On Saturday I read my Torah portion, studied a bit further in the Reading Hebrew book, and read a book called "July's People" by a lady who was from South Africa, and a liberal sad to say. It was about a presumed violent revolution over Africa in general and South Africa in particular, and a black servant, "July", takes the family he's employed by to his village. The whites gradually adapt to living in the village but it has a vague ending with the mother of the family running toward a helicopter and nothing more is said about the rest of them.
I also read more of "Hasidic Tales Of The Holocaust". It's mostly about one family but still amazing reading.
One thing I did not do was practice in the evening. The trouble is, by the time I feel like I have enough things out of the way to practice, it's past 10 at night. Last night it was 11 when I began to have second thoughts about making noises that reveal that I'm here, and sure enough, hearing a noise outside, there was a bum on a bike, who appeared to be standing watch for another bum who was banging on something. They took off.
I did do a fair amount of free buzzing though. I woke up really early, around 8, and finally got up a bit past 9 and did a few things, and got ready to go out and play. I left at around 11:30, got as far as Bayshore when I realized I didn't have my mouthpiece and went back to get it. Then left again.
I rode by San Pedro Square and except for a line to get into one of the indoor shops for some reason, it was really dead. So I rode over to Whole Foods and the black guy who sells little pies for, he says, $20, and hustles everyone, was there.
So I got on the "green" light rail train and on the wait and on the ride, gave a quick tutorial on how to get around on the light rail to a couple who were here, they said, from Sacramento to buy a car. A Mercury Sable in fact. They must have been looking on line for $500 cars or something. They were your typical bummy looking types. He had one front tooth missing and the other one longer than it ought to be, and was wearing his T-shirt inside out and backwards, a thing you do when your shirt is so dirty that you try in desperation to hide how dirty it is.
I started playing at the Whole Foods there on Hamilton at 12:15 and played for two hours, until 2:15. When I first set up I had people putting tips in right away and it was steady for a bit, then really died off, then picked up again around 1:30. And I had very little rough tone problems. I got compliments on my tone also.
When I was done I was really done, and walked back to the light rail station and rode back to Diridon Station and walked over to the Ace hardware store to see about X-acto knife blades of which they had none. It's a small thing but it's amazing how hard those are to get now.
I went to Whole Foods, stashed my tip box and hat in the bike bags, and got some chicken and veggies and a beer. The pie guy was still there, with less pies. He says he started with 40 pies. It's a hell of a hustle he's got, except he really does have to hustle people hard, plus to carry all those pies and his table and all that, he's got to own a car, so of course he hustles like a junkie. Owning a car means you become essentially a junkie, hustling like crazy to come up with the payments, gas, insurance, repairs, etc.
He asked me if I'd had a good day and I said it went pretty well. It actually had, and while I didn't tell him the dollar amount, it was $69.57.
After eating I went into Whole Foods and got a bunch of things, found a bunch of books on the way back, and had a very slow ride home because the wind had me really slowed down.
The reason I'd gotten a bit of a late start even though I was up in plenty of time is that I'd been thinking of a book "My Life In Jazz" by Max Kaminsky. I'd been able to read bits of it on Google Books but now I thought it's been a few years, let's see if the whole thing is online. And it is, on Archive.org. The bits I'd read years ago encouraged me to keep at it, keep practicing. So to get to read the whole thing is amazing. I could hardly tear myself away from it.
But I finally did and started my day and interestingly, on the way home, I heard "The Good Trumpet Player" practicing. He played some bugle-call fanfare sounding stuff than some kind of riffs up and down. I wanted to hang around and listen but I still feel bad about that time I apparently scared him and he'd stopped. So I just rode a bit more slowly and enjoyed the sound as I went by. I wish I could tell him how easy it is to sneak into the practice rooms at the college, where the pianos are even tuned.
Let's round it up and say I made $70 today. That's the same as Max Kaminsky back in the 1930s making $3.50.
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