(previous chapter)
I spent the first night in a wash under a bridge on the outskirts of town. People told me the best way to get a job in Quartzsite was to just ask all the vendors, especially if they were just setting up, if they needed help. I found a sunglasses vendor setting up her booth and landed a job on day one, the day before Thanksgiving. I was also sleeping in the booth as security.
Before work, I'd often take a walk down the road and smoke some weed and play my ukulele. This was often before the sun was up. Eventually, a family in a van picked me up and we went back to their camp in the desert to smoke weed together. I started hanging out with the family, and the whole caravan that formed around them nightly.
I shared a birthday (December 18) with one of the members of the family. Though I had the day off my regular job that day, another vendor had hired me early in the morning to help move her booth. Once that was done, I dropped some acid and went out into the desert. I made it back to the camp just as it turned dark. Everyone there was already raging a drum circle hard.
When I went to camp the next night to hang out, everyone was asleep early from the night before, but there were some newcomers drinking around a fire just before the camp. A guy and two girls. I hung out and jammed with them a little while. After I left, the guy beat the girls up, and set their car on fire with a couple of kittens inside. After hearing about this, I brought my knife with me when I went back to the area the following night for self defense, if I needed it. My boss was there when I grabbed my knife and flipped, though. Then, she flipped even more when I came back in the day after that and the girls had come looking for me at the booth when I wasn't there to say goodbye before they left town. For that, I quit.
I started camping with the caravan I had been hanging out with. It didn't take long before I was picking up more work. One of my friends and I started working for an Indian guy and his wife, helping him move a bunch of rough stone. After work for him ran out, I started working for one of his friends, power washing gemstones.
Eventually, everyone found notices on all the tents and vehicles at camp that we weren't supposed to be there, so we we bounced around a few different places (including the original one sometimes) each night. Work finished up once again, so I went to busking for a couple weeks before tear down went into full swing. I did some jobs for a few different vendors to help the pack up, then the left with the family back towards Tucson.
Saturday, April 22, 2017
The Call Center, An Ukulele, and Hello Arizona
(previous chapter)
Eventually, I found work at the call center in Athens. I was staying with some friends in Buchtel while working there for what little time I did.
I hated every minute of the call center. It tore me up to call people with no money and talk them into donating to different charities, which would only receive a small percent, and actually use an even smaller percent for what they say it's for. I was also close to finishing The Book Must Burn: 100 Poems To Make You Think, and was beginning to also look into getting an ukulele. When I got my second paycheck from the call center, I went ahead and made the decision to get a tenor ukulele from Blue Eagle Music for $100 and quit my job. I spent the last two weeks until my final paycheck teaching myself to play my new instrument, and rushing out The Book Must Burn.
After picking up my last paycheck, I went out and did my first busking, earning somewhere around $136 in one Friday through Sunday weekend, paying for the ukulele and then some. I was ready to be back on the road again, and winter was not too far off anyway.
One of my friend that I had been staying with helped me buy a bus to Arizona. After Acola the previous year, I had no intention of returning to Florida. Through a couch surfing database on Facebook, I came in contact with someone that claimed to own a gem shop in Tuscon. The person said I'd be able to stay there if I work for the gem shop. I boarded a Greyhound and was in the desert city a few days later.
When I got to the person's house, I realized things weren't as they had been portrayed online. Tutone wire wrapped gemstones, then expected me to sell them while we were busking because he couldn't himself. He was also crazy and went off on people around the house, and even people listening to music we played while busking all the time.
I didn't feel safe, and contacted the couch surfing group that I had found Tutone through. They got some old deadheads to come to the rescue, and I met them at the 4:20 show at the Hut to go out to their ranch south of Tucson. I traded some labor for a place to crash for the weekend, then they took me back to town to hitch towards a place they had told me about, Quartzsite.
My ride was some old grandma lady from California that used to smuggle illegal immigrants. At first, she wasn't sure she wanted to give me a ride all the way to Quartziste, on account of my smell. But after driving down the highway a ways and enjoying some of "California's number one crop" she was asking me if I was sure I didn't want to go all the way to California by the time we were in Quartzsite.
Eventually, I found work at the call center in Athens. I was staying with some friends in Buchtel while working there for what little time I did.
I hated every minute of the call center. It tore me up to call people with no money and talk them into donating to different charities, which would only receive a small percent, and actually use an even smaller percent for what they say it's for. I was also close to finishing The Book Must Burn: 100 Poems To Make You Think, and was beginning to also look into getting an ukulele. When I got my second paycheck from the call center, I went ahead and made the decision to get a tenor ukulele from Blue Eagle Music for $100 and quit my job. I spent the last two weeks until my final paycheck teaching myself to play my new instrument, and rushing out The Book Must Burn.
After picking up my last paycheck, I went out and did my first busking, earning somewhere around $136 in one Friday through Sunday weekend, paying for the ukulele and then some. I was ready to be back on the road again, and winter was not too far off anyway.
One of my friend that I had been staying with helped me buy a bus to Arizona. After Acola the previous year, I had no intention of returning to Florida. Through a couch surfing database on Facebook, I came in contact with someone that claimed to own a gem shop in Tuscon. The person said I'd be able to stay there if I work for the gem shop. I boarded a Greyhound and was in the desert city a few days later.
When I got to the person's house, I realized things weren't as they had been portrayed online. Tutone wire wrapped gemstones, then expected me to sell them while we were busking because he couldn't himself. He was also crazy and went off on people around the house, and even people listening to music we played while busking all the time.
I didn't feel safe, and contacted the couch surfing group that I had found Tutone through. They got some old deadheads to come to the rescue, and I met them at the 4:20 show at the Hut to go out to their ranch south of Tucson. I traded some labor for a place to crash for the weekend, then they took me back to town to hitch towards a place they had told me about, Quartzsite.
My ride was some old grandma lady from California that used to smuggle illegal immigrants. At first, she wasn't sure she wanted to give me a ride all the way to Quartziste, on account of my smell. But after driving down the highway a ways and enjoying some of "California's number one crop" she was asking me if I was sure I didn't want to go all the way to California by the time we were in Quartzsite.
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