Until I get my Mojo back...........

You probably are wondering over the lack of activity around here. To be honest I just keep coming up blank. I'll get a few hundred words in to a post, then it just falls apart. I've been trying to pin down some work, but 50 year old former career criminals aren't in high demand. Background checks, a job market flooded with younger, cheaper, cleaner applicants, and a shit economy are all making it tough to find my niche. So I'm chalking the writers block up to those factors. give me a week or two, and I'll be back up to speed. In the meantime I'm going to rerun some of my favorite stuff over the past 3 years. If you've already read it, read it again. If you haven't read it, it's all new to you anyway, so quit bitchin.
.............Without further ado. ................................

Willie was one of those guys that you instantly liked, always smiling, when he asked how you were doing, you believed he actually cared, wasn't just mouthing the words. I first met Willie when I was around 13, scraping plates, scrubbing pots, and busing tables at my Uncles restaurant. Willie was so fat he looked like he was standing up when he was sitting down, the way really big people do. It's like he couldn't bend in the middle. Willie almost whispered when he talked, a low gravelly voice, like a cross between Miles Davis and Froggy from the Little Rascals. Willie was black, it was the mid 70's, he had the requisite giant afro, the shirts with shoulder width collar, he drove a dollar bill green Cadillac. Willie was the epitome of the stereotypical inner city criminal of his era.

Willie didn't run girls, he didn't sell dope, and as far as I know he never got heavy handed with anyone. Willie ran a crap game out of a house, a stones throw from the little lake on Paseo Blvd.He also fenced stolen property, cars, motorcycles, whatever would turn a buck. Fast forward 10 years or so. Willie was like the Jimmy Carter of the local Kansas city criminal world. He bridged the divide between criminals from separate areas of the city. A black guy steals a car, Willie sells it to a white owned body shop where it was magically changed to a legal car and resold. In other words Willie was able to move in and out of opposing circles. With Willie moving around in so many different circles, I would run in to him in one bar or another along Wornall road. I never had any dealings with Willie as far as that goes, we were in different fields as it were. But we always took a few minutes to talk when we ran in to one another.

Willie was a family man, married to the same woman all his adult life, he had about a half dozen kids, did all the same things with his kids, as regular Joe America does with his kids. He was a good guy. I know what you're thinking, "he was a crook, and that means a not so good guy", and you are right, sort of. Nothing in life is black and white, life is full of various shades of gray. You can argue that Willie, or anyone for that matter, who makes a living illegally is basically a bad guy, taking the easy way, morally bankrupt, and I can't fault your thinking. The other side of the coin, there are guys like Willie who do everything else, just like everyone else. All of his kids but one, turned out well, went to college or some regular job. all I'm saying is that neither one cancels out the other.

One of the last times I saw Willie was in the late 80's, maybe the early 90's, the face of crime was changing, Willie was pushing 60, he looked tired. We had run in to one another at a bar on the south end of the city, so we had a few and he started talking about his youngest son, the only one who didn't turn out so well. Gangs had begun to really take hold on the east side of troost, Willies boy was mixed up in it all. Maybe it was the booze, or the late hour, but Willie was talking about something I had never heard come out of another criminals mouth. Regret. He told me he wished he had done things different, done things right, legit. His kid had caught a drug case and a murder charge, Willie figured he was to blame, set a poor example for his son. Maybe he was right , or maybe his kid would have turned out the same if Willie had been a janitor, or a doctor, who knows. The thing that struck me was the regret. I didn't get it, not back then anyway.

There was a moment when I thought I saw Willie start to tear up, there was a long pause, and Willie got up from the bar, slapped me on the shoulder and gave his standard parting line " Don't get none on ya", then he left. I remember thinking at the time that Willie was just getting old, that his regret was just a by product of getting closer to the end of his life, a superstitious belief that he would burn in hell if he didn't repent , feel remorse.

When I got out of prison it was the year 2000, Willie was dead, killed in an argument over a game of dice. Most of the guys I came up with were either dead or in prison for the rest of their lives. In most cases the thing that killed them or put them away, was drugs, whether directly or indirectly, dope was their downfall. I never fell under that curse, that's probably why I'm still around. Not because I was smarter than the Willie's of the world, I wasn't, I was just luckier and in the end that's all it comes down to , at least for me, just dumb luck.