Uncle Johnny's Bail Money

When I was about 15 years old, I was futzing around (is futzing a word?) in the dining room , actually I think I was nosing around , no, probably fidgeting while my mother was lecturing me on the virtues of not hanging out in front of the Pizza Shop at the shopping center ( a treasured teenage congregating point)…I think her words were…”Boys don’t ask girls out who hang out at the Pizza Shop..they know you are always available, you’ll never get a Saturday night date doing that”.

I pondered that one, for a teenage second, wondering if that meant I could actually start dating.

As she was telling me this, my young mind started wandering along with my feet, I started circling, pacing about the dining room ,doing the teenage avoid-eye-contact-at-all-costs, trying to keep my mind off the lecture and wondering how soon I could go to the Pizza Shop.

I pass by the soup tureen. The soup tureen, that big honkin’ piece of silver status that never held an ounce of soup in all my days on this earth, ever.

I casually lifted the lid up off the big silver baby and holy Sonny and Cher, inside it was a roll of cash ( I later counted it, 500 clams)….

I looked up at my mom, who was cautiously looking at me, and said “Wow look at all this money, what’s this money for?”

Of course my mind is racing, is she leaving frumpy step father? Is she saving for an operation? Is this for me? Are we getting a pool? Can I come back later and peel off a few twenties that she would never ,never notice?

Racing I tell you, racing.

She answered succinctly and with a finality that meant, no more questions, “That’s Uncle Johnny’s bail money, don’t touch it.”

I put the lid back as if it was radioactive and left the room. I had completely forgotten about the Pizza Shop and started walking to the door and outside to sit under the trees in the yard.

Uncle Johnny, a name that evoked danger, darkness and omigod do I really have his errant DNA?

He drove a ’63 corvette and wrecked almost every Saturday night, he was wild and scary, he made stealth trips to …FLORIDA...he told us he sold acid at Woodstock and I always wondered if it was the BAD acid that Wavy Gravy warned about ….and what the heck is bail money?

Curious beyond belief, I rode my Schwinn up to the shopping center, past the coveted Pizza Shop and to the library where I look up (um by the way, this is the 70’s) the words “ bail money”…. Or “bail”…seems that wad of cash was there to secure a quick release from jail for scary Uncle Johnny.
Since we are talking the 70’s, automatic teller machines hadn’t been invented yet, keeping cash hidden in the house was the way to go.
And bail money is usually needed at 2:30 am never during banking hours…and by the way, the other definition for bail was “a container used to remove water from a boat” something to save a sinking ship perhaps?…hmmm.

So I was RIGHT…Uncle Johnny was not only scary but illegal! There was something not-quite-right about his trips to FLORIDA. I knew it! He had seen jail…touched criminals, walked the perp walk, omigod again…..or not, because of the bail money.

Now here’s were we get to the point of the whole story…don’t you just pray for this moment?

The point is, here I am , over 36 years later… sitting in my sunporch writing this ,while 2 plumbers dig a massive trench from our house to the gas line, which decided to die and leak gas into the air which I smelled last night and made the phone call that started a VERY EXPENSIVE CHAIN OF EVENTS.

But I don’t get too spastic, because I learned early on, from my mother, to be prepared, to save a little cash in the soup tureen in case Uncle Johnny gets thrown in jail…or a gas line needs to be repaired.

And THAT is the point of this story.

....

Nit picking and downtown money.

I guess you know that you are all grown up when you can admit things about yourself. Like, I'm willing to admit that I am a ...nit picker... a term that grosses me out because I'm sure it has something to do with picking lice out of peoples' hair.

I have always been a nit picker, a sure sign of "Princess and the Pea " syndrome. I mostly cut the tags out of all my clothes except my "LIfe is Good " T-shirts, because they prewash and soften them and the tags are cotton and soft...but I once again digress.

As a nit picker, I reserve the supreme right to rant about meaningless sh*t that perhaps you never even considered and may now find that this meaningless sh*t now bothers YOU and therefore my burden of annoyance has been properly transferred to you hence my neurotic mission accomplished. Isn't sharing fun?

SO let's get to the infectious point: I live and work in the 'burbs, mostly. I do TV and media work, the media work takes me just about everywhere for shoots...my voice over work takes me downtown or into my basement where we have a studio and editing suite....we have the ability to record digitally and send it, put it on the internet and never have to leave the house.

This makes me ecstatic because it means I deal less and less with "downtown money" and "parking lot dollars"...you know what I mean ? The dollars that the parking lot attendant keeps on the top of his filthy pile of broken,washed in the Mon,wadded up, taped up cash, some of which still has some unsnorted crystal meth lines on it, and then hands it to you as change...I always give it right back and say, give me some money that's not going to fall apart three blocks from now.

THe worst downtown money exists on the South Side...this is where all the college students hang and drink on the weekends and mingle with the Bohemian (ie: almost homeless if not for girlfriends) population of the burgh. There are more bars per block than in all of Mt Lebanon, a throw back from the mill days. Public urination on a Saturday night is an elevated art form.

I used to love to take my mother there during the day (the only safe time for nit pickers) and wheel her around in her chair as she marvelled at the mowhawk haircuts and crowded tattoo laden arms of would-be graphic artists. She got a kick out of it and loved the candy store next to the Bead Mine. My diabetic mom would sip a milk shake and her 70 year old commentary of the street scene would evoke musings like "Who's going to marry THAT ?"

Once I saw a rat as big as Jupiter walk right towards me in broad daylight on Carson Street, I jumped and screamed, it jumped and screamed and ran down an alley, the homeless guy on the stoop laughed at me...I said to him "Hey, what's so funny?".... he kept laughing.

But I DIGRESS....... last week, I was on the South Side for business, and stopped to have lunch when my husband at a new pizza place (I hate pizza, but was being cooperative that day) , when the (I think it was a she) malcontent girl at the counter, whose hair was falling in my food and had JUST wiped her nose, handed me the pizza and my change..... I stop in a nit pick stupor and gaze at my change, the ultimate "downtown money"...it was a dollar bill completely ripped in half and scotch-taped back together, kind of.

Can you feel my challenge here?

Do I point out the fact that she just wiped her nose and then touched my food, or mention the fact that she gave me a piece of useless currency?

What do I do?I'll wait while you think about this ....mind you now, my husband is sitting at the table looking at me and wondering what fresh hell I was about to rain down ... I think he might even be shaking a little....but like I said,earlier, I'm feeling cooperative...no sense spoiling our "lunch".

So, I put the ripped dollar in her I-can't-believe-she-has-the-gall-to-have tip jar, wrap up the pizza and and leave it on the stoop of the homeless guy down the block.

.