The Olive Green Gate

 Jacob was financially motivated this Friday night, and was at Sacred Heart at the unGodly hour of 7:30..
There was a brass band of sorts on the corner "kitty corner" (I think is the expression) to Lafitt's Blacksmith Shop Tavern and this was a concern for the kid; who stopped to ask them out the car window, how long they were planning to play there; which they took to mean that we wanted to listen to them.
After they saw us hauling our gear past them, they learned otherwise.
Worried about the impact on our income, we continued on past Lilly's, thinking we would go as far as Royal and Orleans, the spot where someone had given me the Takamine that I still play, and which used to be steadily occupied by a guy who's name escapes me, but I remember that he had a unique approach to busking.
This was to sit there with his guitar leaning up against the wall next to him; and wait for somebody to specifically say, probably some variant of: "Do you play that thing?" at which point he would play that thing.
The tradeoff inherent with that business model would be that he would never be playing the song that the couple first danced to on the night they met, that's walking past; and wouldn't get to see them stop and reenact that dance before dropping a hundred in his hat, while telling him the story of their Love. With the upside being that he "saved his fingers" a lot, and when people asked him to "play something," he would do so, knowing that he was probably playing for money, rather than just playing a Luther Vandross song for free, fishing for a couple.

He was friends with the lady that ran the art gallery on the other side of the wall that the guitar leaned against. And he seemed to have a "Lilly" type of relationship with the lady; who would emerge to run off any other busker who might lean his instrument against the wall; and inform him that the wall already had a busker, type of thing.
The guy might be running late that night.
I would stop and chat with him occasionally, before he died.
After he died, I noticed his absence and, popping my head in the gallery to inquire after him, was told of his passing by the lady; and that there would be a Second Line parade, or whatever they are, for him.
After hearing that news, I went and squatted down with my back against the wall, and my old blue guitar leaning next to me; and said a prayer for the guy; and was still sitting there kind of spacing out, when up walked a young black guy holding a guitar and asked the magic question. "You play (that) guitar?" and then asked me to play something.
I played one of my better songs at the time for a minute.
Then he handed me the guitar he was holding and asked if I could play that one.
It was the Takamine that I still play today and I said something like: "Wow, this is really easy to play," at which point he said: "It's your's. I've been trying to learn to play it for 6 months and I'm not really getting anywhere, and I decided I'd give it to someone who can play and who will appreciate it, and give it a good home or words to that effect.
I hadn't realized that I had assumed the exact pose of the late busker, and that was probably one of the only times in my life when I sat somewhere with my guitar leaning on a wall next to me...
So, after Jacob and I stopped at Lilly's long enough to hear that the brass band was going to have to be played along with, I had no objections to his suggestion that we move to Royal and Orleans...
But we didn't have to go that far because the group of traveling kid types were packing up at the next block down from Lilly's which Jacob calls "the olive green gate," or something like that.
Gosh, I'll have to finish the story later cause playoff football is about to start. We made $145 in about 3 hours. Some guy came along with some windowpane acid, which he gave us a tab of for free.
I ate my half, and it's probably good that Jacob held off, because I got so dosed that there were times when I really didn't know where I was, just that the music was very beautiful and all I had to do was surrender and let it kind of play itself through me; and at the peak of the trip, I was aware that Jacob was there, but it was kind of like I could hear him and sense him; but everything visual was undulating and rippling and he was dissolved somewhere in the mix.
But there was a full blog post in every 10 seconds of the evening.
We went from having a massive technical challenge because I forgot to bring one of the microphones; to finding a work-around that is probably the best setup we have had up to this point.
We wound up taping a couple of earbud type mics to my guitar, one on each side of the sound hole and that sounded better than the mic I forgot to bring...
I got back home still pretty dosed; managed to turn my phone's data back on via a customer service rep. in what sounded like the Philippines, while rainbows swirled around my head. I did the survey afterwards and said that the guy who had assisted me should get a company car, a corner office and a masseuse to come in every afternoon, as the message that the bot asked me if I wanted to leave...
I guess I should go watch football while it's being played....