Small victory.

I drove a long way to pick up a young tweaker. He lived in a little farm town, a little better than a lot of the farm towns down there, the good job in town was a military base instead of a prison. Other than that, you might find work in agriculture or maybe you could work in a grocery store.

The kid told me to meet him at a gas station in the middle of nowhere. I mean, in the middle of the fields. Last gas station before a federal wilderness area. Every once in a while,  a car full of campers stopped off for ice and beer.

He left me sitting at the gas station for almost three hours. Every once in a while he would call me to tell me he'd be there in 15 minutes. Finally he called and gave me directions to a trailer park. I went to the address and there was a bunch of small town tough guys with home made tattoos working on a junk car. Turns out that was the tweaker's car. He'd been living in it. He was driving around going through his possessions that he had stashed at houses of various friends and relations.

He started hauling out garbage bags full of clothes and piling them up in my car. He told me he couldn't figure out what to do with the stuff from his car, so he might as well bring it all with him. The last thing he set in the front seat was a package of art supplies, sketch pads, pens and pencils.

When we finally got going he opened up his sketch pad. He had drawn a bunch of predictable, kind of cheesie looking tattoo designs. Still, I was impressed that he valued his art and wanted to give it first priority. He hadn't gotten high that day and he fell asleep pretty quick. All that waiting around put us in line to catch rush hour in a whole bunch of towns and two big cities. It was a long, long ride back. I listened to music and he snored.

He had a court case pending. Two weeks later, I got to pick him up at four in the morning for a nine AM court appearance. I ended up doing almost three hundred twenty miles in a little more than four hours. We got breakfast, which put him in a good mood. I sat with him until his lawyer showed and then went to get an hour's uncomfortable sleep in the car.

The court appearance was a formality. It was over in a minute and he came back to the car. I had a plan for the ride home. I know a couple of people in the tiny arts community down there. These guys are not the fine art crowd. They're homeboys. My friend is an old hot rodder and juvenile delinquent from the 50's. I thought it might do the client some good to meet an OG who is a successful artist who had been clean and sober for a long time. We went to my friend's studio, in the back of a body shop. He had been a custom car builder and most notably, a painter of custom cars, for many years. He finally got to where he couldn't take the paint fumes anymore, so he started doing paintings and sculpture.

He was getting ready to take a bunch of art to a car show, so he had a lot of finished work in the studio. The kid was impressed. My friend is really something. Even university trained fine artists admire him. After an hour in the studio, we went downtown for lunch. My friend told us stories about the old days, running the streets, drunk and loaded in all kinds of crazy home made cars. The thing is that he is so quiet and humble about those stories that he even seems a little surprised by them.

Now,mind you, we were throwing in a bunch of before and after stuff. My friend and I knew we were on a mission from God to reach the kid. Neither of us ever turned our back on the old life. We just embraced the new life. I could tell the kid was having a good time but I was hoping his eyes were being opened too.

Last stop before the road home was my other friend's gallery. I don't know him very well, but he impressed the hell out of me. He's a young man who left farmville and got an education in the arts, but he came back and decided that he was going to open a gallery and round up the local artists. The first people he drew in were young hip hoppers. He's got them hanging out in the gallery. He lets them use his computers. He shows their art in the gallery and every once in while he sells a few pieces for them. He  managed to attract their older brothers and dads, who started showing up in low riders and hot rods and riding choppers. A lot of those guys are artists too. Plenty of them do cornball prison art with big eyed babes and muscular home boys, African warriors or Vato Locos or Vikings, whichever matched them. Some of them took their talents a little further. They had developed real skill working on their rides and designing. He encouraged them to experiment with stuff to show in the gallery.

That's where my friend the artist came in. He sells his stuff through the gallery and he's brought in some money and fame for them. We thought it would be great to introduce the kid to the gallery owner and hopefully get him hanging with the young artists down there. Unfortunately, the gallery was closed and we didn't get to go in.

Shortly after that, the kid got done with treatment. He didn't want to go back and he ended up in a sober living house up here. I though he made the right decision and I didn't hear about him until the other day. He had to go back home for another court appearance. After the court appearance he dropped into the gallery. He ended up hanging out there for a few hours. He told the owner his whole story. He told him he wanted out of the life and he wanted to develop his talents. He wants more from life than drugs, gangs and small town isolation. The gallery guy said he seemed excited about staying clean and trying something new. He said the kid might have a chance.

I told the people at work. It made them happy. It made me happy too. I swear, we're working for peanuts because we're so excited about sharing "Life, and the fullness thereof". It feels good when someone takes us up on the offer.