Alert And Chomping At The Bit A Bit

 

I just couldn't repeat Saturday morning's performance in which I put myself asleep at around sunup and was awake, alert and chomping at the bit to get out to the Lilly Pad. I had butterflies in my stomach over the prospect of encountering the guy with the dog and the resonator guitar.

I had actually tried to deal with the effect of the guy's presence through using the guided meditation videos. I came to the realization that I was already painting the scene black by assuming that myself and the guy are going to square off like rams during mating season and lock horns in front of Lilly's house.

But, I flipped the script and envisioned myself making friends with the guy; somehow. Like, we would go on to become great pals, type of thing.

I have trouble looking ahead and seeing a way to explain to the guy and to the dog that Lilly had authorized the use of a parcel of her property for use by me in order to conduct the business of busking., This had been cleared with the immediate neighbors in the block, with only one mild protestation being directed at my harmonica, which Barnaby Chancellor claimed to be able to hear in the bedroom all the way at the back of his "shotgun" condo, even with a pillow pressed to his head.

I think I was able to avoid the 10 o' clock harmonica curfew, that Lilly had kind of asked of me after having made her rounds to the immediate neighbors to explain that she had, in the name of rescuing a street musician from probable starvation, really wished to give him an opportunity to make money; and since the block is zoned as residential, it behooved her to go around asking if it was alright with all of them to allow her to let a guy play in front of her house.

She then went and talked to perhaps the chief of police down on Royal Street and, imbuing me with the utility of a service dog, in a sense, told the police that my presence was very soothing to her, made her feel safer and gave her the even greater payoff of giving a guy a chance to work; which helped her sleep better while songs like "Golden Slulmbers" purportedly helped one of her daughters sleep better. And she might have even let the chief in on some of the dirt from the dispute between her and the neighbor to our left; telling him that, while I was playing, I was also keeping close tabs on the comings and goings in and out of that property; whose owners, Lilly suspects might be running an "air bnb," which is something I know little about except that maybe it's illegal in certain circumstances to do so; and Lilly might have said that I was doing actual security work, disguiesed as a busker, type of thing. The upshot was that the cops began to just ride by on their horses and even sometimes one of them would say: "Hi, Daniel..."

I remember living in St. Augustine where the cops were biased at a 180 degree angle from the NOLA ones; most evident in the attitude of the St. Augustine cops was to run as many homeless people out of that city of 25,000 residents but anotheer 2,000 homeless (the weather is fine and there is a some group that charitably feeds homeless people for every 17 homeless people, type of thing.

So, the cops there were literally following homeless people on bikes on their cop bikes at a distance, and waiting for the guy to stop his bike to piss in the bushes or to trespass upon some private property. Then, a ticket for like 100 bucks is written up for the pisser, and he has something like 90 days to come up with the 100 dollars, which will need to be skimmed off the top after beer and cigarettes and weed have been purchased. And, if that has to come from the spoils of panhandling, the poor pisser between a shrub and a fence and pretty much out of public view might find himself in a world of trouble once that 90th day rolled around and the 100 dollars hasn't been paid. Everyone on the street somehow knew that if you don't pay by 90 days; a warrant goes out immediately for your arrest; and that the same cops who tiptoe behind you as you disappear into a totally occluded spot; hoping that when they snap their flashlight on it will be right in the middle of you peeing and it will illuminate the stream of it cascading harmlessly onto a patch of dirt or something. That would allow him, in clear conscious to bark: "ID, please! Urinating in public!!" rather than not having illuminated his crime. He would then have to train his flashlight beam where the guy had been standing, and seeing a wet spot on the ground, charge that it was urine, and had come from the guy who had been standing there. Then the homeless guy could ostensibly claim that someone else must have been there before him and urinated.

At that point the bike cop would probably just affirm on a citation that he had cought you urinating out of sight in public. But the point is that the cops would avidly keep track of names and dates and certainly there was a bulletin board at the station with 8 x 10 glossy photos of they that they never intend to see again.

In one regard the 100 dollar ticket might be the catalyst for the homeless guy to pull himself up by the bootstraps by getting a job, using the shelters as the resources for helping the homeless pull themselves up that they were meant to be -a place to get a good night's sleep for a couple of weeks, during which time you would pound the pavement during the days in clean clothing and hopefully land a job. Then a conference with one of the social workers at the shelter, during which the 100 dollar ticket would be explained, could take place with the result that, since you were employed you would be allowed an extra couple weeks to get a couple more checks under your belt.

That's a long row to hoe for 92% of the homeless people in St. Augustine. Cleaning yourself up and becoming gainfully employed would turn the $100 ticket into a blessing in disguies. Kind of like the judicial system saying: "If you aren't the kind of total loser that we don't want in our community, then you should be able to come up with $100 in 90 days..."

Most of those ticketed wind up getting the hell out of there by day 89. The other cities in Florida will see a "do not extradite" note in the file of the guy if they ever run his name and it comes up that he has a warrant out for him in St. Augustine for urinating in public. Please don't bring him back here, justice can wait.

When I lived there, I had something like 12 of those tickets, but would go to the office of the DA and, explaining that I was a street musician ask for an extension of some sort, so that it wound up that I was able to pay "just something" on each ticket. That enervated the bike cops, who must have had the impression that they had ticketed me enough that some of them should be coming due, and I should just disappear any day; yet I lingered for months...Me and my girlfriend, Karrie.

Karrie was the most wanted person in St. Augustine, at one point. We were staying about 2 miles out of town, in a large patch of trees surrounded on all sides by thickets so that there was just one way in and out. In there we had a huge tent and it was our home. Karrie was a talented panhandler, and often would have a good night doing so on the nights when I hardly made anything, and vice-versa.

But, I had no idea that she had so many warrants until we were visited by 3 cops out there, one female and two guys.

"Police; could you step out of the tent," one of them said. Before we could even step out the female became aghast and blurted out; "Oh, my God, you weren't fornicating, were you?!"

We stepped out and there was the source of the comment, a smallish female with kind of a butch haircut. "Only a lesbian would call it 'fornicating,'" I couldn't help muttering as I brushed by her. They then stood around talking on their radios. no doubt reporting in that they had hit the jackpot in discovering the notorious Karrie Porras. In the middle of this the female's eye was caught by a large jug of Arizona iced tea. With eyes wide she ejaculated: "Uuh, tell me that isn't urine in that jar!"

"No, that's Arizona tea in there; we urinate right where you're standing, as a matter of fact," I said.

They led Karrie away, but she was back about 3 hours later. They had somehow let her go. She had another talent for acting childish and she must have convinced them that she was innocent by reason of innocense; as in having some kind of retardation that yield a "mental age" of like 11 years old. It would be cruel to lock up such a person in such a liberal town of 25,000 plus around 2,000 homeless.

But, back the point of the cop saying "How's it going, Daniel," as he rides by on his horse.

The first night that I met Karrie, we were soon on our way to a liquor store where there was a cop coming or going who, upon seeing us together, kind of made it a point to say "Hi Karrie, how are you doing?" But, with those 180 degrees from NOLA cops, cops the meaning was pretty obvius to me. He wanted me to know that he knew the girl I was with by name and that it would be very easy for him to recall later having seen her with that street musician guy who showed up a few months ago and, quite frankly, should have been run out of town by now.

If anything happens to Karrie, we know where to come looking, type of thing.

One of the bonuses from her talent at being childish was that the whole police force, despite having like 67 warrants out for her were very protective of her.

I suppose they knew that if they brought her in she would be facing so much jail time that it would be inhumane, so they just didn't bring her in front of a judge. Even if the judge wanted to have mercy on her she would have to throw out a lot of the charges (or else sentence her to one day on each) and that would negate a lot of work that went into stalking and ticketing the girl. There is probably some stat kept which tracks how many tickets the officers write up that went on to get thrown out of court. It might imply that the officer had poor judgment if 30 of his tickets were found to be without merit; because they were all for Karrie..