UNFINISHED DOCUMENTARY, KINGDOMS OF THE RADIO | 1995
Once we decided to renovate Girassol, I figured I ought to let Mrs. Chaves know what was going on; that way if we ran into a hassle, we would be coming from a place of righteousness.
I had to go into town and call her from the payphone at Sammy’s. Once I told her that the big house was still standing and in amazingly good condition, she actually wept on the phone. I told her the other buildings were a loss, but she was cool with us building some new ones. There was no electricity out to the property, but the gas lines were somehow still intact and the same company that provided it back when Mrs. Chaves lived there was still around.
I got her to call the company and let them know that she now owned the property and wanted the gas back on. They said it might take a while since they would have to check the hookups, but it would be all right to put it in my name so that we could pay the bill. In the meantime, we had plenty of firewood from the tear downs.
In fact, when we finally finished loading in all of the salvaged building materials, a girlfriend of Enrique’s brought out a jug of morning glory wine she had made and we had a huge bonfire.
The acid-like effects of morning glory seeds was one of those things I had always heard about but never tried as they had a bad reputation for making you really sick as well as really high. For me, there’s nothing worse than losing your lunch while tripping balls, but this chick had figured out a way to extract the good shit and filter out the part that makes you nauseous.
We were all tired from schlepping salvage all week but also had the mellow feeling of a job well done. We built a big pile of lumber we knew we couldn’t use again and all took a big drink of the wine. She called it wine, but had actually used Everclear in her process so it packed a punch like a smack from a bat.
Román Leão 