THE RICKSHAW

June 12, 1993.

I remember the date because it was my 75th birthday. That was the day I closed the doors for the last time to the Goat Emporium, my bar/rickshaw business in Atlanta. The bar side did so-so, but the rickshaw part was both a loser and a winner.

There was only one rickshaw in the whole of Atlanta, and when its owner died, that rickshaw was retired to a museum. The owner had died a few months earlier and that left me just the bar, which according to the weather, sometimes broke even, but mostly didn't. If it had not been for some astute card playing skills at just the right times, the bar might have gone under several times. The secret to winning at poker is to be half-assed good at cards to start with, and then open a free bar to the other players and stay stone cold sober yourself. It's just that damned simple!

But this isn't a story about me or the bar. This is a story about a rickshaw and its owner.

The owner was a confused young Japanese guy from California named Hiroki who got interred by the US government during WWII. When he was finally released after the war, he was so disgusted by what happened to him he determined to 'go back to Japan' - although he was born in East Los Angeles in 1919. The problem was, shortly after the war he was released from an internment camp in Crystal City, Texas, which is damned near in Mexico it is so far south.

So Hiroki headed 'east'. I said he was confused, didn't I? Anyway, he told me he knew Japan was the head of the 'Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere', and East Asia was in the east, right? Also, he knew Japan was much further north than south Texas, so he angled towards the Northeast. He was afoot and hitchhiking, and had very little money which ran out just outside of Atlanta, and I probably should tell you right now we are talking about Atlanta, Texas here, not that frigging megalopolis in redneck-assed Georgia. Atlanta, Texas is pretty damned rednecky too though. First, it is just barely in Texas to begin with, being almost in northwest Louisiana or southeast Oklahoma or southwest Arkansas - take your pick. Anyway, there ain't too many places much more rednecky than around here.

Hiroki said he looked for farm work so he could eat when he first got here. But no one would take him on since he was a 'dirty, stinking Jap'. He soon wised up though and starting passing himself off as a Mexican named Pancho. He knew a smattering of street Spanish from his days in LA, and that worked for him. The local whites knew him as Pancho, although a few mused about his slanted eyes. They'd say, 'Hell. Ol' Pancho there looks more like a Jap than a real Jap!'

Renaming himself Pancho was just easier all around and a hell of a lot safer too for the times. East Texas folks were a long ways from buying finely made Japanese automobiles in1946, and fancy electronics hadn't been invented yet. He survived, but only barely. He married too, to Maria, an actual real Mexican girl with one wandering eye. Not the kind that looks out for other men, but an eye which seems to look somewhere else when the other eye is looking at you. Some people call it 'wall-eyed', but the proper name for the condition is 'exotropia' I found out later. They had kids, several of them, I think five or six or so? Maria was a good woman, quiet, thrifty and industrious, making a good wife for Hiroki, and he became a good father and provider. With more mouths to feed, Hiroki needed more income and that's where the rickshaw idea came in.

Hiroki came to me to build it for him. At the time I was just starting out on my own and had grand ideas about starting a metal fabrication business. Being young and foolish, I'd rented a little shop, gathered a few tools and hung out a sign saying "Jonson Fabrication - ICBADT". 

At the time I thought it was fiendishly clever when people would ask about the ICBADT part and I could smartly reply, 'That stands for "I Can Build Any Damned Thing!"'

But, I had very few customers. I fixed some sewing machines and washing machines, repaired kids' skates and bicycles, and farm implements and such as that, but no one seemed to need anything actually fabricated - until Hiroki came along. He wanted a rickshaw built. Hell, I didn't even know what a rickshaw was and neither did Hiroki really, but he'd researched at the town library and explained things to me in detail. I agreed to give it a shot. It was the first, and as it turned out, the only actual, metal fabricating I ever did for money. Hell, I fixed bicycles didn't I? How hard could it be to build a rickshaw? As it turned out, not all that hard at all.

But Hiroki couldn't pay me. He was honest and told me that up front, so it's not like he was trying to con me. I agreed to build the rickshaw if he'd furnish the materials, and he would pay me for my work over time from the income he'd get from his planned part-time rickshaw business. Fair enough, he needed a rickshaw and I needed the work, such as it was. He gathered up parts and materials, nothing bought, just salvaged stuff from the junkyard and dump. Looking back on it now I know he'd have been much better off if he'd bought everything new, but that just wasn't possible then since he didn't have any money to spare. So, we both made do. And that rickshaw made from junk parts is the reason I got in the rickshaw repair business. I was always and forever having to fix that goddamned junk-assed rickshaw until Hiroki sent off to Japan for an honest-to-God, real Japanese one a couple years later.

That first home-made rickshaw was a success. Now Atlanta, Texas ain't a very big town, but the folks here took to that rickshaw in a big way. It was the late 'forties and people in this country were just becoming acquainted with Japanese things coming into the US after the war, and a rickshaw was, well, kinda exotic so to speak, even if it was made from recycled Fleetwing and Red Ryder parts. It was so unusual in East Texas the big Dalles papers sent reporters to interview and report on 'Pancho, the Mexican rickshaw driver in Atlanta, Texas'!

After the newspaper stories came out, it was Katie bar the door. Folks started coming from all over Texas, Arkansas, and Oklahoma. Swamp rats even came over from their dens in Louisiana. Things were looking up for Hiroki. It wasn't long after that that he took up his Japanese name again, and proudly too. He found Japanese characters in the dictionary which he painted on the side of his rickshaw. He couldn't actually read Japanese but he claimed he knew what the characters meant. 

He quit his other jobs - Hiroki had several - or, to be brutally truthful he was fired when the locals learned he really was just a 'dirty, stinking Jap' after all. That rickety rickshaw became his sole source of income, and he made it pay and well too in the end. In short, Hiroki eventually blossomed like a Japanese cherry tree. And I sort of did too, largely because of Hiroki.

But the thing was see, the folks in east Texas were OK as long as it was just Pancho, the Mexican rickshaw driver, but a real, honest-to-God Japanese rickshaw guy was just too much for them to handle. So they did everything they could to stymy him and his rickshaw business. I mean, nasty spiteful stuff, and called the law on him, sabotaged him and stuff like that. That was one reason I had to repair that first goddamned rickshaw so much. I mean after the locals found out he was a real Jap, no one in town besides me had any use for him anymore. Sure, a lot of them liked the new business he brought to town but they shunned him personally. But Hiroki persisted and prevailed. He was one tough hombre, that guy, let me tell you, both mentally and physically. That man had muscles in the legs on him which looked like chimpanzees rasslin' in burlap bags.

But I became his friend. I was just about the only white man in town who had anything to do with Hiroki. I was in the war too, but I didn't hate the Japs. Maybe that's because I spent my time overseas leapfrogging up through Italy as a motor pool mechanic, working on trucks and bulldozers and such. Hell, I never even got shot at, not even once, but I still got combat pay since I was in the battle zone. But most of my battles were just over how much to pay the local puttanas for a few minutes of nasty fun.  One pack of cigarettes or two?

I always spoke up for Hiroki around town and that got me on the shitlist with a the locals too. But I didn't much care since I was pretty low on the social list anyway. My Pa had gotten himself hanged around the time I was born. My Ma said it was something about my Pa finding the local judge in bed with a fourteen-year-old boy at the judge's fishing cabin on the lake. I think my Pa was the caretaker and even though my Pa swore he'd never say a word, the judge found a way to have him hanged anyway, or so my Ma always claimed. I was raised by my step-pa, if you want to call it that. Being one of the local bootleggers, he was not very high on the social scale either, and added nothing whatsoever to my own social standing. When the war came along, it was a relief to get drafted into the army.

My step-pa died while I was overseas and my Ma passed on a couple years after I got home. She left me a little dab of insurance money which I used to start my metal fabricating business and that brought Hiroki into my life. Funny how the world works sometimes ain't it?

You see, then what happened was after Hiroki got his brand new rickshaw from Japan he got the bright idea of branching out and running two rickshaws, the new one and the original one I'd built for him. Seems like there was enough business for two he said, especially on weekends when folks came up from Shreveport, Baton Rogue and Dalles, and over from Oklahoma City. He offered to go shares with me on any rides I did with the old rickshaw and sweetened the deal by renting part of my shop for rickshaw storage and repairs. I jumped at the chance since I was going deeper in debt with my metal fabrication business every day. I would get a one third share of any fares I booked, Hiroki got a third and his rickshaw got a third. Did I mention Hiroki had a pretty shrewd business head on him? That was what I meant when I said he was mentally tough too. He was all business when it came to business.

That all worked out just great too. I started doing rickshaw rides on the weekends and Hiroki did rides seven days a week. It was really tough on me at first. The first few weekends I wondered how the hell Hiroki got the stamina to pull that goddamned rickshaw all week long, but pretty soon I toughened up myself and everything got lots easier for me. I started actually making money instead of losing it, and started in catching up on my bills. Things began looking a little more bright.

Then, Hiroki got his next big bright idea about branching out big time.

He ordered two more rickshaws from Japan and then dropped a bomb on me by telling me he planned to move his operation over to Texarkana. The reason being Texarkana was many times bigger than Atlanta, Texas. I was floored. Just when things were really looking up, here he was pulling the rug out from under me. But Hiroki was a good man inside. In the end he agreed to leave his operation intact in Atlanta and I would run it. Not only that, under his new deal, my share would double since he would 'loan' the old rickshaw I'd originally built for him to me, and now only take a one third share. What a guy!

Besides, although he offered, I really didn't want to leave town and go over to Texarkana with Hiroki. So I took him up on the deal. Now, not only would I would now be making more money, I'd also fallen in love and planned to marry and settle down with this hot little number I'd met a few weeks earlier in a roadhouse two towns over. I guess I don't have to tell you how that worked out. You need to remember though, that I was still pretty young, stupid and always horny. It did work out just long enough for that hot little gal to talk me into buying the shop building I rented and turning it into a bar which came to be called the Goat Emporium. Don't ask me why, and I don't really know where the name came from, but it just stuck. I never got around to marrying that gal either, and that's a good thing because she soon met a flashy cowboy from Dalles and took off with him. I have no idea where she is now and don't want to know either. I was so everloving jaded by that I never ever got married afterwards and I guess that's a good thing too. Everything usually seems to work out in the end though, doesn't it?

So now I had kind of a low rent bar and a so-called metal fabricating business with no clients, and a worn-out rickshaw, which for a while made me a little money. But two things happened which soon affected my rickshaw trade. First, Texarkana was near enough to Atlanta that Hiroki's operation began sucking all the trade out of my end, and it dried up considerably. I'm thinking that it was really Hiroki himself who was the main big draw anyway. Then too, my bar started taking more and more of my time - and interest. Before long I had started resenting anyone who wanted a rickshaw ride, and that sure didn't help. Hiroki noticed of course because I wasn't sending him any share money, so he came over to check into it. I guess he could see right away what the problem was, but being a man of decisive action he took appropriate measures. You might expect Hiroki to be pissed, but he wasn't. He said he completely understood, but he really loved that original homemade rickshaw, was sentimental about it and wanted to preserve it. Would I be agreeable to storing it for him until he could do something with it? He'd pay me $150 per month and all I had to do was to house it, keep it oiled and greased, and take it out to ride it half a mile or so to 'give it some exercise' once a month he said. Well certainly, that was agreeable to me. It was a no brainer.  $150 was a goodly sum in the early 1950's and Hiroki sure was one hell of a guy. I always lived up to my end of the bargain too and never once failed to do as he wished. I kept a calendar on exercising it, and looked after that goddamned rickshaw faithfully for over forty years.

A lot of time has gone by since those early days. Hiroki and I remained friends. I didn't see him all that much but every month like clockwork I got a check for $150 from him for looking after the rickshaw. Hiroki himself went on to bigger and better things while I stayed put in my little dog-eared Goat Emporium bar. Hiroki just kept on branching out until he had built himself an empire of rickshaws, taxies, concession stands, makeup parlors, dog grooming studios and all manner of such things. I think he just kept creating new business for his kids, in-laws and friends. He got quite rich in fact, and he and his wife joined all the big social clubs in Texarkana. Before he died he was rich enough to have his own personal museum built in honor of that first goddamned rickshaw, and he had it built in Atlanta, Texas. He named it The Hiroki Honoring House.

Before he passed Hiroki told me about his plans and a few weeks after he died the manager of his new museum sent for that rickety old rickshaw.  And damned if I haven't seen some young guy out riding it a couple times since the museum took charge of it, so I guess that exercise order still stands. There's a lot of other things in the museum beside that rickety old rickshaw too of course, memorabilia that Hiroki collected over the years, but the rickshaw itself is the centerpiece of the place. I think the museum is just Hiroki's way of giving Atlanta, Texas the merry old middle finger, and the guy riding it around town every so often is just a reminder.

It really is wonderful how things just seem to work out sometimes, ain't it?