Death-Defying Encounter with Rock’n’Roll On A Budget.

It was a short tour, without a good paying anchor gig. Meaning: we’d driven too far, for too little. If something magical didn’t happen at our gig in St. Louis tonight–like selling a ton of CDs–paying the guys in the band wasn’t going to happen.

So, this morning, I was obsessed with selling merchandise, and though we had to leave Kansas City right away for the soundcheck in St. Louis, I first wanted to stop at a Salvation Army-type mission store just south of downtown. I’d noticed the place the day before, on a boarded-up boulevard, lined with only a handful of functioning store fronts. It was grim.

Drummer Peter Anderson–normally my compatriot in all things thrift–decided to stay in the van. He & James were probably annoyed with me, and I should’ve just let us leave town and get to St. Louis in a relaxed manner. But I wanted to replace our rotting merchandise suitcase with a cool vintage one. The hinges on the old case had completely ripped off. And besides, shopping would help calm my nerves.

Oddly, James decided to join me on this tangent. Peter dropped us off, and sat in the van out front, soaking in the distressed neighborhood as we entered the store. James poked his head in, quickly read the situation, and went back to the van. I went in for the depth probe.

Inside, the place was big enough to get lost in, overstocked with junk that wasn’t selling. I saw a wall of suitcases in the back and b-lined to it, quickly plucking out an old plywood valise in a terrific forest green, ran up to the front, gave an old lady at the register $7, and ran out to the van. I hopped in the rear door, slammed it shut and gave Peter the high sign to head east to Missouri.

We were only a few minutes away, not yet to the highway entrance, when I opened up the case and started filling it with CDs, cassettes, posters, t-shirts, our guestbook and a clip light when I realized that the bottom laminations of the case were all rotten and that I’d just bought myself a useless piece of trash.

“Peter, turn around,” I yelled, “Gotta return this. It’s garbage. I can see friggin’ daylight through the bottom panel.”

This wasn’t the first time I’d heard the sound of James’ eyeballs rolling in his head at me. It was like the high-pitched sound of a television turning on, combined with the grating of gravel inside a set of ball bearings. He was not a vintage shopper like Peter and I. And although I now have the pleasure of looking back at his early 90’s proclivity for acid-washed denim shorts, floppy untied high-top sneakers, egg-blue wire-framed glasses and over-sized wife beaters, I must admit that Peter & I regularly tested the patience of he and Greg with our shopping habit. (Greg was our recently departed trombonist)(No Greg hadn’t died, just quit the band, although he almost died too at one point, but that’s another story).

Though James had only briefly been inside place, he had noticed something crucial.

“Yuh know, there was a big sign that said NO RETURNS,” he warned.

But I didn’t care and asked that Peter turn the ’83 Dodge Ram Van around and again drop me off in front of the store. As we pulled up we saw a tricked-out gold Mercedes coup parked there. It was painted gold, the rims, the soft-top and probably the teeth of those languorous gentlemen hanging around it. It was not an inviting sidewalk scene for three long-haired indie rockers. So, Peter pulled up behind it cautiously, put it in park, but kept it running while I jumped out.

I was oblivious to the Mercedes. Feeling embarrassed and ripped off—a bad combination–there was a wrongful transaction to rectify. So, I jumped out of the back. Walking in, there was now a line of people six-long, all waiting for the old lady to check out items. The pressure to depart for St. Louis was mounting–and damn it–she was ringing up stuff so excruciatingly slow! My patience was sinking. To save time I went back and picked out a comparable suitcase and came back to an even longer line.

Whatever it was that was coming my way, I started to earn it at the moment I broke line, stepped past a few other customers, walked up to the register and asked in an over-polite voice, if, “someone could please quickly process a little return on this item purchased earlier this morning, so that I could exchange it for this other one that isn’t falling apart?” The old lady didn’t acknowledge my request by so much as looking up from her work. Rather, she pointed her index finger ceiling-ward with a frightening inch-long, claw-like, curvilinear fingernail, and said, “you can read can’t you, mm-hmm?”

I looked up, stepped back, and read a huge blackboard sign that James had not, not seen, that indeed said “NO RETURNS. NO REFUNDS.”

“Well certainly M’am you must make exceptions when the merchandise is broken?” But she didn’t look up to nothing. She just hankered down harder into her work ringing up the other silent customers in line before me.

Needing a game plan, I walked to the back of the store. I was 26 years old, and broke, smarting from the loss of our crazed trombonist sidekick. His departure had taken a toll on our sound and on our spirit–and touring had now officially turned into an expensive bummer. It helped matters little that I was a miserly mofo, and that coveting a $7 bill is something I’d naturally spend a lot of psychic energy on—should I choose to walk away and forfeit it to the bowels of south Kansas City–here on this obnoxiously bright morning.

So with some righteousness I walked back to the suitcase section, put the good one back on the shelf, and kept the busted one I’d bought. Then I marched over to the neck tie section and loaded it with a few skinny vintage ones I’d been eyeballing, and then over to the sweatshirt pile where I’d seen a velour pullover that I’d probably look stylishly asphyxiated in. Then I went over to the room next door and while standing with my back to the front window, started stuffing CD’s into the waist of my pants—Steve Wynn, Louis Armstrong, Liz Phair–this, all in plain view of James and Peter, who sat astounded in the van, wondering what shallow grave I was digging for us.

James, at the sight of my larceny began to panic. He was planning a family with his new wife and starting up businesses in rural Wisconsin, and all manner of well-considered adult behavior. Touring needed to not be something he did for thrill seeking and danger, but for financial gain and fun. Meanwhile, Peter quietly kept the van running as the two of them wondered what to do next should something go wrong, especially now as the sidewalk and store were laden with people as noon approached.

Determined, I walked to the front desk, pissed about her discourtesy, and feeling righteous in my belief that a good theft requires a flaunting, red herring element. So instead of just walking my klepto-self out of there with my lifted swag, I chose instead to wait in line pleasantly, with a smile, so that I could speak to her in a manner of mutual respect and resolution.

As she rang up the person in front of me, I noticed that all her fingernails were not only an inch or more long, but that each of them had a unique nature scene painted on them, with palm trees, camels, deck chairs or the sun. This explained why the line was so slow. Had she operated the 1970’s vintage cash register with any speed, she’d have broken a nail. Hobbling, American-style.

My fashion-biases aside, I came to the front of the line and said too sweetly, “excuse me ‘M’am but you sold me this busted suitcase and I’d be very happy to simply take one that isn’t useless. You can just keep my money. I realize that this is against the rules, but I’m sure you can understand….”

“Read the sign,” she blurted.

“But certainly M’am, as one human to another, I’m sure we can agree that some rules don’t apply when something unfair has occurred.”

“What part of NO RETURNS do you not understand?” she grunted.

“C’mon, you gotta be joking! You sold me junk and you should take it back. Rules, Schmools!” And she looked away offering to help the next person in line behind me.

So, I crawled back in line and waited for another chance to make sense with her. She knew I would again be in her face soon. Her elderly nerves nervously worked the machine. She was extremely aware of my approach.

Internally, I was fuming. She had embarrassed me again! So, in my foulness and self-pity, in my sorrow about this miserable and destitute tour, and because of under-attended gigs everywhere, and the fiduciary concerns of struggling artists since the dawning of time, and a nagging feeling that no one would show up to the show in St. Louis tonight–there seemed to be only one reasonable thing to do as the transaction ahead of me completed and the customer peeled away from her counter.

I stepped up, and said, “This is so you don’t rip off anybody else!” I threw the suitcase in the air. In slow motion it lurched at the ceiling, high up with the flown blackboard sign, up towards the dusty beams painted army green, up above the heads of the new 5 people waiting in line behind me. It came down onto the linoleum tiles like a gunshot, flat on its broad side—with a noise that might jolt the residents of this scarred neighborhood.

And with that clamor, it seemed opportune, or even inevitable, that I should also jump up in the air and put two good feet squarely through that suitcase. And, it shattered into a thousand splinters and made a ripping and cracking sound so satisfying that it now seemed as though I’d spent my $7 on something truly wonderful and awesome.

As I looked up to give her the finger and shout “you can keep your (expletive) suitcase.” The old lady reached under the counter for (gulp) her stapler, and ran through a trapeze gate fast as lightening and clocked me in the side of the head, and followed up with some sort of upper cut to the jaw.

At that moment I heard the cry of a young man running from the back room, “WHAD YOU DO TUH MOMMA?! WHAD YOU DO TUH MOMMA?!”

I was on the floor now, somewhere below Momma and her fists of iron, and turned to see this guy running straight at me with a huge glass vase cocked over his head in both hands like a penalty thrower in a soccer match. I dove past the old lady’s counter, toward the front door, slamming it open with my hands, stumbling and landing on my ass near the doors threshold on the sidewalk out front, just in time to see the glass vase release at my head. I dodged to my left as it smashed to bits on the sidewalk just below the fuming tail pipe of our van.

The languorous guys around the Mercedes were now leaving their repose and lurching at me when I ran past them, with the young man hot on my trail. I ran for my life down the block, not knowing where I was going, but not wanting to give away that the van was filled with my band mates, my music gear and my cherished merchandise.

So, feeling no pain—only adrenaline, with the young man’s footsteps behind me, I felt I could loose him if I frustrated the chase. So began a slalom race between the dead saplings that lived (and died) on that sidewalk. Only once did I turn around to stop and play lunge and parry with my pursuer around the sides of a big blue mailbox. He jabbed at me with a big branch he’d conjured from somewhere.

“WHAD YOU DO TUH MOMMA?! WHAD YOU DO TUH MOMMA?!”

I turned and ran, exactly as he threw the branch at my back. It hit my calves, tangled my legs, and put me on the ground. This time the pain was clear, of splintering, shattered CD cases stabbing me in my ass and hips. He grabbed for the branch as I dashed away toward the end of the block.

The intersection demanded a decision, stay on the busy street or dart into the adjacent residential streets? But just then my orange van screeched around the corner into my path with the side cargo door flung wide. James was yelling “Get the hell in, get the hell in!” Peter would not be stopping, so I flung myself into the vehicle, Pete Rose style, landing with my chest atop the amplifiers and drum cases. Before my body could bounce off the gear and land twice, Peter jumped on the accelerator, James slammed the sliding cargo door shut from the bunk in the rear and we peeled away into the afternoon.

Moaning in pain, I slowly slithered headfirst over into the front passenger seat. Peter gasped, “What happened to your head?!” I was a bloody mess, but not half as worried about the blood trickling down the side of my face as I was about the shards of CD case that needed removing from my pants and my hips.

Strange, but only then did a proper panic set in, as I sputtered to the guys my incredulity about Momma, my voice quavering. Peter drove fast and sure. We needed to get the hell out of town. Stopping anywhere to clean off a bloody guy seemed suspect, like it might call us to attention. So we drove about 50 miles along the highway to the first rest area where I rinsed off and tended to wounds.

About 3 years later I sold the Steve Wynn CD for 25 cents at a garage sale–finally, moving some units.