Catch up2

Okay, because I can't seem to write about the past while I constantly experience the present and want to document it, I'm going to be doing current updates alongside past entries for the time being and see how that goes.

Ever gas jugged across country?

With North Carolina growing a little weary, the weather becoming colder, and a serious lack of things going on, I decided to test my posse-gathering skills and see what I could come up with.  The result was a couple desperately seeking to get the hell out of Norfolk, VA, a Musician from Boone looking for a jog down to Athens, GA, a weathered traveler stuck in Greensboro, NC, and trying to get down to Austin, and another mysterious fellow out of Boone who described himself as "White, skinny, and 30."

I gathered up the Norfolk folk first, Pugsley and Sara, and we arranged ourself back at my home base in Charlotte, Amelie's, and we more or less instantly approached by another pair of travelers.  The older of the two was a serious wet-head and I was having trouble figuring out how how he was managing to put two sentences together.  Eventually, he couldn't.  The younger was about twenty, wide eyed, and you tell by the way his eyes were glued to the older wet-head that he was entirely too impressionable.  

I let the 2 of them pair up with my two Norfolk companions and swill it up around the van for a bit before I finally got sick of the wet-head's idiotic Butthead-laugh.  Also pushing me over the edge was his constant asking if he could come with us to Atlanta, while simultaneously saying he had to get out the state that night because he had a warrant out for his arrest for burglary.  I told the younger of them to meet me back at the van in the morning, because I wanted to get him away from this worthless piece of shit, but he never showed up and I didn't have time to wait for something that probably wasn't going to happen.

The next morning, Joe from Greensboro showed up a little late, but at least he showed up which is more than I can say for the others who were permanently stuck "en route".  I decided around 4 O'clock that this was enough waiting, and that four people was good enough.  We left Charlotte targeting Atlanta.

Atlanta came and left without too much incident, Pugsley and Sara ran around the outskirts of the town snatching up fuel and money while Joe and I held down the fort.  We refueled, restocked cash, and took off for Mobile, AL with the hopes that we could crash there for the night as a way point for New Orleans.  We ended up a bit short of Mobile, but it all worked the same.

In the morning we took a minute to wake up, and warm up ( it was still a bit cold at night in Alabama), and then we hit Mobile, passed it and rolled into Mississippi.

Mississippi did not like us.  The first "town" we stopped at literally ran us out of town.  We stopped at a gas station where I bought a funnel so we could get some gas from our gas can into the van.  An older black man walked by me as I peeked around the corner of the gas station to look at what else was around.  He took a disliking to me checking things out and figured I was up to no good.  He turned around and came back and walked up to my face and asked, "Looking for something?"

I told him I was just looking around.  He responded with, "That's my truck over there."  I looked back in the direction I had been looking and saw a whole pile of cars and trucks parked in no particular order.  He didn't point.  He didn't specify.  I had no idea what he was talking about.  He simply stared at me from about 3 feet away and the only response I could give him was a shrug and an, "Okay..."

He started to walk away and came back to us and told me too leave, immediately.  There were 3 more gas stations across the street so I said fuck it, took the funnel and threw it back into the shop on the counter and told them they could have it back.  a lady asked if I wanted to money back.  I told her no.

They next gas station was a bit more polite, but we got more or less the same response from them.  I figured I would go over to the McDonalds next to the third gas station and steal some WiFi and check my E-mail.  Mistake.

I got about 5 minutes into my tappity-tap on my laptop before Pugsley, a man whose body was not used to moving quickly, rushed through the door with a mighty burst.  He took one look around, spotted me, and shouted, "we have to go.  Now!"  I looked across from me where two AT&T business man in suits and ties were sitting and figured I should probably just freak out and make a bigger scene since they wouldn't know how to respond, and Pugsley had already freaked everyone out anyway.

I jumped up out of my seat, slammed my laptop closed , and yelled back at Pugsley, "What did you do!?"  while I ran out the door dragging my bag behind me.  I took off running as fast as I could, quickly passed Pugsely, and saw a lady with a notepad sitting behind my van scribbling what I assumed was my license plate.   As I got close to the van I gained speed coming down a grassy hill and I noticed I was about to hit a large patch of cement directly behind where the lady was standing.  Up until now, she had no idea I had been rushing at full speed straight at her, and I knew as soon as I hit that cement I was going to make quite a racket pounding the cement.  Again, might as well have some fun, I thought.

As i hit the pavement I did a little hop to accentuate my landing while charging full speed towards this woman who was very occupied being a busy body.  I got two or three very loud steps in to which the woman jumped, startled, and nearly dropped her notepad.  I rushed by her shooting a 'BOO!"  at her and quickly popped the door open, started the engine, and gave the woman the I'm-going-whether-you-move-or-not engine rev.  She scampered out the way and I whipped the van around as Pugsley caught up and did jogging-jump entrance into the van.  Off to New Orleans we went.

Lucky Dog, Moonshine, and Balloons.

Brooklyn never sleeps.   The bars close at 4am, sort of, and buses run through the night picking up wayward drunks who can't find the train.   At the heart of Williamsburg, Bedford ave., sits a small opening with a patio  able, maybe, to fit 7 underfed people.  Inside you'll find the Lucky Dog, a  misplaced wild west saloon, started possibly by accident, with a Brooklyn tint.  The bartenders regularly pour free drinks,  the owners bring breathalysers in to the bar on a somewhat regular basis (When they themselves are shit-faced) and scold the workers if they blow double 0's, the New York smoking ban seems to be optional - the owners strolled in with a pair of cigars hanging out of their lips - and the bartender will regulate the old jukebox, not the digital type, by typically throwing quarters at people and telling them to play anything from Weezer or AC/DC to White Snake.  The bartender then proceeds to start singing and dancing to the song with theatrical flare.

This quarter flinging monster, half-viking, half-kitten, is Moonshine;  Moonshine is never sober, never stops smiling, and if I were to stalk him home, I'm sure he probably doesn't sleep because he is too busy building magical sky-castles with rippling muscles while toting a long blond haired wig.  The man is magical.  It's obvious from the layman drinkers' perspective, but on a more professional level several awards from the city of New York hang above his head for "best bartender ever-ever"  or something like that.

The Lucky Dog is called such because it accepts doggies.  So imagine a drunken hole packed with an insane staff, regular shenanigan having regulars, quarters and other things floating blissfully through the air, all while a half dozen or so dogs crowd around your legs - Lucky Dog.

On a calmer day, I got a chance to meet some of the staff, Moonshine included.  I sat with them outside on the patio during their smoke break and asked them what the owners were like, how they liked working there and living in Williamsburg.  Moonshine was particularly chatty, and we soon discovered that we had both been present at Burning Man that year.  If you were at Burning Man, you were sure to see the endless string of balloons floating through the air with no decided destination.  At night they formed an eerie string of LED lights that seemed to mysteriously wave through the stars.  No one knew where they came from, although it was obvious they were based somewhere, and they seemed to roam around the skies of the playa with no limitations.  Either they were very fucking long, or their base was moving.  Neither would have surprised anyone really.

Moonshine ended up being part of the responsible party for these balloons.  Nothing  really, for a man who forges flying castles with his bare hands, I thought.

Strategy: follow that girl on the bike, she's going somewhere we need to be.

There are quite a few effective methods you can use to find what you are looking for.  You can use maps to find places, city zines to find events, you can ask people what's going on, or you can use the internet.  Granted there are large piles of resources available to us to find what we need.  My method is a bit bit different.  There are only two steps:  1.)  Find someone who looks interesting, or is doing something interesting.  2.)  Follow them to wherever they are going.

This method is much more successful than you would think and ranks, in my book at least, higher than any stupid fucking Droid app you're going to find.  This is the method I chose to use when we reentered Brooklyn the following morning.  Aside from being forced into a weird zig zagging course through town because a parade decided to show up and follow us, I did manage to find a girl riding a bike that fit the description of step #1.  That is to say, I like bikes.  Step one, complete.

Step two was a little it trickier.  We were still in the van, and the girl had an obviously superior vehicle which could navigate much quicker and smoother than we were able.  So I told Jon to hold on.

"Whoa, you almost hit that bus?" Jon said, as I swung the van around a stopped city bus and made a right turn at the light.

"Did I?  how close was it?"  I asked.

"Pretty damn close."

"Oh, I should probably watch out for that eh?"

I was sure if we followed this girl on the bike long enough she would eventually lead us to the riches of the Brooklyn area.  Damn the stopped buses, pedestrians, and parades, I was going to stay on this bogie.

The method paid off.  It always seems to work, at least for me, but I'm unsure if it's because I'll just wind up finding something interesting anyway, or if it's actually an effective means to find stuff to do.  I choose to believe the latter.

So this is how we ended up in Williamsburg.  We found a parking spot after 10 minutes of driving around which was, I would find out later, a more than skilled feat.  So we parked, I talked to some guy sitting on a bench for 5 minutes and then walked around the corner where I saw a girl with a back pack.  Time to make friends.  In my mind, backpack = traveling, and we were traveling - that's common ground, so the math added up to: I should go meet her.  I walked across the street, tapped her on the shoulder and asked her if she was traveling.  Turns out she was just in from Dubai, and more originally from Canada.  Neat.

Her name was Gina, and she was in New York chasing pipe dreams, and also, more presently, meeting up with her friend Jonathan whom she met in Columbia (I think, somewhere in northern South America).  We sat and chatted it up for a few minutes until Jonathan arrived and joined our make-shift street posse.  It was a quick chit-chat, and then Gina was eager to drop her backpack off and rest a minute, and we were itchin' to explore, so we parted ways.

We stepped through Williamsburg for about an hour and a half.  I was personally making my mental map and learning the streets and how the city was set up: it's a square grid, bleh, easy enough though.  We made our way back towards where the van was parked, just to make sure we weren't in a tow zone or something dumb.  Living in Kalamazoo has me in a perpetual fear that my car will be towed no matter where it's parked, and so I have to check the van at least 3 times in a single spot before I feel safe leaving it there for any  period of time.

The sun was on its way down when we hit a large intersection in the center of Williamsburg and took a break to look around and figure out where we wanted to go and collect ourselves at.  But no luck for composing ourselves.  I turned around and spotted Jonathan and Gina marching down the center of the street trying to hail a cab and I waved to them, just as the managed to flag one down.  Jonathan asked me,

"Hey you wanna go to a boat party?  It's 10$."

"Do I want to go on a boat...yes...  Jon you want to go on a boat?"

"Okay," he replied.  All four of us packed into the cab and we were off to the lower east side.  While we were driving across the Williamsburg bridge, Jon decided to mention he had never been in a cab before and was a little scared about the way the cabbie was driving.  I told him not to worry.

"They're pros.  We'll be fine," I told him.

When we got to the boat, boarding went fine.  Jon got frisked, but I was apparently too harmless looking to bother with, so I missed a free feel up by a 300 pound barbarian, shucks.  The boat had a full bar, a small buffet, a lower sitting deck, an upper standing deck, a DJ, and of course a full dance floor on the top.  We skipped around the harbor for about 3 hours with love music, it was bad ass, and I don't think we could have said "I'm on a boat!" anymore than we did.  At the end of the day however it was a clean awesome, no drama, nothing crazy just good ol' boat party cruisin'.

Afterwards we took a cab and went back to Williamsburg where we parted ways with our new friends and chilled for the rest of the night at Lucky Dog with Moonshine...but Moonshine is another story...

Click-Clack: We gonna ride Brook-Lyn.

We woke up, and I asked Jon if he wanted to stay in New Brunswick. I told him I most certainly did not. He agreed. And we were off, immediately and without looking back, away from the shitland that is New Jersey. On the way out I told him we should just dive bomb the van into Brooklyn and figure things out when we get there. The important point here, from my perspective, was to keep moving - particularly away from Jersey. Jon, being the compliant, shrugged his shoulders and said, "okay,"

An hour or so later we reached the Holland tunnel, an absolute master piece of civil engineering. The road and toll booths that led into the tunnel however, were not so intricately planned. Coming off the freeway, we haphazardly wandered onto a 10 lane street, that really was supposed to be a 6 lane street (I think), which was full of waving lines of cars that didn't seem to have any particular order or plan in mind. Moving at about 42 FPH (feet per hour), we crawled and powered our way through blocked intersections, swerving motorcycles, and creeping smart-cars which tried to wedge themselves into every ass-crack of a gap they could find.

We managed to squeeze ourselves about 6 cars back from the toll booth, which was relieving because we were low on gas and I didn't want to try and exit off the street to one of the Jersey gas stations that lined the entry to the tunnel, not to mention getting back into this nightmare. I was oddly glad I was driving the van. I thought beforehand that it was going to be a nightmare to drive it in New York, particularly in situations like this, but I found that I was mildly amused that I could shove cars aside using the "I'll fucking hit you," scare technique -

The "I'll fucking hit you," technique was primarily comprised of just driving at someone very very slowly until they realized they were in a tiny expensive car and were afraid to be run over/crushed. Of course, this feeling of dread could be amplified by squinting one of your eyes, pursing your lips, and scrunching your nose every so slightly to the side, achieving that determined, yet insane look. The crazy gaze, when paired with a huge van, terrifies people: when a driver looks up into the van's menacing grill bearing down upon them, and as they slowly edge their line of sight upward towards the gaze, they realize, startlingly, that it's being driven by a crazy person and their life might be about to end. They will get the fuck out of the way.


6 cars back from the booth, and with our spot secured, I was staring at the gas gauge wondering if it was going to hold out, or if we were going to have to run the gauntlet of drive-by fuck you's that would no doubt ensue if we stalled in the tunnel. A soft thud woke me from my mindless daydreaming in fuck-you land as the van rocked back and forth a few times.

"Oh, what was that?" I asked Jon. He stuck his head out the window and looked backwards.

He brought his head back into the van and replied, "Some guy just hit us."

"Really?" I said, laughing. He nodded. I shrugged, I didn't really care about the van's paint, and I couldn't muster up enough concern about a .25 mph crash. The point is, that fucker wasn't going to push me out of the spot, and I felt pretty confident that my 1982 G20 Chevy van could take a piss on his Lexus after kicking the nuts and bolts out of it's tail pipe.

He did, however, mind, that he had hit me and came up to our window to share his feelings with us through our window. His sharing included raised arms and a question, "why'd you hit me?" he asked.

"What are you talking about," I replied, "you fucking hit us."
"Well, you were trying to cut," he shot back.
"We're not moving, no ones moving, except you." I laughed and let him angrily stomp back to his car. Shortly thereafter he decided to just launch into the mess, and floored it ahead of us through some gap where he was quickly barricaded in and trapped in a swarm of cars.

We limped our way through the tunnel and emerged, unfortunately, on the lower west side of Manhattan on a Saturday night: I know, poor planning, or none really. Stuck in traffic, we started, somewhat desperately, searching with what means we had to find a gas station. We had a GPS, and the GPS had a "gas" button, and that was about the extent of our resources.

The first place it led us to was non-existent. Luckily, that spot was on a main corridor on the lower west side, so it only took us 15 minutes to explore it. The next spot the GPS told us to go was a little more complicated, about 5 blocks from Union Square which meant heavy traffic - not a good thing when your gas gauge dropped below the E an hour earlier. Without much of a choice we decided to give it a shot. Worst case: we could easily push the van faster than traffic, so it wouldn't be as bad as the van dying in the tunnel. Between staring at my gas gauge, and having a man walk up to the van and ask us if he could take our picture because we looked like Cheech and Chong, we made it.

We took a 30 minute break, enjoying our free parking on the lower east side. We got some fuel, next step: find the Brooklyn bridge. We decided to ask a cop the best way to get to the bridge, and he told us while giving us the your-a-fucking-idiot look after he realized we were driving. We got over the bridge without an incident, and began rolling around Brooklyn at about 11 or midnight.

To be honest, I wasn't really sure where to go, so I told Jon I was just going to drive around for a little bit until we found something promising. We stopped at a McDonald's for about 25 minutes to steal some of their internet, and without really much aid from that, we continued our wandering. After about 20 minutes later, after noticing 150 orthodox Jews marching around in full garb, I figured out that it was Yom Kippur. Considering the only two type of neighborhoods we were finding were Jewish and Ghetto-as-shit, I didn't think we were going to find much of anything to do at midnight, so we went to Queens...

It was already about 2am when we reached Queens and I was tired. I didn't feel like wandering around anymore and I didn't really know where the fuck we were anyway, so I told Jon I'm going to give it about 15 more minutes for something amazing to happen. Nothing did. And instead of staking out a spot in the city, I figured if we drove east on Long Island long enough we ought to hit some po-dunk hick town where we could crash in some parking lot. We found Hicksville, literally...and drove a bit south from there to some acceptable rednecky place where we parked next to a row of houses and called it a night so that we could have a decent amount of energy the next to tear apart Brooklyn.

"New Jersey: We're more than just a turn-pike" But you're not Jersey. You're fucking not.

Monroe Township, New Jersey


Monroe Township was infested with old people, smelled like train, and anyone under the age of 40 had been enslaved to work in dry cleaning shops and gas stations - the two things old people never get tired of apparently.

Lotten had disappeared off to some shaman gathering in the woods in Pennsylvania early that morning, I'm still not entirely sure how she got there, I just know she was gone when I woke up. I also had to sit through a ridiculous breakfast with Howard and his mother where they argued about whether sugar or raisins were better in oatmeal: fantastic.

After Breakfast, Jon and I wandered around the nearby area eager to get as far away from the old people, and their fortress village, as we were able. We didn't find much. Among the highlights were a Baskin-Robbins which promised free WiFi but failed to deliver, a park next to a pond which no one was at, and a high school. We stopped at the library for an hour or and decided to get the hell out Dodge, before we got recruited into the elderly's secret internment camps.

Where to go? I didn't know much about the cities of New Jersey other than most of them are ugly, violent, boring and smell like car exhaust. We decided to go to Rutgers college in New Brunswick for lack of a better thing to do.

So we drove as best we could avoiding the turnpike, and avoiding the turnpike in Jersey is a pretty impressive task in itself, passing dozens of signs promoting New Jersey as "Not just a turnpike". Right. We managed to dodge it for most of the trip, only being forced onto to one or two times for a short length. About an hour later we arrived in New Brunswick. The first impression wasn't too bad, there was a neat looking church right in the center of downtown with a graveyard houses nearly 200 graves shoved into a corner of a city block. I wouldn't be surprised if they unearthed several of those graves when they built the street and buildings around the church. There was a decent sized train station that was slightly reminiscent of the EL stations in Chicago, and they had plenty going on outside of them.

We ambled up a hill and down what seemed to be the main drag through the downtown and university area. About a half mile outside of the busiest area, we found a parking spot on the side of the street, locked up, and packed out into the town to explore. What we found was so far less than impressive that I could only imagine playing with a cup and ball would have been more fun then roaming the streets around Rutgers university. At around 6, no one seemed to be outside. The few that were, if I were to guess, were completely preoccupied about getting shit-faced later in the night.

Everywhere we went there were deli-like shops toting their city's famous "Fat Darrell" sandwiches which all had cute names like "fat bitch" or "fat whore". Fat sandwiches, by the by, are monstrous creations that are able to turn a city's population into a large scale recreation of "Biggest Loser" overnight. They are sandwiches that are stuffed with, but not limited to, mozzarella sticks, French fries, an entire steak, ketchup, pork rolls, a pound or two of cheese, fried fat, chicken tenders, eggs, mayo, or an entire hamburger and pretty much anything else they can fry and shove into a sub bun together. For example, the "fat bitch" includes: a cheese steak, mozzarella sticks, chicken fingers, French fries and ketchup. That's right, it's an entire steak with 4 mozzarella* sticks and chicken fingers smashed into it, sprinkled with a quarter pound of fucking French fries, and dunked in a vat of ketchup. For the vegetarian selection,(yes, vegetarian) simply take away the steak and add a splash of lettuce. That's Jersey's famous food, a big pile of fried shit. Fuck you Jersey.

We wandered for a bit more, and finally decided we should find a better spot for the van. Here's another shitty thing about Jersey: parking. You know the street signs in cities that say something like, "No parking 2:00am - 7:00am Mon-Fri" or something vaguely similar? Well let me give you an example of a Jersey sign: Take the "No parking 2:00am - 7:00am" and add an : "except for permit district 1 residence." Then, underneath that sign...make another sign, an addition if you will, that is square. This part of the sign will say something like "District 1 parking 3:00 pm - 9:00pm only, except holidays." Now we have two signs stacked on top of each other, so under those put another long rectangular sign like the one on top that says, "Bus route 7B, DO NOT BLOCK BUS," and below that something that says, "Handicapped parking on Sunday, unless park is closed." And finally, at the very end of it all: "City of New Jersey, Violators will be towed, except Tuesdays."

I don't even know if I could figure out if it was easier to violate the sign or just ignore it and hope no one else knows how to read it. I park next to one of these signs, not really sure what the fuck is going on, and decide to ask someone to translate this Jersey chicken-scratch for me. I flag down a kid walking into a nearby house and ask him how parking works. He replies, "Oh, it doesn't matter. They don't check. I just park in the handicap space everyday." Great work, good job.

Jon and I eventually stumble into an underground hip-hop / punk club which is actually pretty great. We stayed there for about 3 hours and listened and chit-chatted with some locals. One of these locals we found ended up being a real gem of a find. Standing about five foot ten and in the shape of a Twinkie, Ski-boy introduces himself to us (I'm not really sure what his name is).
I call him Ski-boy because in the natural course of speaking, he finds it necessary to tack a -ski onto about every third word or so.

"So you broski's wanna go over my friend Jeffski's place and chillski?" he asks us. We have nothing better to do, so we go. On the way there he asks us where we're from, and we tell him. He also adds, "You look like you belongski in Brooklyn broski." I wasn't sure if that was an insult or just an observation, and at this point I really didn't care.

When we get to Jeffski's house, no one is there. We begin to try to separate ourselves from this hodgepodge Jersey posse that has formed around us and go back to the van to sleep. We eventually get clearance to leave. Just Before we go Ski-boy asks me why I keep making fun of the way he talks. I tell him, "Because if you talked like that in Michigan you'd get punched in the face," and walk away.

*In Jersey, mozzarella is apparently spelled mozzerrela.

Detroit part 2: Howard.

Detroit, MI

With the van properly restocked, re-licensed, and repaired, we went to meet Howard. On the way there we discussed what Howard might be like, at this point all three of us had at one point or another talked to him over the phone, or e-mail.

A brief history: Lotten found Howard on Craig's List. His main concerns were about how old we were, and if we were "normal". I thought we might be in trouble when Lotten first showed me the E-mail (on account of the normal comment), but I decided we should just go for it anyway and figure it out later. Worst case, he bails, and we're out 30$. The day after we received the E-mail I talked with Howard over the phone and he seemed very concerned about getting character references from us, I told him he could talk to my mom, but she'd probably just say I was great because I'm her son. I asked him what other reference he might want, and he wasn't sure. So jokingly, but he took it rather literally, I suggested I give him the E-mails of some of my former professors and bosses, all of whom I knew were far too air headed to ever respond in time, not that it mattered. Again, I told him these people are all on my side, they aren't going to say anything bad, and I don't really don't have any objective references. he told me it would be fine, and I gave him my mom's e-mail and number. I don't think he ever called. He also gave me his mom's phone number, who was nearing 90 - just in case I wanted it. I didn't.

So this is Howard, a person who wants character references for a ride-share, works in a Detroit suburb, and generally seems worried about everything. I began compiling what I thought he was going to be like in my head: short, dress button up, glasses, a mustache, and 50ish. Everyone was in general agreement to this as we were approaching the address of Howard's friend's house, where we were supposed to meet him.

As we pulled into the driveway a rather stout polish man greeted us from in front of the garage. Howard hadn't arrived yet, so we killed some time talking to him about car mechanics, or something like that. I'm somewhat confident I was thinking about either spaceships, or David Bowie, or both.

Howard pulls up in some janky sedan, and he fits my description almost pin
on - sans mustache. We talk for minute, pack up his bag in the back of the van, and right before we take off Howard's friend looks at a stick on the back of my van that says DK and says, "Denmark! I lived there for a while." I didn't have the heart to tell him that I feel it's more likely to mean Donkey Kong. Although, no one really knows what it means, so I just let him have his Denmark experience.


By this time it's about 3:30, and I knew we were looking at a fucking late arrival in Jersey.

Fuck it. We rolled out anyway.

Howard ended up being a decent conversation, nothing too exciting, but he did at least know how to keep awkward silences at bay. We talked about running, health super foods, and some other mildly entertaining things, again nothing spectacular.

The whether decided to give us hell once we got into the Cleveland area. I felt a couple ways about this: Annoyed that it was going to take us even longer to drive through a raging storm, but at the same time it meant that at least there would something to look at while we drove through east Ohio and western Pennsylvania, and by that I mean Rain and Lightening which are far more interesting than anything you'll find in western Pennsylvania.


Then something odd happened. There are something you don't expect to come out of the mouth of a 50 year old Jewish man. But there we sat, driving down some podunk road in Pennsylvania when he brings up New York, and he says to me, "yeah, I used to go out on the pier and watch The Clash all the time."

"Excuse me?" I said back. "You used to go watch The Clash?"

"Yeah, we'd pull on our leather jackets and take a train up to the city and watch them play on the pier."

I was having trouble imagining Howard punked out in leather at a Clash concert, but the man isn't lying. He just sits there, content as can be, peering out the window through his glasses adjusting his collared shirt. I take a few more quick glances at him and get a picture of him in the early 80s in a ripped leather jacket, sitting on a pier, and singing along to London's Calling...and it's just not clicking. I just gave up after a while trying to figure out how he ended up where he, and just accepted the world was weird. 50 year old Jewish man used to be a punk rocker...whatever, add it to the list next to the California fruit detective.

We get to Jersey at 5:30 a.m. at a city called Monroe Township. Howard's mother lives in a more or less planned community with a guard at the gate. We get in, and drop Howard off and then passed out.