It’s 3 AM at my home on Albany Avenue in Chicago. I just got home from work which was a driving job where I delivered newspapers all night. I wouldn’t call it a dream job. In fact it was one of the most bust-ass jobs I ever had. It was a filmmaker, and I did it because I needed the money desperately, and for 15 hours one day a week, I could make some good money. The dream part of the job was that my route was unique in the sense that it encompassed the usual stops of new tands, liquor, stores, bookstores, but also, particularly at night, it was dominated by bars, lots of bars, all bars.
People in Chicago were very fond of this newspaper, and, when I would go into the bar to drop anywhere from 200 to 1000 copies of the paper, was greeted warmly, and offered numerous drinks. Some of the bars featured blues players, and I would always like checking out the acts before I went onto my next bar.
So actually, after dark, and for many hours, it was an exhausting, kick ass street job, mixing sweat and ink from the newspapers, in a party atmosphere, and it mirrored my relationship to the wolrd of art and entertainment, where everybody, relatively speaking, was not in need of this sort of work, or for some, any work for that matter.
One dude who was fired, and there was only none, when i had just hired was a bit nuts, but we all really liked him, and his favorite line, all night long was, “Don’t fuck wif no reader driver.” And, ya know, it was actually good advice.
One night I was delivering newspapers to a club on the northside. When i got there, there was a guy on top of a woman, groping and humping the hell out of her while she cried out. I immediately got out of my truck and said “What the fuck are you doin?” And he got off her, i got busy and stopped paying it any mind, and startred hauling my bundles in the door. After having brought in 25 bundles of newspapers and stacked them in the lobby, I went upstairs having been offered some some refreshment, lapping it up, like the dog i am, when the guy i had saw outside, came in the lobby and drunkenly threw all my newspapers all around the floor when he walked up the stairs and into the bar. I immediately confronted him, angrily, and told him to go down there and pick up all those newspapers and put them back in place. Of course, all the patrons only saw a guy in dirty work clothes covered in ink, attacking a patron for seemingly no reason. I looked at them, put out my hand in a stop motion, saying, “You don’t know.” Sensing the crowd was leaning to his side, and he then came at me. Suddenly, out of nowhere two undercover Chicago detectives, who were in the bar, had him down and in handcuffs, dragged out and down the stairs of the bar.
I was really glad about this, not so much that he screwed up my newspapers, but for messing with that woman in the park. Felt good about that one, like the city of big shoulders, was that. Even detectives saving the day. I guess theyb were watchingnthe whole time. Cities, in general, can be a magic kingdoms of coincdence and novel activity, but not staying inside limited by walls.
I don’t belief in Karma for a long time. I mean, for instance, D.T., The Leader, has proven, with a host of other major greedy ones, that evil, lies and huge hypocrisy keeps you alive longer in this, now, flipped world. After the internet and everything else that this huge social shift we have flipped to, has brought to us.
But i remember a simpler, straighter time when “Don’t fuck wif no Reader driver.” was a moral imperative, no blurred lines and out of focus life styles, elation and hurt, resulting from just contact with the world.