Photo by John Hoff, a house on Emerson Ave. N.My mechanic said the police were looking for me, yesterday. They had spotted my car and wondered when I would be coming by. Obviously this made my mechanic rather curious...
...but I just said, "I write a lot of things on my blog. I guess some of the things I've said are a bit critical, like the slow 911 response times on the North Side. They wanted to talk to me. But don't worry, one of them got in touch with me yesterday. We had a nice talk."
He said Highland Auto Tire didn't share any information about me, their valued customer, with the police. This was the young mechanic, not the one who served during the Vietnam War, whose picture adorned the wall.
"It's not a problem," I said. "If the police ask you for information about me, go ahead and give it to them. I'm not a criminal."
The dog's name is "lunch" and the mechanic worked for the CIA
A little pit bull was yapping at me in the waiting room. I asked what it's name was.
"Lunch!" the mechanic said, laughing.
"That's a pit bull, isn't it?" I said. "You shouldn't eat a pit bull. Too expensive. Better to go with something like a black lab. Those things are cheap as dirt."
My joke seemed to play well. I told him I once ate dog in Mexico, while I was young and religious and doing missionary work.
"They cooked it with some green olives," I explained. "Tasted like pork."
Contrary to popular myth, not all strange meat "tastes like chicken." Crocodile, for example, tastes a lot like fish.
"So," I asked the older mechanic, who had come into the room, "What was your job in the military?"
"I was a medic," he answered. "I was also an assistant to a captain. Not like a secretary, but his actual assistant."
"Wow," I said, suitably impressed. "Yeah, I was in the army. I did most of my time in Fort Bliss, Texas."
This did not impress him even a little. He leaned back in his chair, folded his hands behind his head, looked at me intently and said, "I did work for the CIA. The CIA located my whole family here to the United States. I didn't have to pay anything."
"Wow," I said. What else can you say?
A mayoral announcement from the seat of a pickup truck
I saw Pat Kleindl in front of 400 31st Ave. N., the one which will have to fend off the bulldozer. He told me he got that house for $6,500. I asked what he would take for it. I pressed, I cajoled, but he wasn't naming his price. He sat in his pick-up, smoking a cigarette. I asked if he was "packing" today. He said he'd left his pistol in his other vehicle.
"I heard an interesting quote yesterday at the neighborhood meeting," I said. "Some guy was buying up old houses in Detroit. He said 'I feel like I'm driving around in my car, shoveling diamonds into my trunk.' Now is the time to buy, huh?"
Kleindl smiled his cagey smile. At some point he told me he was running for Mayor.
"Really?" I said. "As what? Constitutional Party? Libertarian? Maybe a Republican?"
Somehow I just knew Kleindl wasn't a Democrat or a Green. Call it a hunch.
"Whatever it was Jessee Ventura ran as," he explained. "What do you call that?"
"Independent?" I offered.
"Yeah, I'll run as an independent," he said.
You heard it here first on www.johnnynorthside.com
Maintain order, and perhaps things will go better
I spoke to a short, thin black lady out in front of 3119 4th Ave., the other apartment complex once owned by Shirley Guevara. Rumor fresh as of an hour ago says the mysterious "Castlerock" entity has gone around trying to collect rents AGAIN. Previous rumor said some folks had paid their rents to "Greg from Castle Rock."
I'm sure reality is a complicated mess, however. Maybe somebody paid. Maybe others made promises. Maybe checks bounced. Who knows? Rumors of the shake down continue. If I see "Castle Rock," I will make gentle inquiries.
No, really. You catch more flies with honey. Jeff Skrenes reminded me of this, recently.
The lady by 3119 had a small dog (a black lab, actually, which was eerie) and was reluctant to say anything to me at first. "Don't know," she said a couple of times, but she seemed more at ease when I said, "Ma'am, you understand Shirley Guevara can't be collecting rents from you? I was at a neighborhood meeting, and there was a lot of discussion there about Shirley's two apartment complexes. Maybe you'd like to know some of what was said?"
The dog jumped into my open car door. She hauled it out by the scruff of the neck, apologizing. I think it was sniffing at the dried banana snack food I purchased at Bangkok Market. Yes, she said, please...what could I tell her?
I explained city officials were not happy about the situation at these apartments, and wanted to help the people here, but "the way it was headed" it would be best to look hard at finding another place as soon as possible.
"I know that's hard to hear," I said, as her shoulders sagged. "But you can't be in denial or refuse to face reality. That seems to be the way this is headed."
Pointing out I didn't have any authority, but had merely heard what was said at the meeting, I urged her to maintain order and cleanliness at her apartment complex, and to urge others to do the same, and perhaps the city might be "more merciful" if they saw people were "cleaning up and trying to maintain order."
She eagerly told me she'd hauled bags of trash out of the back yard at 3119 4th all on her own initiative. I nodded. The front yard, what I could see of it, looked pretty decent. I told her the situation over at 3101 was a real problem, though. The back yard was simply full of garbage. It wouldn't hurt to say something to the people over there, if she knew some of them. Really, it wouldn't hurt one bit to tell those folks to clean up and maintain order, and to not allow young men to congregate in the stairwell at 3 in the morning.
All the same, I said, none of these things might make any difference. Best to prepare for the worst.
She asked if I had any more information, anything at all. I didn't. Her face looked no more and no less worried than when she had first seen me. I noticed how much gold was in her mouth when she tried to smile. One can't help but think of stories of skulls, pirates, graves.
I went over to 3101 to see if I could find somebody hanging around who looked responsible (or less irresponsible) to transmit my message of common sense:
A meeting happened. I was there, I witnessed it. For god's sake, maintain cleanliness and order in this building, even if it seems like nobody is in charge. The city is watching and making its judgments. Figure out where to go if it comes down to it, which it probably will.
On the one hand, I really want "the block" cleaned up and the apartment complex at 3101 has been a hotbed of prostitution and drug dealing for years, according to numerous individuals. On the other hand, these are all human beings who only seek to survive and keep the rain off their heads.
The law should be tempered with mercy. I can't help but think of the folks at 416 30th, who did indeed steal electricity from my building in the moments before my finalized ownership, but who were routed in a period of a few hours, the bikes of the children thrown in a heap to become scrap metal.
I'd heard a name at the meeting. The name of the tenant who stood up to Shirley, who rallied the other tenants into a united front, who was rewarded with a brick through the window. I didn't even know if it was a real name. I wasn't sure if it was THIS apartment complex or the other one.
But I parked in front of 3101 6th Street, and a tall young black man walked up.
My electricity thief confesses
"I'm looking for (name withheld)," I explained. "I heard (withheld) is the person sort of in charge at this apartment, sort of."
"Hey, ain't you the guy who wanted to buy my van?" he answered.
Oh my word. It was the "purple van guy" who lived at 416 30th Ave. N. before the "booting and boarding." I'd helped to cause that whole episode because of the outrageous electricity theft from my property. I had also been willing to buy his van for $750, figuring he desperately needed the money for a new place to live, and I needed the van. It's documented in the all-too-amusing videos from Minn Post Dot Com.
But a week or two ago, he'd jacked the price to $1,500 after some repairs, or so he claimed to have made repairs. I'd called to see about buying the van, but also to feel things out and see if he was gunning for me over the "loose juice controversy."
He was firm on the price and concerned about no other issues. He actually hung up on me when I said the repairs he'd put into the vehicle were good, but hardly worth an increase from $750 to $1,500.
There it had ended, except I figured he was crawling into the second story window of 416 30th with great frequency, using the garbage can to get on the porch roof, sleeping inside.
"Well," I answered, carefully. "You wanted $1,500. That's too much."
"I've cut the price," he said. "I'll take $600. I put the wrong kind of gas in it, and there's a problem with the fuel filter."
"So it won't run?" I asked. "Have you replaced the filter?"
"I took it out," he explained. "But I haven't replaced it."
I had been spectacularly unimpressed with his mechanical knowledge when I talked to him before, and this is coming from somebody who is the subject of open mockery from my all-too-mechanical little brother. For one thing, when I checked the oil on his purple van, it was overfilled. I had tried to explain overfilling oil on a vehicle may not be as bad as neglecting to fill it at all, but it's still bad. (All credit to my little brother, who explained this to me more than once while angrily waving a dipstick in my face)
It's not like the vehicle will just excrete it out, I explained, like when you and I drink too much Coca-Cola. This was news to him. What else had he screwed up on the vehicle, I wondered?
He said the van was parked nearby. We could go look at it. I thought of being murdered, of course.
"I'll have to wait on that," I said. "Maybe when my brother is up here. Maybe we could have it towed to the mechanic and figure out what is wrong with it. Hey, didn't you used to live over there at 416 30th Ave. N? That place is all boarded up, now."
"The bank foreclosed on it," he explained. He proceeded to say his landlord was scum, that nothing was ever fixed at the house and, furthermore, he had been cheated on his lease. I could name his landlords, at least by their first names, and I agreed they were scum and had a bunch of buildings in foreclosure. He spoke of the woman landlord as though she was not in a coma at all, contrary to some reports I'd heard, as though she was up and about and was known to drive a blue van. (Which, he said, had been in the area today)
His demeanor was friendly, respectful. He looked at me and said, "I had to live in that place. Only-est thing I ever did that I shouldn't was wire up to another house to get electricity, because she [the landlord] let the power go out."
I thought to myself he knows more than he is letting on. He is trying to get across the point that I'm alright with him, there are no hard feelings, even if I was involved in calling in about the electricity theft from, well, MY HOUSE THAT HE BROKE INTO THROUGH THE BACK WINDOW.
Or he wants to make me trust him, lure me somewhere and murder me.
One or the other, I figured. I had it pretty well narrowed down.
"That's terrible you had to do that," I said. "But you gotta do what you gotta do to live."
He said he didn't know the folks in 3101 6th Street North. It was a bad place, he said. All the time people were dealing drugs in there. I looked into the building and saw somebody standing just inside the doorway, a young woman, peering out fearfully at our conversation.
I figured "word gets around" and it was best to transmit my message of "social responsibility in the void of needful authority." I told him the way things were headed, the city might boot everybody out of the apartment complex...but if folks tried to keep it clean and maintain order, they'd probably be dealt with better. Not that I was anybody with authority, but I'd been at the neighborhood meeting and I knew what I heard.
Oh, and nobody should give money to Shirley, who no longer owned the building, and furthermore it was past the period of foreclosure redemption. People should call the police if Shirley or somebody acting on her behalf came around like that. Don't take matters into your own hands. Call the police.
He again denied knowing anybody in the building. As I drove away, I saw him walking toward the apartment complex in my rear view mirror.
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