Jamaica

          When I was younger and full of vim and vinegar, I managed to fly to Jamaica looking for the slack key players in the cockpit country of the Highlands. Everybody gets a guide who shows up. My guides took me on the adventure of my life. We climbed for what seemed like hours until we arrived at a little clearing with a small fire burning in the center.   I could have been in Africa for all I knew. A group of black men stooped around the fire warming there hands in the cool of the morning. One of them stood up and continued standing up and up until there was a giant Ethiopian dressed in a leather breech cloth in front of me along with his natty dreadlocks.         He was puffing a splift with a great deal of ganja in it. My guide negotiated a deal for an ounce. He walked into his hut with a aluminum camp cup. Soon he returned with a a full cup of manicured ganja neatly shaved level by a butter knife. He tipped the manicured weed into the paper bread bag we brought along. We asked how much.   

    He wanted sixty cents. I produced a dollar.  He gladly took it. We did not hang around for the change but immediately began the long hike down the hill.
      Evening was descending in a wonderful display of tropical colors as we sat on a log. My guide shaped the brown bag called bread paper into a cone.  He then funneled the ganja into the cone tamping it into a tight cylinder culminating in a distinctive twist which allows for easy lighting. That was the best smoke I've ever enjoyed.  The evening moved into darkness and finally I went sleep in the back seat of a rusting hulk of an abandoned car.

      The trippy weed led me to the conclusion that water itself is God for without it we would all perish.  Consider the fact that Jesus himself used water to baptize and perform ablutions only shows the remarkable respect people of the desert have for water. The next morning we had breakfast of fried plantains and greens. Red Label beer and sweet bread is how most of the people survive.  Death comes in many shapes and forms in Jamaica.
      We carried on with the tour stopping at a captured croc that was 23 feet long. The keeper put on a quite a show by poking this reptile in its side. The explosive reaction was instant as the tail whipped around with the jaws wide open clamping down on the pole shattering it into pieces. One just stands there in amazement at the awesome power of this reptile.
     I was staying in Montego Bay when I heard that the Amboy Dukes were at the White House Hotel. Since I had my electric guitar with me, I made my way to the lobby and waited to encounter these guys.   I was super tired and soon fell asleep on a sofa. 

       My dreams were shattered by the watchman called Buster Crab.   He woke me by hitting me on the butt with the side of his bolo knife which hurt a great deal. I jumped up and before I could explain myself he was backing me down a hallway that led to a patio overlooking the sea.   I remember his exact words. " I am going to cut you and bruise you." He kept repeating this over and over.   He raised his arm in a threatening manner.  I shoved his raised arm hard into the wall and ducked under it. Like the jackrabbit in the Wiley Coyote cartoons, I ran out of the lobby into the midnight streets of Montego Bay.  I had met a another traveler that day.   He was staying in a cheap hotel close by. I ran to his door and pounded him awake. He slowly opened the door. I pushed past him and begged him to remain silent while Buster Crab's shadow passed by the door.
     The next morning I realized I had left my prized guitar and travel bags at the hotel. By now I was very pissed.    I contacted the police for assistance which they readily supplied.   My adversary now humbly brought my things to my feet in the afternoon. He was arrested for assault.  

      I was soon on my way back to the states having barely survived the adventure in Jamaica.    It was at that moment, I decided that pursuing a musical career was for the birds. I soon set my sights on other sources of income.  Hard work never hurt anybody. Although it nearly killed me several times it never actually finished me. Close only counts in horse shoes and hand grenades.
      All the music I had developed and carefully planned was destroyed. The lovely tunes I had written and lovingly composed for Anne were given to the winds of time never to be heard again. I remember some of them still like 'Jumping the Garden Wall' which is about young love and what it takes to maintain an infatuation, Romeo and Juliet style.  The illusion that happiness was in a relationship was being dashed again. Youth is wasted on the young. Time to travel to the timelessness of Nowhere Soon.