Monday, March 2, 2015

The Wilderness Years - Hit the Ground Runnin' Part 1

As the rented Crown Vic wound it's way back over the flat fields of eastern Maryland and towards the hills of Pennsyltucky our hero was slumped and comatose in the passenger side of that rented car, fucked would be a bit of an understatement, the Jager and weak junk still kicking it's way out of his system, occasionally our hero, or more correctly moi, would sit up and suck down some Gatorade or water, attempt to eat a peanut butter cracker, check on the driver and then pass right the fuck back out, of the 8 or so hours it takes to drive from the cesspool of tourist town to the city of iron i was out for a good 6 plus of it, finally pulling it together enough to drive the last hour or so in and wind my way to my new home, my co-pilot or more correctly pilot on that trip was a fellow fry boy and friend of mine, in fact he had helped get me the job there a few summers back, a good guy who i can only imagine was more than a bit pissed at having to drive almost the whole way back while i snored and drooled and twitched like the derelict i was, i myself was oblivious and like the selfish prick i was i concerned myself more with getting back and getting my shit settled cuz on that Monday, September 11th 1995, my 25th birthday i would start my new gig, humping boxes and delivering useless crap for a party store, another stint in another warehouse cuz that's what the derelicts of the world do, we move shit from point A to point B and make sure it's in the correct spot on the shelf or in the system, we are the neanderthals of the lumpen prole, i was to make a whopping $6.40 an hour...

Under the shimmering streetlights of late summer i pulled to the curb in front of my new place, an old three story brick house with worn red oak doors, a set of cement steps with the weeds thriving in the concrete followed by a set wooden steps and a small porch painted baby shit brown and peeling from top to bottom, my place was on the second floor and i hit the buzzer and waited for the good Doctor or his woman to let me in, it was two city blocks from my old place and there were two bars within spitting distance, a classic transient neighborhood, a place where most people lived for six months to a year, until they could find something better, or they never left, shuffled from one dump to another, a neighborhood populated by halfway houses, immigrants, foreign exchange students, low-lifes, thieves, con-men, in short just what i needed, as i stepped out and watched the sky turn dark blue in front of a fading pink sun, a sun that was dipping behind the hill that was home to the biggest hood in the city, downtown just beyond that... but it didn't matter, it could have been fucking Pluto over that hill far as i was concerned, i was back in North Oakland, the first place that felt like home since mine had went poof and tumbled over like a straw palace...as i climbed out of the Crown Vic i could feel the sweat drip down my ass and stink radiate off me, i was a fine fucking mess after the last 48 hours or so but here i was, standing in front of a run down old brick house and smiling...

When the good Doctor opened the door he grinned and handed me a beer, he was my best friend in those days, a brother, we lugged all my shit up some creaky steps with threadbare carpet, the place had old stain glass windows that had begun to buckle just a bit and a wooden banister worn smooth by decades of hands, at one time it had been a single family home, back in the big steel boom town years, but now was divided up into three units, with us in the middle, a mixed-race gay couple on the first floor, and forty-something sister on the third floor, the apartment door led straight into a living room with a small kitchen on the far right, two bedrooms to the left, one for the good Doctor and one for his lady, a step in and there was a hallway that ran behind the living room, oddly it had a powder room right next to a small full bath and in the very back, behind a heavy, old wooden door was my room... the door was a good two inches thick, it had to be the only door in the whole place that was still original, they didn't make doors like this anymore or you didn't see doors like this in the shit holes i'd been living in, it was big and thick enough to break fingers if they were unlucky enough to be caught and on the other side was nothing... a 9x6 rectangle.

It's an odd habit i have, the memories of the rooms i've lived in, some seem a blur and some hold this place of almost mythic proportion, for the next three years i would live essentially out of this room, it was a sanctuary, an office, a fuck pad, a library, a studio, it was a carefully organized shambolic mess, a rectangle with two small nooks cut by the chimney that ran up the side of the house, on this first day there was nothing in it but a beat up, tiny three-drawer light brown wooden desk, a desk that looked lifted out of the late 50's, it was set between two windows that looked out onto a small backyard that was bathed in the shade of urban arbor, there was an ancient armoire that had been left, it was the first thing you saw when you walked in, the door being all the way left and the room going right, it was the armoire where i'd tape up the flyer i ripped off a bulletin board at CMU after seeing Allen Ginsberg read one night, it was the armoire where the triple beam would make it's home, but i'm getting ahead of myself, a rickety white nightstand sat pushed into the far right nook, for the first few weeks i slept on the floor until the good Doctor told me to grab the mattress and box spring out of his room, seeing that he and his lady didn't need two beds, it was promptly tossed on the floor and pushed against the wall where it would stay the whole time i lived there, i could actually walk into my room and fall into bed and over the next three years that would come in handy...

Now having been living as a student and then a migrant tourism worker for the past few years i had a habit of attempting to travel light, the funny thing was all my clothes, winter-spring-summer-fall were packed into a trunk and an old suitcase, the rest of the my possessions amounted to a decent sized portable stereo, a few boxes of books, my old electric typewriter and a few plastic milk crates of CD's, i had always listened to music but over the last 6 years or so had cultivated the habit of voraciously reading... i set the trunk under the left window and put the stereo on top of it, kept the desk where it was in the middle, the armoire was a such a giant old beast it was not to be moved and it sat near the left window with just enough space to cram my suitcase and a few boxes of shit next to it and out of the way, i wasted no time in stealing some bricks from a building site and grabbing a few wood slats and making myself a make shift bookshelf that sat up against the outcrop where the chimney ran, i snagged an old chair from a junk room near the main door of the apartment building and bought a nice window fan to put in the left window for the hot months, in a matter of weeks it was my own little slice of heaven, separated from the rest of the place it gave both the good Doctor, his woman and myself the space we needed...

The best part was it felt like mine, like my own little home, it was just the space i needed and my best friend was right down the hall and the bars were close by and i worked a block away from the place, a main artery ran a 150 feet or so away from the apartment but with my room in the back i mainly heard birds chirping and neighbors laughing or screaming or sometimes screwing, and the sound of Baum Blvd. would ebb and flow and sound almost as lovely as the Atlantic surf i had just left, but the real cherry on top was the room itself, when you're broke and living in poor places as the song says, the rooms are stifling hot in the summer and freezing in the winter, in the summer the sun would rise and and pass over my room before noon, the windows had these natty, thick curtains that looked almost quilt-like and let in just enough light when the sun was shining but by noon my room and the backyard were bathed in shade, with the window fan sucking in the cool air my room would be ten or fifteen degrees cooler than the rest of the place, in the winter it was just the opposite, i lucked out and the heat blew strong through my vent and i could shut my door and the room would be ten or fifteen degrees warmer than the rest of the apartment, no space heater needed, and so why so much about the apartment? the room? because they were characters in and of themselves, they gave me a foundation, a base in which to build from, besides like Jarvis once said about the supermarket, i had to start it somewhere... so it started here...












5 comments:

Exile on Pain Street said...

But...why back to Pittsburgh? How did that happen? It could have been anywhere. Do you have any photos of this joint? My big regret is not taking pics of all my weigh stations. Wish I had a pic of the tiny apartment on Clifton Boulevard on the near west side of Clevo.

Diary of Why said...

Quoting Jarvis gets a comment from me every time. :)

Kono said...

Exile- i wish i had photos but i still live close enough i could go take some which might be a neat little idea to add to the ambience of the place... Pittsburgh, well part was business opportunity and having a few friends and lurking somewhere in the back there's always a woman now isn't there.

DofW- Hello Stranger! you know i love to quote Mr. JC.

daisyfae said...

It sounds beautiful... Suspect that out of the context of your 'homecoming', i wouldn't think so, however...

Kono said...

Daisy- drove by the old place last week, smile every time i do... the capers i pulled in that place...