Regular People, Saints & Scum I Grew Up With

 

Click and Meet Pablo Escobar

(El Magico: One who makes something from nothing, self made man)

No, I never met him. My only connection to him on that distribution chain was street level during the mid 80's in parking lot in Slater Park called the One Way. I've spoken of the One Way before. To refresh your mind, it was an open air pharmacy that ran for about ten months before the cops shut it down. All that managed to do was move it to Pascale's Lot about 300 yards north-east of home plate at McCoy stadium. Look from home plate to the right fielder and past that...right there. That one lasted nearly just as long too.

I live in a very compact yet diverse area. I'm all of half mile from the expansive quiet woods, lakes and rivers in Massachusetts and I'm about two miles from the shacks in Central Falls. In the early 80's, Central Fall's population experienced a huge influx of illegal Colombians. There were 9,000 of them, mostly from Bogota and Medellin. Why Central Falls? It's always been the first stop for immigrants coming to Rhode Island. We Irish used to be forced to live there in the 1800's. The factories (Corning Glass, Koch Jewelry, etc) brought the Colombians in as cheap labor.

The FBI eventually called Central Falls the Cocaine Capital of New England. A kilo of it landing in Central Falls went for $10,000. By the time it made it to Boston, the price would have jumped to $20,600. The Colombian dealers in CF weren't dumb enough to flash around nor live large. They were happy enough to live in their three-decker tenements, though their income was in the six figure range. Also, law enforcement was way behind the ball when this started. The trade was allowed to grow and improve as nothing was molesting it.


I never wanted to hang out in CF. I was way too Irish and white. But, there was Stanley's Burgers on Dexter street. Stanley's had the best "grease burger" recipe around here and cheap too.  In 1984, I used to work in Walpole, MA and would get home around 11:30 at night. So some nights I'd get off exit 30 on Rt 95 south to get my greasy snack.  I can remember one night, as I was walking past a parking lot full of Colombians, they started chanting, "Yoo hoo! Federale! We seeeeee you...Federale!"  Any lily white Irish guy with blondish hair walking on Dexter St around midnight,could be, might be...mistaken for some sort of narc/law enforcement to these paranoid guys.

 

At the One Way on Saturday nights, there were about 50-100 of us teens and young twenty-somethings there, hanging out, getting drunk, high...chasing girls. I never judged what was going on. When you see so much of something, like open air drug dealing, you see nothing wrong with it. There wasn't just two or three dealers, but maybe twenty. They were offering everything under the sun like an organic farmer's market. But, to be truthful, we didn't know of anyone yet addicted, shot or in jail either. This was in it's infancy and in a perverse way, innocent.

In Pawtucket, there were three main dealers, two of whom I'll never speak a word. All three could be found at the One Way. But one Jimmy St Jacques (Read up on this Piece of Work) was one I can talk of. He's dead has a coffin nail now. All three were younger than me at the time. I do have to admit I did have this reservation about the young dealers at the One Way, they were all richer than us. We'd see sixteen year olds driving the new IROCz's that came out of then. Along with their ridiculously hot girlfriends.

In 1983, us boys wanted this car!
 

I'm going to digress but so what, I can. This will explain how money can be an aphrodisiac.

When I was in second grade, a new kid came to our school. He was frightening. He had been a burn victim. A few years earlier, he had been caught in a gas station fire in North Kingston which nearly killed every one in the family car. He survived. Unfortunately, he looked like a melted candle, with sparse outcrops of blonde hair on his head shooting up like cowlicks and two-knuckled stubby fingers. At seven years old, I found this very disconcerting. I never got to know him. I'd see him in the hallways, playground and in the higher schools, hanging out here and there. Then for the longest time I never saw him.

One night, this car pulls in to the One Way with guess who, our burn victim friend. When he stepped out of his car, people shook his hand and slapped his back like he was royalty. You could see the deferential treatment he received. Then, this dewy, dripping hot girl gets out of the car next. She reminded me of Miss Stephanie from the 80s sitcom Newhart. I had asked a friend how the hell can a guy disfigured like that get such hot jailbait? I was told because he's rich. His riches came from investing in the pot trade. So, there was a life's lesson for me. No matter how ugly, screwed up or what-have-you, some girls will overlook this. If your seventeen and driving that year's Bronco and have cash coming out your young ears.

 

 

 

Miss Stephanie!

Now back to Mr Jacques. He lived the old 30's gangster motto: “Live Fast, Die Young and Leave a Good Looking Corpse.” I'd see him on occasion at the One Way, holding court like a monarch. I later heard he was a nutjob as he took his car down onto the flatlands by the pond and ran over the Canadian geese that return each year to that spot. He was brought up on charges for that one and pretty much got off.

Other times I'd be sitting at a red light waiting to cross Newport Ave. Newport Ave in Pawtucket is flat, wide and straight for about two miles. I was sitting there, waiting for the light to change when I hear the very loud sound of a motorcycle revving up, switching through it's gears till finally a guy hunched over on it, would fly by the intersection at 100mph. You barely could make him out. Yet, there was no need to. The only one crazy enough around here to do that was St Jacques.

“Live by the sword, die by the sword” the Bible says. Well, St Jacques died by his sword. He had, we found out later, orchestrated three murders in our area. He was getting rid of informants and those who talked too frequently and loud. As with any crime, the trail isn't always clean and others out there have enough information to let the Feds piece together a case. St Jacques decided he wasn't going to live in a Fed pen for the rest of his life and took his own.

I was in my late teens then, sooo long, long ago. The One Way and Pascale's lot are now what they once were, parking lots. The drug trade is run by Caribbeans now, still out of Central Falls. I'm sure they've had to upgrade their craft to avoid the DEA since they've caught up to the game.

Jesus, the things that go on in life!



 

There Goes Another Moment...

Click Away....

Damn, it's nearly been a year since I was laid off. That sure went fast. It's been nearly thirty-one years since I graduated high school and that went even faster! As a kid, weeks took forever to finish. Months seemed like eons.

A while back, I was kvetching (I love that word and if in the mood, I can kvetch with the best) to my eighty year old neighbor. I took the liberty of bitching that as I got older, time went faster. There I was , complaining to someone who was eighty. I knew his inner reaction: “What the hell does this kid have to bitch about? He's thirty years younger than me!” Hey, if someone has an ear to lend, I'll use it!

He then tells me, “Ronnie, just you wait! It goes even faster at my age!”

Faster? How the hell can it go faster? It's flying along now. I'll have to take his word for it as others his age have noticed the same thing.

However at this moment in time, tonight, I feel satisfied. Not ecstatic nor down, just plain satisfied. Why? It's a beautiful night out now. The temps are still in the 60's, it's dry and all of my windows are open. Those summer sounds drift in more and more now. If McCoy had a game tonight, I could hear the announcements as they echo out of the ballpark. If the air is just right, I can hear the crack of the bat. If it were a Saturday night around 1AM, I'd hear all the bikers at Tommy's Lounge fire up and roar down Industrial Highway .

Earlier today I finally noticed the trees are fluffing out fast. I need to mow the lawn as the grass is coming back and the sound of uncoordinated bees thumping into my window screens has returned. The weird thing is that I noticed this all. Usually, me, and many of you, just sort of drift through our days on automatic. This awareness won't last, things come and go in cycles, but it was nice mini-vacation to notice it anyway.

Time will pass tonight to around four AM, when I'll wake up due to the chattering of the robins, who start their day around that time. It can reach a cacophony nearer five AM. Would you believe I like that sound? I do. I don't mind lying there, listening to the sounds of spring, I'll fall back asleep in due time. There's no loss.

So let time pass. It always has.

Irish Pubs, A Not So Obvious Cornell University

Carl Sagan Finally Admitting It.

Prairie Fire: any shot that includes the addition of hot sauce.

I watched a younger woman order a tequila with hot sauce shot last night. She downed it w/o any reaction on her face. That's a feat. My eyes would be tearing had I drank that in combination. I guess that's what practice can do for you. The bartender, after a moment, then dares the girl to do a full shot of pure hot sauce. Without hesitation, she accepts the challenge.

She lifts the glass brimming with the sauce and throws it back. Down it went, and no tears, coughing or vomiting. Jesus!

Now I like Tabasco. There is a flavor in it once you get past the screeching pepper burn. It's great on eggs, chicken wings and I kid you not, popcorn. But to drink it? Better men (or women) have gone there and I am far too much a pussy to try!

*****

One of the people I enjoy talking to there is this guy S. Let me describe him. Picture Jesus Christ and Geddy Lee of Rush combined into one person. I don't mean Geddy Lee having the moral strength of Christ, just the looks. Got that? OK. That's S.

What will happen, is that we will engage in conversations about science that most times, annoys the crap out of others at the bar. But we can't help it. We start speaking of this subject and others sort of float away. The two of us have major GEEK streaks in our personalities and regard science as something fairly stunning. Of course you have to talk about it. There's nothing more bizarre than the discoveries and inventions that come from science. The Father of Planetary Exploration, Carl Sagan, was an avid pot head. Try that on for surprises. Imagine that the entire Viking and Voyager missions (to Mars and Jupiter) had their creation as Carl was musing, stoned to his gills, while lying on the grass in his backyard in Utica, NY. He admitted it.

So, S and I will go off on these tangents that only we two are interested in.

Last night, he brought up something I thought was long forgotten, Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. For some reason, we were discussing how to solve the ever occurring problems that life trips you up with. I had told him when I reach an impasse, when direct focus, struggle and grappling doesn't seem to work, I'll shift my focus and let my mind drift on it's own. I'll “feel” my way around, near the problem, but not in direct contact with it. I'll know the answer when I see it. Many times, this will work for me.

S says: “That's just using intuition.”

I say: “Gee...thanks for reminding me that I describe the hell out of things when one word would suffice.”

Then out of the blue, he brings up “gumption” that Pirsig talked about. He paraphrased Pirsig and I thought he was winging it too. That was till this morning when I Googled Pirsig and found out S wasn't pulling this stuff out of his ass. Here's Pirsig's actual paragraph on it all is this:

“I like the word "gumption" because it's so homely and so forlorn and so out of style it looks as if it needs a friend and isn't likely to reject anyone who comes along. I like it also because it describes exactly what happens to someone who connects with Quality. He gets filled with gumption.

A person filled with gumption doesn't sit around dissipating and stewing about things. He's at the front of the train of his own awareness, watching to see what's up the track and meeting it when it comes. That's gumption.

If you're going to repair a motorcycle, an adequate supply of gumption is the first and most important tool. If you haven't got that you might as well gather up all the other tools and put them away, because they won't do you any good.”

The long and short of it? At first, dive into your problem and start, you'll hone your skill as you learn.

S had nailed this the night before. Smart guy. I ought to give him more credit. Leave it to me to overuse my cynicism.

*****

Irish pubs are not just full of potato eating, bomb making, Prot-hating, Irish Republican Army veteran drunks.  Though you can find that. We're so close to Boston and there's plenty of illegal Irish that find their way down here. Some of them have regaled me with stories about Bernadette Devlin. Not just expat Irish from the 70's either but you will find a great swath of different types of people, from all walks of life, in these pubs.

Italians have their food and the whole culture that has sprung up from that. We Irish have our pubs, which can mimic Greek symposiums filled with Irish Plato's and Socrates...and a host of other disciplines, like how to properly use apple wood in a BBQ. I'm not kidding, the depths some of us go to in there over whatever subject can be astounding. Italians do this around a kitchen table, we do it over a pint glass.

Nice Irish Catholic Girls Accosting Someone with an AR-180

Entanglements

Finally the sun returns! This spring has sucked in my view, it's been way too cold. I find this surprising since the past few springs have really been remarkable.

It's been a while since I wrote anything down here but I ran out of ideas as usual. So here goes some griping.

Today, I managed to be jerked around by an online continuing education site, a business association that deals in my craft and the Dept of _____. It seems no one has the right information anymore. Add to this, I was t-h-i-s close to renewing my license when the computer page froze up after taking my credit card information. “If we try this again, the site may charge your card TWICE! We'll have to wait til it clears itself.” Nice, I was a millimeter away to solving all this. Now I've been advised to wait till tomorrow to do this by phone. Perhaps we should go back to parchment paper and the Pony Express. This way, there would be fewer things to fail.

You know where all this licensing crap came from? The Great Depression. When everyone was out of work, especially teachers, Roosevelt created jobs by having these out of work teachers train and confirm the next generation of them. This was the birth of the teaching certificate. Then slowly the “little piece of paper” was needed by damn near any occupation. It spread into everything.

Byzantine is the word that pops into my head. Where the simplest action has to be broken down into many parts with many people confirming, processing and stamping everything you need. Sure, you could fire all the bureaucrats, but that would result in the economy crashing once again. Hundreds of thousands of paper pushers out there competing against you for a job. Like that idea?

I'm reminded of a line from a movie... “The first rule in government spending is this. Why build one when you can get away with building two?”

*****

Like you I'm sure you were shocked and dismayed by the Marathon bombings and the gunfights that ensued on Watertown streets. The older brother now seems to have been some local nut fighting his own jihad. The younger brother, we're hearing, may have been this spineless follower who was dominated by the personality of the older. I guess the kid brother had the personality of the “beaten wife” syndrome. Caving in every time to the more powerful one. Though, this may be wrong as the media have blown the accuracy of this story a few hundred times already. We'll see.

Though, think on this, he's nineteen. At nineteen what the hell does he know? I'm not defending this kid but when I was nineteen I was a moron compared to who I am today. I've made typical mistakes as a nineteen year old but they didn't culminate in having 9,000 cops, a helicopter and SWAT teams from Quantico chasing my ass down. Then again, I didn't blow up kids either.

Even if he escapes the death penalty, this kid's life is pretty much done with. Nineteen and at best, he's headed to Colorado's ADX Florence facility where they hole you up 23 hours a day. You get one hour to walk in some yard where you can see concrete and the sky. Perhaps this kid may think twice on wanting to avoid the death penalty.

Other than dealing with our broken down system and weirdo bombers, I'm glad the sun came out again.

Out of Ideas, So I'll Talk About the Weather

I can sit here, with my eyes closed and I'm half aware, half asleep. Even with my eyes shut, the computer screen is bright enough to light up the inside of my eyes. I see pinkish white. The whir of the cooling fans and the dog's breathing are constant. Then I hear sounds I haven't heard of in a good while, people walking down the street, talking. I have my windows open and these things drift in.

Summer's coming.

The cold I've always been aware of. I had to tolerate, fight and deal with it. My hands and feet were always the first to grow cold and they said; “We're here and we're cold! We're here and we're cold! Don't you ignore us..we're COLD dammit!” It's very much like having a burn on your arm, the throbbing won't let you forget. It gets tiring and annoying. Much like acquaintance who keeps repeating the same stories to you but you wished they'd leave. Dull and slightly painful company. But tonight a change, the veins are popping out on the back of my hand, instead of ducking as deep as they could when cold.

And now I'm enjoying this little respite, with the softer sounds of the late night floating in.

One of the reasons I hated winter was due to growing up with a crappy heating system. We had an old oil burner, forced hot air system in our house that, I swear, was 4% efficient. I wasn't alone in that estimation, both my grandmothers agreed, our house was raw and cool in the winter. That kept the two of them away during most of the winter, much to my Dad's contentment.

My brother and I had this competition, if the heat came on, we both would dart to the living room air register to cuddle up against it and get nicely toasted. Yes, it sounds like we were homeless on a sidewalk heating grate. But, it was the best register as it had the least distance from the furnace and was hotter for it. It was well located too. I could peer over the arm of the couch and still see the TV screen while I was being bathed in hot air.

Eventually, real spring would arrive and that warmed the house through and through. It even made our upstairs bedrooms tolerable enough to actually spend time in them when awake. When sleeping, you aren't aware of how cold it is, once you pile on enough blankets.

To this day, most people stare at me strangely when I say that my house has no insulation. They look as if I said “I'm Jesus.” And again, I have to explain the history of this neighborhood. This whole plat was built in 1950 when heating oil was about 20 cents a gallon. Why insulate when you could keep your thermostat on 80 all winter and be dismissive about the heating bill, as it was so cheap.

So when spring arrived, it was a relief.

Behavior doesn't change much. As a kid, on warm days and nights, I'd yank every window open to get that wonderful air and heat in. I enjoyed the sounds I'd hear ambling in as I lay in my bed at bedtime.

What do you think I did today? I opened all my windows and until a few minutes ago, I was snoozing in this chair by the window, being lit up by a computer screen and hearing neighbors chat.

Pet Cemetery

I had a few hamsters as a kid. The problem with them is that they have pretty short life spans and you get tired of replacing them after a while. As you become an older kid, the furballs eventually become boring too. Just what can you do with a hamster? (and knock off the homo jokes please!)

Here's what I found out what hamsters can do.

Do They Swim? Yes, they can!

After letting mine roam the carpets, the book cases and tables, I became curious as to whether they can swim as they are naturally a desert animal. I filled up the bathroom sink with tepid water and placed my tan furry friend on the flat portion of the sink and watched him turn the other way in fear. I had to redirect him back to the water as he sought escape. I then motivated him (with a slight push) right over the edge into the water.

Hamsters can swim easily! They have a trick I thought neat when I saw it occur.

Hamsters are hoarders. That's their job. They have pouches on the insides of their mouths where they'll stuff seeds, grasses and whatever food they can find while scampering around to later store in their burrows. When I slid my hamster into the water, I could hear him suck air into his mouth. He filled his cheek pouches with air and inflated them like little balloons. Once he was done filling his cheeks up, he stopped dog paddling and floated like a pontoon raft. Quite contentedly too. That was good for about twenty minutes of kid fun.

Hamsters are race car drivers too. But in my house they drove slick soled slippers. I'd plop one of them into one of my slippers and send him (to his perspective, at 110mph) by pushing the slipper very fast and see him “drive” across the living room carpet. This was good for about another twenty minutes too. By the way, hamsters can get dizzy. Once the slipper came to a stop, mine would get out and walk haphazardly.

I'd let mine out of his cage during the summer months and let him prowl the backyard lawn. I made an interesting discovery about nature doing this. I kept close to him because they will take off on you. I was standing over him and for some reason, by luck, I had moved my arm which caused a shadow to move over him and he did something remarkable, he crouched and balled up. It then hit me. He was trying to not to become prey. He had an automatic reaction to the supposed “hawk” shadow that glided over him.

So, you guessed it, I had my hamster avoiding the 300 hawks that kept flying above him, casting their menacing shadows on him. He'd run, ball up, run some more, ball up again. So many damned hawks!

*****

I haven't had a hamster in over 40 years. What was weird was that around 2002, I had come across my first hamster by accident.

When my first hamster died, my mother and I had a little funeral for him. I found a small box for the casket and found a grave marker, an old brick on which I painted his name and dates. I had buried him in the center of our backyard as that was probably where I wasn't going to be digging up with my Tonka trucks. The play areas that were dirt were the corners of the yard. So, I buried him and then actually buried the brick on top of his sarcophagus as my Dad said he didn't want to run over the brick with his lawnmower. For about 30 years he lay there, resting in peace.

I'm not lover of lawns and my job to keep it pretty is just to cut it when it starts to annoy me at how long it is. But back in 2002, a good part of my backyard lawn had died off. God knows why? Grubs? Mold? Either way, it was dead and I now owned a large dirt patch.

So, being a good homeowner, I turned over the dirt and reseeded it. I was using a digging fork which is great on sod and dirt. I had shoved the fork many times into the dirt when it once made a loud sounding TINK.

“Huh? What the hell did I hit? What's under the ground.” I thought.

So I shoved the fork deeper, to the side of whatever I hit, and leaned on it like lever to discover a buried brick.

It hadn't hit me yet just why it was there. Till I saw and read the faded paint on it...Holy Shit!

“Claude Bartholomew Hamster” was painted on the brick.

“Oh.My.God.” I thought to myself. I had forgotten all about this. I was nine years old when I buried this thing. I was so surprised I had to bring my brother outside to show him this.

“Dig a little deeper...I wonder what else might be down there.” He says.

I dig, but all I come across a few pieces of rotted wood and that's it. I guess Claude was recycled back into nature 100%. The best guess, he was recycled into my lawn.

I don't know where the other hamsters are buried. I had three of them.

 

*****

 

I came across this and found it in bad taste, but I love dark humor too.  This college girl had her own funeral for her hamster and uploaded it.

 

 

"Squib Mesocricetus Auratus passed away Monday, December 17 of causes incident to age (ie NATURAL causes). Abandoned at a young age, she was adopted from the Meijer Pet Store orphanage in January 2006. Acutely aware of her fortunate situation after living in such squalor, she vowed to champion the cause of homeless hamsters everywhere. This never happened, but it was nice of her to care.

Squib was a tolerant, docile beast with a keen mind as hamsters go and a strong love of stunning acrobatics. Her beady little black eyes would light up at the sight of her bungee-jumping harness.

Other favorite activities included chewing on things, running around the cage, sleeping, and the occasional escape. Her one regret in life was that Ellen never petted her.

Squib was preceded in death by the predecessor hamster Jerome (thanks Carmen). A viewing will be held Tuesday, December 18 at 7:00, followed by a short but moving funeral. Internment will be behind Laura's condo.

In lieu of flowers, Squib requested that cash donations be made to help alleviate the exorbitant costs of burial and the poor fuel economy of Jaclyn's Jeep.

Nothing Amazing, Just a Tuesday...

Conformity? To hell with that!

As you get older you attain some balls finally. You can ditch that fearful need to conform and bray your opinions without fear that you may be...oh Jesus...judged! Ah, I didn't say anything that shocking like, “Let's Kill All the Bankers” but I was opining on music with my friend tonight, rather loudly.

There's a nice little pub in Mansfield called Casey O'Connors and I can feel at home in there. Why? Because the place is stuffed with other prematurely white-haired Irish guys who are bandy legged as well. I go there on my bi-monthly visit to M. to see how he's doing. Our conversations run the gamut while I drink my pisswater Budweiser and he drinks his God awful bitter IPA beers. Tonight the subject was music.

I think we blew a good two hours on the topic. Actually, it was due to his loaning me his book that got me thinking about how music has changed and that the “Kids of today listen to shit.” “Where's the harmonies? Where's the layering? Why are there no great lead guitars anymore?” I went on and on.

There came a point when, I was braying about the fact that there's no longer any real movements in music anymore, I was poking my finger into the bar to make the point. As I was doing this, it made an audible “click, click click” sound as my sort of long fingernail tapped out my disgust.

The bartender comes over with, “Is there a problem?” I say, “Yeah, today's music sucks! When was the last time you heard a band grow and evolve their music? I swear the last great ones were before 1990!”

The bartender then realizes I wasn't pissed off at M. but bitching to hammer down my argument.

Next to us, some 20 somethings just looked away real quick when I shot a look at them.

Wind me up and let me go...

Besides that I heard some nice stories about how a plow team nearly brained a Director of a trauma center up somewhere in Massachusetts with a piece of pipe. During that blizzard we had in early February the team had done 40 hours straight and wanted to crash in the hospital lounge area. The Director said no. The team leader said yes. And you see where that was going to end up. Even guys with plows have tempers that'll blow after you pull a 40 hour shift.

Tomorrow I have to get up on the roof and fix that damned antenna I've left hanging since that blizzard. I also ought to fix the gate that got ripped off it's hinges during the same storm. I'm not too keen on climbing a 45 degree angle roof. It's a great way to excite the fear of heights in me. Odd, as a younger guy, I could tap dance all over that roof. I guess the fear of falling knowing I'll land on my face sort of makes me cautious now. Hell....I'm cautious about everything now.