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