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.