A day at 12

The walls shook as the train passed behind the house. The neighborhood was surrounded by train tracks on every side. There were only four crossings out. One on Austin, one on Harlem and the other two on Central and Narragansett. We were surrounded by trains and four blocks from Midway airport but nobody left. 

The walls always shook when a train passed. Just like everything else. This time it was early. If it wasn’t a Saturday, Mom and Dad would be at work and I’d be walking out the door to school with Emily. I love Saturdays because there is no school. In a few hours Dad and I will probably go to Minuteman Park to hit batting practice and take ground balls. I like playing shortstop but if I don’t start growing and my arm doesn’t get stronger, I’ll probably have to move to second base. Next year when I turn 13 the field gets bigger and the mound is further back. 

I can feel Bobby's music vibrating through the floor from the basement. The train drowns out most of the noise but I can still hear enough Slip Knot to get out of bed. Sometimes music sounds worse than the clashing of steel. Sometimes I pray for a train. 

Mom is also awake. I can smell Folgers burning in the kitchen directly outside of my bedroom. 

Dad yells “DEEJ. LET THE DOG OUT.”
Maple hears the screech of the back door and springs in from the front room.She is a puppy and looks like our last dog Courtney, but she is a yellow lab. Courtney was a chocolate lab before she was hit by a train. Now I always remember to close the gate. 

The dirt infield at Minuteman feels like stone under my cleats. Its uneven surface, littered with rocks, bottle caps, glass and weeds, often guides the baseball away from me.  “Bad hops are caused by bad feet.” yells dad from home plate.

 We’re working on fielding the ball, planting my feet and throwing it to first base. Backhand, forehand, slow rollers. Make the throw. 

All of my friends play baseball except Jon. He just skateboards and lives down the street. I like skateboarding too. It’s different from baseball. You fall more but there are less rules. 

Once the bucket is done dad and I walk to first base to pick up the baseballs. 

After three more buckets of grounders he sets up for batting practice. We yell “heads up” to the Mexican kids playing soccer in the middle of the park before he starts throwing to me. I wish Minuteman had a real fence. Once the bucket is done we have to pick up the baseballs and start over three more times. 

When I got home Emily was watching Disney channel and eating BLT’s in the front room with Jon’s younger sister Erin. 

It's past lunch and her parents are still in bed. Ours never sleep that late. 

“Is DJ home?” I hear through the screen door.

“He’s in his room,” says Emily

Jon bursts into my bedroom.

“DUDE Manny and I got into a fight with Joey”

“What happened?”

“He called me a hillbilly so I called him a kneecapless fuck and then we threw hands”

“Did you win?”

“Ya”

“Congrats. You’re still a hillbilly. 

The walls shook as the train passed behind the house. 

We ran into the backyard, behind the garage, and started throwing rocks at the train. 

Jon wore glasses and the same clothes as the day before. He was thin, not that tall and had a mullet because his mom cut his hair. 

When the train left we grabbed our skateboards and rode to the park. 

Indianapolis & St. Louis

(Comedians Steve Raines (White) Brando Harris (wearing slides) oct. 5 2024

The first show of the week on the road was Friday in the small room of the Indianapolis Helium. It started at 8pm in between Lavell Crawford shows in the big room downstairs. I brought Steve Raines and Brando Harris to open and despite the character building hotel and lack of personal space (3 guys, 2 beds), I think we had a pretty solid start to the trip.

The small room that we played in is actually a closet with 50 seats and a microphone stand bent against a dull gray wall. To the untrained eye it looks like the inside of a shoe box but it's actually a comics wet dream. A small dark tightly packed room with low ceilings is all we could ever ask for. Steve was talking about open heart surgery for pigs and Brando was talking about Seinfeld and Indianapolis had a good night. 38/50 seats were filled and we got to watch Lavell Crawford’s late show after we ended with some of my college friends that came to see me. Its humbling to watch somebody truly great do the thing that you think you’re good at. I’m glad everybody got to see Lavell. He’s the real deal.

The last few times I’ve been to Indy I headlined a comedy club that was also a therapy office. It was nice to finally be performing inside of a mall where god intended comedy to live.

We hit Waffle House, went to bed and hit the road for the next day in St. Louis. 

St. Louis I can’t say much about other than the hotel had long term residents. The towels had piss stains and we were across the street from a Rally’s and an abandoned used car dealership. I was catfished by Hotels.com and I’ll never let it happen again. When I first got to the club I thought we somehow sold a bunch of tickets but Earthquake just added a 4pm show since he sold his other four shows out. I didn’t sell many tickets so the show wasn’t great. It was also in the same room as the service bar for the main room and you can hear everything that the bar tender does while you’re on stage. A 5:30 show is hard in a city that you’ve never been to but I guess that's how it is sometimes.

We saw the Arch. We ate at Panda express in the mall and the boys took the bus back to Chicago the next day as I started my journey to Nashville, Tennessee.