I woke up this morning with a phone call from the Pittsburgh School Board to teach at one of the worst high schools in Pittsburgh. I’ve been there before but today I could not bring myself to endure the pain of teaching there. I just needed a day off. The phone rang at 5:30 in the morning. Its nice when you can refuse a day like this when teaching is just your hobby. Its nice to have a regular job. I could not go back to sleep so early in the morning, so I put on the radio. And this radio station was interviewing some guy who wrote a book about Jimmy Hendrix. I was in that never, neverland right before you fall back to sleep. They mentioned how he grew up in extreme poverty and he was given an F in music in grade school. Interestingly he did not start playing guitar until he was 15 years old. And he became the greatest guitar player in a few short years. He was thrown out of the army for not performing his duties quite right. But he credited the sound the wind made through his parachute during his time as a paratrooper for some of the sounds he made on his guitar. And he never thought much of his voice, until he heard Bob Dylan sing in Blond on Blond. Dylan's raspy voice encouraged him to try singing. Its amazing all the influences that motivated him. Growing up it was almost a right of passage to go to the movie “Woodstock” and hear Jimmy’s rendition of the “Star Spangled Banner”. Jimmy played at Woodstock with a right- handed guitar(he was left-handed) and played it upside down sounding like screaming, and planes crashing, and bombs going off. His favorite guitar was a stratocastor the kind with a gear shift below the strings that you pumped to create distortion to the sounds from the strings. He restrung the guitar the opposite way that a right-handed person would play it. This was a strange time for young people. On the one hand you had the Vince Lombardi football era which was all macho, caveman mentality, and on the other side you had the flower children coming on strong as a backlash against the war in Vietnam. And when you listen to Jimmy Hendrix at the Woodstock concert, he combines all the elements of both cultures, macho and hippy. Come to think of it so did Jim Morrison and Janis Joplin. All musical miracles that surprisingly all three musicians died at 27 years of age.

I went down to the Strip district to buy some catfish today. And as is always the case I looked for some good street food to eat while shopping around. I picked up a couple of pepperoni rolls to take to Laura’s sister’s ‘light up night’ party. We used to take pizza but that turned out to be a little painful because the pizza shops that we frequent are always so crowded on Friday nights. Today all the street vendors were crowded. So I headed over to the big fish house. And I bought my catfish filets. I used to buy the dressed fish with the bones but the filets are so much easier to eat. Still no luck finding a street vendor without a long line. So I bought a cup of decaf and checked out the books that were displayed on a bunch of tables. Finally I spotted an empty vendor outside a middle eastern restaurant. He was selling gyro sandwiches. Everybody knows the kind made with lamb and beef on a pita bread. The cucumber yogurt sauce was fresh and so were the onions and tomatoes. He put a spice on that I couldn’t identify, it tasted a little like coriander. The food always tastes better when you do not have to wait in line. I walked around eating gyro and drinking lemonade. Two of my favorite gastronomic pleasures are walking around down at the Strip eating street foods, and buying good sandwiches and hoagies and driving around in the city eating them. I’ve gotten pretty good driving with food in my hand. I can walk pretty good chewing down. There is particular satisfaction in walking and eating because you are burning calories while you eat. You do not feel as guilty shoving it in.