College Kids Of Color Come Calling

I guess that explains why there were police at every street corner all along the trolley tracks that I rode into the Quarter, and then at every corner all along Royal Street.

A stop at the Unique Grocery, to spend a couple of the 3 dollars that I was down to, after having messed up and drank that (Satur)day was the occasion of a young black kid standing in front and yelling at the security guy inside to take off his badge and his gun and to come outside and fight the guy, who had been caught trying to shoplift or something; maybe he thought it to be peaceful looting.

Whatever it was, the security guard was being accused of being "prejudiced" and the kid maintaining that the only reason the guard was exerting force over him, i.e. kicking him out of the store, was that he had a gun on him. Had he been unarmed, the kid would have stayed in the store and stolen whatever he wanted, I guess was his point. Darned gun...

This is what tipped me off and reminded me that it was indeed the time of the annual football game between the two "black" colleges, Grambling and Southern University. There has been at least one shooting every one of the 12 years that I have been here and have either played of not played during that weekend.

Two years ago (last time because of missing a year because of the ooga booga) I just took the night off. "I don't blame you," said Tim the security guy up front.

But, I could also remember a year when I made something like 85 bucks because I was doing white boy music and kids respected the fact that I wasn't trying to pander like other buskers who were breaking out their lame versions of Motown stuff, which just seemed to get a lot of head shakes; and no tips. Then, of course they started to hate "all these f*** n***s" and of course it was down hill from there. But there has been an annual shooting, usually in the vicinity of where fried chicken is sold, or by the Krystals...

 This is the way that those scholars typically act each year. It seems that alcohol has a more debilitating effect upon African Americans. Probably because their mothers drank and did drugs while pregnant with them, unable to go nine hours, never mind nine months without getting some kind of buzz to cope with the stress of being pregnant.

The new phone arrives; will it have better sound recording capabilities?

But, this is the pot calling the kettle black perhaps, as I was in the store to get my own can of what turned out to be Old Milwaukee beer, a brew that I haven't had since 1989. I remember that time; I had gotten a 24 pack of the stuff and was carrying it to my apartment in a complex which was half U Mass college students, and the rest, low income and welfare people. It made for a unique environment, where most of the college kids had no idea that their neighbors were trading food stamps for hard drugs and living off welfare, having kids out of wedlock who wound up becoming currency in the sex trade as soon as they reached their teen age years...

The college kids went to the bus stop, carrying their books, and every couple days, one of the apartments in the place would have its windows open with loud music coming out, and the place full of dancing kids, wherein there would be a few kegs of beer.

The skeezer element would try to befriend these kids, and it created a kind of symbiotic relationship between everyone. Crime was relatively low because the welfare people knew a golden goose when they saw one, and there wouldn't be any violence directed at the college kids, even though it might be happening in the next apartment over from them..

So, I was carrying my 24 pack and this certain white guy whom I had seen around and knew only through smoking weed approached.

I sold weed to a guy who knew him. That is usually the only bridge between the college kids and the other society. If the college kid wanted to smoke wee, then the twain would meet.

That changed all the rules and skewed the crime statistics as, with the familiarity that came between the weed dealer in the college kid also came a certain license that the drug culture felt they had; and that kid's bike might wind up being stolen, or he might be jumped for the money in his pocket. Relationships based upon drugs are funny that way. It might be that the skeezers are emboldened by having the dirt on the college kid that the kid smoked weed, and that might cause him to hesitate in reporting his bike stolen to the police; the police might smell weed when coming to fill out the report and the kid didn't want to risk that. Weed can spawn that kind of paranoia in the mind.

So, up approached this guy, who did some kind of work when he did that had him covered in black roofing tar or something, which never totally washed out of his clothes and so he looked kind of dirty all the time.

"Hey, man, can I have one of your old millwaters?"

He was insulting the beer that I thought was not bad at all, even though it is kind of cheap. Funny how people will assume some things are inferior just because they are cheap. They might complain about someone serving them Ramen noodles and think they should have served them something better, when in fact there isn't anything wrong with the noodles, they are just really cheap, and thus, the worst food you could eat, in some people's minds..

"If you think they taste like mill water, why do you want one?" I said, and initially refused to give him one. I guessed his point was to make me feel like: why not give a few away, since they are just a cheap and nasty beer made from mill water. Is "mill water' that nasty? Isn't it the stream that turns the huge water wheel thing that turns the thing that grinds the grain in the mill? That might be some of the purest water there is...I thought.

"Just because it doesn't cost as much as Heineken, doesn't mean that it sucks, I don't drink this to save money..." I went on.

I think I eventually gave him one, but not before getting him to begrudgingly admit that Old Milwaukee "isn't that bad."

So, I was amused to see that the Unique Store carried that brew, and that the label had been changed to a plain white can with small red writing; no more picture of a mill, or whatever used to be on it.. And, it was, of course, cheap. And it wasn't bad.

By the time I reached Tanya Huang, who was playing on the corner of St. Louis and Royal Streets, the same guy who had been yelling at the security guard was now standing on the side of Tanya, seeming like he was trying to get attention. Tanya had said something to another tourist about another subject and the kid was saying: "Was that for me, are you talking about...?" and then referred to some thing, maybe his manner of dress that he was, in the manner of a schizophrenic, taking to mean that Tanya was insulting him, over her microphone for the benefit of all 15 or so people whom she might have been directing her comments to.

The kid dropped a dollar in her bucket and then said something like: "See, I'm paying you.." as if that meant that she owed him attention or something.

I had stopped and gotten off my bike and I pushed it up onto the sidewalk, intending to say I didn't know what to Tanya, maybe something about how that same guy had just been making a fool of himself at the Unique Store, when the kid, upon seeing me, turned and walked across the street. Maybe he had made some kind of schizophrenic connection between seeing me at Unique's and then there and it had caused him to run off.

I just nodded my head at Tanya, and looked in the direction of the retreating nuisance as if to say "That's all I was trying to do; I didn't really have anything I wanted to say to you.."

The streets were packed with cops and black college kids and I was impressed by how insecure those black kids are; talking extra loud as if trying to run everything by other people in order to get their approval or not. "You heard me? You heard me? You heard me?" echoes down the streets. There was transparent false bravado and I got icy stares everywhere I went.

I never lost my generally good mood and my acceptance of the fact that they probably wouldn't tip any more than the 7 bucks that I made, playing for about an hour until the amp batteries died. I had accepted it and was happy and grateful and I realize that this -playing for blacks who are trying to show off for each other- is just a stepping stone from the time before, to a better time afterwards...

Maintaining my feeling of happiness and gratitude will, in hindsight, have set me up for a much better night tonight.

The Patriots just won handily and I am going out to get batteries for another 3 and a half hours of busking. It is a pleasant 57 degrees out. I couldn't be happier or more grateful...

I am tempted to get a beer or two though I know that has proven to not be a good idea that last two times. It's just hard to imagine right now how it could screw up my whole night; it takes about 5 beers to do that....