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"CAN I HAVE THAT MONEY BACK, PLEASE?"

It wasn’t a time in my life that In was proud of, financially speaking! I was having a rough time finding work. There was one month where I had to ask my brother to loan me $300 to pay the rent. He said, “I’ll give you the money this one time, but I already have three kids. I don’t need another one! (A point well taken regarding ‘responsibility’).

To get by, I had already sold my clarinet, flute and beautiful 1924 7-foot Steinway piano. I had very few possessions left of any value, just some oriental rugs, which I was having a hard time selling. Finally, I got lucky when I called up the owner of a ritzy oriental rugs store on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. He said he’d send a man to my Bronx apartment that night to check out my rugs. My rent was due the next day. I had never missed paying my rent.

When the man arrived, he liked the three colorful lightweight Mesopotamian rugs that were hanging my walls. (I had bought them for $500 each at a rug and art gallery in Gothenburg, Sweeden while touring with "Blood, Sweat and Tears” in 1971). The rug dealer offered me $150 for all three! I also had two medium-sized typical-looking oriental rugs, which he offered me another $150. I accepted both offers without bargaining. I was happy to be getting the amount needed to pay my rent. He handed me the cash. But a second later, he asked, “Can I have that money back, please?” That was a bit of a shock t hear. I returned his money in disbelief. I’m thinking, I just had the money and it slipped right out of my hands! Then he proceeded to show me a small oil stain on the back of my living room rug. I had never had noticed it before, being that it was on the underside of the rug. He told me that this ‘lessens’ the value of the rug. He asked if he could speak with his store owner about this. I didn’t know if he was going to reject this rug or try dropping his original offered price. Plus I didn’t know if he was faking the phone call to his boss (maybe there was nobody on the other end of the phone). Maybe ‘he’ was the boss! Anyway, he told me it was OK, he’d take all five rugs. He gave me back the $300, I thanked him, and he left.

It was kind of a ‘funny', but ’sad’ situation to be in. I paid the rent the next day.