is where they lived, when not driving a cab. There would be few white drivers who would want to work certain all black zones, these would be like the Jim Carey's of cab drivers; white guys who qualified as the one white guy that the blacks had a stomach for, in the name of "equality," or something.
These guys would be packing heat, though, and it would be known that they were armed, etc.
I, on the other hand, would be sitting in Mandarin, which was a white middle class area, where the houses were big, and the inhabitants of which seemed to shrug off their mortgage payments, then go about adorning their places with expensive flags and lawn ornaments.
Many of the houses had boats sitting under canvas in the driveway, and, although I have come to see this as being endemic to a class of people that I was raised among and, as such, it is lamentable; they would order a lot of pizza and other foods to be delivered to their homes. They were the 10%, who made enough money to feel that throwing it around (read: flushing it down the toilet) was the way to go.
And so, paying $16.83 for an order of food which cost Dominos $2.83 in ingredients to make, just so they wouldn't have to do anything except wait for the guy to come and give him the money, was common in Mandarin.
Since I had delivered pizza in the same area, any call for a cab which came in for that zone would be from an address that I could invariably find before any other cab driver, especially one who had to glance at a map before heading to pick up a fare.
People would call all three of the cab companies, knowing that they were reducing their waiting time to the lowest denominator of whichever one gets there first (the other two cab drivers would be informed, probably by a house mate's stepping outside and doing the 'cutting the throat' sign, as a way of communicating: "He already left and/or we no longer need a cab because a friend just called who has a car and said he would take us, type of thing) and so, having the map firmly etched in my head from pizza delivery, I was in a good strategic location for flagging down any calls from Mandarin, and providing the people with good service. The white, middle class people, of course.

People in Mandarin, who, like myself, were there because they couldn't deal with the lifestyle of what was downtown, found in me a link to that existence, which turned into things like, my bringing the son of a wealthy couple who were out of town for the weekend, down the the corner of 3rd and Duval Streets to score crack, so he could return to the mansion and blaze away.
These people were, self admittedly, too socially in-adept to go down to the hood and "deal with a nigga, one on one" trying to get a fair deal on some dope, when everything from their haircut, to their brand of pull-over sweater screams: "If you take my money, I will just go get some more from the bank; I'll be more scared, than anything."
So, basically, they would see the cab drivers as being kind of a bridge to the underworld. Because, even if the driver planned upon working in the upper class zones, he would invariably pick up a fare who was en-route from one of those nice neighborhoods, with his destination being the hood.
I can remember one occasion when I picked up a young black girl from a nice house in Mandarin, and wound up dropping her off (a pretty decent fare away) in some complex where she instructed me to do a full circle around the parking lot before she got out, so she could survey it for potential predators.
But, then there were people like Tim and Veronica.
I was sitting in the Woods of Mandarin parking lot one night, when, up walked a guy, who turned out to be Tim.

He was kind of a Chuck Norris looking guy, especially in the face; tall and rather large and dressed in a button-up shirt and slacks and shoes; like someone who at least had ties to the business world.


Veronica was his girlfriend, She had one of the prettiest faces I have ever seen. She was short, maybe three quarters of Tim's height, and weighed no more than 95 pounds. She had a ready smile, which was as sly as it was pretty.

She soon was at the side of Tim, who was trying to hire my cab for a run to a certain area of Phillip's Highway, about 4 miles away, and back.

Tim and I soon negotiated a fare for a round trip, and we were on our way to do "the thing,' although, I wouldn't dub it that until about the 10th performance of it.


Tim and Veronica were "crackheads," but one would never get away with calling them that, because they were above that. Theirs was an entirely different culture than that of those who frequented crack houses, and immersed themselves in the collective depravity of the society there.

Tim would buy powdered cocaine and then turn it into crack using the stove at his apartment. This would yield a high grade product that's ingredients were not a mystery, such as in what one might buy off the street.

Veronica had found a good man in Tim.
He was from a pretty affluent family. His parents owned a large house by the river.


I imagine that Tim had probably been kicked out of the big house, by the river. And this, after friction had probably resulted from his crack smokings
.
But, he had the mannerisms, typical of a private school educated kid, and this allowed us to establish an instant rapport, when he approached me, as I sat in the parking lot of the apartment "village" where he and Veronica had a sparsely appointed apartment.

They had the kitchen, with its stove, in an otherwise barren studio. This is where they cooked up their crack (but don't call it that). The stove was kind of the centerpiece of the place, in this regard.
And, the bedroom was a mattress on the floor in the back room with a couple books and sundry items, along with an alarm clock, scattered around it.

The thing had become a nightly ritual for Tim and Veronica.

My introduction to it was when I brought them up to the spot on Phillip's Highway that is known to be frequented by hookers.
There, we would drop Veronica off where the hookers frequently walk before retreating to the other side of the road about a hundred yards away, where I would sit in the cab and Tim would usually stand outside of, so as to get a better view.
Then, we would watch as some guy took the bait and a car would stop in front of Veronica. I would come to refer to them as "gators."

Veronica would then start to spin a yarn to the gator.

She would say that she and her boyfriend had just had a fight, and that she had fled him after he had started to become violent. She would then go on to say that all she wanted to do was to get a room at the nearby Comfort Inn, and that, if the gator would spring for the 69 dollars or so for it, she would be appreciative to the point of inviting him to visit her in that room.

If the gator fell for it, Veronica would be getting into his vehicle; which we would immediately take up following in the cab.
This was to make sure that he was doing as told, by Veronica and would be driving her to the Comfort Inn.
Any deviation from this course would mean that the gator had gotten a wild hare and had decided to spirit Veronica off to somewhere, thus taking control of the situation, perhaps because he was a serial rapist and/or killer of prostitutes, as are so common.
In this case, the full capacity of the Crown Victoria that I drove (with its "state police" package that included a powerful 4.9 liter engine, along with beefed up suspension to include "roll bars") would become utilized, as I would basically tail the gators vehicle until such a point where he came to a red light or something, whereupon Tim would jump out of the cab and reclaim Veronica
ostensibly for him to transport her to the Comfort Inn, where he would hand her the money for the room, she would instruct him to park where he could see the front desk from his vehicle, so that, after she had rented the room, he could go in and inquire of the front desk person which room whatever name she gave him was staying in.

go in and rent it, and then, after seeing 
 had a sort of routine, that involved the complicity and availability of a cab driver, that involved Veronica being placed upon a certain stretch of Phillips Highway which was known far and wide as being "where the hookers are" in Jacksonville, and then waiting for some guy to take the bait.

Veronica would then, under the watchful eye of Tim and myself a hundred yards away, start to spin a yarn to the guy.
She was quite an actress.
She would tell the guy (I started to refer to the marks as "gators") 

I remember the first time that I drove them there, to do the thing.

It hadn't been dubbed "The Thing," yet. I wouldn't do so until about the dozenth performance of it.

I was sitting in the cab that time, parked in a spot that I had made my regular place for just sitting and resting, or waiting for a fare.

But also with the intention of making the big yellow car visible from Tim and Veronica's apartment window.  

 it was his upbringing; how he most assuredly went to private schools his whole life, probably finished with pretty good grades, wound up with a pretty easy and well paying job (

A 3,979 Word Addendum To A 3,850 Word Story

Why Not 2K?

My previous post of 3,965 words, which was, initially intended to be about my having started a batch of home brewed "lockdown" apple wine, turned into a flashback of when I was jailed in late 1999 into 2000 and had me nodding off at the keyboard as I neared the end of it.

I made sure that it had a beginning and and end, then hit the publish button, before flopping backwards onto the bed, where I slept, until well into the next day.

After perusing it the next morning, I discovered fewer mistakes than I might have expected, given that I kind of wrote "full steam ahead" without ever going back to proof read, but there were a handful.

Plus, I had forgotten to include the actual story, which I had set out to write.

It was like going to a store to get one thing, and forgetting it, only to come out with a cart full of other stuff. 3,850 words worth of it.

I never got to the anecdotes which stemmed from being locked up as a "material witness" for 123 days, from October 27th, when it began in Federal Way, Washington, to February 28th, 2000; when they let me out (because they couldn't legally hold me any longer) with plans to re-arrest me on any old charge, so I would be locked up and available to testify on their behalf, a capture which I managed to elude for about 2 months, while driving a Yellow Cab, using the identity of a deceased friend of mine, for which I had a "valid" Florida license.

Those two months saw the introduction of the complication that ensued after I picked up a 28 year old black lady, named Angela Washington, in my cab, whom I wound up dating, and then moving in with.

She was in between boyfriends because her prior one, a guy named Maurice, was going to be away indefinitely. This was because he, coincidentally (if you believe in those things) was the co-defendant in the murder trial of the guy that I was supposed to testify against. If they could locate me.

My plan was to keep driving the cab, and staying with Angela, while keeping an eye upon the progress of the trial (which had already been moved from January back to February, then March (whereupon they had to release me) and then April, then May...

This was due to their having trouble locating witnesses (go figure) and/or getting them to show up for depositions and such.  I'm sure the State's Attorney, George Beteh, wished he could just keep them all locked in the jail, as material witnesses, until he needed them.

But, for the most part, they had jobs and families.  My status as "a homeless drifter" made George feel at liberty to take my freedom away from me at will, just for the purpose of his prosecution.

And so, I fought back, injustice for injustice, by committing identity fraud and driving a cab right under their noses.


Story Within The Story #1: A Bottle of Pop

But, before they let me out in late February, my cellmate at the Duval County Jail had been a guy name Prevarian Reese. If his mother gave him that first name so that everyone who ever met him would remember it for the rest of their lives, then she succeeded, in my case, at least.

He was a light skinned black kid, kind of small, maybe about 5' 7'' and 125 pounds, who had a wild hairstyle which made me think that he might have worn dreadlocks on the street, and then had picked them out, during his "free" time at the jail.

But, he was about 19, and was probably in there for the same reason as me, which was in order to secure him, while he was waiting to testify against a bigger fish than he, probably to get his own sentence reduced.

About this, he was not telling anyone, because nobody likes a "snitch" in jail. Somebody his size, who was also there to rat on someone else already had two strikes against him.

I didn't have the same concerns, because the guy I was going to testify against had murdered a guy in cold blood, and a photo of the victim posing with his wife and young daughter had been splashed all over the news, making him Public Enemy #1.

Plus, Bobby (Quesnel) the killer, had only been in Florida a couple months, before the crime; not long enough to become affiliated with any gangs. Somewhere on that 8th floor was Maurice, waiting to testify against his "buddy," and probably homesick and dreaming about Angela, whom I wouldn't meet for a couple months...

So, Prevarian was placed in the same pod where I was, which was like a country club, compared to what was just a few floors above us, for his own protection.

But, I learned a lot about him because, since he couldn't read or write, I would transcribe letters that he would dictate to me, to be sent to his girlfriend, whom he called "baby mama," or his mother, whom he called "mama."
I would occasionally suggest a word or phrase, being careful not to make them sound like they were being written by a Prevarian imposter.

It turned out that I had a pretty vivid picture of the neighborhood where the Reese's lived; because I used to by pot there, maybe even from him, when he was disguised by dread locks. It helped me to compose the letters -being able to picture the neighborhood...


Prevarian and I had often shared the fruit wine that I brewed in the cell.

Brewing it was yet another way for me to fight back at the system: "A toast; to George Beteh!"

I especially remember the batch that I had started in the middle of December, to be ready for the big celebration of New Year's Eve, 1999.

He had removed the mat from his bunk, so we could stand on the rack and gaze through the narrow horizontal slit of plexiglass, which was our window, to watch the fireworks exploding over the St. John's River. From our vantage point, it seemed like we were almost eye level with them.

As we prepared to count down the end of 1999, we were also curious to see if the power would go out, and then jet airplanes would begin to nose-dive to the earth, while intercontinental ballistic missiles shot out of the underground silos at the nearby Roosevelt Air Force Base, and streaked skyward, passing by the incoming ones from Russia on the way out.

It was "Y2K," after all.

The computers in the jail going on the fritz, causing all the doors in the place to pop open at midnight, with the guards unable to coordinate a response because their walkie talkies were just flashing "12:00" would have been nice, in addition to the other things, we thought.

None of that having come to pass, we were still there in January of 2000.

By then, I had enough bottles fermenting to be able to keep us in wine at least every other night. And the jail kept the orange and apple juices coming as well as the occasional raisin topped creme filled cookies. Prunes, though, were apparently removed from the menu.

As I have said, the guards never shook down our cells looking for anything like it, since we were all there as material witnesses, and were kind of on their side, in that regard.

But still, I had devised a clever way to hide the air-tight plastic bottles with the "buck"* brewing inside them, by disguising them as rolls of toilet paper.

I would fashion a piece of cardboard into a cylinder about the right size, and then go around the outside with a few wraps of paper, so that, to the casual observer, it just looked like Prevarian and I were well stocked up on that particular item of toiletry. Even when guards did search cells, in my experience, they would kind of avoid the area of the stainless steel commode/sink/mirror -probably something to do with criminals excrement being perceived as being especially vile.

My biggest concern was having to regularly loosen the caps enough to allow the gas to escape with a hiss, reducing the pressure before the flanges around the bottom of the bottles blew outward, leaving them with elliptical shapes rather than with the fancy flanges that create the optical illusion of there being a really good 20 ounces of soda in them (more than the 20 ounces in the bottles of the competitors that don't employ such technology -it also makes the bottles easier to stack). This would coincide with a loud "ppfflapp!" sound that might arouse the curiosity of any nearby guard. If left unattended for too long, the things would explode like hand grenades spraying fermented apple shrapnel everywhere.

But, sometime in early February, I was on the docket for one of my pointless court appearances.
These were a pain in the ass to me.

I already knew that George Beteh was pulling the strings, and that, once I got to court, my case would be "continued" due to some folder not having been sent to the clerk's office, or my public defender having gotten the date wrong, or whatever. All orchestrated by the number 3 prosecutor in the state of Florida, who had his sights upon the governorship some day, probably. The freedom of a common citizen was only a drop in the bucket, compared to Mr. Beteh's zeal..

It was amazing how the public defender, whose job it was to make sure I was treated fairly, could be made to disappear for a particular reason, though, George Beteh would probably swear that there was "no collusion, no collusion at all..."

I would only be brought to court because of my "right" to a "speedy trial" and to give the outward appearance of due process being enacted. The last thing Beteh wanted to do was violate my rights, right?

It would be more accurate to say that he probably didn't want the state to be held liable, should I decide to sue them for false imprisonment or something, after I got out. He wouldn't trust me not to do that, based upon the principle of "it takes one to know one," or "those who don't trust others shouldn't be trusted," type of thing...take your pick.


It's the kind of sleaziness depicted in John Grisham novels, and not so much as in the C.S.I. episodes where the public defenders are heard to bellow things in the detective's office like: "If all you got is a 3 year old worthless check, then my client is walking!!" before the client does just that, leaving the detectives shaking their heads.
Collusion!

My public defender (if he was even there) would hand me a card with the date of my next unnecessary court date on it, and would avert his eyes from mine, as he gave me the supposed reason for the delay. One of the silver linings for me in that situation would be that I would become more acute at reading the subtle signs that someone is lying to me, which might come in handy, somewhere down the line.

The ironic thing was that, even the victims of worthless check crimes would rather see the culprit out on the street where at least there is the hope that he will work (and have his wages garnished) so that he can make some monetary restitution. So, even the judge must have thought it peculiar to keep seeing my name appearing on the docket. Unless, of course the judge was in on it. But, what am I saying; that would be collusion!


So, when the day rolled around in early February, when my case was due to progress, with another visit to court, I dreaded it. Sitting on my bunk and reading a Dickens novel suddenly seemed like a vacation.

At 5 AM, the electronic door to the cell would pop open, "Mckenna, court!" would crackle through the overhead speaker, Prevarian would stir just enough to mumble "good luck," and the long day would begin. I would have let the steam off of my buck bottles right before stepping out of the cell, to join the others, in the first of many "waiting" areas.

 There is an unwritten rule in jail that you kind of watch your roommates stuff on the days that he has to go to court.
If you don't have at least this level of bonding between you, then you probably would find other cellmates.

This one would be where we would wait to be served breakfast a couple hours earlier than usual, since it would be impractical to feed us at 7 AM, with the rest of the inmates, then expect us to be ready for court a mere 2 hours later -not with all the waiting that we would have to do factored in.
My Rights
So, the pain in the ass would start for me, because I would only have the other dozen or so inmates to trade food with. I would be lucky if I could trade my green eggs for someone's oatmeal, then my milk for someone else's oatmeal, and then, if there was still an oatmeal hater left, my sausages for his oatmeal. I stayed my most healthy while incarcerated, by living off as much oatmeal as possible. It was as much due to my not eating the green eggs and greasy soymeal sausages nor drinking the cow's milk that I stayed in good spirits and health; but oatmeal is a wonder food.

Then the dozen of us would be daisy-chained together at the ankles, and the wrists, with a chain joining us all. For any one of us to make a dash for freedom, it would require the cooperation of the whole dozen, and our ability to run a twisted variation of the "three-legged race" that none of us had probably practiced since 5th grade. (Or, in Prevarian's case, since whatever grade he dropped out of).

If there was anything redeeming in the trips to the courthouse, it was in being able to see through the back window of the van that brought us to the jail, through the metal grate, and to be able to catch glimpses of the outside world, and see people going through their daily walks of life.

A lot of these people looked pretty miserable. Getting out of their cars, putting coins in the parking meter, frowning at their wrists, looking tired and disheveled. Sometimes the van would stop in traffic right in front of a bar that I would wistfully gaze at, remembering the beer and the game of darts that I once had, in another life. I would be happy to be out there, even if it meant I was just starting a work day at a job I didn't like; that I would leave at the end of the day and be free; until the next morning.

And I would see people trundling along, looking almost suicidal...Why don't any of them at least glance at the van and think: "At least I'm not in jail?"
At least I'm not handcuffed to a half dozen strangers, squinting into a sun that I haven't seen rise in weeks...

"Yeah, they have a lot to be miserable about..."

Of course, I wanted to yell: "Hey, do you want to switch places?!?"
I'll take your lousy job, your car that has a bearing about to go out, and your house with the cockroaches in the kitchen, along with your freedom, and you can sit here on the hard, wooden bench, crushed like a sardine between a wife beater and a small-time cocaine dealer. You say you took the gold ribbon in the three legged race, back in 6th grade? Hey, now!!

Then, the person on their way to wait tables through another hectic morning can instead worry about clutching on to the wife beater for dear life every time the van careened around a corner, or defeated the purpose of a speed bump...
Because if one falls face first, everybody goes with him.

It seemed like the drivers of the vans would take the corners extra viciously, most likely with sneers on their faces. After a little jerk of the steering wheel, the resultant cry of "goddam!!" coming from the back must be one of the fringe benefits of working in criminal justice. This would fit the basic personality profile of many of those who aspire to work in that field, if you ask me.



And the redneck driver would only crank the Garth Brooks on the radio all the louder, after someone invariably asked: "Yo, can you put on 95.1?" Which someone invariably would.

The message seemed to be:"It was the hip hop and R&B culture that led you to where you are now. Had you been more true to God and country; mom and apple pie; the occasional rodeo, then...well, listen, he's singing about it right now, let me turn it up!"

On the rare occasion when it was a black driver, then 95.1 FM would already be on; and the ride would be smoother, actually.

And the music would sound really fresh; like the sound of freedom.

After the van came to a stop in the sally port of the courthouse, and the radio was turned off, leaving only the sound of a dozen men breathing, and since our hands were already joined by handcuffs; someone would, invariably, offer up a prayer.

"...Father, God..." they would usually start with.

And then, it was usually the same prayer; asking God to "touch the hearts of the judge and the prosecutor," which always reminded me of the adage about "closing the barn door after the horses have already gotten out."

"Father God, we ask you to touch the hearts of the judge and the prosecutor..."

What about the heart of the guy that just had surgery to repair the damage that your bullet did to it?

95% of what is going to transpire in court has already been fleshed out between the parties involved, days ago, and so it really is apropos of closing the barn door after the horses are gone. The court's disposition this morning is just going to be a formality, I wanted to say, but they were busy with Father God.

I should become a judge, there would be people praying for me every morning...

Then, as the judge was probably just waking up, we would thrown in a holding cell, together with inmates from the other floors in our jail, along with those that had been brought in from other counties.

The Trials Begin

Then, the trials would begin. The trials in the holding tank.

Mostly, it was the black guys. They would all start to blab simultaneously.

They would talk about their cases in detail, as if the rest of us were a jury. They might be trying out whatever "defense" they were going to put up, maybe practicing what to say in front of the judge; or maybe just airing it in front of others, to see if it sounds as ridiculous as it might in the courtroom.

A lot of them admit their guilt ("of course I ain't gonna tell him that part of it...") which is just about the first thing a lawyer will tell a client not to do.

A lot of times, especially in the case of the young black guys, it sounds like they are really trying to fool themselves into thinking that they didn't do whatever it was. As if repeating; "for real, I wasn't even there that night, I'm telling you, I wasn't even there!"
"I'm so glad I hid the gun inside the TV, though, they never found that; or I'd be looking at at least 20 years!" Whew, Thank, you, Father God... 

Sometimes, it seemed like they were looking for pointers ("No, don't say that; what are you, crazy? Never tell a judge that!).

And then there were the truly pathetic ones, with no logic at all to their arguments. "Why would I steal 60 cartons of Marlboro's I smoke Newports?! It don't make no sense, right? I mean everyone knows I smoke Newports; that doesn't make no sense at all!" (no, that doesn't make no sense at all...)

Most of the white guy's would sit silently.

And, at some point, my court appointed attorney would tell me that my case had been continued. Of course it had.
I might even spend the whole enchanted day in the holding cell, watching others go and then come back, in moods that ranged from one end of the spectrum to the other.

From the ones coming out of the courtroom saying: "Thank you, Father God!" ones to, in one case a young black kid coming back, who had actually turned "white" with fear. This showed up as almost a grey color.


He had obviously had the s*** scared out of him by the justice system.

But, I sat the entire day, which turned out to be a long one.

It wasn't until after 5 PM that we returned to the jail.

So, there was Prevarian, sitting contentedly in the cell, flipping through a magazine at around 3:45 PM.
He was kind of making sure that nobody came in and messed with my stuff.
But, along with guarding my shower shoes and my pillow, he was also making sure nobody stole my apple wine in progress.


When I got back late that evening, I noticed that something was amiss.

I saw a pile of sheets and blankets just outside the doorway to our cell.
As I ascended the staircase, I started to smell the distinct odor of fermenting fruit.

I looked in the cell. Both of the bunks had been stripped down to the bare mat. Prevarian sat on his, wearing only his boxer shorts. The smell of fermenting fruit was very strong.

He was, he informed me, waiting for the trustees to bring us both fresh linen and new uniforms.

He had been sitting on his bunk, looking at the pictures in the magazine, when there was a loud popping sound, as if someone had stomped on a milk carton, only "like 5 times louder".
Prevarian was hit with some flying fermenting fruit, though, the wall right behind the commode absorbed most of the force.

He just shrugged his shoulders, when I walked in. They (the guards) hadn't even searched for and taken the other bottles, which hadn't blown up (because they were at an earlier stage of maturation).

He asked me how court had gone. I told him that it was the same B.S. that I had already expected.

I wound up getting "written up" for having contraband (to wit: alcoholic beverage) in the cell. I took full responsibility for it, which did not surprise the guards, since they had noticed how many apples I seemed to have been having given to me by other inmates, but had kind of looked the other way.
Cell life quickly returned to normal.

I would be released "on probation" in less than a month, to roam free and in violation of it for another couple months, but would be back in time for the trial, during which it would be postulated by the defense lawyer for Bobby, that I was the actual murderer.
The theory revolved around the fact that I had babysat Bobby's girlfriend when she was little, and we all lived in Massachusetts; and that I had been found living with the girlfriend of the co-defendant after I was let out of jail on probation.

But, that will have to be the next chapter: The Angela Washington chapter... 
That night, I transcribed a letter for Prevarian, that went something like: Dear baby mama. Today when I was sitting in the cell, one of my cellmates buck bottles that he was doing, blew up and got all over everything in our cell. It scared me really bad when it blew up; I didn't know what it was..
I didn't know what happened, but then I smelled the wine and saw it on the walls, running down. Now I am waiting for them to bring fresh linens so I can take a shower because I still smell like wine. We are going to be alright, though.
How are you doing....etc.

*Alcohol made in the Duval County Jail had the nickname of "buck," which I believe derives from the fact that getting drunk in there is "buck"ing the system.
In Virginia, it was called "mash"

None Of The Above

The blogger interface has a whole new look. For a while, I could see no way to create a new post.

It turns out that it is an orange circle with a + sign on it, which hovers near the bottom right corner of the screen; diametrically opposed to where the old button, which was labelled "new post" used to be.

This is supposedly intuitive to anyone who has been using applications since kindergarten, and is more of a "universal symbol," so Google won't have to translate "new post" into thousands of languages.

Still, I actually had to look up how to create a post in blogger, after having had a blog for 15 years.

Is It Just Me?

Of course the thought occurred to me that only my blog had had the new post button disabled; and my imagination ran wild, during that panic stricken few minutes...

Did someone who hates me flag my blog as inappropriate? Would that make it so I would have new posts frozen for a certain period of time, while Google's "Blogger Team" reviews the thing?

Would that bring me face to face with Chuck Kroll (aka NiteCruzer) who was leading the team ten years ago when my blog was "removed" because of "malicious code" that was found on it (It was a third party "free" hit counter that I put in my layout, which was counting the number of visitors, but also trying to invade their computers, or at the least, record all their addresses to spam them, or something).

The upshot was that, when I posted to the forum, asking for help with the problem, I seemed to have opened a can of worms by starting a new thread, when there was already a thread on the very subject.

One of the forum members, commented; "why did he start a new thread?"

To which NiteKruzer answered something I paraphrase as: "Because he's a troll. He's after all of us!"

Chuck then went on to say that "I" used to post as this other user name - an 18 digit or so name that had numbers and symbols in it, which he gave.

He then vowed to "see where else he has posted," and take some drastic action, maybe not stopping at alerting the authorities; whatever.

So, back in 2009, this was a bizarre circumstance for me.
I didn't have the wherewithal to Google: "What to do if the help forum guru thinks you're a troll and refuses to help you."

It was kind of unsettling to think that a guy, whom you would believe to be a computer genius (in order to have ascended to becoming the moderator of the Blogger help forum) is on a cyber "seek and delete" mission, intent upon putting an end to my "trolling."

It could be that the hit counter had been invented by this same troll, and maybe that was just a side project for him, and, since I had been using this totally anonymous computer at the homeless shelter; where all 55 people who use it in a given month are all seen as being the same person; where one day this user might log onto the food stamp website and put in all of her vital information, and apply for food stamps online; and then "the same person" logs on again the next morning and applies using totally different information, and is approved.

Not to mention this person having 55 different e-mail accounts....

It is easy to imagine how this computer might become infected with stuff; stuff that is even out of the "purview" of Chuck Kroll, aka. NiteCruzer.

He thought I was a troll; yet, I knew that he was an idiot, because I wasn't.

An idiot, at least, when it came to being able to weed a troll out from someone who just used an infected computer, and had a malicious hit counter on his blog.

So, I decided to just leave Chuck Kroll alone.

I think I took the precaution using a different e-mail account, then started another blog (this one).

I guess the fallout from the Kroll thing is that I back up the blog more frequently now; never leaving more than a megabyte on the table, so to speak...

But, about 5 years ago, I see the smiling face of Chuck Kroll, of Menendez, California, and it is an invitation to be his friend on Facebook.

I wondered if he wanted to apologize, maybe say that he has since then, read my blog out of sympathy for how he had mislabeled me and cost me 3 years worth of blog posts.

Or, if he was still after me, but needed access to some of my facebook-friend-only data, so that he could ramp up his troll hunt and shut me down for good; the end of this, or any other blog on Blogger for me...

I decided to leave Chuck Kroll's friend request "unconfirmed."
Can You Describe Him?
And I am trying to figure out if there is a way to bring up old unrequited friend requests on Facebook, so I can at least post a shot of Chuck here.

He had a shaven head and looked to be in his mid 40's and I guess resembled Rick Nielsen of the (late 70's through 2 years ago) band Cheap Trick, as much as any celebrity I can think of...

Answer To Comment

 Having gotten this comment from Alex in California, I realized that A: He no longer reads this blog, because I did a whole post about the"non filers" stimulus check, and:
B: I might actually get the thing, and maybe sooner than I think.

I was able to find Alex's new blog, which he never disclosed the name of to me, by merely doing a Metacrawler search, filtered by geographic region (central California) time (past 48 hours) and by looking for documents that contained any or all of the terms, "chicory" "Ken" "ebay" and/or: "Ms. Crackhead."


Out of something like 23 billion pages published recently (which it supposedly only took 43 seconds to "crawl") Alex in California's blog contained the only instance of the term "Ms. crackhead" (case insensitive) being used. Sometimes it seems like a small web...I didn't even have to use "contains all or some of the following." "Ms. Crackhead" was the ticket. 

Now it is about noon on this Thursday, and I guess it will be time to check the mailbox soon. My sister said she was going to send me money, but that entails her buying a stamp and an envelope, and that is something that I once procrastinated (in between plumb forgetting about) over for weeks; when I wanted to send Howard Westra a letter....

But, I suppose I will see which comes first, her letter, or the stimulus check, or if it will be none of the above...

I am about to hop on a bike and go to get a can of cat food for Harold.

I have also been thinking that, should I get an economic stimulus check, I am going to buy Harold some of that 40 dollar per bag stuff, as opposed to the $16.99 bag of Friskies™ that has been his staple.

He also has what feels like a swollen gland, or maybe ever a tumor, along the side of his spine, which seems to only be about the size of a two inch long stick of licorice. But, it basically feels like the swollen lymph glands which I would also get, at times when I had been trying to live off a steady diet of things like white bread, and partially hydrogenated soybean oil.

Harold likes to go under the cars that are in the parking lot, and has hence acquired a slight staining of the fir on the top of his back, which is like the color of automotive grease, mixed with the yellowish tan of his fir.

This is also about where a gland might be which has been triggered to produce antibodies, or whatever, in response to a persistent irritant like car oil, transmission and/or brake fluid, some gasoline, and radiator liquid; can't forget that, when dealing with the cars that these Sacred Heart residents can barely afford.

Left: Elvis Costello, broadcasting from his house...

But, Harold barely touched a $1.79 (compared to .55¢ Friskies) can of some "wilderness" blend of food which, I believe had ingredients like pheasant and quail, and duck, -stuff that a cat like Harold might actually bag, out in the wild. ...venison...peas and carrots.

It seems that Harold loves the "indoor" varieties of foods, even though he spends about half his time outside, under cars.

These foods are supplemented with a lot of greens, ostensibly to make up for the lack of opportunity to eat grass and other leaves, outside.
So, I don't have to give Harold the indoor variety because he can get plenty of greens outside. But, I figured out that, eating greens is perhaps Harold's favorite reason for going outside, so much does he seem to like them. So, I continue the feast on them even when he is inside.

But, the COVID-19 thing has actually forced me into feeding Harold stuff that he is only lukewarm on, but will eat after staging a protest which could last about 5 minutes, involving standing next to the food and meowing.

But, the fact that he has more readily eaten stuff like tuna fish straight out of the 88 cent can, purchased with food stamps by an owner too broke to buy Friskies, makes me think that this might be an opportunity to transition him to a diet of much more healthy cat food.

Right: I've been watching a lot of Eckhart Tolle videos, or just listening to them, as I lie down...

I still want to do some research, though. I strongly suspect that the plethora of exotic flavors, are meant to lure their owners, who are of the millenial generation and thus are susceptible to being sold on such things as duck and shrimp in a carrot and squash bisque. Their pets might me fine with a can of Friskies "sea captain's catch" where what is in the nets that "the captain" hauls in will vary (and there might randomly be some duck and shrimp in it) but will meet certain nutritional standards; and will probably just have some ingredient added that will "make cats eat it."

I'm even starting to look like the guy...

So, in the meantime, I have started another drawing.

I still have plenty of kratom, and the prospect of waiting another 40 hours or so for my food money to come in is not that daunting at all.
If I get busy with any number of projects, I might just spend the whole 40 hours on whatever it is...
The latest story only needs one more paragraph to cap it off where it is...