Working at the major fruit stand so I am dictating these notes for entry this evening. Yancy has been a difficult one to deal with today. According to Janis he’s been bitchy to a lot of people lately.

This area is upright. Streets are filthy. It’s definitely a transient part of town. Once again I am reminded that just because one has an engineering degree, it doesn’t mean they’re intelligent. In fact they seem to be mutually exclusive.

Bill is on the road again. Not scheduled to return until Monday. Mike is coming over tomorrow night so that should work.

I am listening to Ian Dury and The Blockheads Do It Yourself. A definite desert island disc for me. Never fails to lift my spirits and it does not sink my boats. That was a reference to a song on Do It Yourself.

So, the major fruit stand. I am a mere fruit fly here. I just want to do my job, keep my head down

It is a totally different animal, this fruit stand is. Some have a sense of entitlement, a snobbish air for some. I’m a contracted fruit stand worker. In fact, in six days it will be a year since I started working at the fruit stand.

A lot has happened. I am still nervous a lot of the time. Even when I do a task I have done a dozen times I am still waylaid by my crippling self doubt. This week I am trying to use that nervous energy to my advantage. At least that is what I tell myself.

At the main fruit stand I have access to a vast library of music. I was playing Ian Dury and The Blockheads, Do It Yourself which may have been difficult for some fruit stand workers. I switched it to Brian Eno, Music for Airports which is easily ignored.

Now, Janis is at lunch and I am playing New Order, Power, Corruption and Lies. That was my introduction to New Order, not counting a mix tape that Dave Bell made 45 years ago.

Two imported fruit stand workers have been wandering around in a circle, a square circle for the past half an hour or so. They walked by my desk and I had to ask them what was going on. Are you doing a walk and talk? Is this a glitch in The Matrix? It turns out their imports and where they are imported from that’s more circular for them to get their steps in and exercise and still talk about work.

I am dictating notes into the phone, eating a banana, and in 45 minutes I will be picking up a lunch, a salad.

If I had a superpower I think it might be making certain people feel better about meeting me. I laugh at that cuz it’s quite egocentric on my part and I’m always wrestling with my ego.

One of these days I will have to tell the story about me being at the Paradise Garage and seeing New Order.

A new day, this April 14, 2026. I woke up tired, like I had been fighting in my sleep. I don’t recall fisticuffs or anything like that, but was exhausted waking up. Now I am better, more alive now than I was then.

Al Green’s greatest hits are playing. He just turned 80 yesterday. I have been enjoying his music for over 50 years. Remembering specifically, a paper drive that the VFW was sponsoring. Driving around Saddle Brook neighborhoods picking up piles of newspapers to be recycled. Someone had an AM radio playing Al Green’s I’m Still in Love with You that Sunday morning. It being a hit record meant I heard it a few times that morning in 1972.

Were things that tough in 1972 that a paper drive was in order? Granted most of the organizers grew up in the depression and more than likely were in paper drives and similar things back then. Nobody reads newspapers anymore, at least not the physical newspaper. Now it is all digitized, and the men who ran the paper drive have passed away. A copy of the Daily News is $3.00, the New York Times is $7.00, and the Sunday edition a whopping $12.00.

My family got 4-5 newspapers a week, almost daily. The New York Times in the morning, the Daily News, the Bergen Record and the Herald News and the New York Post that my father would being home at the end of the day. Sunday was the big day for the papers, the New York Times was a couple of inches thick, the Bergen Record and the Daily News had a comics section in color. It was a good routine for most of my life growing up there.

It was mainly all adult men, if I recall correctly, and I would not be surprised if a few of them were drunk. Safety standards were nonexistent as we drove up and down the streets of Saddle Brook. It was exciting for me since it was something I had never done before, and I had not done it since.

Al Green has always had a special place in my heart. I have to admit I had not thought about Al Green much after that, though when Talking Heads covered Take Me to the River on record and Saturday Night Live, he started to resprout in my consciousness. A year or so after that, I bought Al Green’s Greatest Hits Vol. 1 & 2. I made cassettes for various family and friends.

I remember seeing some show, I am thinking an early Richard Barone show at Maxwell’s and Guy Ewald played Love & Happiness by Al Green moments before Richard Barone took the stage. Later in that decade, before my dear friend Jet passed away he arranged a showcase for a few RCA artists, Three Times Dope among others but for me the biggest name was Al Green who did his thing admirably for a couple of songs.

That was the only time I had seen Al Green live and he was a few feet away from me. I would love to see him again but things being what they are, we’re rarely on the same page at the same time. I have money he’s not around, he’s around when I have no money. Been there and done that.

There was just a demonstration for Buffy the Vampire Slayer across from the building where I am working. They’re singing songs and holding up signs that say “Save Buffy”. I do not know what it was all about but it seems to have ended.