September 3, 2010. Friday.
Situation: Every Friday night so far this year, I’ve had work; but I’ve lost my regular Friday job, so no work tonight. To illustrate what I was saying about my wage above, I’ve calculated my net earnings for certain nights. On a Thursday night I get five Jacksons for what’s ostensibly three hours of work, but if you add in set up, break down, and driving time, that comes to about six hours of work. Add two more hours of preparatory work as I’ve talked about, and the total comes to eight hours. Figure the allowance for mileage that the federal government permits (it varies from year to year, but has been around $.50 per mile the last couple years) – that’s $.50 times 66 miles, or $33. Subtract that from five Jacksons, and divide by 8, and you get an hourly net wage of about $8.37. That’s admittedly slightly above the minimum wage, but my Sunday work fares far worse. There my gross is only three Jacksons and three Washingtons. Subtract the mileage allowance of $40 ($.50 times 80 miles) and divide by 8 hours of total work (which in this case doesn’t include any preparatory work that I might do, say, on Saturday), and the hourly wage comes to about $2.87. This is for work that calls for much training and supposedly requires rare, if not unique, skills. And this work doesn’t carry any benefits – no health, worker’s compensation, or unemployment insurance, no 401(k) plan. Admittedly, I do get free meals (part of which I most often box up and have as a second or third meal during the week) and, on Thursday, two glasses of merlot and, Sundays, all the apricot wheat beer I dare drink. Last night, I also learned that the Thursday job, which was once weekly, and reduced to every other week for the last couple months, will continue every other week into the fall. Fortunately, to make up for the lost work on Friday nights, I have some work I can do during the day today. This is for an entirely different kind of job, which, by the way, requires little more than an attention span, and at which I can some times make $100 an hour. Early this morning our new refrigerator, which was the first we’ve ever had to buy, was delivered. I caught Moi staring at it with – what? – I guess, with the delight one stares at a new purchase, or perhaps she’s just admiring the change of color, black with an industrial gray door, which sort of matches the gray-green and black-green of our cabinets and countertops. She’s consecrated the appliance with four magnets: one in the shape of a fiddle, another which is a watermelon wedge wearing sunglasses, the third a plaque of Mt. Rushmore with the faces of four Indian leaders looming in the clouds above, and the fourth showing a cartoon dog next to the saying “Love me, love my dog.” I work most of the afternoon, getting back about 4:30; Mway is waiting for her walk. But after I put on my boots, helmet, and gloves, she twists her head and looks up at me with a quizzical look, as if to ask “Are we really going for a walk now?”
State of the Path: Perhaps she was wondering if I was going out to mow the lawn instead, which indeed I had been thinking of doing – and it’s about a week since I mowed it last, a rhythm Mway might be attuned to, and the grass is at a height at which I usually mow it. But, since the place Moi and I usually work at Saturday nights is closed for the weekend, I decide to postpone any mowing until at least tomorrow. My eyes fall upon the outbuilding and on what once was a rabbit hutch attached to it. Inside it now, for years, there’s been nothing but jars; on top of it is a cow skull, against its legs is a basketball backboard for the kids which we never put up, and beneath it are several plastic wastebaskets lying on their side and a shredded plastic snow sled that Moi might actually use to haul things around. Before the walled garden, I note the “chokeberry” bush, now bearing purple berries, and next to it what once used to be a belligerent multiflora bush, now nothing but dead branches, starting to get covered over with wild grape vines. I take a pee in the walled garden, and when I turn around, nearly step on a big pile of turds Mway has left in the path. I start to go straight to the creek, but Mway turns on the side path, and I decide to follow her. Just before the monkey vine portal, Mway turns left onto the faint path that I thought might have been made by the neighbor kids, and I follow her there too. It leads to the dump mound – a pile of dirt, which was here when we first bought the house, out of which sticks a wash tub and some sheets of rubber. There’s several big animal holes dug into it. Hiding it from the sight of the neighbors on one side is a bush with red berries (is it the same as the bushes I’ve lately noticed in bug land?), and a couple trees down is the Boy’s tumbling down fort. This is indeed a cozy and a “cool” place for kids to play in, I think. Near the monkey vine portal is the same bush with red berries. Lots of bumblebees again, brown little butterflies, monarchs (or viceroys), that same butterfly that kind of looks like a cecropia moth (is that the right name?), and a spindly bug that I think for a moment is a mosquito, but I’m sure is something else. Down by the creek, I note for the first time how much jewelweed is growing in bug land, among the grasses now turning brown. As I’m walking along looking at it, I just in time catch myself before I take another step and fall over the creek bank. Coming along the ridge, I see that the red-berried bushes here have different kinds of leaves than the bushes near the dump mound – maybe I’ll have time to try to identify all these things this weekend.
State of the Creek: Mway goes into the water below the tree stand. She gets out somewhere and runs ahead of me, and at the big locusts, I see her standing on the creek at the narrows looking over to the other side. From where I view her I can see the big cavity under the path that Moi worried about earlier this year. When I catch up to Mway, she suddenly leaps across the creek after what may be a rabbit, which dashes for cover into the dead branches of a multiflora bush surrounding the big oak that rises above the big clod of sod along the creek.
The Fetch: More fetches than I care to toss. Mway seems to still have a little bit of a squeal to her bark, and she seems to be snorting a lot from plowing through the goldenrod after the stick. Going back to the house, Mway finally manages to pass me near the walled garden, just before her pile of turds which she willy-nilly steps on.
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Might as well continue my token description of my work as a musician in this here US of A, which I’m doing, as I’ve said before, for the benefit of no one in particular. I didn’t play last night, never having replaced the lost Friday night gig that I mention above. The Thursday night gig I mention above has now been lost also, though that was replaced for a time by a Tuesday night gig, since lost, the restaurant owners having decided to lease their premises to a franchise bar featuring topless waitresses, midget dancers, water pistol shots, juggling bartenders, “biggest dick” and biggest tits” contests, and the like, although I’m not sure if this new establishment has actually opened, having heard from Jill and Tom, two of our followers, that the town is fighting its proposed existence. I have approached another establishment in this town about the possibility of a regular weekly gig, though I’ve yet to hear back from it. Randy, Wade, and I have managed to maintain a presence in this particular town since 2003, thanks initially to the good word of two elderly couples for whom we once played an anniversary party, Nick and Mary and Ned and Fran, members of the “crooner” and “Big Band” generations respectively, who have anchored our gigs here. Mary’s favorite tunes included “East of the Sun, West of the Moon” and “The Way You Look Tonight,” Fran liked Goodman’s “Don’t Be That Way” and “Take the A Train” (the latter of which she danced to with Sue Smith), Ned curtly approved of “whatever you do sounds good,” and Nick, perhaps a former Ramsey Lewis follower, had a standing request for three tunes, Ray Charles’ “Mess Around,” “Night Train,” and Herbie Hancock’s “Watermelon Man,” which became an end-of-the-night staple called “Nick’s Picks.” The gigs here have also been anchored by a number of other couples (not all of them in their 70’s, 80’s and 90’s) and by Wade’s sister-in-law Sally and her coterie of friends, ex professors and artist-retirees from the communication fields, who sit at one large table and, led by Sally’s booming voice, often raise a ruckus of conversation which I have to remind Wade and Randy (as well as myself) not to play sonic tug-of-war with. (Janet is fond of Ellington, Marcia likes anything by Monk, Trudy is most pleased by “Time After Time,” Sid always want to hear anything by Kurt Weill, Walter anything by Mingus, Jane likes “Fever,” and Sally herself, who has lost her husband, her parents, and both of her kids, often requests “St. James Infirmary.”) Sadly, since we started in this college town by the river, Mary has died, as has, as I’ve just mentioned, Sally’s husband and both her parents (though they were in bad shape when we started), at least two members of her coterie, and another elderly couple I can think of off hand, Reuben and Ro, the latter of whom used to sway in front of me, cocktail in hand, to “What Is This Thing Called Love.” After Mary died, Ned and Fran of course kept coming to whatever restaurant we were then playing, bringing Nick along, who, although always close to an Alzheimer’s condition, had rapidly sunk deep into a spousal post-mortem fog, often looking up befuddled at us at the end of the night, politely calling out for the “Pick” we had just played. Ned had not yet had his driver’s license revoked, though sometimes at the end of the night he would forget where he had parked, Randy then having to use Ned’s “remote beeper” to find the car for him. On breaks, due to the same reason he forgot where he parked, Ned kept us updated on his WWII experiences in New Guinea and state cop escapades, but, except for leg pains, remained in spry shape, even after being knocked flat on the ground one afternoon in a parking altercation, until last January, when his doctors decided he needed an operation for colon cancer, rendering him bed-ridden.
So this past year, Ned, Fran, and Nick only made it to one gig at this restaurant where we no longer play (where the seating arrangements and acoustic structures were anyway stupidly deployed by a young manager). I know Nick has a large family, and they no doubt keep close tabs on him. Fran and Ned never had any kids, but I know Fran feeds a cat or two. Wade has kept in touch with Fran by phone, though this is a call he has to think twice about, as Fran usually has about two hours’ worth of things to say.
The gig I usually have tonight is the one I have weekly with Moi, at a place where we’ve played since 1992. Moi’s still on Red Cross duty, and besides Katie has closed her place for the holiday weekend, but maybe I can describe this gig sometime later. Tomorrow is a gig I’ve had with the trio for ten years (I once had an argument with Wade over whether it’s been ten or eleven years). Maybe I’ll be able to describe a little bit of that soon.
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