Life As An Elevator
A Novel
By D. Witt
Chapter Eleven
As we draw closer to Allen's Landing in the Old Quarter, near the
original but now abandoned Houston ship channel, Chris pulls up
sideways into an alleyway between two freight storage warehouses next
to an iron fire escape stairway and parks Tommy's Nash Rambler. The
stairway is the entrance to Love Street, the club where we are the
house band. We see the small greenspace park underneath the nearby
freeway overpass. The side of the warehouse is lit up with a gigantic
fifteen foot yellow blinking sign spelling out Love Street with
hundreds of tiny light bulbs. Love Street is lit up but it is early
yet, about 10:00 PM and only a few people have gathered. Some are
milling around looking to score. Things don't start happening until
about midnight. Sometimes things will go on until the wee hours.
Getting out of Tommy's car, we begin to walk down the narrow alleyway
stopping to sit under the fire escape stairway on the steps. Chris went
into the club upstairs to set up the equipment for a sound check. Love
Street Light Circus is on the third floor of an old warehouse building
and it is hell getting the equipment up three flights of stairs. At the
front of the building is a small grassy park with benches where the
hippies sit and smoke pot. I can see from my place on the fire escape
stairs the fog rising from the old Houston ship channel. It is
beginning to rain and the mist rising from the poluted blackness of the
old canal sent a reverberating chill up my spine and the ripples from
the tarpitch black surface of the water lapped at the banks of the
shore. I heard the faint sound in the distance of freighter's horn
moaning along with the plunk from Johnny's acoustic guitar. He was
sitting on one of the benches in the park, axe in hand, playing for
spare change provided by the small group of hippies sitting
cross-legged on the grass in front of him. Johnny Winter had tried
several times to get Cliff Carlin, the owner of the club, to book his
band with drummer Uncle John Turner and bassist Tommy Shannon but
nothing has materialized yet. Johnny just camps out on that bench every
night with the hope of something will break for him and his mates
eventually.
His long skinny neck where the blood veins pop out on the
side is covered by his long pearl white hair dripping with sweat when
he is really jamming. He strains crooknecked over the fretboard
searching for the blend in the chords that gives him a unique blues
style. As Johnny's guitar licks permeate the dank air, I thought about
rekindling the conversation that I was having with Tommy on the way to
the club. I still haven't shared a new revelation that I had recently
and I was eager to tell him about it.
I began to explain to Tommy and Clementine that I imagine my lifespirit
is like a water balloon. "Do you know how the water in a balloon makes
it all squishy but how somehow it always reverts back to its original
shape?" I ask. "No matter how hard that you squeeze it, it always goes
back to its natural shape, right?" I continue. "Yeah, so what's the
point?" responded Tommy. "OK," I press on, "imagine that the water
balloon in its natural state is encompassed by an absolutely perfectly
shaped transparant crystaline sphere... like a glass bubble."
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