Between Arrests
Bill is almost six months out of the South Carolina prison system. At age 54 he has spent a total of 17 years behind the wall.
He was born in Venice, California, a few blocks from where, currently homeless, and mostly drunk, he struck up this conversation, but he was raised in Washington and started doing booze and crime at an early age.
It is well beyond the Statute of Limitations, so he related with glee the night he backed-rammed a Chevy Malibu into the Radio Shack, across the parking lot from where we sat, in a smash-and-grab stereo heist.
Between booze and bone injuries, Bill is not likely to find paying work in Southern California. But it doesn't seem to bother him that he probably won't have more than another six months before he's behind another wall. 
When I started to take his picture, he asked what I was doing. I told him he had an interesting face and I like to take pictures. He said okay, but only if I took one of us together. I said, sure. But he must have forgot to hold me to it.
posted by BJMe @ Tuesday, March 14, 2006
1 comments
1 Comments:
You bring up an interesting point: it seems that quite a few anglo-inebriates look and sound alike. Bill reminded me a lot of Lee Marvin in look, attitude and voice.
As Bill sucked on his tall can of Colt 45, he drifted in and out of a very clever Irish brogue. He conveyed a look and sound I had heard many times before. And I have to admit that I am fairly sympathetic to it.
When an approaching, elderly friend of mine waved prior to getting his coffee, Bill started to pack up his booze and 'backy, saying he'd better leave as he tended scare people, which he didn't know why. I told him it was because he was so ugly and to sit.
He laughed at that and sat, but told no more tales.
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