Where T-Shirt Meets Pants
In the waning winter-like light of a North Carolina day Cantrell Jefferson looked at his frail wrist and squinted to determine if the dot there was a freckle or a flea. His bare feet and the backs of his hands had a glossy clear sheen from the chemical repellent he had heavily sprayed on them. It had been worse once when without a home of his own he entered late at night a friend’s apparently abandoned house in Austin, Texas and laying down on one of the mattresses strewn about the place noticed a barely perceptible muffled clicking sound that turned out to be hundreds and hundreds of fleas jumping from whereever they had prior been to land on his fully clothed body and then work their way to any exposed skin they could find. That experience had set the bar at a level all other flea infestations would be measured against. This wasn’t so bad Cantrell said 20 minutes after finding the gin in the freezer and medicating internally. The swell of all the initial bites seemed to be subsiding and he felt fortunate to be able to sit still staring off into space without the distraction of itchy spots on his feet, his wrists, and belly where t-shirt meets pants.
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The Apology
She was commenting from a thousand miles away in response to my question who got shot this time. She remarked on what a strange world it is where I am able to ask the same questions being ask of her by neighbors in the next block, at approximately the same time.
The headlines I had read on the glossy screen of this computer made me fairly certain that the two shootings seven blocks apart, while not known to be related by the news agency, were in fact not only related, but that the shooting two blocks from her probably included young people that she had some ongoing contact with.
She had already been to the hospital and had names that the news agency had not released. The 17 year old with the bullet in his stomach is the only one of the young men I have met, if only briefly, on those ocassions when his father left him on the porch as a much younger boy, quite a few years ago. His stomach wound is serious but she was led to believe he would live. In her opinion his getting out of the hospital alive was only a precursor to his eventual violent death. She reminded me that he was afterall the intended victim in the shooting back in April that mistakenly left two boys dead in front of her house.
The 19 year old was the son of a dwarf woman in the next block and he had been hit twice in the head with bullets from an assault rifle used in the first shooting. The mayor’s wife was attending services at a nearby Treme church and Swat teams rushed in to clear the church of its 30 occupants because a suspect or just someone trying to escape the spray of bullets had run in there.
Suspects of the shootings abandoned the red Ford Focus marked with at least one bullet hole near the Iberville Projects and police spent several hours looking for them, without success.
Within minutes of the online reporting of this crime citizens were once again spewing their vitriol in the comment forums with so much apparent fear and hatred that it would almost seem to match, albiet from the theoretical comfort of an easy chair, the desperation some of these street kids experience from birth to coffin. Razing the Iberville was seen by some as a solution.
I have mixed feelings about the Iberville but know without a doubt that the razing of it will have little or no influence on whether or not young people continue to kill each other. And I at best as little more than a casual observer of this violent phenomenon have no answers either.
And my friend, with now 15 years in the trenches, ended her brief email report this way--everything I try to do seems like an apology. I can’t stop this.
She was commenting from a thousand miles away in response to my question who got shot this time. She remarked on what a strange world it is where I am able to ask the same questions being ask of her by neighbors in the next block, at approximately the same time.
The headlines I had read on the glossy screen of this computer made me fairly certain that the two shootings seven blocks apart, while not known to be related by the news agency, were in fact not only related, but that the shooting two blocks from her probably included young people that she had some ongoing contact with.
She had already been to the hospital and had names that the news agency had not released. The 17 year old with the bullet in his stomach is the only one of the young men I have met, if only briefly, on those ocassions when his father left him on the porch as a much younger boy, quite a few years ago. His stomach wound is serious but she was led to believe he would live. In her opinion his getting out of the hospital alive was only a precursor to his eventual violent death. She reminded me that he was afterall the intended victim in the shooting back in April that mistakenly left two boys dead in front of her house.
The 19 year old was the son of a dwarf woman in the next block and he had been hit twice in the head with bullets from an assault rifle used in the first shooting. The mayor’s wife was attending services at a nearby Treme church and Swat teams rushed in to clear the church of its 30 occupants because a suspect or just someone trying to escape the spray of bullets had run in there.
Suspects of the shootings abandoned the red Ford Focus marked with at least one bullet hole near the Iberville Projects and police spent several hours looking for them, without success.
Within minutes of the online reporting of this crime citizens were once again spewing their vitriol in the comment forums with so much apparent fear and hatred that it would almost seem to match, albiet from the theoretical comfort of an easy chair, the desperation some of these street kids experience from birth to coffin. Razing the Iberville was seen by some as a solution.
I have mixed feelings about the Iberville but know without a doubt that the razing of it will have little or no influence on whether or not young people continue to kill each other. And I at best as little more than a casual observer of this violent phenomenon have no answers either.
And my friend, with now 15 years in the trenches, ended her brief email report this way--everything I try to do seems like an apology. I can’t stop this.
In The Pit With BM/MB
A man said mister you got a flat tire on Sudley Rd. which was a surprise to me having just recently left the highway barreling down at seventy plus miles per hour. I nodded and said thanks man not realizing that to receive this news I had rolled the electric window all the way down and would therefore never see it up again without paying for a new window motor. I pulled immediately into a service station and began airing up the tire while trying to remember did I have anymore of that fix-a-flat or did I months ago give the last can to a woman in distress in Jersey City. I would soon realize it did not matter because for every pound of air I was pumping in 252 grams of it were seeping out. There were maybe 20 minutes to kill before my passengers being driven to the airport would begin to fret. I was determined to use considerably less than half of that and pulled the car over to a parking space and began barking orders. Bill Macy you need to get out of the back seat and when he hesitated I cried now Bill Macy, now! and I started throwing his bags into the back compartment to further punctuate the rare exclamation mark. Bill Macy was on the team now and stood ready in the pit, hoping I’m sure that he would not be called on to change out the head gasket, which luckily at this point in time was not the problem in question. I lifted up the bench seat on which moments earlier Bill Macy had been lazily sitting comtemplating self-flagellation with a baseball bat and began pulling out the tire changing tools stored there but which I had never before used on this vehicle. It sure was a little jack for such a large vehicle. The first lug wrench I tried seemed too large for the lugnuts and I cursed out loud a world populated by improper lug wrenches. There was another smaller lug wrench with a swivel head on a short handle and this I put over the first nut. Bending the handle to ninety degrees I then put my foot on it and standing up erect pumped down on the small wavering handle with all my inconsiderable weight and it made that cracking sound which shouldn’t be good but when changing a tire, is. I did this for every lugnut and then looked for a place to put the jack. Bernadette came out from the store attached to the service station from which she had been procurring cigarettes for her sister in NY who desires to pay less than nine dollars for a pack. She was a little concerned with my jack placement as it would seem I was setting myself up to be crushed by a Jeep in a service station off of Sudley Rd. She asked me if she should inquire inside about a real jack and in classic male dedication to any tool I chose to consider mine and which had not yet been proven a conclusive failure, I took slight offense to the question and assured her, without any real confidence, that this jack would work fine. Bill Macy, having uncovered and unsecured the spare tire in the back compartment, continued a posture of vigilance . After unsatisfactory progress with the short crank I procurred from under the seat the long folding crank but not of course before pinching my finger when unfolding it. The tire rose and I then removed the lugnuts and put them in Bill Macy’s outstretched hand. The clock ticked. Bernadette, my love, will you get me a bottle of water I said with more urgency than required and forgetting the my love part. But she got it anyway because she forgives me my frequent quirks of mood. Bill Macy grabbed the spare from the back and dropped it on my foot. No need for apologies I assured him, Jetblue awaits.
A man said mister you got a flat tire on Sudley Rd. which was a surprise to me having just recently left the highway barreling down at seventy plus miles per hour. I nodded and said thanks man not realizing that to receive this news I had rolled the electric window all the way down and would therefore never see it up again without paying for a new window motor. I pulled immediately into a service station and began airing up the tire while trying to remember did I have anymore of that fix-a-flat or did I months ago give the last can to a woman in distress in Jersey City. I would soon realize it did not matter because for every pound of air I was pumping in 252 grams of it were seeping out. There were maybe 20 minutes to kill before my passengers being driven to the airport would begin to fret. I was determined to use considerably less than half of that and pulled the car over to a parking space and began barking orders. Bill Macy you need to get out of the back seat and when he hesitated I cried now Bill Macy, now! and I started throwing his bags into the back compartment to further punctuate the rare exclamation mark. Bill Macy was on the team now and stood ready in the pit, hoping I’m sure that he would not be called on to change out the head gasket, which luckily at this point in time was not the problem in question. I lifted up the bench seat on which moments earlier Bill Macy had been lazily sitting comtemplating self-flagellation with a baseball bat and began pulling out the tire changing tools stored there but which I had never before used on this vehicle. It sure was a little jack for such a large vehicle. The first lug wrench I tried seemed too large for the lugnuts and I cursed out loud a world populated by improper lug wrenches. There was another smaller lug wrench with a swivel head on a short handle and this I put over the first nut. Bending the handle to ninety degrees I then put my foot on it and standing up erect pumped down on the small wavering handle with all my inconsiderable weight and it made that cracking sound which shouldn’t be good but when changing a tire, is. I did this for every lugnut and then looked for a place to put the jack. Bernadette came out from the store attached to the service station from which she had been procurring cigarettes for her sister in NY who desires to pay less than nine dollars for a pack. She was a little concerned with my jack placement as it would seem I was setting myself up to be crushed by a Jeep in a service station off of Sudley Rd. She asked me if she should inquire inside about a real jack and in classic male dedication to any tool I chose to consider mine and which had not yet been proven a conclusive failure, I took slight offense to the question and assured her, without any real confidence, that this jack would work fine. Bill Macy, having uncovered and unsecured the spare tire in the back compartment, continued a posture of vigilance . After unsatisfactory progress with the short crank I procurred from under the seat the long folding crank but not of course before pinching my finger when unfolding it. The tire rose and I then removed the lugnuts and put them in Bill Macy’s outstretched hand. The clock ticked. Bernadette, my love, will you get me a bottle of water I said with more urgency than required and forgetting the my love part. But she got it anyway because she forgives me my frequent quirks of mood. Bill Macy grabbed the spare from the back and dropped it on my foot. No need for apologies I assured him, Jetblue awaits.
Print Some More
Hell yes, is America a great country or what? After an arduous day of mostly sitting on my ass I was rewarded with a one one hundred millionth share of a huge, lumbering, mismanaged, American insurance corporation. Say what you will you detractors of this great country of mine but I am now a stockholder. While you hide away in your caves plotting evil me and a hundred million of my closest tax paying friends are pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps and pitching in to save this country from certain economic doom. Some of us may choose to cash in our stock and run but others of us will have a bake sale in front of Walmart. We will raise money. We will buy more stock.
I will soon need to write this stuff down but for now my portfolio is pretty simple. I have me a little Bear-Stearns, some of that Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, and yesterday I added AIG. You can argue that a portfolio full of failures is a fool’s portfolio but about that I have this to say--I don’t think so.
There was a time...excuse me, I have a phone call...
It was a solicitor wondering if I would be interested in three million foreclosure properties. I said to the man, with no little bit of pride, that I was perhaps too heavily loaded with real estate and would first have to check with my investment manager, the government of these United States of America, and see if there is any money left in my account to invest.
Hell yes, is America a great country or what? After an arduous day of mostly sitting on my ass I was rewarded with a one one hundred millionth share of a huge, lumbering, mismanaged, American insurance corporation. Say what you will you detractors of this great country of mine but I am now a stockholder. While you hide away in your caves plotting evil me and a hundred million of my closest tax paying friends are pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps and pitching in to save this country from certain economic doom. Some of us may choose to cash in our stock and run but others of us will have a bake sale in front of Walmart. We will raise money. We will buy more stock.
I will soon need to write this stuff down but for now my portfolio is pretty simple. I have me a little Bear-Stearns, some of that Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, and yesterday I added AIG. You can argue that a portfolio full of failures is a fool’s portfolio but about that I have this to say--I don’t think so.
There was a time...excuse me, I have a phone call...
It was a solicitor wondering if I would be interested in three million foreclosure properties. I said to the man, with no little bit of pride, that I was perhaps too heavily loaded with real estate and would first have to check with my investment manager, the government of these United States of America, and see if there is any money left in my account to invest.
Birdhouses 501
Do you want to get a birdhouse? I asked Bernadette and she said sure so I drove down the highway a bit until it was safe to turn around and returned to the yard full of birdhouses, a fairly impossible to ignore distraction while driving between South Boston and Lynchburg, VA, on 501.
This is a lot of birdhouses is what we were both thinking and after a few minutes of roaming around, a tanned man with shortly cropped white hair and smooth skin came out and we talked to him about his birdhouses and he talked to us about the big labor day flea market in the area and his various properties and his father, now deceased, and a 37,000 dollar marble and a Honus Wagner baseball card that he hid under a cushion in his shed for a collector to find and a woman with big breasts, now deceased, who I ferreted out to be Anna Nicole Smith, and he said none of her stuff after her death is that valuable to collectors, not like it was while she was alive but one of the hottest things on the market right now is anything to do with Daisy Duke.
He didn't know why they made her blonde which flummoxed me for a second until we were able to determine he was talking about the most recent Dukes of Hazzard movie and I just said I hadn't seen it as if to end any discussion which would seriously consider a blonde Daisy Duke.
I liked his bird houses as things to look at and paid no attention to the fact that the only bird we saw in any of them was dead. I have looked at handmade birdhouses before and knew they were hardly ever cheap and when the man said the bigger ones were a hundred and the smaller ones were sixty-five this supported for me that opinion of what is a not cheap birdhouse, but we knew we were going to buy one and I didn't want to haggle. Bernadette said it's what you do but by "you" she either meant any of you out there or any number of other people who are not me. I could have haggled him down 20 bucks and frankly it still would have been more than I wanted to pay. And in truth I am not against haggling; I have done it before and will do it again. I just wasn't feeling it that day.
The man opened up a couple of his sheds for us and we politely looked inside at some of his stuff. We were supposed to meet someone in Lynchburg for dinner before heading a couple of hours north to arrive back here at Mt. Pleasant. Well I guess we better go I said to Bernadette about ten minutes after she had said the same thing to me and in between which we had learned a few more of the interesting details about a man whose passion is birdhouses.
Do you want to get a birdhouse? I asked Bernadette and she said sure so I drove down the highway a bit until it was safe to turn around and returned to the yard full of birdhouses, a fairly impossible to ignore distraction while driving between South Boston and Lynchburg, VA, on 501.
This is a lot of birdhouses is what we were both thinking and after a few minutes of roaming around, a tanned man with shortly cropped white hair and smooth skin came out and we talked to him about his birdhouses and he talked to us about the big labor day flea market in the area and his various properties and his father, now deceased, and a 37,000 dollar marble and a Honus Wagner baseball card that he hid under a cushion in his shed for a collector to find and a woman with big breasts, now deceased, who I ferreted out to be Anna Nicole Smith, and he said none of her stuff after her death is that valuable to collectors, not like it was while she was alive but one of the hottest things on the market right now is anything to do with Daisy Duke.
He didn't know why they made her blonde which flummoxed me for a second until we were able to determine he was talking about the most recent Dukes of Hazzard movie and I just said I hadn't seen it as if to end any discussion which would seriously consider a blonde Daisy Duke.I liked his bird houses as things to look at and paid no attention to the fact that the only bird we saw in any of them was dead. I have looked at handmade birdhouses before and knew they were hardly ever cheap and when the man said the bigger ones were a hundred and the smaller ones were sixty-five this supported for me that opinion of what is a not cheap birdhouse, but we knew we were going to buy one and I didn't want to haggle. Bernadette said it's what you do but by "you" she either meant any of you out there or any number of other people who are not me. I could have haggled him down 20 bucks and frankly it still would have been more than I wanted to pay. And in truth I am not against haggling; I have done it before and will do it again. I just wasn't feeling it that day.
The man opened up a couple of his sheds for us and we politely looked inside at some of his stuff. We were supposed to meet someone in Lynchburg for dinner before heading a couple of hours north to arrive back here at Mt. Pleasant. Well I guess we better go I said to Bernadette about ten minutes after she had said the same thing to me and in between which we had learned a few more of the interesting details about a man whose passion is birdhouses.