My sidekick, Jay

Every Don Quixote needs a Sancho, every Batman his Robin. In January 2016, I was living at the aforementioned Carondelet Manor group home in south St. Louis. I'll be honest, I was getting tired of those places, it was pretty bleak. The previous one, Allways Kare in the Central West End neighborhood, had been like living in the lap of luxury, I had my own room and even an office, all to myself, but eventually they gave me the old heave-ho. 

This house is two doors down from Carondelet Manor. It was built just before the Civil War, by a man who subsequently became a general on the Confederate side, General Bowen, and died in the war. I didn't know any of that at the time, I just hung out on the back porch smoking dope and drinking beer. 

One day this guy turns up at the group home, kind of a frail and timid little guy about twenty years older than me. We start drinking beer together on General Bowen's porch, and he tells me he's an artist. I've heard that one before, I thought, but then he gave me a USB stick with his art on it. 

Well I'll be damned, I thought, he's the real thing. That's his Houses for the Atomic Age. All of his work depicts the late 1950s/early 1960s era. I asked him "How did your style develop?" and he shot back "It was always that way." It was great having someone who could talk about art and literature, and we became fast friends.

That's his Astro Chimp, based on the chimpanzees who were sent into space before humans, Gordo I think one of them was called. My taste was a little more conservative, but I could see the guy has a genius for spatial organization. 

Then he told me about the Eggleston photos. 

That's Jay in 1960, photographed by William Eggleston, who later became famous for his color photography. Jay grew up in the Mississippi delta, his family had been planters, which is kind of a euphemism for plantation owners. So like me, Jay had grown up rich but had become poor. He had worked in wholesale clothing, then gotten a master's in psychology and worked for the state, in the department of corrections. I refused to believe it until his sister confirmed it, he really did work at prisons. Jay's dad knows so much about the Civil War, he knew about General Bowen's house.

It soon became apparent that Jay hadn't aged a day since these photographs were taken. I've never seen anyone so incapable of malice or any serious wrong. Where Saint Paul talks about, If I must needs boast, I will boast of mine infirmities, this is the guy. The kingdom of heaven being for children, all that stuff people grouse about. 

I wasn't sure about bringing him down to La Paz, since he never learned any Spanish (I had two years in high school). But it's worked out great, much better than I hoped, even. 

Most of the files are too big to upload, and I don't want to mess with them right now, but you get the idea. That's his Jackie.