Art Festival Hell, 2005

The Pompano Beach Seafood Festival. Christ almighty, I just don’t have a large enough stock of superlatives to describe what a monumental waste of time, energy, money, effort, and talent this bullshit dog-n-pony show turned out to be. I’m sitting here at the ol’ computer with a perfect, beet red sunburn/windburn, a hole in my left pinky finger that’s about a 1/8 deep and as big around as a piece of coat hanger wire, an empty wallet, and a seriously bad attitude. Check this out:

The show was billed as ‘A Three-Day Celebration of Local Seafood & A Bustling Arts and Crafts Bazaar on the Boardwalk’. It sounded like the perfect venue to hawk my original canvases and gicleés of bright, colorful aquatic life. The booth fee was a wee bit steep, $375.00, but I usually haul in about a grand or two at most of the outdoor art festivals I do, so it seemed like a good enough deal. I applied and sent in my check the afternoon I read about it. As the big weekend approached, I worked like a madman to get a few more canvasses finished, a few more gicleés from the printers and get my tent and festival setup cleaned, prepped and ready to go.

Friday afternoon was check-in and set-up from 12:00 to 4:00. After 4:00, all vehicles had to be moved to either a nearby municipal parking lot or a Pay-to-Park lot; no vehicles could be left on the blocked-off street in front of the beach. The gates would open to the public promptly at 5:00. Saturday and Sunday would be full day shows, but Friday was just the evening. Once I got checked-in and given a map to my space, I found that the ‘boardwalk’ was actually just dozens and dozens of 6′X8′ pieces of plywood screwed onto 2′X4’s to form a rickety pathway across the beach. There was no pathway of any sort leading to the aforementioned ‘boardwalk’, so I had to heave, push, pull and drag my setup and my work across 50 yards of sand to get to my space while my wife struggled with our two-year-old. When everything was finally set up at about 4:30, I managed to wipe the sweat out of my eyes, catch my breath and have a look at my temporary neighbors.

The booth next to me, on the left, was a group of little old ladies representing a cat rescue charity; the guy on my right was selling T-shirts with ripped-off Guy Harvey designs printed on them (more about this dingus later). Further down the way was a lawyer (Injured in an accident?! Speak to a lawyer for FREE!), a group of condo developers, a guy selling stove-top barbecue grills (…as seen on T.V.), several church groups, herbal facial scrubs and people hawking a spray on pain reliever (all natural formula!). There were a number of people selling craft items like that really beautiful, brightly colored Mexican pottery, hand-woven hats, driftwood carvings, blown glass sculptures, painted metal wall sculptures from Jamaica, beaded jewelry, etc….in almost every case, these people were not the actual artisans, but rather importers taking advantage of sweat shop labor in underdeveloped countries. Most of the area was saturated with cheap, manufactured, flea market-oriented crap. The total number of actual artists and craftspeople, including your buddy the Jettboy, five…five people out of easily 40-50 booths; although I guess you could include the old Blues guy with the saxophone who was selling copies of his music CD.

Once the crowd started pouring in, it looked like it was going to be an OK evening; I sold two $25.00 prints, had a decent amount of interested lookers (mostly parents who were dragged in by their kids…children love my work), gave out a handful of business cards, and had three or four ‘bebacks’ (you know; “I really love this. I’ll BE BACK later to pick it up,” but you never see ‘em again). Although the ‘Art and Crafts Bazaar on the Boardwalk’ would be open until the festival shut down at 10:00, we closed our mobile gallery down at 8:30 due to lack of in-tent lighting. We moved all of the art back out to the van (now parked some three blocks away) and secured the tent for the night. I went home a little disappointed that it didn’t seem like much of an ‘art’ crowd, but I was still confident that I’d make my booth fee and maybe a few hundred bucks. I quickly showered off the days sweat and grime and sank into an exhausted sleep.

Saturday morning we got up and headed out early. The festival opened at 10:00, so I wanted to get there early enough, 8:00 or so, to get a decent parking spot and get all of my work back up before the crowds showed up with money bursting from their pockets. The sky was a dark gray, but I was certain it would burn off pretty soon. Once we got to Pompano Beach, which is about 25 minutes away from our home, the wind was blowing hard enough to bend the palm trees; a gentleman we passed struggling to keep his hat from blowing away mentioned that the wind was 30-35 knots on the beach. When we reached the ‘boardwalk’, we we’re stunned to see tables and festival tents scattered, broken and twisted, all up and down the ‘boardwalk’ like a giant child’s discarded toys. I’ve had the same EZ-UP tent for about six-or-so years and she’s served me well through dozens of outdoor festivals; the thought of it reduced to a giant wad of torn blue canvas and bent metal left a hard knot in my gut. I prayed a silent “thanks!” to the JuJu Gods as I noticed my ol’ blue up ahead, none the worse for the wear.

The Cat Rescue ladies next to us didn’t fare nearly so well; their tent lay sprawled upside down behind their space, it’ crooked legs and supports sticking out at odd angles like a squished spider. A rope tied to a 5-gallon bucket of sand was the only thing that had kept it from flying off into the west. The sweet little Hindu nut vendor who had given my son a free cone of cashews the day before had no tent left at all when he showed up.

The wind was so strong that I couldn’t hang any canvases up; not a single one. I couldn’t even set up my print rack for hours. Every time it looked like the wind was lessening, it would pick back up even stronger. A representative from The Festival came by at about 9:00 to survey the damage. When it was noted that the wind was too strong to set up my work, she was quick to snap “Sorry, no refunds. There’s a warning in the contract about inclement weather; the Festival is going on rain or shine; with you or without you.” By 11:30, with a thin crowd filtering in and the sky still overcast, I was finally able to put up two walls of my tent, hang up six or eight smaller paintings (none of my A-list stuff, though, it’s all too big and too valuable…I couldn’t live with myself if I saw one of my $3,500. paintings heading off into the sunset), and put out my prints. By 12:00, my son was getting bored, fussy and hungry, so I sent wife and child back to the house to relax for the rest of the day and let the old dad do that old familiar ‘art show’ thang.

From 12:00 til 3:00, I fought with one of my tent walls. The high wind was pushing it like a sail with each massive gust. With each squall the tent would flex inward several inches, and I would push against it with all of my 185 pounds of artist to keep the support structure from snapping or bending out of shape. When one giant ‘whooooooosh!’ caused the tent stakes on the right-hand side to pull up out of the ground and three small canvases to come off of their mounting struts and go flying across the tent and onto the ground, I decided to just throw in the towel and take down the wall. Every surface that I normally have hanging free was by now festooned with as many bungie cords as I had at my disposal to keep my work earthbound. Between 2:30 and 3:00-ish, the sky returned to it’s usual bright Florida blue and all of the spooky gray clouds headed off to menace the Bahamas; the wind, however, didn’t really die down and conditions remained pretty miserable even if it looked gorgeous. I still hadn’t sold one damn thing; not a single print and certainly not an original.

By this time the crowd was huge, easily 20,000 plus people circulating around. But, they weren’t circulating in MY direction. A few drunks now and again would wander in, look around, maybe dig through the print rack or the paintings I had stacked on my transport cart, belch out “Nice work, man,” and wander off in search of the next beer or glass o’ rum punch. A few people would glance around the booth with a confused look that said, “…where are the trademarked labels for beer companies decopauged onto weathered barn wood? Where’s the bright, neon green, hand-painted ‘Show Me Your Tits!’ and ‘Party Naked!’ signs? Where are the cast resin iguanas with sunglasses holding up miniature cast resin margaritas? Where’s the ‘I’m not as think as you drunk I am!’ T-shirts? This stuff looks like that damn ‘art‘ or sumthin’…” It was now absolutely, beyond the shadow-of-a-doubt clear that this was not an ‘art’ crowd; a fun, Aloha-shirt-wearing, eating shrimp and drinking $4.00 cups o’beer and buying cheap-ass imported geegaws crowd, for sure, but not a group that came prepared to shell out $800.00 for a painting to hang in the den.

By now the Cat Rescue ladies next door were aggressively hustling the packed crowd for donations; as soon as someone got within earshot-generally right in front of my booth-one of the volunteers would hit them with the “…would you care to make a donation to help take care of unwanted cats?” Now I love the felines as much as the next guy, but these festival-goers that didn’t would make a wide arc away from the Cat Rescue volunteers…and away from my booth. After seeing several dozen people herded away from my booth in this manner, I finally went over and, very politely, asked the chief little old lady if she would pleeease wait until people had passed my booth before hitting them up for a donation. I had helped her get her damaged tent set up that morning, even gave her some of my spare tent pegs and rope, so I though we were cool. She apologized profusely, said she understood my position, and said that she would ask her people to knock it off. Despite the understanding smile and nod, the mood between us was frosty the rest of the day and her staff would periodically glare at me with daggers in their eyes.

Then there was Angelo, the t-shirt vendor to my right. The guy did give me a couple of beers from his thoroughly-stocked cooler throughout the afternoon, so I feel kinda’ like a jerk talking smack about him; but he was easily the most annoying, obnoxious, overly-familiar, loudmouthed asshole I have met in a long, long while. The government could use Angelo to torture political prisoners; three hours around the guy and anyone would admit to whatever you wanted…as long as you promised to take Angelo away. Ange was about 5′5″ and easily that big around, with spiky dyed blonde hair, a pencil-thin black moustache and a Jersey accent like a wiseguy off of The Sopranos. And a filthy mouth; jeez, I come from a long line of Navy men and tend to cuss like a stereotypical sailor, but you have to know me really, really well before you’ll ever hear gems of profanity like “motherfucker”, “cocksucker” or “cunt” come from me…Ange used them every third word, and every other word was “fuckin”. Every female from age 14-to-65 who walked past wearing anything more revealing than a burkha would prompt Angelo to leer, “Hey, bro, you see ‘dat sexy bitch?! Fuck! I sure would like to [fill in blank with crass, perverted sexual imagery of choice], hah?! You know you wouldn’t turn down some a ‘dat action, ya’ crazy bastahd!” And on and on, ad naseum, occasionally followed by a weird, jiggly, pelvic-thrusting dance move. Then the guy starts telling me that a huge number of t-shirts he’s printed are Guy Harvey designs he’s lifted from magazines and such; he’d scan them, clean ‘em up a bit, crop off the signature and copyright notice and then print ‘em as shirts. “Hey Ange,” I told him, “you’re saying that it’s OK to rip off artists? I’m not if you noticed, but I’m an artist…” Different story, he says, it’s OK to rip off somebody like Guy Harvey ’cause he’s filthy fuckin’ rich and so many people have copied his style that nobody knows the difference anymore. When a customer comes up to Ange’s booth and asks “Hey, are these shirts Guy Harvey?” Angelo laughs and says, “Naw, they’re MY Harvey! Haw, haw, haw!” I got to hear this bit o’ wit at least a hundred times.

By 5:00, I had only sold one print at $30, but I did get to have a couple of conversations with drunks that started out with them slurring, “When I was a kid, I always (hic!) wanted to be an artist…” The high point of my day was a husband-and-wife interior design team who loved the colors in my work and were interested in setting up a meeting to discuss some custom work for a condo they were decorating. I gave them business cards, but I doubt I’ll hear from them. At around 6:00 a near-fistfight, shoving and cussing match broke out almost right in front of my booth. I was really tempted to ask the fellas to take it somewhere else, but getting into a scrap with one or more drunks would really have ruined an otherwise terrible day. Since it was still too windy to attach the back wall of my tent, a huge number of people had just decided that the open gap was a perfect walkthrough from the boardwalk to the amusement are behind me; every fifteen or so minutes someone would stroll through my tent without a word beyond the infrequent “Hey, man.” At 6:30, I got a nice surprise; a beback from earlier in the afternoon actually came back and bought a $30. print. I was thrilled; I could have hugged her.

At 7:00 my wife called me on my cell to let me know she was heading back to the festival to help me pack it up. By then I had had enough; enough zero sales, enough heat and gale-force wind and sand, enough Angelo, enough $4.00 cups of watery beer and $3.00 bottles of Gatorade, enough drunks, enough baffled looks as though I was demonstrating a card trick to a dog…just enough. I told the wife I was ready to just break down the tent and display system, load up the van and blow off even trying to come back on Sunday. Thankfully, she agreed that we had squeezed about all the money out of the Pompano Beach Seafood Festival that we going to squeeze out.

By the time my lovely bride and boyo showed up, I had stowed all of my paintings on my handcart, packed the prints back into boxes, folded up the print rack and packed away sixty pounds of miscellaneous junk (weights, tent pegs, a mallet, rope, etc) into a big plastic bucket. As the missus stayed at the site with my son, I made a series of about seven trips across the sand to haul all of our stuff back to the van.

As I weaved through the crowd carrying my overweighted white plastic bucket with one hand and a bunch of aluminum display rods in the other, I received the cherry on the top of the colossal crap sundae that had been my weekend. I tripped, either over my own clumsy, sand-filled shoes or someone else’s, and fell. The force of the fall popped the steel handle out of my utility bucket with an audible “Sproinng!”. As I kneeled in the sand trying to reattach it, a voice from above me said, “Hey, man, I think you cut yourself.” I glanced at the top of my white bucket and noticed large dollops of blood all over it. Hmmmm, that’s odd. I held my left hand up into the light and noticed that it was covered in blood. Just above the second knuckle of my left pinky was a perfectly round hole, almost like a stab from an ice pick, that went almost halfway through my finger; the end of the steel wire handle, where it hooks to attach to a socket in the bucket, had apparently stabbed me. Wonderful. There wasn’t much I could do just standing around on the sand, so I picked up my load and continued to the van, where a Huggies Baby Wipe made a quickie makeshift bandage. When I returned to our site, my wife’s eyes got as big as dinner plates when she noticed all of the blood on my hand and on my shirt. At one point I must have wiped the sweat off of my face, because there was blood all over there, too. Once I convinced her that I hadn’t been beat up or attacked by a landshark, we loaded up the tent into it’s uselessly-wheeled case, grabbed the baby in his uselessly-wheeled stroller and headed out into the night, where somewhere a cheeseburger, a bottle of Guinness and maybe a tetanus shot was waiting.

Adventures Amongst the Trolls

When I was about 24, I returned to the bosom of my beloved Texas after a spell in Oxnard, California. I worked for a while, a long while, at a Diamond Shamrock convenience store/gas station in Austin. After my experience working at Uncle Dick’s 7-11 in California, I figured convenience store work was easy enough to get and would provide some much-needed income while I painted or found a real job. I ended up working there for a little over two years, and while the experience -not to mention the money- sucked completely, the fantastic cast of rogues, reprobates and miscreants I met can’t be beat.

The store was in an ideal location for a thriving community of seedy types right out of a Bukowski novel. It was a few blocks off of I-35 on Riverside Drive, the last big street before the highway crossed Town Lake, aka The Colorado River (at least Austin’s little branch of it). Snuggled up right behind us were a mass of low-rent apartments, many of them Section Eight, and a large empty field that opened up on the banks of Town Lake. This wasn’t the pretty part of Town Lake, where yuppies jogged on the spotless hike-n-bike trails surrounded by a carefully manicured environment, soccer moms led their children on safe nature walks and rowers from the university would shoot across the grape green waters. No, this was the baaaad part of the river. Technicolor graffiti was sprayed onto any building or flat surface that went unguarded for any length of time. Rusty, abandoned shopping carts by the dozen were scattered over the area in various states of decay; beer, cheap booze and even cheaper wine bottles, along with the occasional hypodermic needle, were strewn like wino confetti all through the big open field. When the wind would pick up, the loose garbage would pile up in large drifts against the chain link fences, blowing through the holes. The area had a lingering reek of exhaust, ripe garbage and standing water.

Here and there, unevenly spaced up and down this portion of Riverside Drive, east of the highway, were shabby men in shabby clothes, often sucking bargain beer or cheap booze from a brown paper bag-wrapped bottle or can, and, more often than not, toting handmade “Will Work for Food” signs. They were generally from mid-thirties to early-sixties, almost all men, and mainly white, although there were a few Hispanics mixed in. I found out later that the black homeless and the wetback Mexican homeless pretty much kept to themselves; hobo ‘turf wars’ were not unheard of, and straying into another group’s area might be a quick route to a serious ass-kicking. These men wandered solo up and down Riverside throughout the day. Whenever they would encounter each other, they would say hello, almost formally, often with a tip of the crumpled, filthy baseball cap and a handshake, chat for a few moments and wander along in search of whatever they could squeeze, shake or beg out the day. Much later on, once I found out that most of them congregated in the evenings in a makeshift camp under the bridge where I-35 crosses the river, I began calling them “trolls” after the under-bridge-dwelling creatures from the old children’s story. It kind of stuck, and ‘troll’ became another word in the list of terms they’d use to describe themselves, right up there with tramp, hobo, wino, vagrant, and bum.

 

My informal introduction to the trolls of I-35 and Riverside was sudden and painful. I had been working at the Diamond Shamrock only a week or so, when one hot summer afternoon the manager noticed one of the local winos aggressively panhandling our customers for change as they were pumping their gas or heading to or from the store. Never one to do his own dirty work, the manager-who shall remain nameless in this narrative, but in my memories is referred to as “the fat bastard”-sent me outside to advise the fellow that he was trespassing on private property, and ask him to kindly move along…or else.

I went outside to where the guy was standing, swaying, out near the gas pumps holding a 40 ounce beer in a brown paper sack. He was a disheveled, beat up-looking old guy of about 60-or so, bald as an egg, with a stained grey beard that reached mid-chest. He was wearing filthy old combat fatigues, a tennis shoe on one foot and a loafer on the other. A few of the patrons looked noticeably relieved that somebody was doing something about this situation and they wouldn’t be forced into a position of either ignoring the guy, giving him some change, or mumbling “…sorry, I don’t have anything,” as they scrambled to get back into the safety and security of their cars. Despite the terror in the eyes of some of the more genteel customers, I thought the old boy looked as dangerous as a fart in a windstorm; a little crazy but most likely harmless.

“Hey guy, you’re gonna’ need to move along,” I said sheepishly, “the manager doesn’t want you hitting on our customers for money.”

“You can’t tell me what to do, sonny!” he barked drunkenly in gust of swamp gas-scent and a spray of spittle, “this is ‘Merica!”

“I’m just doing my job, man; manager says for you to go, so I’m here to ask you to go. Nothin’ personal.”

“I ain’t goin’ no-fuckin’-where, goddammit!” another gale of skunk breath.

“Fine,” I sighed. Confrontations have always made me a bit edgy, and I didn’t want to stand out in the heat with this old fella shrieking at me any longer than I had to. “I’ll just go inside and call the cops.”

I had just started to turn away from him, and suddenly a grubby hand clutching the neck of a brown bag-covered 40 ounce Schlitz Malt Liquor was zooming toward me. I instinctively tucked my head into my shoulder and tried to turn away to protect my oh-so pretty young face.

 

KERRRRRR-BLAAAMMM!

The bottle struck me on the side of my head just above my left temple. I swayed for a second and the hot, blindingly sunlit day started to blink and go dim; just like in the movies, everything seemed to move in slo-mo. The old guy was pulling back for another swing, and I was just barely able to get my arm up to block him. As he struck, I latched onto his forearm, pivoted, completely dazed and almost overbalancing, and twisted his arm up behind his back. With my other hand I grabbed a generous handful of his soiled shirt. I stood there for a minute, legs spread wide for balance, and struggled to catch my breath and clear my head a bit. Unsure of what else to do, I started marching him back to the store, with him hollering and twisting the whole way.

“Ow! Ow! Ow! Godammit, yer’ breakin’ my arm! Lemme’ go, you sunovabitch!”

A young couple opened the door for me just as the manager was coming around the counter with his eyes bugging out of his head in shock. As he saw me coming in, he beat a hasty retreat back to the safety of his register area and it’s tiny locked door that an angry five-year-old could kick in.

“Dude, call the police!” I gasped at the manager, pressing the struggling, cursing Tasmanian Devil in a wino suit against the front counter and wrenching his arm up further. “Stop fighting me, man! You’re gonna’ hurt yourself! Be cool for a minute and I’ll let you go!”

We stood struggling for six or eight minutes before the police showed up. As soon as one of the cops came in, I released the old boy and backed away. He wheeled around and glared at me. His face looked like an apple that had been left out in the sun, and I noticed that there were tears in his eyes.

“What in the hell is going on here?!” the cop barked, taking up a position between the wino and myself and extending his arms, palms out, as if to keep two rabid dogs away from each other. His partner burst in the door followed by the young couple who had held the door open for me. Out in the parking lot, a small crowd had gathered and moments later a second squad car whipped into the parking lot.

“I wanna’ press charges!” the wino roared through his snaggled, ruined teeth, “I was just mindin’ my own business when this young hooligan came up and put some kinda’ karate on me and, and, and…” here the old guy started snuffling and burst into tears, “he done broke my arm, officer!” he wailed. At once the young couple, both shaking their heads and gesturing madly, and the store manager, all started talking at once, explaining their version of what had happened, what they’d seen.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa…everybody hold it! You,” the cop said pointing at me, “come out here and talk to me. Everybody else, calm down!”

I followed him outside, leaving his partner to deal with an angry drunk, a panicked store manager, and two excited young lovers who had just gotten their dose of melodrama for the week. My head was throbbing and a sizable goose egg was starting to rise on the side of my melon.

We stood out by the ice machine, out of view of the inside of the store and the spectacle going on there. The cop had a slightly bemused smile peeking through the “I’m a hardass policeman!” facade, and I could sense, but not see, a twinkle in his eyes behind his mirrored cop shades.

“OK, let’s hear it…”

My throat was bone dry, my head ached from the beer bottle slam, I was experiencing that shaky comedown that happens after a huge rush of adrenaline. I would have killed for a cigarette.

“OK, the boss told me to get this old guy to move along ‘cause he was panhandling our customers. I come outside, ask him to move along, he says no, I says “OK”, he clocks me in the head with a forty ounce, I lock his arm up, bring him inside, and that’s it…” the words just gushed out in one long sentence.

“You need to go to the hospital?”

“Nah, I’ve been hit harder. I just want to go home, this day is totally screwed up.”

“You sure? You might have a concussion.”

“No, I’m alright.”

“Well, here’s the deal,” the cop said, taking off his shades, “if you want to press assault charges, you can, but it won’t do much good. He’ll get locked up for a while, but that’s about it; and compared to the way these guys normally live, a month in county lockup would be like the Four Seasons. We could have Mental Health pick him up for observation, but he’d most likely be out in forty-eight hours. Why don’t we just take to the drunk tank and let him dry out; chances are you’ll never see him again.”

“That’s fine with me, ” I said.

“You didn’t break his arm did you?” the cop grinned.

“Naw, he’s fine. If ya’ll could just get him out of here, that’d be great.”

Without taking any statements from the ‘witnesses’, the police loaded the still raging old man into their squad car. I stood out near the parking lot and watched them drive off. Ever defiant, the old fella flipped me off as the car pulled away. I’m not sure, but I think he was mouthing “motherfucker” at me.

Weeks later, the old guy showed up again, seemingly with no recollection of the nasty incident that had taken place earlier. His name was Calvin. He was originally from somewhere in the midwest, Kansas or Ohio or some such. Once we got to know each other, he became one of my regular trolls. Quite some time later, I asked Cal about the whole ‘hitting-me-in-the-head-with-a-beer-bottle-and-getting-carted-off-to-the-hoosegow’ thing; asked him if he remembered any of it.

“Shit, man, I didn’t know you back then, bro” he grinned mischievously, showing off his stained and damaged teeth, “besides, I was pretty drunk.”

Poor Bastard Shoots Self; Stoned Brothers Aghast

When I was in my early 20s I saw a man kill himself on live TV. I was watching the news with my brother, both of us incredibly stoned. The regular news was interrupted for an “Action News Breaking News Story!” about a guy who was holding his ex-wife hostage in a 7-11.

The news went LIVE on the scene to Wendy Howell, bubble-headed blond news reporter. In hushed tones, Wendy was vividly describing the scenario as the police tried to talk the guy into surrendering using a crackling bullhorn. You could see the parking lot and storefront just over Wendy’s shoulder. Suddenly a man walks out, silhouetted against the glaringly lit front of the store, signs for Slurpees and hot dogs at his back. He stands still for a moment as the police shout incoherently over the bullhorn. Wendy’s cameraman zooms in on the man as he calmly raises the gun to his temple. There’s a small pop like a firecracker and the man drops. POP! A human life ends right there on the television. It wasn’t like the movies where the guy crumples to his knees and then sprawls forward in pained slow motion; this poor bastard dropped like a sack of potatoes. Instant. Final.

My bro and I looked at each other, mouths gaping open like bug-eyed perch and ‘did you just see that shit’ expressions. One, maybe both, of us gasped something along the lines of, “Holy fuck…!“

I can still vividly remember the whole thing. It’s burned in my gray matter even after all these years. I’m not sure why; as I mentioned, the man was in silhouette, so there wasn’t any graphic Hollywood facial expression or fountain of gore. I don’t know…it just shocked me how un-Hollywood it actually was seeing this poor schmoe snuff himself…no context to better understand it, no storyline, no illusions, just a sudden snap of encapsulated violence and a heap of something shadowy on the concrete that used to be a person.

I’ll never forget it.

My First Tattoo

It was a crooked, sloppy black-and-white sword, about three-and-a-half inches long. You can’t really see the fucker anymore; I had it covered-up by a furious, roaring, red-eyed, black-maned lion’s head when I was about twenty. No special significance to the lion; I just thought it looked badass, and when you’re that age, looking badass is reason enough to have a burly biker with an electric skin-shredder draw on you. Even that one is a bit faded now as I look back at forty-two-odd years on the planet.

I was sixteen, or maybe just barely seventeen…I don’t really remember

 

I was driving home in my beat-to-shit old ’74 Ford LTD, known to my friends as the mighty Scrap Iron. I was taking long back roads because the car had developed a nasty shimmy in the front end at high speed, and taking her on the freeway scared the bejesus out of me. On the side of the road I noticed a guy hitchhiking. Odd place to try to thumb a ride, there was seldom ever much traffic on this particular stretch of road that ran through mainly pasture land. The guy was in his mid-twenties, had long hair, a ratty beard, shabby clothes and looked like a dangerous ex-con with an old Army duffle bag that could potentially contain the dismembered head of the last person to give him a ride.

Yeah, I stopped.

He tossed his bag in the back seat amongst my fast food wrappers and empties. I asked him where he was heading, and it turned out that he lived just a mile or two from my place. Jeez, I can’t even recall his name. Kurt? Maybe Brad?

“Wanna’ smoke a joint?” Kurt, maybe Brad, asked. Oh yes, yes sir I did.

We fired one up and drove along in my old clunker talking about music, chicks, cars, motorcycles and whatnot, sucking in the sweet smoke and enjoying the 450 air conditioning (you know, four wheels and fifty miles-per-hour). Eventually the conversation rolled around to art. I told him how much I liked the black-and-white tattoos he had all over his forearms. At the time I guess I was just too naïve, or stupid, or stoned, but it didn’t really dawn on me that they were quite obviously prison tattoos.

“Hey man, I did most of ‘em myself; I’m a tattoo artist.”

“No shit?! I’ve been wanting to get a tattoo for a while. Do you have your own equipment and a shop and stuff?”

“Naw, no shop, but I do have my own tattoo equipment. Hey man, if you wanna’ swing by my place, I could pick up my Tattoo Kit and give you a righteous tattoo,” Kurt, maybe Brad, said.

“Yeah?” I asked, “what’ll it cost me?”

“Well, you got any beer? I ain’t allowed to have alcohol where I’m stayin’, and I could sure use a few brews. You fix me up with some beers and I’ll tattoo you.”

I had about ten bucks in my pocket, but that was more than enough for a couple o’ three six-packs of Schaffers, one of the cheapest, nastiest, foul-tasting beers on the market. Maybe it was Carling’s Black Label. Do they still make that shit? I zipped into a Zippy Mart and bought three six packs of the cheapest. I had my trusty fake ID at the ready, but didn’t need it. The clerk looked too bored to even care if I was eighteen or eight. My passenger had a beer open and half-downed before I even started the car.

We picked up his equipment. Although he really wanted a TicTac or something, he mooched a cigarette before going in to hide the beer smell on his breath. I was never sure if it was a girlfriend that wouldn’t allow him to drink, or if he was staying in some sort of halfway house for recently paroled cons. He carried a beat-up old primer-gray tool box with the words “Tattoo Kit” handpainted on the side in dingy red paint above a sloppy cartoon skull.

We drove the two-or-three odd miles back to my house. I drank one of the beers, he killed two. Nobody else was home, so we sat in the livingroom and shot the shit as we drank still more beers.

I had a look at Kurt, maybe Brad’s, Tattoo Kit; it was a plug in transformer from a model train connected to a handpiece made out of a tiny model car motor duct-taped onto a Bic Pen housing. A piece of bent coat hanger wire with a sewing needle soldered onto it fit into a hole in a tiny wheel at the end of the motor; each time the motor would turn, the coat hanger wire and needle would plunge in and out of the Bic pen housing. There were copious amounts of duct tape all over the whole assembly and splashes of decades-old colored inks. I had never seen a ‘real’ tattoo machine before, so this low-tech gadget, straight out of San Quentin, looked like a miracle ‘art’ machine to my glassy young eyes.

The design was a sword; specifically the sword birthmark on the neck of the warrior chick from the movie “Heavy Metal”. I had a back issue of “Heavy Metal” magazine that showed the aforementioned sword.

“Oh yeah, man, no prob…” a bleary-eyed Kurt, maybe Brad, slurred. The beers he’d slammed were beginning to show. I probably should’ve stopped him right there, but I was buzzing along nicely myself. We drank a couple more as he sketched the design on my right shoulder with a black pen. He broke off the rolling ball assembly from the pen and dipped the tattoo needle into the blob of black ink oozing out of the plastic tube.

Drunkenly swaying like a sapling in a stiff breeze, I frowned and said, “Hey man, aren’t you ‘sposed to be using some kinda’ special tattoo ink? I’m pretty sure there’s a special tattoo ink…”

“Naw, man, any ink will do. It’s all the same stuff, right? The people who make tattoo ink just want to charge more ‘cause it says ‘tattoo ink’ on the bottle.” Seemed like sound logic to me.

I dubiously looked at the sketch on my right shoulder. The sword blade leaned from the handle at a strange angle and the little doohickeys that stick out to protect the hand were different sizes. More drunken frowning.

As if reading my mind, Kurt, maybe Brad, laughed and said, “That’s just a guideline, man, just to give me the general shape to do. When it’s finished it’ll look a lot better.”

“I’m not so sure I shou…” I started, stopping to belch.

“C’mon, man, don’t be a pussy. I’m ready to start. It’ll be cool,” Kurt, maybe Brad, scowled, holding the buzzing, clicking tattoo machine up and carefully inspecting it, insuring that the needle was going out at the proper depth and speed. Or pretending to carefully scrutinize; he was much drunker than me, and I was…I was pretty damn drunk.

“Alrighty, let’s rock-n-roll.”

“OK! Fuckin’ A-right, man!” Kurt, maybe Brad, beamed, “Now this might hurt a little at first. Whatever you do, don’t flinch or move, you’ll fuck up the tattoo.” I nodded, grit my teeth and steeled myself for a hurting. And I got one.

“Ow, ow, owww! Fuck, man!” I hollered as the needle tore into my skin, sending drops of blood and ink flying. I didn’t flinch, even though it hurt like a sonofabitch. Kurt, maybe Brad, had an expression of utter surprise. He once again squinted at the tattoo machine, and a sudden look of “AH-HA!” crossed his face.

“Oops, sorry man. I din’ have it adjusted right. Hold on…” he fiddled with the train transformer and adjusted the handpiece. “This ought to fix it.”

I noticed the first bit of my new tattoo consisted of four or five big, black, copiously bleeding dots. It looked like someone had gently stabbed me a few times with a shish kabob skewer rolled in ashes. He re-dipped the needle in the ink and prepared to start again as I clenched my teeth and tightened my arm.

Whatever adjustments he had made seemed to have done the trick, as the needle gently purred across my skin with no more pain than a scratch from a kitten. I was comfortable enough to light up a cigarette as Kurt, maybe Brad, set to work. He stopped a few times to dip more ink on the needle. It seemed to take an hour, but in the time it took to smoke two cigarettes it was all done. He wiped my shoulder off with a wet paper towel and I got a good look at my first tattoo.

It was crooked, sloppy and much longer than I had wanted it. The lines were either way too thick and blob-y, or so thin and spider web-y that you could barely see them.

I was sixteen, or maybe just barely seventeen, drunk as a skunk and grinning from ear-to-ear.

I loved it.

 

First Memories of an Asshole

Once, when I was a wee young pup, I guess about 3 or 4, just a tiny little boy, I had an encounter with my first bona-fide, grade ‘A’ asshole. I didn’t have a word for this person at the time; I was just so shocked and frightened that all I wanted was to find my mama and have her hold me in the safety of her arms while I cried. It’s possible that this was the first real brush with meanness, nastiness and raw aggression that I had ever had. It’s definitely the first one I remember.

We were shopping at a Krogers store. They had this silly system of enticing the customer to bring back his or her shopping cart; after you had loaded your purchases into the car, you returned your shopping cart to the store, pushed it through this mechanical turnstile-thingamajig, and a stamp would be dispensed. You collected the stamps in a little booklet and, when you had filled X-number of pages, you redeemed the stamp book for…I ‘dunno, discounts, or prizes or some such. On the other side of this turnstile assembly, the carts that had already been pushed through were sitting ready for the new customers to use.

My mom was off doing something, maybe even shopping, and me and my older brother were left to amuse ourselves until she came back. For whatever reason our little 3 and 5 year-old minds contrived, we were fascinated with the ticket-dispensing gadget. We wanted those tickets! Had to have ‘em! But where to get a shopping cart to push through the turnstile-thingy? We figured out—clever ‘lil monkeys that we were— that we could take the carts from the front of the line, walk them around to the door area, and then push them through the turnstile. A never-ending loop of shopping carts! An infinite source of tickets!

After walking several carts through in this manner, my brother took our strip of tickets and ran off to find Mama and tell her about our amazing, ticket-producing scheme. As I waited for the two of them, I thought I’d go ahead and use my time to obtain another stash of tickets. As I walked a shopping cart back around to the front, I couldn’t help but notice that my activities had attracted some notice from store personnel. A young man of about 16 or 17, wearing a blue and red Krogers uniform, stood right in front of the turnstile with his arms crossed. To my 3-year-old perceptions, he looked eight feet tall. He was a skinny, red-headed guy with a big, snaggle-toothed, bemused grin on his freckle and acne-spotted young face. I smiled back.

“Hey, what’cha doin’? he asked in a friendly voice. I was a shy fella’—still am, actually—so I said nothing, just smiled sheepishly and looked at him with wide little-boy eyes.

“Are you tryin’ to get a stamp?” he asked. I nodded my head, still smiling my innocent little boy smile.

“Here,” the kid chirped, taking my cart and pushing it through the turnstile. With a metallic ‘click’, the device popped out a wonderful, magical, blue and red ticket.

The friendly stranger snatched the ticket and held it up in the air, displaying it like a model on a game show.

“Is this what you want?” the towering, red-headed giant asked. I nodded enthusiastically and held out my hand. The kid smiled even more broadly…and then proceeded to tear the stamp into teeny, tiny, little fragments. Making a sweeping ‘abracadabra’ hand gesture like a grand magician, he released the tiny bits of torn paper to flutter to the ground like red and blue confetti.

Suddenly—so quickly that I didn’t even notice it—he was stooped down to my height, his ham-sized hand wrapped up in the front of my shirt, pulling me so close we were mere inches apart. His once friendly face was now a blotchy, blazing red mask of fury, and his grin was now pulled back into a vicious sneer full of misshapen yellow teeth. His watery blue eyes burned into mine with a gaze of pure hate.

“You little fucker,” he hissed, in a gust of bad breath and flying spittle, so low that nobody but me could hear him, “Think you’re soooooo fuckin’ smart, dont’cha, you little bastard?! I ‘oughtta beat ‘yer little ass!”

My eyes were like twin green dinner plates, filled with terror. I shook like a leaf in a stiff breeze. I tried to pull away, but he was too strong. I recall wanting to scream, to holler for Mama to come and protect me, but I was mute with all of these new emotions.

“Get the fuck ‘outta here,” he growled, “and if you tell your mom and dad about this, I’ll find you, you little prick! Now GO!” He released the front of my shirt and stood back up. As fast as my little legs could carry me, I scampered away like a shot. The last glimpse I had of the red-headed bully, he was once again smiling, like nothing had happened, and waving at me.

“Bye-bye, now,” he called out merrily.

Bastard.

Intro to Jett’s Collected Memories (in no specific order)

I had what I though was a nasty upper respiratory infection that I just couldn’t seem to shake, and after a few weeks I started coughing up blood. After a few more weeks, I finally went to a doctor.

A CAT scan showed a large mass in my left lung, and several smaller masses scattered throughout both lungs. My bloodwork came back with several weird anomolies.

After much head-scratching, a specialist scheduled me for an open lung surgical biopsy to get a tissue sample. In one week, I’d be laid out on a table and a team of trained professionals would open me up and carve a piece-of-pie-sized chunk out of my lung. I asked him if it was cancer. He shrugged and said we’d know more after the biopsy. “Don’t be too concerned, it’s probably something simple.” he said, but I could see the doubt and concern in his eyes.

I was pissing ice water. I was sure that those twenty years of smoking cigarettes had poisoned me beyond repair. I had long before accepted the idea of my own mortality; death itself really didn’t frighten me, but I was staring at forty, the big 4-0, had a wife I loved, a beautiful baby boy, and goddamn it, I just wasn’t ready to go just yet. I was terrified at the possibility that I might not be around to raise my son; terrified that he’d grow up not knowing me…that I’d just be a picture in a photo album.

My life hasn’t been ‘great’ my conventional standards—I didn’t discover a cure for the common cold, map a route to the New World, invent the automated martini machine or become the dictator of a small nation—but it has been one ‘helluva interesting, entertaining, and oftimes amusing ride. If my son couldn’t have the old man, I wanted him to at least know who I was, what I was ‘about’. Just in case the Grim Reaper was setting a place at the table for me, I decided to write down my life story for my boy; a series of short tales about my life, my loves, my travels, my wacky adventures, my dramas, my comedies, my tragedies, and the eclectic clan of oddballs that fate has seen fit to drop onto (and pull off of) my path.

After the surgery, it was discovered that I did NOT have cancer, but rather a very rare, very exotic lung/auto immune condition. With treatment, there was every possibility that I’d continue to live a long, more-or-less productive (well, productive for ME, anyways), interesting life. I shuffled all of my memoirs away, but I still bang out a yarn or two once in a while…just in case I step out in front of a bus tomorrow.

This blog is a collection of those writings and any new ones that I may write down in a fit of boredom.

 

 

 

A little over four years ago, back in 2004 when my son was almost a year old, I contracted a weird lung ailment.