Groundscore- I drove my roommate down from the mountains into Chico and waited with him at the Amtrak. It was like 4am or so iirc, we got there super early because I didn't want him to miss his train. He and I were both completely broke, I wasn't even sure if I'd have enough gas to make it home back up the hill. On the way down I was trying to coast as much as possible on the downhills to gain speed so that they'd carry me up over the humps just to be super thrifty with my gas. He wasn't going to be able to eat anything on his train ride, we were both just so hobbled.
So we're hanging around at that Amtrak station and I go kickin around the parking lot just out of boredom, lookin at random graffiti and such. On the asphalt at the far end of the parking lot I spotted what looked like money. As I got closer it looked like a larger bill than dollars. It had to be at least a 5 just by appearance from that distance. As I got even closer and my eyes locked in on it I could swear it looked like a hundred dollar bill but then the doubts set in because I'm sure we've all found those stupid fake hundreds before with some sort of advertisement on them so I was like ugh probably one of those as I leaned over to grab it.
Nope, it wasn't a fake. It was a hundred dollar bill and a twenty dollar bill folded up together just laying there in the parking lot. I was so stoked. I gave my roommate the 20 so that he could eat and I kept the 100 for gas and also the assurance that I'd have gas to pick him up again in a few days. I would have hit up a store and broke the hundred and gave him more but his train was almost to the station and there simply wasn't time to.
Kickdowns.. This one isn't amazing or anything but it really counted for a lot at the time. I was about 17 years old hitchhiking with a friend. We were total noobs, it took us four days just to get from Fresno to San Jose lol. We were broke and hungry af. Dumpster diving didn't even cross our minds, we were just dumb kids on the road with no traveling experience. We were sitting outside of a grocery store in the shade pondering our next move. We weren't spanging or anything, we were just chillin. Some random guy walked up and just handed us a ten dollar bill. Back in the 90's you could actually feed two people with ten dollars. We were so fucking grateful for that guy. It was like he just knew somehow.
I don't think I've ever been kicked down an item but I have a short story about seeing an item kicked down that I thought was pretty neat. I was like.. idk 15 or so at the time. My friend Bert really wanted this Joy Division shirt. He insisted that we walk literally all the fucking way across town, probably like 8 miles or so to the record store that had the shirt. So we did, spent hours and hours walking to this store in the hot summer heat for this damn shirt he had to have. Then we walk another 7 miles or so to the Tower District where we hung out in those days.
Ok so.. when I say literally, I mean literally. Literally the fucking moment we reach our final destination in the Tower District, which is the bus stop we used to take over out in front of Blockbuster Video.. some random person is sitting there waiting for the bus. We weren't even there to catch a bus, it was just our hangout. Anyway, this random guy says to Bert "That's a rad shirt!". Bert takes the shirt off and gives it to that guy. I mean I love seeing a nice kickdown and everything but bro.. I coulda just grabbed a shirt from the house and saved us like 15 miles of walking. Bert was fucking dope like that. He always wanted to just see someone else stoked. Many people use the phrase "They were the type of person that would give you the shirt off their back" Bert really was, even if he had to walk 15 miles just to hand it to you.
RIP Bert. He's the Hispanic one, actually wearing another Joy Division shirt in one of the pics here. Side note- The blonde guy caressing Bert & the one with his tongue out is an engineer for Union Pacific. I got 5 of my homies hired on with the railroad, he was the only one who stuck it out.