He was 17
years old in the summer of ’71. Johnny Livewire needed a job. He searched
through the want ads and found something he thought he could do: messenger. Being
a messenger at the American Blueprint Company suited Johnny fine. He hated the
thought of being cooped up in a building all summer. He could spend his time grooving
in the streets of Manhattan and New York City grew him in. The handsome, six
foot tall, haggard youth with long wavy brown hair to his shoulder, parted in
the middle, Romanesque nose, facial hair he didn’t bother shaving, in his black,
unmarked, v-necked t-shirt, black high-top steel-toed construction boots blending
into black denim jeans, wrapped his hard body with leather belt to fit. Johnny’s
deep, sharp, hazel-green eyes carried the warmth of his soul to many a high
school coed convinced and willing to feel his tenderness, mold herself to his
tenderness, and become a woman with him, almost become a rebel with him. LSD, marijuana,
Hiram Walker blackberry brandy and Marlboro red; the chute was greased and many
a young lady slid him in.
Mom didn’t
take too kindly to Johnny’s wide-open disregard for house rules. At least she
didn’t bother him about smoking cigarettes in the apartment; she smoked Tareyton
herself. But she only gave him $5 allowance a week. In the fall, Johnny would
be a high-school junior. He had to work the summer just to try to earn a
dollar. He took the West End BMT up to Times Square on 42nd Street and
walked to 5th Avenue. The American Blueprint Company, with offices
on the fifth floor, south side, would be his headquarters. When he learned they
would give him carfare to deliver the parcels, he had an idea: the first day of
work he left Brooklyn early to avoid the rush hour crush and carried his
bicycle onto the ‘T’ train, riding it past Bryant Park and the Main Library, chaining
it to a parking sign pole on 41st Street; no one would know. He
pocketed the tokens.
The time he
saved he would have wasted underground or walking perusing the Midtown records,
especially King Karol. He would leave a deposit on a record he wanted and pick
it up before heading home. Many a record was the first test copy in New York,
like a Blues Image or Iron Butterfly album. His collection grew and his rock
knowledge deepened. The rest of his earnings went for slices of pizza, nickel bags,
and Forex natural lambskin condoms.
Hank sat on
one of the dozen mismatched chairs in the grubby messenger lounge. The wobbly
ceiling fan kept the smudged windowless room barely cooled in the summer
swelter, the air tinged with the smell of blue ink and oil from the presses
outside in the large, worn, high-ceiling workroom stuffed with drafting tables looking
like a bland pool hall. The tangy smell of unwashed clothes wafted off of Hank and
tinged Johnny’s sorry nostrils and he sat waiting for his next assignment
reading his pocket copy of Quotations of Chairman Mao protected by its shiny
red plastic cover.
Hank sat a few
feet across from Johnny, shoes off, cross-legged, only brown-spotted tumors on
his down-turned balding head, picking fuzz bunnies from between his toes through
the hole in his sock. Hank waited his turn, too. Philip Unger, an unkempt overweight
man-child in his late twenties waited, too, doing a word jumble. They didn’t
mind waiting; they got paid by the hour. The trip meant carfare and tips from
clients to Johnny; he took their turns, gladly. Hank was saved for special
deliveries the manager didn’t think Philip, Johnny, or the other young messengers
could find. Johnny sat like a roach in a corner come to life by the manager’s
call:
“Johnny, come
here,” the manager called into the drudging room holding a three-foot long
cardboard cylinder. “Bring this to this address on 65th off Madison.
Take the IRT.”
“Okay boss,” Johnny
said jumping to his feet, placing the two tokens in his pant pocket. Stepping
into the dilapidated hall to the original hand-cranked elevator, Johnny waited
for the filthy worn uniform of an old black elevator-operator to reach his
floor, pushed open accordion door and closed in, cranked, for the slow trip
down. He walked around the block, unchained his bike, and headed up Madison,
swerving through the Midtown congestion to the client, delivered, tipped by,
and returned to base.
Johnny was just about to enter the building when a headline on a stack
of NY Post newspapers outside a curbside kiosk caught his eye. “3d Rock Star, Jim
Morrison, Dead at 27.” The date was July 9th. It said he had been
discovered almost a week before. Devastated, Johnny went to Zum-Zum, the fast
food restaurant next to the blueprint building, for bratwurst with the snap
when you bit into it, sat and read the dreadful news. His hero was gone.Roadhouse Blues by Johnny Livewire
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uc3aYrmLkSo
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