Getting Directions to Sherwood Forest
Had a dream…
Was working for the tent company and had to do an on site.
They gave me a Ford Raptor to drive…
Got to the on site and parked it in front of some hotel that had a valet.
It was nice enough to be parked out front so I didn’t think twice.
I walked down a hill to the location…
There was Steve, the man who owned the tent company.
He was sitting at a picnic table with all the other vendors, where I’d be sitting for the evening.
We greeted one another.
I realized I had forgotten my book in the car and I still had some time before I actually had to be on site so I went back to get it.
When I got back to the Raptor… I felt the need to ask if I had to move it.
The valet was cool about it … “I don’t think so man, let me ask my boss”
I watched him go in to ask his boss.
Everything seems fine but then I see his boss look at me…
In that moment I knew I’d have to move it.
“Uh yeah you gotta put it like across the street my boss says, sorry man.”
I get in it and as I’m moving it, I realize it’s actually a complete piece of shit to drive. Steers like shit, gets no traction…
Like piloting a hydrofoil on an oil slick.
I nearly hit a mailbox.
I find a spot that I can just pull up into…
“Fuck this.”
I hop out, grab my book.
It’s Assembling a Black Counter Culture.
I walk back down to the site.
The event has started and it seems to be some sort of rally, celebrating black culture.
All welcome.
I walk up and I see my family… my brother, aunts and uncles, sister…
I plop down in the grass with the book and embrace everyone.
My sister turns to the picnic tables and looks over at Steve…
“Hey Steve … why you sitting over there?”
We all laugh as Steve coyly shrugged.
I wake up to the sound of a moth flapping its wings in between the window and the screen…
Trying not to crease the pages of the book I believed to be in my bed.
I did work for a tent company.
Owned by a man named Steve.
I remember one day being in the truck with Steve, my brother, and his friends (really also my brothers as I’ve known them my whole life).
On the way to a job site.
Steve handed me the aux cord.
I slowly eased my way from Michael Jackson…
Into Marvin Gaye…
A little Stevie Wonder…
Steve would chime in about how much he liked the music that was being played every now and again, and we all discuss the artistry for a bit.
Gil-Scott Heron…
Public Enemy…
Steve is still with us…
The Last Poets…
My brother smacked my leg and side eyed me…
“Gimme the aux”
I can remember exactly what it was that he put on…
But it wasn’t The Last Poets.
Steve was brought back to a comfort zone.
We stopped for lunch at a taqueria.
Steve’s treat.
While eating someone asked
“Steve man… what made you want to build a tent empire?”
He told us about how it was his last shot..
He had lost his tech job and with his last $5,000 and his wife’s blessing bought a tent and booked his first event, ever since then he just continued to grow.
“You know ‘Siri’?”
“yeah”
“I helped design Siri.. then got laid off.”
Later on in the day…
We went out to Shelter Island to take down a tent.
In true, Shelter Island fashion, a microburst formed and quickly dropped 2 inches of rain on us.
My shoes had completely soaked through, each step I took squeezed a coke bottle worth of water out of them.
It wasn’t so much a bad experience, we laughed all throughout the days work. We had started and it needed to get finished.
Steve worked right alongside us through the rain.
When the rain eased up, he laughed as I tried to squeeze the water out of my socks.
“I’ll be back.”
He returned from his truck barefoot holding his pair of Merrell hiking shoes.
“I need these back at the end of the day.”
We got back to the shop.
Steve doubled our pay for the day.
I returned his shoes.
“Steve’s cool.”
“Yeah. Steve’s cool.”
I always found it interesting that Steve … one of the minds behind … a piece of tech found in nearly everyone’s pocket found his true fortune in setting up tents for ostentatious Long Island weddings.
He surfed between job sites.
He paid for lunch most days.
If it rained, he doubled our pay.
He didn’t carry a “the customer is always right mindset”
It was more of a “these rich people have more money than brains… so if they want something different, they’ll just have to pay more.”
One of the first jobs I set up…
After erecting the tent, putting the sides on it… installing lights…
The customer argued that they’d asked for it to be set up oriented 90 degrees from what it was…
“Well you didn’t…”
“No I know what I asked for. I want it spun NINETY degrees.”
Steve came and broke the news to us… we’d have to take the tent down, pull all the stakes, pull the lights… and do it all over again..
But in true Steve fashion, he was right beside us doing all the work.
And in true Steve fashion, our pay got doubled.
Something leads me to believe that Steve just wanted to drain these people that believed they needed these elaborate tents for their silly overly pristine events.
His way of taxing the rich after being sniped by big tech.
But what do I know.