A Time To Move; A Time To Remain

It's Saturday night at 10 p.m., and I'm already back from the Quarter.

I got half way down there then realized I hadn't brought the key to one of my tuning pegs; it had fallen off after the screw worked its way loose and I hadn't tightened down its replacement yet, thinking I would probably just replace the whole thing.

I would have to find some thing in the Quarter to act as a screwdriver. I decided that, since I had also planned to file my nails down more, and had forgotten to do that, I would just ride around a bit looking for free stuff. I suppose I will try to go and get 75 bucks from the plasma place; and hopefully that will be my last visit to the one in East New Orleans.

Not that I expect the one in Gretna to be markedly different; but they will give me the "new donor" bonus of 100 bucks for my first 8 donations or whatever it is. It's just an unpleasant experience at the Bio Mat place on Bullard Road. The black ladies that work there won't speak to a white guy. And that rudeness is enough of a drag to make me stop going there. I can say almost anything in the way of just trying to be civil and comment about the weather or something and the black lady, whose job it is to shove a needle in my vein and hook me up to a machine will not even return a word; as soon as she has finished whatever she has to do in order to hook me up; she will turn and walk off. Then, she will be seen and heard chatting to to black people on the other machines.

I'm thinking of waiting until after I've donated and they unhook me to raise my voice towards a white guy who seems to be the manger: "Say, are you the manager, sir? I guess I just want to say that this is the last donation I'm going to make here, because of rude way in which I'm treated repeatedly when I come here. The people that stick me never say a word to me except 'keep pumping.' If I say hi to them or talk about the weather or something, in a friendly way; they just stare back at me then walk away as soon as they're done with the machine. This is apparently the wrong place for a white guy to donate.."

I have a tentative plan to hit the other place a few times and, as soon as I have a couple hundred bucks in my pocket, to hit the road and busk my way up to New England to visit family and friends. I might stop in Jacksonville, Savannah, Ashville, Charlottesville, and then from there get a Greyhound all the way to Boston, with perhaps a stop in Providence, Rhode Island, because I have an undefined fascination for that city...

I'll get a new battery for my phone and so will be able to post here with photos and stories. I'm also going to get a sleeping bag of some kind, so then I'll only have to worry about food and finding a laundromat to wash the 2 sets of clothes that I'm not wearing type of thing. I'll avoid the homeless shelters, except for taking showers there.