Jazz and other fundamentals of life

Something, maybe a snatch of music, possibly a reference to the time I was a literacy Vista Volunteer in Pittsburgh, drew up this memory:

My best guess would be that he was around 70 years old.  He wore a herring bone suit that had seen better days; a sweat-soiled white shirt; a pair of scuffed, lace up black shoes.  He placed a battered Homburg on the counter beside me as he ordered a cup of coffee.  When he turned to say good morning, looking me up and down, checking out my half-eaten eggs and finally locking me in with a penetrating gaze of slightly bloodshot eyes, I knew a story was coming.  The best ones usually come about through chance meetings and the time and willingness to listen.  It was Saturday, I had nothing better to do, and the second cup of coffee was free. 

He told me that he was a debt collector during the thirties.  He alluded to, but didn’t quite say, that it was basically a strong arm job, chasing out-of-luck debtors for one of the hundreds of fly-by-night agencies that made a killing during the depression, buying up written-off loans for a fraction of their value and harassing the down-and-out defaulters for whatever they could collect through continuous late night calls, surprise visits, faintly veiled threats of police action and other intimidation tactics.   But that was just a job.  What he really lived for back then - what made his life worthwhile - was jazz.  Pittsburgh was a jazz town, oozing out of the all-night jukes and clubs in the Hill District - places like the Crawford Grills (I & II), the Savoy and the Bambola Social Club.  He told me about heading home after a day of collections, grabbing his saxophone and heading out to find a venue where he could maybe sit in for a song or two. His voice became tight and his rheumy eyes lit up as he talked about Earl Hines, Art Blakely and other jazz greats that came out of that melting pot neighborhood known as the ‘Crossroads of the World.’ 

Then, after asking the waitress for another cup of steamy black coffee into which he poured half a jar of sugar, he pointed out the luncheonette window to a garbage strewn empty lot across the street.  “I used to live right there” he said.  “There was a three-story building – one of them old style ones that had long outlived their former glory and became the refuge of guys like me.  I lived in a cramped apartment on the first floor.  It wasn’t much, but you should have seen the inside.  Every wall space, every corner, I had filled with jazz albums.  Over the years, I must have bought out the jazz sections of half the back street record stores in the city, little by little.  Duke Ellington, Cole Porter, Satchmo, Cab, Lionel – if it came out on vinyl, I bought it.  My landlady used to complain – said it was a fire hazard.  Turns out she was right.  There weren’t but two light sockets in the place.  I ran my turntable on one and rigged up the other with one of those strip things to run everything else – my hotplate, the radio, a little icebox.  One day I hurried out down the street to get some coffee and lunch meat.  I heard the fire engines as I was coming back.  A neighbor passing by on the street said to me ‘You better hurry.  Your place is burning down.  I ran back.  There were flames coming out of the downstairs windows.  I had left the hotplate plugged in, just so some water would be boiling by the time I got back.  I looked at that fire and saw my whole life going up in flames: all that music.  Everything I had collected since I was a kid.  You know what?  I started to walk toward the building.  What was there to live for? My life was inside there, everything I cared about, all my memories.  I wanted to disappear along with it,    I didn’t though.  I stopped before I got to the door.  The heat was too much.  The fireman probably would have pulled me back anyway.  But I thought about it, I really did.

And here I am.  Drinking another cup of coffee.”