Joseph Jean the Jellybean
I'm getting wildly off topic, but who really cares? I just want to talk about JoJo, my happy thought from the last post.
Jojo was born Joseph Jean VanAsch, in Wheaton, Minnesota, on May 21, 1956, the year of the Monkey. He grew up with his grandmother in the home he says he still owns. It was a small chapel out back, where his best childhood memories were made, hanging out with his granny.
He joined the Air Force and went to Vietnam. At some point, he was in England too, because he describes jumping into the English Channel to me and his eyes light up when he talks about it, remembering how cold it was. "Pip, pip! Tallyho!" he says.
He cleans the parking lot for the Bunkhouse Saloon in Las Vegas as well as several other odd jobs. He cleans it for free PBRs. If he's got a little money, he buys everyone a round and gets a Bud. He prefers Bud but PBRs are cheaper and he gets more of them for his cleaning efforts. He cleans the bathrooms too, arguably the dirtiest job ever. I've caught homeless people in them washing their socks; I found a woman in there once, stone cold out, laying in her own vomit. When the EMTs woke her, she came up swinging.
Jojo was raised Catholic, but doesn't talk about God much. He always talks about the Spirit. To him, everything is Spirit. Sometimes he sits at the bar and looks at me blissfully, saying, "You have the Spirit!" Then he has a shot of peppermint schnapps and starts wild antics. If a band is playing, they say things like, "We just play here to see him dance. He dances like he really feels the music." If there's no band, sometimes he'll happily quack.
"Quack, quack, quack... QUAAAAACK," and sometimes he throws in an "AFLAC!" and if the rest of the regulars are at the right level of liquored up, they start quacking back. I giggle because I have a room full of happy drunks all quacking. One day some young hipster couple walked in, looked around, heard everyone quacking and turned to walk right back out. I guess the quacking was too much for them.
I liked to watch how people responded to him. People either loved him or thought he was a complete moron, and treated him as such. Nobody liked those people and they weren't very welcome after that. He was tattered, usually dirty. He looked maybe a little homeless some days. His hair was wild, unkempt and the jeans someone had given him always a size or two too big, so he strapped them on with a belt.
Before working for the Bunkhouse, he lived in a dumpster out back. The Air Force had let him go, after he'd lost his granny and his wife, deemed him unable to serve because he'd gone a little loony. I took him to the base one day, and he ran around happily, like a child, climbing on planes and showing me where things were when he was there.
Brian, the former owner of the Bunkhouse, came in one day. I'd been anticipating meeting him, because he was the person who fished Jo out of the dumpster and gave him an apartment and a job. "He wasn't going to live long like that, getting beat up for his VA checks," he said. Many of the owners down there have varied interests, some apartment buildings, strip malls, bars, motels. So he had a place to put Jojo. Jo worked for him as a bartender for years, until he was getting too drunk to do his job. Then it was parking lot cleaning. For beers.
He told me he'd found a child, one day, lost and crying near the Fremont Street Experience. He took the child's hand to find a cop. Before he did, the parents found him and screamed and yelled at the man who'd "stolen" their child. The cops showed up, Jojo explained, and they roused him a bit for the parents' sake, but told him to go home. The police in the neighborhood know everyone there. They know Jojo, that he's the best. That he takes all the pop tops off the cans at the bar and keeps them in a bag until there's pounds of them, then delivers them to the children's hospital because they recycle them into some kind of machine. I asked him why he goes so many miles in July, when it's 118 degrees out, and he just says, "It's for the kids."
He saves his money every year, to buy everyone in his trailer park, largely old people, shut ins, a Thanksgiving dinner. I took him to pick it up at HyVee. They weren't very kind to him, but handed over the turkey and fixings, and he handed over the money. He always left me stunned at his warmth and kindness with people who weren't kind in return.
After a few years of knowing him, I decided to lean over the bar one day, while he was getting the whole bar quacking, and call him out. "You're a genius; why do you try so hard to make people think you're crazy?" He stopped quacking, looked me in the eye in a moment of incredible clarity and said, "Don't wreck my nine ball, kid," then went back to quacking and giggling with the boys.
Jojo was born Joseph Jean VanAsch, in Wheaton, Minnesota, on May 21, 1956, the year of the Monkey. He grew up with his grandmother in the home he says he still owns. It was a small chapel out back, where his best childhood memories were made, hanging out with his granny.
He joined the Air Force and went to Vietnam. At some point, he was in England too, because he describes jumping into the English Channel to me and his eyes light up when he talks about it, remembering how cold it was. "Pip, pip! Tallyho!" he says.
He cleans the parking lot for the Bunkhouse Saloon in Las Vegas as well as several other odd jobs. He cleans it for free PBRs. If he's got a little money, he buys everyone a round and gets a Bud. He prefers Bud but PBRs are cheaper and he gets more of them for his cleaning efforts. He cleans the bathrooms too, arguably the dirtiest job ever. I've caught homeless people in them washing their socks; I found a woman in there once, stone cold out, laying in her own vomit. When the EMTs woke her, she came up swinging.
Jojo was raised Catholic, but doesn't talk about God much. He always talks about the Spirit. To him, everything is Spirit. Sometimes he sits at the bar and looks at me blissfully, saying, "You have the Spirit!" Then he has a shot of peppermint schnapps and starts wild antics. If a band is playing, they say things like, "We just play here to see him dance. He dances like he really feels the music." If there's no band, sometimes he'll happily quack.
"Quack, quack, quack... QUAAAAACK," and sometimes he throws in an "AFLAC!" and if the rest of the regulars are at the right level of liquored up, they start quacking back. I giggle because I have a room full of happy drunks all quacking. One day some young hipster couple walked in, looked around, heard everyone quacking and turned to walk right back out. I guess the quacking was too much for them.
I liked to watch how people responded to him. People either loved him or thought he was a complete moron, and treated him as such. Nobody liked those people and they weren't very welcome after that. He was tattered, usually dirty. He looked maybe a little homeless some days. His hair was wild, unkempt and the jeans someone had given him always a size or two too big, so he strapped them on with a belt.
Before working for the Bunkhouse, he lived in a dumpster out back. The Air Force had let him go, after he'd lost his granny and his wife, deemed him unable to serve because he'd gone a little loony. I took him to the base one day, and he ran around happily, like a child, climbing on planes and showing me where things were when he was there.
Brian, the former owner of the Bunkhouse, came in one day. I'd been anticipating meeting him, because he was the person who fished Jo out of the dumpster and gave him an apartment and a job. "He wasn't going to live long like that, getting beat up for his VA checks," he said. Many of the owners down there have varied interests, some apartment buildings, strip malls, bars, motels. So he had a place to put Jojo. Jo worked for him as a bartender for years, until he was getting too drunk to do his job. Then it was parking lot cleaning. For beers.
He told me he'd found a child, one day, lost and crying near the Fremont Street Experience. He took the child's hand to find a cop. Before he did, the parents found him and screamed and yelled at the man who'd "stolen" their child. The cops showed up, Jojo explained, and they roused him a bit for the parents' sake, but told him to go home. The police in the neighborhood know everyone there. They know Jojo, that he's the best. That he takes all the pop tops off the cans at the bar and keeps them in a bag until there's pounds of them, then delivers them to the children's hospital because they recycle them into some kind of machine. I asked him why he goes so many miles in July, when it's 118 degrees out, and he just says, "It's for the kids."
He saves his money every year, to buy everyone in his trailer park, largely old people, shut ins, a Thanksgiving dinner. I took him to pick it up at HyVee. They weren't very kind to him, but handed over the turkey and fixings, and he handed over the money. He always left me stunned at his warmth and kindness with people who weren't kind in return.
After a few years of knowing him, I decided to lean over the bar one day, while he was getting the whole bar quacking, and call him out. "You're a genius; why do you try so hard to make people think you're crazy?" He stopped quacking, looked me in the eye in a moment of incredible clarity and said, "Don't wreck my nine ball, kid," then went back to quacking and giggling with the boys.
Ok, I’m literally commenting on every one of your blog entries here ... just can’t help myself! There must be tons others like me that simply missed your post that this blog exists. Trust me, I’m gonna be spreading the word.
ReplyDeleteOk, this JoJo guy - is he still alive? Do you know? My son and I will be in Vegas on Sat, June 16 to pick up a friend at the airport before heading out to Best Friends (that animal sanctuary I was telling you about), and I bet I could talk her into making a pit stop with me to try to greet this man and share some blessing. I guess we’d just head to the Bunkhouse Saloon?
The Bunkhouse closed for a while, then reopened. I heard they play house music sometimes now. UGH. Jojo's trailer was taken, when downtown Las Vegas was gentrified. He's hard to find now, but I'll check around. The last time I was in town, it took me nearly a week to find him. He has his local haunts, but the Bunkhouse no longer pays him beers to clean the parking lot, because: gentrification. But he's there. Somewhere. You'll go through a lot of questionable neighborhoods to find him. Ha! What I DO recommend in Vegas is going to Red Rocks or Valley of Fire. Those places are permeated with magic. Valley of Fire even has petroglyphs. I got high enough to figure them out, the last time I was there. ;)
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