Today July 14, 2014
Three different people wanted me to ask them what their
story was….I mean, maybe they didn't want me to ask them, but I felt like
their actions and uniqueness was begging for me to ask, but as usual I just
made stories up in my head for them instead.
Person #1 was a fellow with an 80s half shaved head, and
long blond angled bangs hanging down in front. He looked like Tim, a fella I
knew in the 80s that played bass for a fairly popular band. But this guy was
younger than Tim was then and also thinner.
He pulled up to the front of the store in a Maroon Saturn an
older car, being into cars I was already making up stories about his car, in my
mind it was his moms car once. The time
of day was only about 9:45 AM, we sell sandwiches not breakfast. He looked at
the door and saw the time, and went back to his car. Around 10 he came to the
door and looked more carefully at the sign and saw the small number 30 after
the 10. He went back to his car and fell asleep. I asked my co worker, I wonder what his story
is…my co worker shrugged and said
“I bet you do Melissa”.
“He’s probably waiting for his girlfriend’s boyfriend to
leave for work”. I tossed out, mostly referring to the vast amount of apartment
buildings that line the hills behind my work.
Joel said “You always go there don’t you? you think of the
worst thing” we laughed bout that…..yes, I said something about that being more
interesting.
Then after we opened and the fellow in the Saturn had woke
up, gotten a sandwich and left. In comes a Mexican gal (self proclaimed) in hot
pink short shorts, carrying an electric guitar in a decent canvas guitar bag and a big
black backpack. At first I wasn’t sure if she was with some of the other
customers that came in, she shifted about, was maybe looking for some money in
her purse. Read our bulletin board full of posters advertising music and
events.
She told us that she had never been to Thundercloud before,
and we said, oh, did she want a sandwich? No, she was looking for Caldo Pollo (chicken
soup), which they happen to have across the street at Arandinas, but not
always. So we told her a few other places that had Caldo Pollo just in case,
and she grabbed her guitar and took off across the parking lot. I wondered to
myself, what was her story? Did she travel to Austin to play music and maybe
get discovered, although to my knowledge not very many talent scouts are
scouting about Austin. It’s not Nashville…or LA.
Maybe at this point I should tell you about a little more
about where I work-I work at Thundercloud Subs, it’s a local chain, but the one
I work at has been here at this location for about twenty some odd years. We
are close to downtown, this neighborhood used to be worse, I worked here at
this store in 1990 and there was a methadone clinic behind us, and some of the
apartments that are now hip party pads, used to be a housing project with boards on the windows. I mean
it’s not a horrible neighborhood, because by other large city standards Austin
doesn’t even really have a “bad part of town” that compares to say Los Angeles,
Chicago or even Albuquerque, NM where my mom used to live. But this zip code is
usually high on the crime rate statistics reports, usually second or first in
homicides for the city. So, quite a bit of interesting things happen in our
parking lot, we have large windows that provide a full view of the bus stop and
the parking lot. There is a liquor store next door that has a steady stream of
customers that are homeless, or “fly signs”asking for money on street corners.
So the third person to come in that made me wonder what his
story was, is a guy who I have seen in there before, he seems like a regular
guy, but something about his demeanor; the way he notices that I am looking at
him makes me wonder what his story is…he has two scars under his left eye. They
are in the shape of tears, sort of, I wonder if he had tattoos there, the kind
you get in jail to indicate having killed someone, or a family member has been
killed, etc. Or if he got those scars in a fight or just from some other
accident, I want to ask him, but I know I can’t.
This reminds me of the time me, Diane and Joe Stassuli went
to the “T, G and Y” convenience store on South Congress Ave. We were waiting in line
to cash our paychecks and the fellow in front of me is an old Hispanic man,
with a red tear tattooed under his left eye. I am standing behind him, but on
his left side and Joe is right behind him, and Diane is somewhere near us. The
man is cashing a very big check and the man behind the glass is counting a big
stack of hundreds and piling them up in front of the cash window, little space
where you take your money. I am just watching him count the money and seeing
that it is about 5000 dollars now. The old man with the tear drop, and he had on
a fedora hat, he looks over at me with very dark brown eyes, and squints and
says right to me, “I killed a man once for looking at me”. So, I took a step
back and maybe mumbled sorry. Joe
Stassuli being the crazy guy that he was, says to the guy-
“Oh yeah, how'd ya do it?”.
I looked at Joe, and Joe grinned, the old man completely ignored us, took his
money, put it in his wallet and walked out. So, here I am at work and all of
this is running through my head. I told Joel the story after the guy with the
scars left. He liked that story, I knew he would.
Then a little while later, the gal from Mexico with the
guitar comes back, she has posters now, and she tells us they did have Caldo
Pollo across the street and she was glad because you know “ a Mexican gal needs
her Caldo Pollo in the morning sometimes”. Oh that’s good we say, glad you
found it. She shifts around the front lobby area for a while in front of our
counters, and not sure if she actually put up a poster or was taking one….she
picked up her guitar and her backpack and headed back across the parking lot.
Hot pink shorts, tall black cowboy boots, she reminded me of some cult movie
character or something. Later I saw her at the bus stop talking to various
people and laying on the bench. Not even worried if someone could grab her
guitar which was a ways from her at this point. I just find people interesting,
not sure how I got that way, I used to walk up to complete strangers as a child
and ask them what their name was…and tell them mine in hopes of striking up a
conversation and I still wonder what her story was…..
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