A long time ago I was a little kid in the Jungle, and my first job was selling bags of walnuts on the side of the road. My best bud at the time had a dad that was really into the value of a buck and earning your keep and everything else you would hear in country songs not about heartbreak and drinking, or see on truck commercials. "Like a rock," and all that.
So we came to him talking about wanting Streets of Rage for the Genesis, with our value sale being that we would be asking for less quarter money for the arcade stand-up version. He leaned back in his chair and said... Hmm, I think there is a way you two can make this happen. Interested?
The next day he woke us up at four in the morning, threw our bodies onto the back of a flatbed truck, and drove us to some location in the dark heart of the San Joaquin Valley, which is an agricultural version of Mordor. We spent the rest of the morning walking around an orchard filling bags with walnuts, which on a drizzly morning feels like slowly pulling testicles from wet screaming nutsacks.
Then we threw the full bags of walnuts onto the flatbed truck, then he threw us back onto the flatbed truck, and we drove back into town. We thought we were done, on the ride back we asked about our money. He said, "Not so fast. These walnuts aren't going to sell themselves."
He pulled into this dirt lot across the street from the mall. He got out and set out two lawn chairs right on the southern edge of the four way intersection. He told us to take a seat. We had just become old enough to understand how much shame and embarrassment was involved with what he was asking us to do. But we did it, for Streets of Rage.
It was the longest day ever. Everybody we knew saw us at least twice, somebody threw a soda at my head. Nobody bought any goddamn walnuts. When he came to retrieve our bodies six hours later he asked how many bags of walnuts we sold. We told him we sold exactly none. He said, "Well damn, tough luck. You didn't make any money today, but there is always tomorrow." Fuckin' hate walnuts now. Also, Jerbz.
The Protoculture Mixtape v.136 : Issue : People : Freemont
