No Good Deed Goes Unrewarded

I was up bright and early on this (Tuesday) morning. Harold was asleep at my side on the bed. I noticed that the tinnitus that has been encroaching upon me was much subdued and wondered if sleeping 2 feet away from the laptop had been contributing to that.

I decided to do the good deed of calling one of the numbers that I had written down from the list of "contacts" in the phone I had found somewhere in the Quarter, Saturday night. It's a really nice phone, and I was tempted to solve the problem of my own phone being garbage and it's replacement cost of about $24 by transferring my service over to it, maybe by moving my SIM card to it. But then I thought about how important people's phones can be to them; how their "whole life" can be on them.

The phone I found had only 2% of its battery charged, so I was only able to write down a few of the more frequently called people from its "recent calls" list; without enough battery power (it takes the other kind of adapter than the one I have -further proof that it is a more expensive phone than the one I got through the "free" government program) for me to go through all the photos and videos to try to determine how integrated into this person's life the thing had become -how far back the stuff goes; how many irreplaceable looking things were in it.

I decided to call one of the most frequently called numbers, which I did, and got an, at first skeptical sounding guy named Eddie on the line; who eventually seemed to start believing I wasn't a scammer after I had given him enough details about the lost phone.

It turns out he works at the Willie's Chicken Shack on Frenchmen Street, in the heart of that particular area which is the counter-culture alternative to Bourbon Street, where the young hipsters congregate. Bourbon Street is considered stodgy and set in its ways by the gen z-ers and millennials -where you will see a jazz drummer reading texts on his phone with one hand while keeping the beat going with his other limbs because he has played the particular "standard" he is playing about 5,447 times, type of thing. The Frenchmen Street musicians are playing their asses off, trying to make a name for themselves, type of thing; more appealing to certain types. I'll admit that I have had a lot of success the 3 or 4 times I had ever decided to set up down there -usually after buying and sampling weed from the neutral ground area around the Checkpoint Charlie's bar.

Checkpoint Charlie's is kind of a Welcome Center for musicians fresh in town, offering a laundromat and nightly open mic nights where a new arrival can get up and strut his/her stuff and be immediately shunted to the management of whatever club is deemed fit for the likes of whatever they play; or they can at least hit the sidewalks to busk in clean clothing...

I am waiting for a text from Eddie, whom I will notify when I am about to leave for the Lilly Pad, so he can meet me there to get the phone, or to tell me what hours he is working at Willie's so I can bring it to him.

I then left to go get a beer and saw 3 kittens, no bigger than softballs, on the benches of a couple tables at The Holy Grounds bar, which didn't open for another couple of hours. They were very clean and healthy looking. There were two black brown and white "tiger" striped ones, huddled together against the side of the building -as far as they could scoot down the bench away from the sounds of Canal Street, and on the next table over, similarly situated, a black one. (segregation is a natural phenomenon in the animal kingdom, maybe Governor Wallace was onto something, but I digress).

I decided to continue around the block then double back to Sacred Heart to get a little food for them. As I approached the building, I noticed a group of people on the sidewalk on the side of the building opposite where I live, who had tables set up and were giving away bags of food, along with things like socks. So, in endeavoring to feed the abandoned cats, I wound up with food for myself. Maybe I'll get a monetary reward when I return the phone, along the same lines, I mused...

When I went into my phone to call who turned out to be Eddie ("I'm Hispanic," he had told me, after telling me his name -so maybe Eduardo is more accurate) I noticed that I had 2 missing calls from Lilly from about 20 minutes after I had stopped busking from her stoop, due to being drenched in sweat. A call to her confirmed that she had heard me playing and had probably gone outside and just missed me. My phone sits at home with a useless battery (but I'm glad I didn't decide to steal Eddie's -humble Willie's Chicken Shack worker that he is...
I called Lilly, who told me that her neighbor had tried to change the locks on the gate in front of which I play, which leads to an alley between the 2 properties over which there has been a McCoy/Hatrock type of dispute for years now.

"Please come and play," she admonished me; but then quickly added: "Don't tell anyone you know me, or that I told you you could play there." I guess she wants to reserve the delivery of that last bit for any such time that her neighbors might try to run me off, so she can assert her control over the block...

So, soon I will ride down there and set up, maybe start at 3 p.m., clad in shorts and a tank top and not the long-sleeved thermal shirt. Jazz Fest is this coming weekend, and people have arrived early to walk around and explore before the big weekend commences; and, though they only walked by sporadically yesterday, they almost all threw me at least a dollar. I might have to acclimate myself to the summer heat by gradually increasing my playing time from the 1 hour of yesterday, up to the more "living wage" expectancy duration of at least 3 hours. Stings and picks and harmonica funds need to be set aside, above and beyond alcohol and weed expenses...