Cents I Fell For You

One lazy Autumn afternoon, I was hanging out the door of my corner tavern watching people and cars go by. It was too pretty outside to waste the day away inside my dimly-lit bar. My customers felt the same way, as many of them had ordered beers to-go in brown paper sacks… so they could drink them outside… on the corner.

There’s something uniquely communal about hanging out on the corner in the ‘hood. You can easily tell what type of neighborhood you’re in by who’s hanging out on the corner. My corner is like a little community. It’s friendly and often fun-loving… if for no other reason than I simply won’t tolerate any bullshit on MY corner. Now, that’s not to say that there aren’t any low-key gangstas and shit-starters among the fellas who hang on my corner. Because there are. But they know how to act on MY corner. They had better! They know me. And they KNOW they have to take all of their silly shit somewhere else. ‘Cause I ain’t having it!

It was nice to stand on the walk in the sunshine right outside my tavern door. It was one of those GOOD days… with pleasant breezes sweeping through the ‘hood… cooling off the remnants of summer… and people just hanging outside on the corner… laughing and talking… taking full benefit of the day.

Somehow, everyone seemed to be caught-up watching some of the younger fellas pitching quarters… from the sidewalk on my side of the street… all the way over to a brick wall on the other side of the street. The quarters would hit the brick wall and roll… often right back into the middle of the street. These young guys seemed to be having an awfully good time drinking beer out of brown paper sacks, laughing and playfully taunting each other… waiting occasionally for cars to pass by so they could continue tossing. It was equally amusing to watch the expressions on drivers’ faces… gawking at all those quarters in the street like, “What in the hell are these fools doing throwing MONEY out into the middle of the damn STREET?!” I have to admit… I thought the same thing, too. But it was quite entertaining to watch.

It seems that they had modified the game of Pitching Pennies to Pitching Quarters… just to amuse themselves. You see, most of these guys were hustlers and dope dealers (on the down-low). And like most hustlers and dope dealers, killing time is their biggest pastime. In the dope biz, they not only hustle dope but they hustle downtime, too… as they wait on the next service call for a dope sale or a dope pick-up. So, why not amuse themselves? Apparently, pitching pennies up against a wall was a little too penny-ante for them. But pitching quarters… across a sleepy two-way street… up against a brick building… well, that sounded like FUN! And it was. BIG FUN… to all who played and to all who watched.

The young hustlers had so much fun… they kept sending their little gofers down the street to the carwash to get more and more quarters. Some of them even ignored their calls to service their dope customers… just so they could continue to play their new game. But as the calls began to mount, one of the guys checked the missed calls on his cell phone and said, "Okay, y'all. I gotta make a run." Truth was… they ALL had to “make a run.” So, they agreed to make one last toss. Closest quarter to the brick wall WINS! And winner takes all!

An old man on the walk, who had been watching them play, said, "Y’all mind if I get in on this." The young hustlers, not at all threatened by his slight, elderly stature, replied, "Naw! Go 'head, Pops." No one seemed to know the old gentleman. He had happened upon the game as he was walking down the street. And like all the rest of us, he was captivated by the sheer spectacle of it.

Out of respect for his age… and quite mannerly (I might add)… the young hustlers invited the old man to pitch his quarter first. But he waved them off and motioned for them to go ahead of him, "Naw. You gentlemen go on. I'm gonna bring up the rear."

Having paid proper respect to the old man, the young guys picked up where they had left off… laughing and taunting each other as they each took-on the final challenge. They pitched their quarters… with more intent this time. But the quarters all bounced off of the brick wall… and rolled back toward the middle of the street. Each of them tracked their quarter to its final resting place, wrote their name on a dollar bill and placed it under their quarter… until it was finally the old man's turn.

The old man pulled off his jacket, gripped his quarter flat between his index finger and his thumb and hurled it… as hard as he could… toward the brick wall. But he barely had enough on his toss to reach the other side of the street. The quarter landed well short of the brick wall. It hit up against the curb, instead… did a couple of pirouettes… and fell flat against the pavement.

Instantly, everyone burst into laughter. What a pitiful throw!

The young hustlers laughed the hardest… uncontrollably… and joked about how the old man didn't have enough on his toss to even reach the brick wall. One even quipped, “You should’ve kept your little quarter in your pocket, Pops!”

Undaunted by their laughter, the old man put his coat back on. I figured… with him having been thoroughly razzed and humiliated… he'd continue on up the street to wherever he was headed before he had stopped to watch the game. But when he had donned his coat, he walked out into the middle of the street… and started picking up quarters.

All of a sudden, the young hustlers didn’t find him so amusing. After all, the old fart was scooping up THEIR money! They ran over to him in the middle of the street and asked, “Hey! Hey, Pops! What’s up? What you doing?” He rather matter-of-factly replied, “I’m picking up my money.” As if to beat him to it, another one of the guys quickly started picking up quarters, too. Yet another one angrily challenged the old man even further, “Old man, how you think that’s your money? Your quarter barely made it ‘cross the street!” The young man was visibly upset. And they all had seemingly begun to lose their patience with the old man.

I was like… “Uh-oh, Houston, I think we got a problem here!”

Just as I braced myself for some shit to pop-off… the old man stopped picking up quarters, stood straight up and shot right back at his challengers, “You said whoever’s quarter get closest to the wall wins it all! That’s what you said! Now… look around! Whose quarter is closer than mine?”

Then it dawned on EVERYONE (myself, included) that the old man's quarter WAS the closest quarter to the brick wall! Without even having cleared the curb… this old man… weak-S toss and all… WAS the clear winner!

Ding! Ding! Ding! He had just taken us ALL to school! Lesson #1: Don’t just watch the player. Watch the game.

While we were all so busy making fun of the old man’s weak toss, he was focused-in on the game. The scattered dollar-bill markers… nowhere near the brick wall… were clear indicators that the young guys had lost. The old man had, indeed, beaten them at their own game.

Having silenced his challengers, the old man turned to the young G who had been picking up quarters (thinking himself to be the winner) and said, "Hey there, young man! I appreciate you picking 'em up. But they belong to ME!"

The young hustlers’ playful taunts gave way to their submission, as they all pitched in and started picking up quarters and handing them to the old man. Hell! They even gave him their dollar markers, too. Must have been $80-$100 there. The old man kindly thanked them, as one of the young guys removed his beer from its brown paper sack and gave the sack to the old man to put his winnings in.

But true to the period of time the old man had come along in, he didn’t just take the money and run. He took a little sting out of his conquest when he asked the young losers, “What are you gentlemen drinking?” Then he motioned toward my tavern door and said, “Come on in here and let me buy you another one!”

Classy move… strictly Old School. But it sounded like money to me! So, I hurried on back inside my tavern… followed by the old man and pretty much everyone else. It seemed this old fella had made some new friends. As he stacked quarters on the bar to pay for a round of beers for his young losers, he was still taking them to school. Teaching them Lesson #2: How To Be A Good Sport… A Gentleman.

After he paid for the first round, each one of the young guys took turns buying the old man a couple of rounds… laughing at themselves and mocking how that old man had come along and whipped their-S… AT THEIR OWN GAME! The money they had lost was nothing… chump change to them. But the camaraderie they had discovered and the lessons they had learned were priceless.

Needless to say, didn’t nobody get no dope that day! (lol) The old man had not only taken the young hustlers’ money… but he had shutdown their hustle… at least, for the time being. And a good day turned into a good time.

The rhythm of this blue note is: Quarters to pennies, dollars to cents… A lesson learned is time well spent.