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Pete in Fayettenam
We need to get something
straight before we start.
This is a totally false
story.
Well, some of it is, all
the illegal parts are false,
but all the parts that
can't get me arrested are true, swear to Koresh.
Recently (I don't know,
time is a blur) I wrote about Fayetteville, AR,
where Clinton used to
teach something - constitutional law, maybe?
So this Razorback writes
me and we did the e-mail thing and he mentions PETE!
Swear to Koresh, I know
Pete. He mentioned his last name, so don't think I'm so dumb
that I just assumed his
Pete was my Pete, but yes, it's the same Pete.
It's hard to believe
he's still alive. You'll find out why in a minute.
This is waaay back, the
summer of Watergate - 1973.
There was a Ken's Pizza
near West and Dickson, just across from Roger's Pool Hall.
The manager, Jerry,
wanted go to on vacation really bad, but he couldn't because everyone
who worked their was,
...we'll say, not Ken's Pizza in Fayetteville management material,
if you can read between
the lines. So I showed up one day, looking for a job, and he said,
"You're hired. Here's how
the place works, I'll be back in two weeks."
Sidebar:
The first Saturday I worked there, we got slammed. Hundreds of
pizza orders, and hundreds
of pitchers of beer were being served. The manager told me, "When
we get busy like this,
don't bother to ring it up, just put the money in the cash
register."
ha ha
Translation: I'm robbing this place blind.
Once I knew that, I decided I'd be crazy to let him have all the
money.
Soon, I was making an extra $200 tax-free dollars a week, and
this was when minimum wage
was $1.60 an hour. (Of course, this is one of those
false parts.)
So, I'm in charge of a stable
of stoned pizza delivery people and a fleet of Datsun cars,
and trust me, Datsun was
real shit 28 years ago. The car was made of aluminum foil.
One of the stoned pizza
delivery drivers was my man Pete! Pete had done more drugs
by the time I'd met him
in 1973 than everyone who's reading this now has done in their lives.
Pete was an experienced
drug-user. Pete ate LSD to study with if he couldn't find
any speed.
(That's true.)
So, one day a dealer
friend of his dropped by.
(This is the part I'm swear to
Koresh making up, just to enhance a boring story)
This dealer says he has
a hundred lot of white crosses for $25.
Sidebar:
For you younger kids - a
white cross was a teeny-tiny dose of speed.
It was about the size of
a punch-hole, and wafer-thin.
A newbie might eat one
to stay up and study for a test or something.
Note: Speed is a hard
drug, and shouldn't be taken lightly, but this was like kiddie speed.
(Plus, it's just a
made-up story)
Back then, if I
remember, a "white cross" went for maybe a dollar each, or 75 cents
if you got it from a
friendly dealer, so this hundred lot for $25 was a steal.
So, this guy presents
Pete, and me, since I had the cash register, with this great deal.
Pete says I can have
half for just $12.50. Koresh! That's retail at
wholesale prices.
This wasn't
"drug-dealing," this is just buying a $10 case instead of a $5 six pack.
It just made sense to
buy in bulk, ...like shopping at Sam's.
Don't believe me? As the
"President."
He always bought quarter
pounds of pure coke, not $25 "papers" of cut crap.
So, we make the deal,
the guy leaves, and Pete splits the 100 pills in 2 piles.
He handed me one of the
piles and gulped down the other pile.
No need to hit "refresh"
on your computer - that wasn't a misprint.
Pete ate 50 of those
damn things while I stood there with my jaw open.
Mama Mia...
Stunned and amazed, I put mine
away and he went on a delivery run.
He calls 20 minutes
later - says he's out of gas way the hell out by the VFW, near The Rink.
So I pull another driver
of his delivery route and send him to rescue Pete with a gallon of gas.
Half an hour later, they
both arrive, Rescueboy grabs more pizza and tears out the door
and hops into one of the
Datsun fleet of delivery cars, trying to make some money.
Then there was Pete.
Pete was maintaining,
because for Pete, sober is dangerous.
So Pete grabs a stack of
hot pizzas and heads out the door.
He calls 15 minutes
later - he's out of gas - again.
He forgot to get gas,
and only had that one gallon, so here we go again,
pulling another driver
off his route to go rescue Pete - again.
30 minutes later they
gets back, Rescueboy Two grabs a stack of hot pizza
and heads out, but Pete
grabbed me and pulled me to the side.
"Bart, that speed's not
working. Can I buy yours?"
ha ha
You think I'm lying?
No - wait, I am lying,
remember?
This is the pretend
part, the Maureen Dowd part of the story...
So Pete says, "I'll give
you $25 for your half. You should help me out,
since it's double your
money and the stuff isn't that good, anyway."
He kept pestering me
until I agreed.
(You know how those
people can pester...)
I handed him my bag of
50, ...and he gulped them down.
I, ...I, ...I, ...
I don't know why it was
such a surprise, but I was shocked again.
So Pete grabs a stack of
hot pizzas and runs for the door.
I said, "Pete, would you
get some goddamn gas this time?"
Pete screams, "Sure
Bart. No problem."
Pete jumps into his
little white Datsun (I think it was a 220 model)
and saw he was too close
to the car in front of him, so Pete threw it in "R"
and ran into the little
Datsun 220 behind him.
BAM!
Sensing trouble, I
opened the door and yelled "Pete!"
Pete yelled, "I'm
sorry," then put it in "D" and rammed the little Datsun in front of him.
BAM!
I screamed louder.
"Pete!"
Pete screamed, "Sorry"
and sped off with the stack of hot pizzas.
I had no idea he was
that high, even tho I saw him pull a Robbie Knevil with a handful of
hard drugs.
(You think I'm stupid
now? You should've known me 28 years ago.)
So I have this moral
dilemma, and this was before Laura the Unloved was available.
Madman Pete clearly
needed to be off the road, and I hoped he'd agree to that without me
having to intervention
his ass in a Friday night pizza parlor with four other high drivers.
Before he had a chance
to run out of gas a third time, Pete came back and told me,
"My stomach started
hurting, so I dropped by Dickson Street Liquors
and chugged a pint of
gin, and now my stomach really hurts, so can I go home?"
See?
There is a God.
Besides the owner's
cars, nothing really got hurt that night.
Sidebar:
I really like telling
old (fake) stories.
That crack-whore/boxer
story was fun to re-live.
There was no chance I
could get hurt re-living that, so it was fun.
No chance of getting
hurt, or seeing a friend hurt, or having to shoot a man.
That story was real,
but, this drug-dealing Pete story is just another false memory.
Speaking of false
memories, remind me to tell you about the Ken's Pizza owner, who's name
is
Glenn and drove a white
Rivera, and who was bangin' some broad that Don Tyson put up in a
swanky apartment a few
blocks from the pizza parlor, at the corner of West street and the
Chi-Omega house.
Yeah, those apartments right there with the white Corinthian pillars..
ha ha
That scumbag Glenn was
rifling Tyson's paid-for honeybabe and he'd call his restaurant and
order
pizza to be delivered to
her chicken-financed apartment, and then the son of a bitch would
insist I,
the acting manager,
deliver the order personally, just so he could come to the door in his
Hef-robe
and bitch at me about
how the pizza didn't have enough cheese!
Hey, sorry about that, Glenn,
but my portion-control commandant is real strict!
Hey, Glenn, if I could
remember your last name, I'd bust you, Dude!
Oh, the old stories,
...there are hundreds...
===
Last thing, if we get
into the old stories, I should tell about the three road trips we look
to St.Louis and OKC and
Birmingham to see Jimmy Page and his band of zeppelins.
...and the time in
Muskogee Oklahoma, when Robert Plant looked at me and said,
"Where do I know you
from?"
ha ha
Did we pull out all
stops for Zeppelin/Page/Plant shows?
Does the Pope have lips?
Koresh, when you look up
"decadent" in the dictionary, it says,
see
http://www.bartcop.com/ledtrips.htm,
so I should work on
putting those stories in print.
Of course, those stories
will be filled with mostly lies, too, because nobody
would combine LSD, hash,
TCH and alcohol for a concert, right?
But, in closing
(applause...) can you believe Pete is still alive?
Way back in 1973, Pete
was a druggie madman, and he's still kicking twenty eight years later.