Roma > Rotterdam
Trip Start
Jun 15, 2007
1
8
25
Trip End
Sep 05, 2007
Roma, Italy
Monday, July 2, 2007
(Roma, Monday, July 2, 2007)-It's a hot and sunny July Monday morning in Roma when we say goodbye to Antoniello and get ready to board our planes. Mark is flying to Eindhoven to make a gig that night, and for some reason I'm on a plane to Rotterdam where I'll have to catch a bus to the train station and then make the one-hour ride to Amsterdam Centraal.
It's cold and raining when I get off the plane and wait for the bus, and still cold and rainy when I arrive in Amsterdam. I'd given my keys to the apartment to the cats from New Orleans so they could stay in our pad when I was in Italy, and they've left them in the mailbox-which I can't open because Dorothy had the other set of keys and she'd taken them back to New York with her when she fled.
I have to do a lot of waiting around in the rain and finally end up wheeling my luggage over to my pal Ted Jackson's place in the Pijp. He's agreed to put me up for the night, and while I'm waiting to hook up with Ted I stop by to check in at the 420 Café and walk in on my dear friend Walter "Wolfman" Washington and his wife Barbara, who are taking a little vacation in Amsterdam before joining his band, the Roadmasters, in Italy later in July for a tour. We enjoy quite a few laughs over a couple of smokes and they catch me up on the news from New Orleans.
By the time I get to Ted's and turn in early I can feel a bad case of the flu starting to descend upon me. It's still cold and wet the next morning, and it stays that way all week-more like November than July. I'm out and around in the weather all day, catching up with my peoples at our various stops, and I finally chase down a set of keys to the pad and gain access to my apartment at last, shivering with cold and exhaustion as I jump in the bed for a long night's sleep.
I'm trying to act normal the next day-the 4th of July!-as I make my rounds and get ready for the radio show and concert with Wolfman scheduled for the 420 Café that evening, but the flu is starting to move into my system full force and I feel worse by the minute. But the show must go on, as we say, and I tough it out as long as I can before bolting out the door and heading home to my lonely sickbed, where I remain for the next two days with the worst case of intestinal disruption and ceaseless distress that I've ever suffered through.
-Detroit
August 23, 2007
Comments
Oy vay
Big Chief - When it rains, it pours. Stay dry as your wit, brother.
Love, Munz
Chaos
A sorely missed friend, folk artist Preacher Frank Boyle, described an incident of gastronomical distress as follows: 'I went to bed, and everything was fine. I woke up, and there was CHAOS.'
He stayed at my house on Poland Avenue when he had a show at Peligro Gallery. Took him over the canal to Fat's house, thinking he'd like to see it.
'I was one of (8?) black waiters in Las Vegas in 1971. I think he'll remember me.' With that, Frank got out of the car and marched right up and knocked on Fat's front door. Frank cut an elegant figure, tall and lanky in a trench coat and Kangol hat, but sadly, no one answered.
xo
Sinclair up for AIR!
Hey John:
Sorry to hear about your stomach dismay. My prayers and binding foods are with you.
best from Cambridge Mass,
Larry