Transcript of 'Redneck rounder'

	My biological grandfather was a huge bear of a man that killed
somebody in a fight and bailed out on my grandmother when, I guess, my
dad was about 10 or 11.  And let's see, there must have been 7 or 8
kids when my grandfather blew out of town.
	And supposedly he was a tree topper and he got in a fight
after work one night with somebody and broke their neck and killed
them and left my grandmother with all these kids.  She lived in a
one-room cabin in Maryland out in the woods and they stole food, stole
corn, stole pigs, stole chickens.  All lived in one room.
	But the family, my dad's side of the family, they're real
hardcore redneck country people and they have some strange ways about
them that I really enjoy, but you have to sort of know that culture to
understand it.  But my Uncle Homer is my dad's older brother.  He was
Neil's father and he killed my aunt, threw her out of a car at 90
miles an hour when Neil was a little boy.  So anyway, he was pretty
messed up by that.  His dad went off to jail and his mom was dead.
And he was shipped off to Iowa to live with some maternal relatives
and he and his little brother and his little sister were virtual
slaves on this farm, forced to work from sunup to sundown and were
beaten.
	And so he finally came back east and lived with my dad and
lived with us.  Neil was, he was my hero.  He was good looking and he
was just the all-American boy at freckles and he was just a good
looking guy and he was strong.  He loved to fight and he could fight
and I admired that.  And he was into guns and he knew how to take guns
apart when we were 10, 11, 12 and showed me all I know about guns
basically.  And he was just, his dream in life was to be an Airborne
Ranger or be in Special Forces or something.  He just lived and
breathed that day in, day out.  He wanted to, he was going to be a
soldier.
	Anyway, when we were about 14 I guess, 14, 14 and a half,
Neil, he stole a submachine gun.  I'm not sure where he got it.  One
of my uncle's friends or something.  Stole a submachine gun of a
thousand rounds of ammunition.  And then he and a friend of his stole
a tractor, you know, a semi-truck without the trailer.  And they were
going to head out west of California in a stolen truck.  And I guess
they were going up through southern Ohio and they did some target
practice and I guess, I don't know what I was told anyway, Neil
accidentally shot 30 or 40 cattle on some farmer's ranch.  And that
landed him in a reform school until he was 16 and he got out and he
just wanted to, he just wanted to be in the service.
	He lied about his age and got some papers forged or whatever
and he joined up.  And he was one of the first people sent to Vietnam,
one of the first batch to go over to Vietnam.  He used to write me
these letters about the mosquitos and the women and the whorehouses
where it cost ten cents to get laid.  And he was just my hero.
	But he re-upped twice for Vietnam.  He spent a total of three
years over there, three and a half years.  And he was one of those, he
was with the 173rd Airborne Division and then he was with 7th Special
Forces.  And he wasn't one of these MASH kind of guys.  He was like he
and five or six other guys would put the greasepaint on and they would
jump behind enemy lines and they'd be like 30 miles out of Hanoi, you
know, and work their way back.  And I guess he killed lots of people
over there and knew all the different ways to kill people.  He knew
more ways to kill someone than I could even imagine.
	They'd find some VC somewhere.  He said he didn't or he
couldn't use a gun because he didn't want to alert everybody in the
area.  So he would just, he liked that physical hand-to-hand kind of
stuff.  And I guess it overtook him because he really liked it.  He
would, I remember him telling me he crawled up behind more than one VC
that was nodding off or wasn't paying attention and he'd come up
behind him and put that wire around his neck and half a second, he's
like my terrier with a rat.  He'd just dispose of him.  And I guess he
got real callused about that.
	You know, he did a lot of this stuff before the big protests
came around and before people started to become aware of the horrors
of the war.  I think when Neil first went over to Vietnam, it was cool
to go to Vietnam and we were still under the false illusion that we
were doing something for our country or stopping communism or whatever
it was.  He was there at a time when he still thought he was doing
right.
	But I'd gone in the Army myself at the same time and I was
down in the Dominican Republic.  But I came back from there and we
both ended up at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.  And I remember the night
I got back from overseas, I stole my truck and I drove all the way
across base over to the special forces barracks and tiptoed in the
barracks about four in the morning.  I was waking people up.  They
were highly, highly pissed off at me.  But finally found his bunk and
woke him up and boy, we hugged and we went down the latrine and sat
down the latrine and smoked a big bomber and just, we were family.
And it was just a wonderful feeling.
	We got in some barroom brawls down in North Carolina that were
just amazing.  Just right out of Hollywood Central casting with chairs
flying and used to be a place down there in Fayetteville called the
Rock-A-Zon Lounge where all the bad, bad Vietnam vets would go and
drink.  It was known in the Army circles, don't go to the Rock-A-Zon
Lounge unless you're ready to fight your way out.  And we used to go
in there drinking all the time, weekend passes and pick up the hookers
and have a good time.  Nine times out of ten get into a brawl.
	And I remember picking this guy up with Neil one time.  We had
him up in the air.  Both of us picked him up and we were running his
head into a telephone pole.  Slamming this guy's head into a telephone
pole.  And you know, knowing the climate in Fayetteville, the guy
probably enjoyed it.  I mean, that's what everybody did, you know.
	I remember getting up for Reveille one morning.  I had two
lockers.  Everybody had two lockers.  One was your civilian clothes
and one was your military clothes.  And it's four o'clock in the
morning or whatever.  I jump out of my bunk and I looked at my locker
and everybody's scurrying around like a rat getting ready for Reveille
and everybody's yelling and screaming at you and all this.  And I
looked and I said, "Civilian clothes?  Military clothes.  Civilian
clothes, military clothes."  And it was like a magnet.  I couldn't
help myself.  I put on a T-shirt, jeans, my boots, my leather jacket
and threw a few of my personal items into my AWOL bag.  And I hear
everybody running out to Company Street.  There's four or five hundred
guys lined up in all the platoons all lined up getting ready for
Reveille.
	And I just walked on out the door and walked around the corner
and walked about half a block up where I was stashing my motorcycle in
a boiler room.  And I started that baby up and it just sounded so
sweet.  And I hear the trumpets blowing and I hear that, "Company
attention."  And they're all saluting and doing their little schtick
and things just idling.  It's one of those kind of nice, cool North
Carolina mornings.  Well, I'm not going to hang out here today and
pick up cigarettes, but no sir, I think I'm going to go into town and
get me a little.  So I just couldn't help it.  I gunned it and I rode
around the front of the barracks and went right down the side of the
Company Street right behind all these guys all standing there.  And
that sergeant and that lieutenant are staring at me and I just gave
them a little wave and rode on off.
	I stayed at AWOL for about 45 days.  I talked to my mom and
she said the FBI had been to our house.  She said, "They're going to
deport you."
	I said, "They can't deport me."  But anyway, I turned myself
in and they gave me a choice actually.  They said that I could sign a
piece of paper that said, "I screwed up.  Please forgive me.  Yeah,
I'm willing to go back and make a go of it and you can take two-thirds
of my pay for the next 12 months and I can wash every damn pot and pan
in the country.  Or I can do time."  And I told them, "I'd rather do
the time and walk out like a man and screw you all."  So I did the
time.
	They come about every month or so I was in the stockade.  They
said, "All you got to do is sign this piece of paper.  We'll let you
out and go right back on active duty."
	I said, "Well, you know where you can stick that."  So I did
my time.
	I got out and Neil was still at Fort Bragg.  So Neil and a
couple of my buddies come into town and throw me a big going-away
party.  I don't know, my plane was leaving at midnight or something.
The next morning, I forgot when.  And we went to the Rock-a-zon.  And
we got stinking drunk and came out of the bar and there's these MPs
standing there.
	They started hassling us.  Grabbed Neil, grabbed one of my
buddies and one of the MPs grabbed me and said, "Let's see you pass an
ID card."  You had to have a weekend pass or you had to have a pass to
be in town.  And I was just a little too drunk to put up with his
crap.
	And since I was no longer a member of their organization, I
stepped on his spit-shined boot and I said, "That's my pass."  I said,
"Here's my ID card."  And I knocked him on his ass.
	And next thing I know, there's this big melee going on.
Everybody's rolling all over the ground.  There's Fayetteville police
come up, riot squad, whatever.  They break it all up.  And I'm pretty
tanked up, so I'm screaming, "I'm a civilian.  You can't touch me.
I'm a civilian.  Out of your jurisdiction."
	This cop looks at me and says, "You're a civilian?"
	I said, "You got it."  I said, "I got discharged this
morning."
	He said, "Good.  You're under arrest."
	I said, "What do you mean?"
	He says, "You got a job?"
	I said, "No."
	He said, "All right.  Vagrancy."  They threw me in a
Fayetteville city jail on a vagrancy charge.  I was there for about 12
days and didn't know anybody except Neil.  He was confined to Fort
Bragg.  And I got a call out through somebody, through the Red Nabors,
the guy that owned the motorcycle shop, Meridian Motorcycle,
Fayetteville, North Carolina.  And Red was one of these crazy kind of
southern guys.  He owned a motorcycle shop and he went fishing with
the sheriff and went to fundraisers at the governor's mansion.  He was
the biggest importer of Triumph and BSA Norton motorcycles on the East
Coast for years.
	Well, he come down to jail and he said that he'd get me out if
I went to work for him.  And it sounded like a much better deal than
the one I was having at that time.  So I said, "Sure.  I'll go to work
for you."  So he got me out of jail.  Next day I went down to Meridian
Motorcycle and he put me on a payroll, $90 a week under the table
fixing motorcycles.
	And I had a room up on the second floor of the shop.  It was a
little 10 by 10 room with two little twin beds thrown in it.  And it
was just a little flop place for whoever happened to be around.  But
he gave it to me and it had a window in it.  And the window looked out
on the rest of the second floor.  And there must have been 300
motorcycles up there that GIs and people had stored when they were
overseas and stuff.  So I had to lay on my bed and I'd look at all
this chrome and the streetlight flickering in there and all this
chrome and horsepower.  Very heady for a 19-year-old, you know.
	And Red's girlfriend owned the Dixie Diner across the street
so I got to eat for nothing.  Go over there every morning and have
bacon, eggs, grits.  I started out there, I would uncrate new bikes
and put them together and prep them, you know, get them ready for
sale.  And then after a while I started doing engine work and whatever
they had me doing.  I just had the time of my life.
	Fayetteville was a wild town.  It was like the Wild West, you
know.  I was young and full of myself, racing motorcycles.  How can
you not get any when you're on a, you know, when you're on a
two-wheeler running up the road about 90 miles an hour?  And women
were drawn to it like a magnet.
	She'd come in the shop one day with one of her girlfriends,
this little Peter Pan collar on her girlfriend, this little, looked
like a little Mary Tyler Moore or something.  And she came in and she
said that her school was, she was doing a report on bikers for her
school.  And did they have any bikers that she could talk to at the
motorcycle shop?  And they said, "Oh, you got to talk to J.B."  And
said, "He's in the back, going in the back."
	Well, I had my room up on the second floor, but I used the
facilities on the first floor.  We had a little toilet down there and
everything.  But we had a gunk room at the very back of the shop where
we'd push bikes in after we raced.  And we'd gunk them down, spray
them down, and hose them off.  And that was my shower area.
	Well, I was in there taking a shower, covered with soap, and
these two little high school girls come in, and somebody yelled, "Hey,
J.B., somebody here to see you."  So I walked out from the gunk room,
buck-ass naked, nothing more but soap.  And they're giggling and
covering their eyes.  And I said, "Wait a minute, wait a minute."  I
hosed myself down and put some jeans on.  We got talking, and they're
telling me about this report they're doing.  I said, "Come on, let's
go for a ride on my scooter."
	"Oh, I couldn't ride on one of those.  My parents would never
let me ride on one of those."
	I said, "Come on, let's go for a ride."  I took her out for a
ride and copped the usual adolescent crap, you know, a few wheelies.
And I went 90 in an '85, you know.  Took her around town, took her out
to this lake.  And this poor girl, I didn't realize at the time, I
thought she was having a good time, but she was scared to death.  And
got out to this lake and got off the bike, and she looked at me, and,
well, she didn't use the word "hurt."  She used a more graphic word,
but she said, "Please don't hurt me."  And that's not, I'm just out
riding around on the scooter, you know.  That's all I'm doing.
	I got arrested again in North Carolina.  Her and her
girlfriend would sneak out and see us.  And a couple buddies of mine
and I lived in a little 40-foot trailer in the seediest of trailer
parks down here in Fayetteville.  And it was a friend of mine named
Deacon and his wife and their little boy and another friend of mine
that lives up in Sacramento and I named Sleepy.  And we lived in this
little 40-foot trailer, had the time of our lives.
	Anyway, we'd come home one night, we'd gone out to the
drive-in.  My friend Sleepy was dating her friend.  And we went to the
drive-in and we had to get them home.  We got them home.  And Deacon
and his wife had thrown this huge party and we come to our trailer and
there's about 30 bodies laying all over the place.  It was packed and
people passed out everywhere.  And the trailer next to ours was
vacant.  The people had just moved out.  There were about 60, 70
trailers in this little park.  And the one next door was vacant.  So
Sleepy and I said, "Hey, enough of this.  Let's go, let's go crash
that trailer next door."  They were furnished anyway.  They had a
sleazy little furniture.  So we went and we went and crashed there.
	  And about two hours later, there's a knock on the door and
it's the girls.  They'd snuck out again after we dropped them off.
"Hey, come on in," you know.  So I'm up in front with one and Sleepy's
in the back of the trailer with the other.  And we're just having
adolescent fun and, you know, as my dad likes to say, just a little of
that old slap and tickle.  And we're having a good time and all of a
sudden, doors, somebody's beating a door, yelling, you know,
"Fayetteville Police Department, you know, come on out with your hands
up."
	Deacon and a couple of yo-yos playing a joke on us or what,
you know.  But sure enough, there were about 15 or so Fayetteville
police officers there.  And someone, one of the idiots in the trailer
park had called the cops.  And so they knocked on the trailer and we
come out, buck-ass naked.  Wouldn't let us put our clothes on.  Whole,
complete, stereotypical redneck bust, the cops leering at the girls.
The girls are like 16, we're like 19, you know.  Keep us out there for
like an hour and a half, two hours standing out there.  Finally let us
put pants on and I think they let the girls put their jeans on a
little.  Handcuff us, take us away in four different squad cars.  Take
us down to Fayetteville Police Station, booked us, threw us in
jail. What the charge was?  Cohabitation and trespassing.
Cohabitation.  I got, I still got the paperwork on this.
	No shower, one meal a day.  They serve their meals in the
Fayetteville City Jail.  I swear to the almighty father, they serve
their meals in army ammunition boxes that are cut in half.  They have
a real sharp edge on it and they just throw a bunch of crap down there
in the bottom like a gruel kind of thing.  It looks like what my
friend Howard eats for breakfast now and he's a health nut, but back
then I just sort of thought it was something for hogs, you know.  And
they pass it through the little slot, you know, in the bar and that's
it.  No utensils, you know, and, you know, I believe I asked for a
napkin and they just ignored me, but, you know, figured if I had to
eat with my hands I could at least clean them off somehow, you know,
but that's what your sheet was for.
	About five days later they take us to court.  Now you got to
remember this is a cohabitation trespassing charge.  They take us in
the courtroom.  We are manacled.  Leg chains, wrist chain, I mean the
waist chain and handcuffs.  And I swear as the day is long that I'm
still wearing my paisley pants.  No socks, shoes, shirt or anything.
Just my paisley pants.  paisley bell bottoms.  They weren't just even
like snug paisley jogging pants that somebody might wear today.  They
were paisley bell bottoms.  Hiphugger paisley bell bottoms.  So a good
percentage of my pubic hair was sticking out of the top of my
hiphuggers.  And every time I see Charlie Manson on one of these
clips, that's the way I felt then.  I mean manacled and I just felt
like I looked around that courtroom and the smell of polyester was
just overpowering.
	  And so we come to court, Sleepy and I. We're manacled.
Bring us up to the front of the judge's bench, standing up there at
the bar.  Here come the girls that we were arrested with.  Well, the
girl I was with, her father happened to be a general at Fort Bragg.
So she comes in with this little suit that would have made Annette
Funicello proud.  With a little Peter Pan collar and little flats and
the proper hose and her hair in a little, you know, that girl flip,
you know.  Totally squeaky clean.  And here comes her dad, the general
behind her with, you know, he's almost leaning forward.  He's got
about 800 medals on his chest, you know, and he's got the omelet on
his hat, you know, and spit shine everything and the swagger stick.
And he's also looking like out of Central Casting.
	  And of course, everybody looks at the girls and they are so
sweet and innocent.  And then you can just hear them suck their
breasts in when they look at us.  You know, I mean, they just they
hated us.  Well, they call the trial to order and they read the
charges and all this.  And we're all standing at the bar and General
Hotshot pipes in.  "Your Honor, can I have a conference with you?"
Judge calls a 15 minute recess.  Well, of course, Fayetteville, North
Carolina is completely dependent on Fort Bragg.  If the military
pulled out of there Fayetteville would die in about a day and a half.
And so they really kowtow to the military.  So the general gets it.
We're still standing at the bar.  He gets a conference with the judge.
Come back out about five minutes later.  He stands behind his
daughter.  He sends us the girls to probation and lets them go in the
custody of their parents.  And they promised to be good girls or
whatever.  And we figure, all right, probation, we're out of here.
I'm going to blow this state and never come back.  Get on my scooter
and ride.  Looks at us and he gives us one to three building North
Carolina's highway at the federal, I mean, at the state penitentiary
in Raleigh.  One to three.  We look at each other and I'm just about
to have a heart attack.  And he says suspended on the condition that
you pay your costs of being in jail, which I don't know where the hell
that came in from because I'm getting like a half an ammo box of gruel
a day and no water to wash myself with.  And it's costing me twelve or
fourteen bucks a day or whatever to be there.
	Well, anyway, the whole thing came to about one hundred and
twenty-five or one hundred and fifty bucks that we needed to get out
of jail.  One to three would be suspended if we paid this hundred plus
dollars and left North Carolina.  And if we were ever caught in this
judge's jurisdiction again, we would serve the full three years.
Thrown out of school.  Had a couple bars tell me they didn't need my
business, but I had never been thrown out of an entire state.  So
immediately I'm thinking, what can I do?  Okay, I'll get a flag, I'll
take one star off.  You know?  A couple hundred thousand square miles,
I can't go in.  But that was the least of our worries.
	  Anyway, the gavel comes down, the bailiff comes, and the
sheriff's deputies run us right back up to jail.  No problem, we'll
get this money, we're out of here.  Won't let us use the phone.
Couldn't believe it.  Finally, after two nights or so, one guard lets
my buddy Sleepy use the phone.  He calls his dad in Sacramento.  His
dad's retired military.  Says, buzz off.  You got yourself in this
jam, you get yourself out.  Click.  Sleepy comes back to our cells and
says, my dad's not going to help us.  Says, you got to call somebody.
I didn't have anybody to call.  My mom wasn't talking to me at the
time.  And my dad didn't have a phone.  So I had nobody to call.
	But his wife, Jody, had gone to court and sat in the back of
the courtroom and watched what happened.  And this girl went out and
turned tricks and got the money together.  Like the day before we were
going to go.  She came like 12 hours before the prison truck came,
bailed us out, had the cash.  She turned tricks.  I mean, this was not
in the day of the $150 trick.  I mean, this is the days of the $10
trick, you know?  And I always thought that that was just, not that
she was a virgin or anything, but that kind of biker mentality, biker
code.
	I mean, I just remember before we got busted, things were so
lean that Sleepy had been a cook when he was in the Army.  So he still
had a couple of cooks on post that he knew.  And they gave us some
Army food.  And we had a couple of these big cans of instant chicken
soup.  Maybe 500 servings in one of these two-gallon cans or something
of it.  And we had the power shut off in the trailer.  We had no gas
on the stove.  And I remember being so hungry one day, I put some
water and some of this chicken, instant chicken soup in a pan.  I put
it outside the trailer in the sun at about 9, 10 in the morning.  And
about 3 or 4 in the afternoon, it was kind of lukewarm.  And I ate it.
	And I remember the worst of the hunger was, we hadn't eaten in
about two days, pawned everything of any value to us that we had.  And
we were hungry.  And you get down to that point where you're just
hungry.  We broke into a restaurant.  And just did a burglary, you
know, and stole food out of the freezer, full of steaks.  And I
remember we were so hungry, we got in there.  They had coleslaw in
these big 50-gallon plastic trash cans.  A deacon popped the lid on
this coleslaw thing and just dove in.  I mean, his feet were in the
air.  He just dove in up to his, you know, head first up to his chest
in coleslaw.  He was just sucking down coleslaw.  The man was hungry.
	But for about, you know, 4 or 5 days after that, since we
didn't have a refrigerator that worked, we had to eat this stuff
pretty fast.  But we were eating filet mignon and New York strips and
stuff.  You know, whatever.  We didn't take any money or nothing.  We
just hauled off all the damn meat we could out of this place.  You
know, we could take on our scooters.
	But anyway, we got bailed out.  Left North Carolina about two
days later.  Got my bike.  Flew out of town.  And then Deacon and Jody
in the trailer we were living in, next to the one we got busted in.
	A few months later, Deacon got busted.  He had a box of acid
sent to the trailer.  And the cops delivered it.  But anyway, they
knocked on the door.  He took the package and slammed the door in
their face, ripped it open and tried to eat it.  And there were like
100 hits of acid in there.  He tried to eat it.  And I don't know,
what I heard was 13 hits or something he got managed to do before he
kicked the door in and busted it.  He got 20 to 40 years for that in
North Carolina.  He went to Raleigh.  His wife and kid went back to
New Mexico where they're from.
	He's in Raleigh doing his sentence.  He's about three years
into his sentence.  He becomes a trustee.  Does all the right prison
moves.  Becomes a trustee.  They put him out on the prison farm.  They
give him a horse to ride around and manage the other prisoners working
on the prison farm.  One day he keeps riding.  Rides all the way from
Raleigh to Danville, Virginia on the border, where Jody picks him up
in a VW bus with the most obvious of disguises.  He's got a long hair
wig for him, a fake beard.  She's all decked out like a deadhead.  We
didn't call them deadheads necessarily then.  In an old VW bus with
the kid, like a couple old hippies and their baby traveling cross
country.  I guess he parked the horse and got in the van and to this
day I hear from him occasionally and to this day he's free.
	But anyway, I ended up in D.C. and Neil got out of the Army.
He moved up to D.C. He was up there about two weeks when he was
charged with murder in Accokeek.  He had gone up to a field party when
he got out of the service with a friend of his that was a special
forces guy that was still in the service.  One or two girls.  I think
two girls.  They heard about this big field party in Accokeek.  It was
supposed to be this great party and they went out there.  They went
out there and were partying and it ends up it was mostly a black field
party.  And they were the only whites there.  And I guess there were a
couple hundred people partying in this field.
	And they haven't just come out of the service.  They weren't
very prejudiced because in the service you deal with all races.  And
so they were drinking and partying and one thing led to another and I
think a couple of dudes were hitting on the girls.  And then I guess
they were told to back off or whatever.  One thing led to another.
And I guess a handful of these guys said that basically they were
going to beat the shit out of Neil and his buddy and screw the girls.
And maybe Neil's girl was with him and the other guy and his girl had
just come over to the car and these group of guys were hassling him
and walking up with him.
	And I think things escalated.  Two guys punched the guy Neil
was with and a couple other guys ran over at Neil just as he opened
the trunk of the car.  And he pulled out his M-16, turned around and
shot this guy's chest off.  Well, actually put a hole in his chest and
shot his back off is what happens.  And killed him.  And everybody
stopped and they got in the car and split, Neil and his friends.  And
he was indicted for murder on that.  And he got off and it was
self-defense.
	They said it was self-defense.  He was, like I said, he was
the first batch of guys to go over to 'Nam in the early days.  He went
to 'Nam, actually, he went to 'Nam in '63 or '64.  And when he came
back, you know, like you've heard the story a million times about the
Vietnam Vets, no parade, no Victory Girls, you know, no picture on the
cover of Life magazine holding the beautiful honey up in the air.
None of that.  And the country had changed completely by '68.  And he
came back to a world that just, that he really wanted to be a part of,
but was so alien to everything he'd enjoyed all his life.  Mainly that
military thing.  Patriotism and all that he bought into that lock,
stock and barrel.  And the girls were laughing at him.  Nobody wanted
a guy with a flat top in those days.  And he still had the flat top.
	So he started roadieing for my band and started hanging out
and trying to change himself.  Grew a beard for his hair.  Bought a
Harley, bought a van.  And he just tried desperately to fit in at 41st
Street, Pine Street, even the Childe Harolde and places like that.
All these houses and communes at the time.  And people liked Neil, but
they never warmed up to him.  They never really took the time.  And he
kind of became, oh, that Vietnam Vet guy.  Oh yeah, Neil, he was in
Nam, you know.
	And I remember he started doing PCP.  And he started smoking
it daily.  Among other drugs.  He was chasing the dragon, too.
Smoking heroin.  Smoking opium heroin.  And he just got really
twisted.  I remember the welfare people came over to our house one
time.  And just for a lark we got Medi-Cal, I mean Medicaid cards for
our dogs.  Gypsy and Saja.  We had two safe for a night.  And the
welfare people came by our house and asked for us.  And Neil said we
weren't there.  And he was on PCP.  And they said, well, is Gypsy and
Saja here?  And he said, yeah, they're sleeping there in the
fireplace.  So we got a little bit of trouble with the welfare people.
	But he was so crazed on PCP at the time, he restored a
Sportster.  Michael Willis's down on 18th Street.  Spent a year
restoring this Sportster.  Bought every part you could possibly buy.
Had everything chromed, anodized, had the motor blueprinted.
Everything you could possibly do to a Sportster.  He literally spent
to the last nickel what you can spend on a motorcycle.  He couldn't
have spent another dollar.  There was nothing else to buy.  He had
bought everything.  And he would come up to me and he'd say, man, this
weekend, my scooter.  This weekend.  I'd say, come on by, we'll go
putting, because I still had bikes then.  Come on by, we'll go
putting.  Never happened.  Next week he'd come by.  This weekend.  And
it was this weekend for like 52 weekends before he finally got the
thing together.
	So Willis is there, a bunch of people around.  Neil gets the
bike.  He's ready for a Saturday, Adams Morgan community, and he's
ready.  He cranks that sucker up.  It's a joy.  Pulls out of Willis'
little garage, down the alley, gets halfway up 18th Street, thing
blows sky high.  He forgot to put oil in it.  It just ceased up, it
just blew.  But that's the kind of luck he was having at that point.
	We went out one time in my old Jinx bug, my old Volkswagen.
This is about a month or so before he got killed.  We had a good day.
I forgot what we did.  I think we went up to see the family maybe up
in Maryland.  We come back to D.C. and everything's fine.  I was
living in Georgetown at the time and he's driving me up Wisconsin
Avenue.  And he looks at me in red light.
	It's a hot D.C. day, you know, and he looks at me and he says,
"Hey man, you know that green towel in your bathroom?"
	I said, "No, I don't know what you're talking about."
	He says, "You got a green towel in the bathroom."
	I said, "Okay."  "All right, I got a green towel in the
bathroom."
	He says, "It's mine."
	I said, "It's yours."
	He says, "It's my towel."
	I said, "Well, I don't know what you're talking about.  There
might be a green towel there, I don't know.  But if there is, I know
it ain't yours because he hadn't stayed in this place or anything."  I
said, "But you take the towel.  Take all my towels.  I don't care."
	So he drives another block or two, gets another line.  He
says, "You know, I'm really steamed about that towel."
	I said, "Neil, what are you talking about, man?"
	He said, "That green towel, it's
mine, man.  You stole my towel."
	I said, "Neil, what the hell are you talking about?"  I said,
"Get real.  It's a, it's a towel.  I don't, take all the towels.  I
don't care, man.  It's just a towel.  What the hell are you talking
about?"
	  He says, "Man, I'm really, I'm, you know, man to think that
you would steal my towel."
	  I said, "Can you hear yourself, man?  We're talking about a
towel.  We're family.  You're talking about a towel, you know."  And
finally I said, "Hey, I've had it, man.  You know, get the towel,
whatever you need, man.  This is a bunch of crap.  I'm out of here."
And I jumped out of the car, about a block from my place.  I said,
"You know, go cool out or whatever."  And I went up, I told my
girlfriend at the time, I said, "Man, Neil's here."  I said, "We got a
green towel in the bathroom?"
	And she said, "Yeah, my mother gave me some towels last week
or something, you know."
	I said, "Well, Neil thinks it's his."
	She said, "No, my mother gave them to me, man."  I said, "I
can't believe him.  He's, he's really nuttin' down, you know."  So I
forgot about it.
	About four or five hours later, I'm sitting up there, the
phone rings.  It's Neil.  I said, "Hey, man, how you doing?"  I figure
he's called.  "Hey, I'm sorry, man.  You know, I didn't mean it.  I
was just having a bad day.  It was hot, you know.  We were in
Georgetown."
	Instead, he says, "You got my towel, man."
	"Neil, you gotta start this again.  You got my towel."  And I
just lost it.  And I started screaming at him on the phone.  "I had it
with you and the towel."  I said, "I don't know what the hell you're
trying to do, but if you're trying to call me out, let's go for it.
Get your ass over here.  You be here.  You know where I live."  I
said, "You and me, and I'll fight you to the death for the towel.
Does that make you happy?  One of us will die for a towel."  You know,
whatever.  I really got upset.
	He said, "I'll be over, man.  I'll be over in 20 minutes."
	I said, "Well, I'm waiting for you."  A few choice words.  And
I remember thinking that this guy, this guy's bad news.  I mean, he
carries a .45 automatic and an ankle holster, and you know, he's bad
news.  So I figured the only way I could win is, I lived above a pizza
parlor on Wisconsin, and he would pull in the alley behind there, come
through the courtyard, come up the fire escape at the back door.  And
I was waiting for him.  And as soon as he knocked on the door, I was
going to say, "Come in."  And I was all the way across my apartment.
And as soon as he opened the door, I was going to rush him like a
football player.  And I was just going to hit him and knock him over
the railing, two floors down into the brick courtyard, you know?  I
figured I would either paralyze him for life or knock the wind out of
him or something.  But I was really, I mean, I wasn't going to fight
him fair and square.  I wasn't going to, you know.  I thought my only
chance was just to knock him over the railing, you know?
	And he never showed up.  But I sat there in a chair for about
three hours waiting for him to come by.  I wanted to be ready to
sprint the minute he opened the door, you know?

	But he met this girl who was the ex or maybe even the current
girlfriend of a very famous biker that rode with the Pagans.  And
there was a scene a few years prior to that where this bike club had
been on a run in Southern Maryland, Chesapeake Beach, I believe, and
got into some trouble and got arrested.  And a couple of the guys were
thrown in jail there.  And they went down to Southern Maryland and
blew the jail up.  Do you remember that?  That was big headlines.
They literally blew the jail up with dynamite and got, I think they
may have killed a cop or a guard or something and got their guys out.
	Well, they caught the guys that blew the jail up.  And it was
the president of the club.  And he got a big sentence, whatever, 20 to
life or whatever.  And this was his girlfriend.  So he's away in
prison now.  He's been in prison for three or four years.  And he's
still kind of probably running the shop from prison, you know, up to a
point anyway.  And just when a biker goes to prison, he's a martyr,
you know, they don't forget about you.  And he'll start going out with
this girl.
	And she was nutty as a day, just nutty.  A biker, a total
biker chick, right off the cover of Easy Rider.  Property of the
pagans, you know.  But he started going out with her and they had this
thing, and that's why I think he was killed.  We buried him out there
in Acapulco.

	And then his little brother, Roger, who I never did know too
well because he ended up living with other relatives.  He got in
Neil's van, inherited in Neil's van.  He went down to Florida and got
arrested.  And they found him hung in a jail cell in Florida.  One of
the cuffs of Roger.  It's wild.
	I think all the violence in my family, the murders, like my
uncle throwing my aunt out of the car at 100 miles an hour.  Oh, then
he backed over her too.  That's what actually got him thrown in jail.
My grandfather killed somebody, Neil.  I got an uncle that was blown
up in a truck during a trucker strike, dynamited his truck.  Got two
uncles that died in motorcycle accidents.  Wild stuff.

	That was actually in the sixth grade with a girl named Judy
that I went with for about six months from like the first day of
school.  And we would walk home from school every day holding hands.
And we would stop about every 20 feet and kiss and make out.  It's
3.15 in the afternoon and we're standing on the main street in town
just like Bogart and Bacall, you know, just in this heavy passion
embrace.  And we'd walk home from school and we'd stop every 20 feet
and kiss.  It would take us from like 3 to almost 5 to get to her
house.  I don't know what the hell people thought, driving by and
sweeping their porches off and we're just standing there making out
like we're in a motel or something.

	And then I get a note one day in sixth grade from this girl
named Sandy Nelson, another real cute girl.  She sends me this real
nice note.  She smiles at me in class and stuff, right?  She sends me
a note.  It says, "Meet me..."  There was this path behind the
playground behind school and there was a little path through the
woods.  It says, "Meet me back there after school and I'll give you
what you've always wanted."
	And little did I know this poor girl was thinking, "I'll give
you a kiss."  "Meet me at the path and I'll give you what you've
always wanted."  I couldn't believe it.  So I showed my friend Red
Jenkins.  I said, "Hey, Red, look at this note."
	He said, "Oh, a touchdown, man.  You're gonna get it.  That's
fabulous."  He says, "Can I watch?"
	I said, "For a quarter."  So Red gives me a quarter and we go
back after school and we hang out at this little path and Red's hiding
behind a bush.  And she comes up and I say, "Hey, how you doing?"  and
I hold hands or something, give her a little kiss or whatever.  And I
immediately fell down on my knees and lifted her dress up and buried
my face in her mouth.  And she screams and shrieks and runs, you know,
throws her books and runs off down the path.  And I said, "What?"
	And Red, who was a big, tough kid, comes up and says, "Hey,
man, give me my quarter back."  He says, "That wasn't worth a
quarter."  He says,
	"You're damn right it wasn't worth a quarter."
	So anyway, next day I go to school I get yanked out of my
first Perry class by the principal.  I go up to the office.  What's
going on?  I go into the principal's office.  He's at his desk.  He
says, "He's accusing me of trying to rape this girl."  I guess she
went home, cried to her parents and said this guy tried to rape me at
school.
	I said, "No, no, no.  It's not like that at all."  And luckily
I had the note.  But better yet, I had Red Jenkins, who wasn't at
school that day.  And I had to call him that night and say, "Red, you
got to talk to Mr. Heath.  They're accusing me of rape."
	He said, "It cost you a quarter."

	I used to drive up from the South Bay a lot.  And I would gig
there five, six, seven nights a week.  And I'd drive up through
Oakland and I'd come in and I'd be all keyed up from playing music all
night and partying.  And I'd come in and this house would be quiet.
She'd be asleep.  I'd take my clothes off and I'd try to go to sleep
and I couldn't.  So I'd get up and walk in the living room and watch
TV.
	So I would come back from South Bay and there was this
junction in Oakland.  There's two signs and the freeway splits up
there.  One sign says, "San Francisco Bay Bridge."  And the other sign
says, "Richmond Bridge, Marin County."  That's what the signs say.
But every night I would read those signs and the one side would say,
"Play.  Sleep.  Boredom."  And the other side would say, "Live Nudes.
Sex Act."  And I could feel that pull of that steering wheel.  It was
like the magnetic forces of the North Pole were pulling that wheel to
the "Live Nudes."
	And inevitably I'd find myself on that damn bay bridge heading
into the city looking for some fun.  I just knew some people in San
Francisco, some ladies I could see at that time of night.  But I've
never really liked straight girls.  They bore me to tears.  I don't
like the game.  I don't like the tease.  I don't like the facade.
Like in junior high when they said, "Oh, Jesus."  I'd say, "Yeah."
All the girls that were ostracized because they were sleazy, they were
the ones that I inevitably would seek out and befriend.

	I met a real nice girl one time at Saddle Rack in San Jose.
Beautiful, friendly.  We hit it off quick.  It was back when people
were wearing those tight designer jeans and she was walking away from
me.  And I noticed she was about 10, 20 pounds overweight.  The guy
was a little big.  I thought, "Gee, that's too bad.  She's a little
big."  And I thought, "What the hell do I care?  This is a wonderful
woman.  I'm going to go home alone because she's got an extra five
pounds on each cheek.  What do I care?  What the hell is it?"  It
means absolutely nothing.
	And I went out with her.  We had a wonderful time.  And it
doesn't mean anything.  I once in D.C. slept with a 300-pound girl
that let me stay in her apartment.  And it was real nice, real
friendly.  And I don't remember the time.  I mean, she was...  Well, I
had a thing at one point years ago when times were lean and I was
hungry.  I was going to do these gigs and everybody in the band would
be hitting on the most beautiful girl in the place and everybody would
be wasting their time and their energy trying to score the stuck-up
babes that wouldn't have anything to do with anybody.
	And I always went for the really big girls.  And somebody
asked me about that one time and I said, "Well, they're loyal.  They
treat you like gold if you get home with them.  They do things in bed
that a lot of Miss America types would never consider doing.  They
have the best snacks on the planet.  Go to Miss America's house, eat a
rice cake, or go to some really big girls' house.  They've got it all.
They've got all the good crackers, free, you know, any kind of snack
you want.  They got pudding, you know, they got cookies, cakes, three
or four different types of soda, chips, dip.  You know, you got your
pretzels, your butter.  You know, you got a meat tender in the
refrigerator that's actually tending meat.  And the quicker is, in
those days anyway, they all had diet pills.  They had medicine chests
full of Dexedrine.  So, you know, I'd get strokes, I'd get orgasmic,
I'd take three or four Dexies, and I would have a wonderful snack.
Meanwhile, my friend is sitting down with Miss America eating a rice
cake, like eating a styrofoam.
	Did you hear about the three guys trying to get into heaven?
I think I told you I wasn't going to be able to tell you that.

[Music]