Chapter 15          New Jersey/ creased pants and the locker-room failure

New Jersey was more like contemporary life is today. Everything is so far apart that it makes car-world omnipresent. I only rode a bike a dozen times that year, but walked many miles across the Great Swamp near where we lived.

We visited a doctor that year who looked at my painful knees and he told Mom that I’d be in a wheelchair by age 40. I laughed, but she was a nurse and took it seriously. It’s amazing the doctor could see so far into my future.

The summer before my senior year started, a little bell went off in my head and told me to save money to buy shoes the following year. It was an odd intuition because my father had a good job and paid for everything.

I didn’t know it then but my family was going to change.

The year in New Jersey was hard on everybody. My father’s former traveling-sales job kept him away all days except weekends, but now he had a second big promotion and a bigger paycheck, and he was home almost every night. We embarrassed him.

He was a shiney-shoe bastard ... always buying me shoe polish and showing me how to buff it out just right. Hell I was street. I bought my first power saw when I was 14. I built treehouses, collected salamanders, climbed around abandoned quarries, crawled through drainage tunnels and caves. I was never going to polish the apple and make good, and he reinforced that real well, telling me repeatedly I would ‘always be a day late and a dime short.’ He probably heard that insult somewhere, and was proud he found someone to use it on.

That summer I got a warehouse job at Two-Guys and worked ‘carpet’ for a while, getting a taste of warehouse lifers who barely made it from paycheck to beer. The radio was constantly playing the number one hit, ‘whose doing your old lady while you’re out making time,’ and my mind has forever burned that slogan together with those people. The air, the streets, everything … everything was dirty … even the trees looked absolutely ‘lived-out’ in that land.
 
I buddied up with another guy from ‘tile’ and we took alternating days sleeping 2 hours in the morning behind the carpet rolls. My mind went dead, until inventory came up. Wow I loved that. I got the department half counted in a one day, but the shop steward and some other guys rushed me in the parking lot. They wised me up, saying the job had to be slowed down or the company would fire one slaggard who drove in from East Orange. Hell, it was his job, I didn’t want it, so I went back to sleeping.

That year the country had military plans outlining how they would cut off rioters from leaving Newark and East Orange, and I guess I felt good about that. It also helped me understand why corporations mechanize everything because you can’t trust the people.

My senior year started and I liked the new school. These people were rougher somehow, and enjoyed a good rowdy in the lunch room. I never heard stories like these guys. They were open about the hardships in their lives, and I listened at the ‘trouble’ table during lunch. I was relegated lowest on the peck list, but it didn’t matter, I had a spot.

I ‘tried out’ for the basketball team because I was tall and strong, but I didn’t have any talent and couldn’t jump. The final cut came down to Barry or me. The coach decided we could both stay, even so, I was a better player, but everybody liked Barry, so a day or two after that I quit the team … but that wasn’t the reason.

Hell what was the use, I couldn’t even take a locker in the same room as the other guys. They gave me an ‘athletic’ locker, but I used my regular gym locker instead. It wasn’t a shower thing, I took a shower with everyone. No. It was a sharing thing. I didn’t want to share time with people or something.

I don’t know what it is, I’ve had it my whole life, the loner syndrome; always wanting to be with people but locked away and unable to bridge the gap.

Afterwards I joined a church intramural basketball team, and played out the rest of the season. I don’t remember how I met those guys, but we traveled around playing other church teams and I played every game. It was fun and we had one guy who could shoot all-night-long and he led us to a winning record. 

These were real people. They weren’t mechanized by coaches or school colors or familial hoo-ha-ing from the stands, and nobody ever mentioned the church. It was good. There was no role within the school paradigm and I could remain anonymous.

The last game of the season was against a Black team in west or east Orange. We were winning in the last seconds until the lights went off, and when everything came back on, another minute was mysteriously put on the clock. Yes these were real people, down and dirty and gritty and wanting to win. Their whole school was there, with cheerleaders and everything. The guys were probably 3rd stringers who couldn't make the regular team. They had everything on the line, but we came in an old van and it was just the 7 of us white people in a sea of Black faces.
Some of our guys were nervous. The coach was scared. I wasn't. We lost the game ... probably lucky for us.

I found a friend at school, Trevor, and he was positively into Ginger Baker. He introduced me to music and stereo equipment, and that year I bought records and became a groove-dog. He was just an ordinary ‘I’m going to Georgetown and major in History’ kind of guy.

Late one night Trevor and I were coming home from an ice cream store, he caught a sheet of ice that put his father's car sideways around a telephone pole. I wore a seatbelt so I didn’t have a scratch but he bashed his leg pretty good when the pole smashed in the driver’s door. It wasn’t too bad; Trevor could still use his leg after we got out through the passenger window.

Our parents came to the hospital to get us and I got into trouble with my father over that wreck, but don’t remember why … but I do. He told me not to go out that night because it was icy, but I went anyway. What I really remember is Trevor’s parents were pissed off about the car but glad that he was ok. They talked to him like a person and I felt so left out. My father was just pissed off. The accident was more proof that I was a nothing person.

Our parents came to the hospital to get us and I got into trouble with my father over that wreck, but don’t remember why … but I do. He told me not to go out that night because it was icy, but I went anyway. What I really remember is Trevor’s parents were pissed off about the car but glad that he was ok. They talked to him like a person and I felt so left out. My father was just pissed off. The accident was more proof that I was a nothing person.

I had a girlfriend of sorts that year, Kim S. We were introduced by Paul's sister. He was another friend, except tight and straight-laced. He was the school's running back, and saying that everybody was calling him a humm. Gay I guess. I never treated him or others like that.

I was a senior and Kim was a junior. We were probably same age except I started school a year early. Mom said I refused to stay home. So they sent me to school.

We only had 1 date. Don't remember where we went, but neither of us liked the roles we had to play in front of our parents. We never saw each other or spoke in school, but we talked on the phone 1-2 hours every night about nothing in particular. She lived for the beach life when her parents stayed at the shore every summer.

My father smashed that because he would try to call home from his business trips, and the line would be busy. What the hell was so important that he needed to call us?

Anyway my phone calls were throttled, and the girl wasn't interested in me otherwise. Shortly before we moved away, I stopped by her house and were visiting in the basement family room. She said, what do you do when somebody very important is leaving and you won't see them again?

Surprised, I didn't know what to say. We were friends of sort but not magnets for each other.
 
She let that settle in my mind a few moments, then pulled out a picture of some guy down at the shore who was leaving and she’d never see again. I don't know what I said after that, but I remember acting like, yeah I figured that's what you meant. Probably said enough and left.
Why the insult? In retrospect, who the hell was she anyway? Some quiet hate-filled mouse who went through school and nobody noticed.
But who was I? Maybe I was nobody because that's what I believed, and maybe she told me that. I wasn't daring enough around her.
I never pushed her, or demanded her, or took her somewhere she hadn't been. But neither did anyone else. It was a 1 wheel cart with 4 steering wheels.

My father and I boiled over that year. He got shiney-shoed with me and said I was going to start wearing ‘creased pants with a cuff.’ Blue jeans were out. The edict had been passed!

Everybody at school wore blue jeans except my religious friend Paul who was pressed and starched-tight by his Radio-Preacher father.

Paul’s family took me to church with them a few times until my father bashed me saying I was only going with them because I liked Paul’s sister. What difference did that make? So what if I liked her, was I vomiting goo-goo on his dress code or something?

He was right I guess, so I stopped going.

I was interested in what Paul’s family was saying and doing. I liked his sister and we had one date and spoke often in school. I bought her a ‘Turtles’ album that she hated, but so what … it was a tiny romance that went nowhere. And I went to their church in part because I wanted to learn what these people were saying … it was new and interesting. But my father denigrated it and I thought I was supposed to do what he wanted.

Paul’s father sat me down in their living room one night and asked why I stopped going to church. He talked to me like an adult, but a seventeen year old boy who had never seen anything but personal-bashing couldn’t possibly explain why. How could I tell him about my father? I didn’t even know myself.

Even though I didn’t understand my feelings, I resented my father’s intrusion over every microscopic piece of my life … especially since I always came up short in his eyes.

And then there were the fucking pants. My father was given to simple logic: ‘creased pants make the man.’ Our family never openly resisted him since there was a level of respectability about the man except he never became a part of anyone’s life. He just stood afar and criticized every nuance and affect of your cough and table manners.

He and I trudged out in the snow over to the men’s store in Morristown where he bought me 3 pair of slacks. Slacks. The word sounds illegal coming off your tongue doesn’t it? Slacks. I told him I wasn’t going to wear slacks. He battled back with squawking and other threats of home-detention and he got so mad that he came to hit me.

My father hit his children. He threw me down a flight of steps and ran after me and threw me half way back up. Mom was screaming for him to stop, but I was unhurt physically … and he had a pretty good throw … he was invited to try out for the minors as a pitcher when he was young.
It was true, I was screaming and out of control, and that’s why he threw me down. He didn’t know what to do with me. I probably needed hyperactive drugs. I was a case without reason.
 
I was kid… how could I see that? We came up in an abusive home where you were expected to get it right … and I mean buddy, you better get it right the first time or you were beat down verbally … and occasionally physically. The great weapon of choice was withholding love; I-can’t-love-you-if-you-don’t-do-what-I-say bullshit.

My sister is still sorely afflicted with the ‘gotta obey – or I won’t love you’ disease, which comes from hell-burnt Christian theology, and may explain my earlier hostility toward religion and their houses of worship.

The final ‘creased-pants’ battle was quick and decisive. My father came to hit me, but I was standing on the first step leading upstairs, and doubled my fist and let him know I would pound him hard. I was bigger than him and would’ve marked that SOB.

My father immediately backed away. He never attacked me again and never mentioned slacks again. Today my only regret today is not being able to fit into that size trouser.
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Chapter 16:         last year of high school: divorce / my family disintegrates
Sent

Chapter 17     my parents relationship created the boundaries by which I lived, and now that was gone.
sent


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Chapter 18        I come into police focus again

The years following high school were spent sputtering in and out of college.

I had trouble in the dorm and my roommate moved out saying he was afraid of me. It was the same reason my father threw me down the steps I suppose.

You know, not until I started writing this book and cataloging the events from my life have I gotten to see that certain themes have replayed over and over in my life.

Why was this guy afraid of me? Why were my teachers afraid of me? Was this because of my rage? Frankly I don’t know, because I was never aware of my rage prior to writing this book. I can’t tell you what those people saw.
I wasn’t actually dangerous, just loud and needed massive alone-time and quiet to settle my spirit.

I do know my roommate intentionally walked in on my girlfriend and me, and I thought he just wanted to see her naked. On the other hand maybe I was hogging the room.

I remember also that he was a popular guy and was saying stories about me to everyone. I was taught to keep my mouth shut, and here he was spreading my personal information, but he was only privy to my information since he lived with me. Maybe I was shoving that fool out the door, and did it by using my intimidating personality. I don’t remember.

For some unknown reason, while living in the dorm, I stole a statue and kept it for a couple days before returning it to the building lobby where it came from. My roommate narked me out. The school sent me to one of their psychologist where I must have performed adequately. Afterwards the school put me on probation but I was just so fucking quasi-social.

I finally gave up the school-charade after a year and a half. I quit and was living with my mom.

My father had money and success and he supported me fully or partially for the next ten years. I think my mom encouraged me to fail in some respects because it was how she thought of herself. I think too she wanted to punish my father.

I didn’t understand the rancor of their relationship and how that footballed me across the field. I remember thinking that I was waiting during my entire childhood for my parents to give me permission to do something, yet I didn’t want a suit-and-tie job. It’s like I wanted to be a geologist but nobody said I could be that, so I just waited. They discouraged and distained my artwork. I loved to draw, it was truly in my soul. But their reaction caused me to throw away all my work.

I was 20-21 years old, but didn’t have a regular job when I lived at mom’s. Of course everything was cheap by today’s standards. I didn’t own a car for another 6 years, and was happy riding a bike and walking everywhere. I loved being outdoors and these were the formative years for my bicycling even though I had ridden all my life.

After quitting school, my father heard about it and drove into town for a solid chit-chat, which got nowhere. I was flattered that he came just for me because I hadn’t seen him since he left  … but what influence did he think he had?
Today ... I wish I'd said how happy I was to see he was okay, but he was just angry.

We had to sit in his car. He couldn’t go into Mom’s house, and my hang-outs were wrong. He had only one hour to get it done and get back to work, but I was destroyed by my upbringing wasn’t I? Wasn’t that his fault?

Again, my course was already cast; I was too unstable to decide about life now. I had been taking drugs, and spent most of my time on the streets around campus. My mother accused me of spending all my time ‘squiring’ the girls about town. I didn’t think that was true because I had a steady girlfriend, but I was ‘trying to find myself’ and didn’t have a clue.

The meeting with my father disjointed everything and I moved out of Mom’s house and stayed in empty classrooms and anywhere I could get in. It was winter and cold. I was homeless and dreamed of finding success but didn’t know which direction to go … at least I wasn’t wandering off in the woods, my brain wasn’t that derelict. I was still trying … but what was I waiting for?

A friend told me about an apartment building that had 5 free rooms in the basement if the person would sweep and mop the halls and burn the trash. The apartment manager was just evicting another dead-beat so he had a spot open and offered me a room. I was settled at last.

The room was 20 feet long and 6 foot wide and it felt like paradise. Everything became easier with Mom out of my hair and I felt better without her crushing anxiety. I could breathe.

II was beginning to get small jobs around campus. I bubbled-in form-B’s for a researcher, helped a guy move into his new house, painted another guy’s house. Loaded and drove a u-haul to Cleveland for a guy who was moving there with his wife, and hitchhiked back. He was worried for me, but I said no, and got off at the highway ramp and put up my thumb. I hitchhiked several places before.
I worked a day here or there, and sometimes worked around the apartments to subsidize my father’s allowance. I learned to paint at those apartments for $2 an hour … and it was a trepid start to what eventually became a livelihood.

It was a good time for me and I fit into campus life since I was the same age as the students and had a nice girlfriend, Susan W. She was always nice to me and was in a school … but I wasn’t taking classes … all I did was ride a bike and walk around campus most of the day.
 
Somehow I came into police focus again.

It had been three years since the last investigation but I wasn’t stealing or breaking any law other than occasional drug use. But that’s a lie I told myself. I was sport for criminal mischief at all times.

Drugs weren’t an everyday thing for me … oh hell yes they were. I smoked dope every day and I was a large person with dirty clothes, and stuck out because I talked loud. In retrospect, I probably seemed threatening to those who didn’t know me. I was a hippie, and looked street. I had the requisite long hair and was in the crowd the day they tried to take the administration building. I successfully dodged the draft and signed the ‘subversive’ sheet.

Yes I took the inductee bus to Indianapolis and signed the ‘subversive American’ sheet. I dodged the draft.
Before I left, I asked my girlfriend if she would wait. She shook her head. I liked her honesty. I’d heard stories of girls that promised to wait but had to send a dear John letter to the guy while he was overseas. Anyway, it gave me motivation to get rejected.

The inductee center kept me a few hours after the bus left. They said I'd have to recant my subversive sheet. No way. I saw the leverage it gave me. They said they'd have to do a full investigation of my family and friends. I just shrugged. Lol, good luck finding a friend. And my mom would never narc me out. . I could depend on that.
Late in the day, I was supposed to go meet with the Major who would decide how many days they would detain me. I sat in the outer office for a while, looking at him through the glass, and then just got up and left. I was on my way out the door to the street when they stopped me.
They took me back to first guy I talked to, who gave me a bus ticket and said I was turned down for service. 4F, I was unfit. Spot on, they got that right.

I had to walk a while to get to the greyhound station. No military bus for me … but in reality, I couldn’t go into the military any more than I could take the athletic locker with the school basketball team. If I couldn’t sit next to members of my own basketball team, how could I join the military?

But the police didn’t come for that.
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Chapter 19 the drug set-up

The police came because I was seen in drug circles. I wasn’t a factor in drug deals beyond a pill here or there, but I influenced others to take drugs, and saw it as a good thing. I openly blabbed about drug experiences … good lord, the one time I should be tight lipped about something, I run my mouth to everyone.

We used to gather at the pizza parlor, but not for drug deals. It was just somewhere to be. It was a bustling time and I felt camaraderie, and felt warm and accepted by the people, even though I don’t remember anyone. But these were wonderful times because I belonged. We were all the same age and energy, and the ideas were fresh and alive like we invented everything anew. But it was an illusion since these people were in school and would soon be gone and make lives while I would continue to stumble.

I lived the illusion, and it felt great. We gathered one night with everybody excitedly talking about nothing. It was just people. I wasn’t selling or carrying drugs. There was no talk of drugs, there was no purpose to the conversation. It felt fresh and there was no harsh battery overlooking the conversation ready to fire salvo against any misspoken word or slovenly drip on your chin. My father wasn’t there. I was with my peers and successful and calm, and was the person I wanted to become.

Then the door opened and in walked Mike. He didn’t fit. I knew him from high school where we got into a fight of sorts. He hung out with the rougher guys back then and I got sideways over a pissing right to something and they tried several times to get it off in a brawl. But I wouldn’t fight. I knew if you hit one, then the others would come for their turn. It was stupid and I should’ve made friends with them, but I didn’t want their lives, and maybe that was the problem.

Mike and Jeff caught me once on a back street. They screeched their car to a halt and started rousting me. Mike quickly backed away, saying he wouldn’t fight anyone who didn’t fight back, but that wasn’t why. He backed away because I looked down the steep slope next to us, and he knew I was going to take him down that hill, and he didn’t want to go. That’s why he backed off. Jeff said he didn’t care, and rushed in putting a fist right at my mouth, but I moved my head back and all he got was air. Quick as that, the non-fight was over; I was dutifully intimidated, and those guys never bothered me again … or so I thought.
    
Someone told me Mike was playing in a Stones-style band in Indianapolis, but here he was tonight. He walked up and asked to ‘borrow’ $5 so I gave him the money, and he left. My daddy kept my $50 monthly allowance going despite our differences. I lied to my father and told him I was taking classes.

Ten minutes later Mike came back and showed me a piece of aluminum foil. The other people at the table must have been witnesses. It was folded into a tiny rectangle and he said ‘it’s morphine.’ He asked if I’d take it in exchange for the five dollars but I wasn’t interested, and said, ‘keep the money.’

Mike left but came back two minutes later and handed back the five dollar bill. In a brief glimpse, I saw a human being standing there when he smiled at me. Mike was doing ok, but the whole thing was curious until Larry the narc walked past a few minutes later and we exchanged looks. So that’s what it was … a drug set-up … good thing they didn’t offer up hash, because I would’ve taken that.

Larry the narc probably didn’t realize that I knew exactly who he was. See, I’d seen him at the SDS rally. I saw him again when he was searching somebody’s dorm room with several men looking for drugs. Somebody pointed him out that day and I would see him a number of times again. I never displayed emotion around him .... just observed.
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Chapter 20    Bones reveals not everybody had been chased by the
         police and Dan the Informer shows up.

My new free room was pure luxury. Bones took the room close to mine and we set off on a rambling spree of bad behavior that ranged from by-passing the laundry room pay-box to conspiracy to grow marijuana around the county.

Bones was connected to a drug dealer who had a house secluded in the countryside. I knew exactly where the house was from my hikes in the country, but the guy wouldn’t let me tag along when Bones visited … just as well … I didn’t want to do business. I wasn't a socializing guy. I only wanted the occasional product.

Bones emboldened me and I had the same affect on him, and we committed a few break-ins on campus. He was smart and popular and needed a jolt like me. I was street smart and leery, so we matched up pretty well for a few careless years.

Couple years before, when we both lived at the dorm, was the first time we broke into a campus building. It was his idea. We stole an exit-sign and fire extinguisher. On the way back a patrol car spotted us and we ran off along the railroad easement and dropped our bounty.

It was against my instinct, but half hour later we went back to retrieve the stuff, and you have to wonder why we needed an exit-sign or fire extinguisher in the first place? The only answer possible is the jolt.

Just as we started picking up the stuff, a radio crackled and I spotted a watchman back in the trees. He was calling for the patrol car. Immediately I took the lead. I knew it would never do to run back to the dorm because they would trail us like hound dogs. Instead we climbed up to the railroad tracks and started running east over the bridge going toward 7th street. Below us came the police car screaming up the street. We had a 200 yard head start but I was running slow to let the police catch up and Bones was panting and saying ‘lets go, let’s go,’ and I laughed.

In one of the most revealing moments of my life, I ask Bones, ‘haven’t you ever been chased by the police?’ and he emphatically said no. I was totally surprised. I honestly thought everybody had been chased by the police. Only later did it dawn on me that most people had never experienced it, and most would consider it an extremely negative event in their lives. The revelation was a shock.

So here I was 18 or 19 and astonished to discover not everybody had been chased by the police. Gee, how far out on the normal curve was that?

I was running slowly so the police would keep running toward us and not go back to the car and race ahead on the street.
I also wanted to linger in the darken middle-area between intersections as long as possible in case another police car showed up at the intersection ahead. But equally important was to gauge the running speed of the police while disguising our speed, so once we turned off the tracks we could blow it up to full gear.
Simple thinking born of evasive experience. Maybe I learned how to evade just to stay out of my father’s glare.
But the real advantage I had was having walked that stretch of track several times before and knew the cut offs.

As it turned out no other cars joined the chase. The police kept running after us, and we took a right and quickly doubled back in the weeds and let the two officers pass. One officer had equal instincts and turned his flashlight right on our hiding spot. Of course I knew the light would hit the leaves and blind the officers to our presence. Bones was ready to bolt, but I grabbed his arm. After the officers went up the sidewalk and ran off into the parking lot, we worked our way back across the tracks and disappeared the other direction.

Bones laughed and said the police were stupid. I knew it wasn't true but didn't say. It's bad luck to start boasting and take your eyes off the surroundings, because they could spot you any time, and there were more of them than us.

Today they would’ve caught us easy, but the whole thing was nonsense from the start. It was all stupid. I can feel Dr. Gray’s stare as I write this. And now, 38 years later, I understand what he was saying; ‘you have to choose well in life.’ But what a delayed effect Dr. Gray’s bomb had on my consciousness.

After the narrow escape, we went back to the dorm and carried heavy rocks up to the roof, hurling them off until we hit and destroyed a tall walkway light. We laughed crazy, and I admit, I'm laughing now.

We broke into the central building at the dorm. His idea again. We hid under a staircase when the security guard made his rounds. Bones wanted to run, but I knew to sit and make no fuss.

Our next break-in was a construction site where he found an unlocked tunnel leading into the building, and we stole tools and other junk. Again it was the jolt. We were just wild Indians buzzing up society’s ass.

We stole a motorcycle. His idea. Then got it running and went for a test ride with me on the back. We rounded a corner and there was cop car. Bones immediately pulled to the curb and was ready to run. I grabbed his arm. The cop got out and I pulled a story out of my shorts.
I told him it was my brother's bike and he wanted us to get it running, and that we had just got it started and were taking a test spin, so we didn't have the plate ... or helmets ... but we lived at the apartments just around the corner. Forget the broken ignition lock, the policeman asked if we could walk it back. No problem.

After that Bones wanted nothing to do with the bike, but I started riding it around on the campus sidewalks. A policeman tried to tackle me and ended up stumbling into a hedge-row. Stupid me, that seemed funny.

I took the motorcycle riding again the next day, but this time saw a couple of people looking at me … and then I noticed a security guard talking on his radio, so I headed towards the woods.

Pretty soon a patrol scooter came rushing after me so I turned the motorcycle down a dirt trail and drove that bike down the steep hill through the woods until it crashed at the bottom. I tumbled off in front of a group of students and ran away leaving the motorbike behind. I was a regular marauder.

The last break-in Bones and I committed was in the chemistry building where he was taking classes. It was his idea. There was a store room with electronic gismos, and we wanted some trinkets … again I have to ask, if they were selling the same stuff at a flea market for 50¢, would either of us have purchased it? Probably yes, but more to sit in a drawer than because it filled some imperative use.

The deed was done and our bags were full, but on the way out a security man unexpectedly came in the back door. He wasn’t coming our way but Bones panicked and ran up the stairway whereas I could always hold my nerve. But once he broke, I had to follow. Together we ran down another flight of steps and burst out the front entrance of the building, which was lit-up like a main stage. We were lucky nobody was nearby because we were visible for blocks.

We ran down the street and ducked along a darkened streambed. Bones was on high-alert and quickly scrambled away saying he wanted to split up. That was a good instinct and I let him go before ingratiating myself back onto a different sidewalk and started walking slowly as if coming from a completely different direction.

About fifteen minutes had passed and the police were questioning two guys sitting on their car hood. I walked by making sure to glance at them two times like an ordinary passer-by might do.

Today they would respond with more police and they would have stopped me as I walked past, but the inescapable reality was: I only mimicked ordinary behavior. I was not able to act normally, yet thought myself to be perfectly normal.

Bones and I never did anything else after that night, but a short time later a new guy showed up at the apartment building and started hanging around me. Bones wanted nothing to do with him, but Dan and I became friends. It took 5 years before I figured out Dan was a police informant. Maybe Bones saw it right away.

When I confronted Dan 5 years later about being an informant, he admitted, ‘well at first.’ And there’s a measure of truth to what he said, but it proved to be a casual truth at best. I figured out that my friends were how the police would approach me from then on, and so that’s how I communicated to them in return.

Bones moved into a real apartment with real friends and confided that he would never risk his future again for the stunts we pulled. But that was a blinder he threw on me to protect himself since he kept using and growing hooch for years afterward. I guess we all have rationalizations, but it was smart to cast our boats in different directions. We were like fire and gasoline together.

But still ... I caused a change didn’t I? Bones got to see the boogeyman, and became more streetwise, and he probably voted later to beef up law enforcement to stop guys like us from parading around the law.

Ultimately everything has changed and today’s lawbreakers and sociopaths are turned loose to run the corporations that overcharge your family … and it’s all nice and legally protected by the same police that chased us for being stupid.
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Chapter 21    a fledgling business is born    

For a short while, I pulled it together and passed out flyers door to door in the wealthy area, with a vague offer of unskilled services to paint and clean-up. I got a few jobs, and began clunkering aimlessly that direction, all the while making an influential client base. I obviously could talk better than I could work.

Nothing prevented compounding native stupidity however. I refused to work more than a couple hours a day, and clumsily tried doing everything without a vehicle … it was a disaster even though I was a pretty fair carpenter by then, having bought my first power saw at 14.

I was a tinkerer as a kid and knew how to cut wood and wire electric circuits before I was out of high school. But I was a rank amateur at working for people and getting their jobs done.  
 
It’s embarrassing to imagine what damage was wrought on those people’s homes. One house the customer bought the cans of paint, but I put the ‘paint’ on as the first coat then overcoated with the ‘primer.’ The same house, I stepped through a soft spot on the roof because I was stoned. I didn’t fuck up on purpose, I was a fool fresh in from the cane field.

Years later I ran into the man whose house I had painted so poorly, and he said he owed me the last payment. I said, ‘you don’t owe me anything, I didn’t do you any favors.’ I knew my work was lousy. It was twenty-three dollars, and maybe I was paying back somebody for the wrongs I hoisted on society, but it was quasi-integrity when you balance it with the sum of my youthful activities.

I built two pieces of furniture for my room. One was a wardrobe with coat-hanging space with two pull-out drawers. The other was an odd shaped set of drawers with some of my artwork glued to the top. I should’ve saved both pieces, but everything carries a memory, and I couldn’t afford the baggage. I was still searching and had to travel light.

The apartment manager discovered the laundry room ‘hot-wire’ that Bones and I installed to avoid paying a dime for the dryer. It was brainless, how much money did we save, forty cents? The manager had accumulated a list of social infractions, but the final straw was a false wall Bones built in his room to hide a hydroponic grow-pond. Nobody could prove my fingerprints were on that project too, but like I said, we were running like wild Indians. The manager put an end to the free rent, and we were told to leave.

In a parting gift, Bones threw a coke bottle through a window pane in my room, obviously making it look like I did it. He owed the manager something, but I thought we got a square deal … we got more than a square deal … even though it left me with nothing and nowhere to live.

Bones brought me the book, ‘How to live on nothing,’ and laughed when he and a friend handed it to me. Our friendship dwindled, and my contact with Dan the Informer increased. I stopped using drugs except marijuana which I continued off and on for three more years.

I got a new apartment with shared kitchen and bath. It was great. Had an upstairs attic where I set up a ‘shop.’

Bones came around wanting to get even with the old apartment manager. He got hell bent on shit. I should’ve told him no, but he would have done something serious against the guy with somebody else’s help. I suspect he would've damaged the guy’s car.
Somehow we decided to throw eggs at the manager’s apartment window, so we ran across the lawn and let loose a barrage. Bones was violent, and it seemed unnecessary. But to think Bones had called me ‘a violent mf’ more than once, makes me think now that it was him more than me.

After the first barrage, Bones wanted to go back for a second, but I said no. I wanted to see. Because I knew that manager was a lot more streetwise than Bones gave him credit. So we crept into the backyard of the house across the street and peered over the bushes. It took a few moments, but sure enough, that manager was sitting invisible on the lawn, right inside the shadow, just where the bright streetlight turned into shadow. It was perfect. I showed Bones, but he was unimpressed. He should have been. Even I didn’t know that trick.

I felt bad about throwing eggs against the manager because I respected him. He had dignity, and was a lot like a person I wanted to be. A few years later, he got killed a 4-5 blocks from the apartment in a car wreck. He always drove too fast down the back street, and somebody pulled out.

Chapter 21a
Hitchhike to New Orleans.
My girlfriend always went home for the summer. I’d been hearing some stories about her after she left. She wasn’t quite the purebread sweetheart she had represented to me. But then I wasn’t open with her about the crap that Bones and I were doing either.
We were like magnets around each other, but neither was a true match for the other, and it was her time in college, and college kids experiment with the world. I never asked. When we were together, it was our time, but the rest was her time. The problem was, she was involving some of my friends, and that’s too close to home. Her friend told me, maybe it was a ‘message.’

That summer she wanted me to come down and visit. I’m not sure why because she already made up her mind about me apparently.
I had no money, but I could hitchhike, so I did.
It was quite a trip, literally because the second day out of Nashville, I dropped some acid. It was the first time, and ill-advised.

My girlfriend broke up with me in September of that year. She had a right to grow; it was her last year of school and I offered nothing. But I was crushed and threw myself into work … not at the usual ‘9 to 5’ like regular folks; instead my work became the bicycle.
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Chapter 22    I became a bicyclist that year 1973 / the informer and I steal ladders

I became a bicyclist that year 1973, not a basketball player or bricklayer. I was an athlete and honed my skills, and could cobble over curbs without hands and swerve in and out of traffic at will. My terror manifested itself on the community and I belonged nowhere. I found a new state of mind.

Pirates live by a code, and I was no exception. My rules took nobody into concern, and I took no prisoners. If I chose to run a stoplight or roil down a sidewalk full of people then that was my choice as a free man.

How is that any different from a coach pushing their athletes to find the extreme because the opposing team doesn’t care?

Yes that’s right. Cars do not care. They rush for yardage, willing to crush anybody to gain an inch at the intersection. Well that’s not exactly true, but true enough when you’re on a bicycle.

I introduced bike-riding to Dan the Informer. And also to my younger brother. Both men came to see bike-riding as a requisite in their lives because neither had a car. My younger brother became an expert cyclist and the physical motion helped his arthritic back, and it added a proud accomplishment to his life that he still enjoys today.

My relationship with Dan was complicated. He was a local boy who had fallen behind the herd and had no job and developed a theory about life: ‘the best way for seeds to grow is to cast them at arm’s length on un-toiled soil.’ I guess that meant he didn’t want to work, but we stole two aluminum ladders and went into the painting business together.

The informer and I stole two aluminum ladders! Why did that go unreported?  Did Dan want a job? Did he violate impeccable ethics for selfish gain? But then again, ethics are just a measure of rash desperation aren’t they? There is no right or wrong. All actions cause change, and that’s all there is.

Does Dr. Gray think he would not steal my loaf of bread to feed his starving children? Of course he would, and ultimately what difference do those tiny accounts make? Life can be chiseled down to a simple formula: all men cause change, and all change to become men. And that’s all there is; everything is ‘change.’ Just like inside Wayne’s cave where every man made his mark over all those that preceded him; man must mark his change.

In Wayne’s cave, there is no memory of which man was honest and which stole a hamburger. All that remains is the mark, and mankind innately understands this, otherwise why do people make a mark to begin with. Why else build a pyramid?
 
The only immortality available to man is the change you cause by scratching into the cave ceiling with your torn fingers before you drown in the black water, and even that is eventually lost to time.

So did it matter that Dan the Informer stole two ladders with me? Or did one unlawful change in property ownership allow a positive change when we used those ladders to find useful work in society? I’ve always said, there’s no sense shooting two Christians to save one … although I don’t know what that means.

I had occasional work from the Bank’s trust department and bought a ’55 Chevy pick-up truck for $200. I went gliding about town showing off my new rust. But that old truck couldn’t go faster than 35 mph.

I moved into a house on Washington Street that shared common areas and I made a zoo of new friends.

Somehow our Washington Street group started an evening volleyball game that attracted young people from all around the area. I had the final say on the teams because I made them equal. I could divide up sides and make them equal, and people accepted that about me. They looked to me to do that at the beginning of each game.

Down deep inside, people just want equality and fairness. That’s what people really want.

Inequality is the cause of every fight, and I was about find one.

Trouble was coming, and that trouble would be the first seed in a long fight for bicycle equality on the road.
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Chapter 23    James and a full-blown felony from a bike infraction
sent