“Raised by Outlaws”

A novel by Scott Newton

Copyright 2022

Chapter one

            Dealing marijuana is as easy as reading a road map. First you learn the main roads between your house, your job and the grocery store. You get a girlfriend and learn some side streets. You find a good restaurant in a new neighborhood and explore. Some people branch out farther than others.

            I was always good at making the connection between one locale and another. They say I take after my grandfather, who was a natural-born salesman. If I met someone, I’d write down his name, memorize it. If a woman gave me her telephone number, I’d call sometime and make conversation. Then, when I’d meet these people later on, in various social circles, they’d treat me as a friend. For a marijuana dealer, it’s important to have a lot of friends.

             I was in Manitou Springs, Colorado in the summer of 1973 when I made my first big deal. I had a job then, my last one for three years. I know now my job was dangerous, but I didn’t realize it then. I was 18 and deep in a long, narrow ditch dug by a backhoe through the middle of a new, not-yet-paved street. Only the curbs were in place. We were laying sewer pipe. It hadn’t been used, so it wasn’t a smelly job. Just hard physically, and you got dirty, and the hole could cave in.

            The city superintendent and his assistant, Jessie Barlow, came by to inspect the work. My boss and the city superintendent went off to talk, and look at a blueprint, and I stood up to take a break and nodded at Jessie Barlow, a surveyor who was about 25.

            I looked up and down both banks of the long, narrow ditch to make sure no one else was near us. “Want to drink a beer after work?” I said, looking up. “I’ve got a joint.”

            Jessie nodded. “Where?”

            “The Glass Cage,” I said. “You get off at 4:30, right?” I’d seen the city workers around our job site before. He nodded. “I could swing by 15 minutes after that,” I said.

            “Cool,” Jessie said. “See you then.” He waved, and went and joined his boss. I checked the sewer pipe to make sure it was at the correct angle. We shot a laser beam through the pipe, using a target in the middle of the pipe, to make sure we were laying it at just the right slope through the new housing development. It had to have “flow.”

            Later, I sold a pound of very good pot to Jessie, and a month later a second pound, also of good pot. Then, Jessie Barlow told me his brother in Dodge City wanted to buy 15 pounds. “Can you handle that?” Jessie said late one afternoon at the Glass Cage, a square tavern made all of windows located near the arcade on Colorado Boulevard. The windows were outlined in colorful neon. When I started drinking there, old alcoholic cowboys still hung out there.

            “I can get the pot,” I said. “Your brother will have to have the cash. Absolutely. No other way to do it.”

            Jessie Barlow had straight, brown-blond hair and an easy gait. He reminded me for some reason of a good high school point guard. Perhaps it was because I’d only recently graduated from high school myself and had a limited frame of reference. I’d been selling marijuana for two months, but already I was a favorite among the old hippies in Manitou and Colorado Springs. I’d moved to town and staked out the local places. The Log Lodge Cafe was where I had breakfast each morning. I rented a large house near Colorado Boulevard, and I could be found from 7 to 8 most evenings at the Glass Cage.

            The rich-kid dealers could have the movie stars and rock stars at Aspen and Telluride. I was a small-town guy from Pueblo, and I’d moved to Manitou Springs because I heard there were pretty girls there. I fit in quickly and decided I was going to stay in this little paradise at the base of Pike’s Peak.

            The man who sold to me, Bob Tejon, was the older brother of a friend of mine from a rival high school in Pueblo. Richard Tejon and I talked at a party in the spring, and I said I was moving to Manitou Springs. Richard said I should meet up with his brother, Bob, who could get me weed. Richard gave me a telephone number. Once I was in Manitou, I called Bob, explained who I was, and he dropped by one day with a joint.

            Bob drove a yellow 650-CC Yamaha motorcycle. It was old and beat up and Bob said that’s just how he wanted it. “You don’t want to draw attention to yourself out there in the world,” Bob said. I convinced him to sell me a pound, and within two days I’d sold 14 ounces and needed another pound. Bob and I went out to breakfast, and when he saw I knew everyone at the restaurant, he figured I wasn’t a cop.

            “Damn, kid,” he said, “you get around.” I liked having Bob hang out at my place. He was always buying an album, then making cassette tapes for his friends. He’d roll up the sidewalk on his motorcycle, park on the grass and hand me a tape. “Have you heard Marianne Faithfull’s ‘Broken English,’ ” he’d ask. “It’s pretty good. She used to go out with Mick Jagger.” Then, we’d go inside, smoke a joint and listen. Bob had dark skin, thick black hair, and a medium build. You’d never notice him in a crowd, but he was good looking. Bob never stayed long, but he always had a comment or two on the state of the world, maybe a book to loan you. He turned me on to the writer Graham Greene. I’m eternally grateful.

            It was about this time, mid-summer, that I gave two weeks’ notice at my job. My high school friend, Andy Fannuke, came to live with me. He was supposed to go off to college, and his parents were upset that he had moved in with me. Well, my parents were upset, too, that I wasn’t going to college, but I needed to spread my wings.

            Andy was five-foot-seven, three inches shorter than me, and a skinny guy, weighing probably not more than 140 pounds. I’d played football and lifted weights throughout high school, so I considered myself  “solid.” I liked football so much I would’ve liked to have played in college, but I was never fast like a good football player has to be. I could run hard but not fast. I was confident no one would try to rob me because I could run hard and hit hard. Like any good linebacker.

            I have thick, brown hair while Andy has coarse, thin blond hair. He wears thick glasses. We were best friends throughout school; he was, I suppose you’d say, my sidekick. I took math and science classes with him. I suppose we were both college bound, but I began to develop some attitudes.

            One was, “I know where your job is at,” which is a line from a Jimi Hendrix song. I couldn’t imagine wasting my life at some meaningless job; this is a luxury of youth. The second attitude derived from years of exposure to the news, which seemed suddenly insignificant following the Vietnam War. I saw war footage every night. Most people don’t realize the significance of televising a war, but it hardens you. It was replaced by victims of fast food, safe-automobile legislation and frivolous lawsuits. Television programming in 1973 was stupid. My attitude was: Life for you may be scary, but I’m not afraid to go outside and play. I wanted to make easy money, meet women, throw a few parties and watch college football on Saturdays. I’d become a fan of the Big Eight.

            When Andy moved in, I think it was still July, he brought a television with him. He was always working on televisions, radios, stereos. I didn’t have a television, and my stereo wasn’t much, either. Andy immediately made big improvements in the area of electronics. He was also interested in my dope business. He was ready to make the drive with me to Dodge City.

            Andy and I pooled all our money, $3,750, and gave it to Bob; he came back with the 15 pounds. He was wearing jeans and an oversized white shirt with a Phillips 66 logo on it. It flapped in the wind as he rode up on his motorcycle. Whapa, whapa whapa. I thought him the picture of cool. He had a travel bag with him. We went inside and he opened it, and took out the marijuana. It was in kilo bricks, 2.2 pounds each. Andy and I just stared.

            “When you buy large like this, you get extra,” Bob said. He pulled out a small baggie with four yellow and black capsules. “LA turnarounds,” he said. “You drive to LA, turnaround, and come back. Speeders. They should get you to Dodge City and back.” Then he pulled out a block of hash. I’d never had any before.

            Bob requested a sharp knife and a glass, which Andy got for him. He cut off a piece of sticky, oily hash, stuck it with the knife, heated it with a lighter and caught the smoke in the overturned glass, which was half off the table. In about 10 seconds, after the smoke had cooled, he inhaled the smoke like drinking from the glass upside down. He gave Andy a hit, and then me. I liked the sharp, medicinal taste. It was like 100 joints combined into one.

            In my living room then was a couch, a wood chair and table, and the stereo and television Andy had just brought, which weren’t in cabinets. It was just a screen and the guts of the TV. It was speakers and wires, again no cabinets. Neither was on, the TV nor the stereo. The sun shone in through the large window and onto the dark, hard-wood floor. There weren’t any pictures on the white walls. We could see pine trees, Colorado Boulevard and part of the mountain out the window. We sat for a few minutes, enjoying the buzz.

            Bob sat up straight in his chair. “OK, boys,” he said. “Let me give you some advice. On your way to Dodge City, don’t smoke any dope or hot-knife any hash. Don’t speed or break any traffic rules. Don’t do anything to give the highway patrol a reason to pull you over.”

            We walked Bob outside and he kick-started his motorcycle. “I know a girl I’m going to see,” he said. “It’s a fine day in cool, colorful Colorado.” “Cool, colorful Colorado” being the state motto.

            The next morning – as planned – Andy and I got in my 1967 Mustang, our most road worthy vehicle, and started for Dodge City, about six hours away. We drove across the hot plain of eastern Colorado and then western Kansas. The fields were worked and dry, brown dirt was showing. They would plant the winter wheat in the fall, but in the summer the plain was a desert. The road was long and straight, with few homes or towns. We were afraid to take the speeders and we didn’t smoke any weed, just as Bob had advised. We drove the speed limit. The landscape was remote, but we knew there were highway patrolmen out there.

            We got to Dodge City, nervous as could be. For starters, we didn’t want to get arrested. In addition, the 15 pounds represented our entire wealth. We stopped at a gas station, filled up the car, and I called Jessie Barlow’s brother James from a pay telephone. The heat was coming up in waves off the pavement of the gas station as we waited in our car, parked near the pay telephone booth. There was strip development where we were at, a McDonald’s and a Taco John’s, a Dillons grocery store and a few local hotels and national-brand gas stations. James Barlow showed up, looking a lot like Jessie. He was tall with an easy gait and long, brown-blond hair. He was broader across the shoulders, but the fact he was so recognizable put us at ease.

            We followed him to a small house with air conditioning, and met Doug Shell, a heavyset man of 30 with a full smile. I had the feeling it was his money. We showed them the weed, and they showed us the money, and we all relaxed. Andy counted the money, in front of them, and this would become the way we always did business. Andy counted fast, like he’d dealt cards once or something. He was always doing math in his head, but saying the important numbers outloud. “Five stacks of hundreds, one thousand dollars each, and one stack of ten 50s, plus fives and tens for another $500 is six thousand.”

            I got out the hash and we hot-knifed two hits each, then sat and listened to music – including Billy Preston’s “Will it Go Round in Circles” – and chatted away about future trips. I felt we had become friends fast. Doug Shell was a night manager at a slaughterhouse, which would explain why he had the money to buy a house and the dope. Slaughterhouse jobs paid well. He looked old for 30, like he’d lived hard, and hands with big knuckles and strong forearms. I figured he could fight.

            Andy took a liking to a pair of cowboy boots James was wearing. On our way out of town, Andy made me stop at a farm supply store and he bought a pair.

            We talked about Doug Shell’s job at the slaughterhouse. We knew it was awful work. Historically, it always has been. The people who use the knives and saws on the beef for eight-hour shifts, almost by the nature of the work, drink hard and live hard. We felt we had found a good place at the end of the road, a community where we could regularly sell some weed. We were going to be careful. Maybe Doug Shell, given the nature of his work, was meaner than he looked.

            We were riding in the 1967 Mustang, listening to Bob Seger sing “Get Out of Denver,” and Andy was wearing his new boots, brown suede, and saying how comfortable they were. We had just made $2,250. “With some of our profits, I might buy a little derringer to keep in my boot,” he said. “Just in case there’s trouble.” I nodded, agreeing it might be a good idea, though not committing myself to it.

Chapter two

            I’m telling my story for a number of reasons. I’m tired of the coverage I receive in the business press. And, I’m trying to find that scamp Blond Bob McNally. He was a semi-famous drug dealer in Colorado who disappeared in 1987 and still hadn’t been found 10 years later. In the next eight years, I’ve yet to learn more than what I read in a newspaper article in 1997. I do know when we needed him, he wasn’t there. Anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself as there are so many details to tell. Maybe I’m writing this to re-live my youth. Maybe I’m writing it to lay out the facts of my life.

            My own criminal enterprise started in 1973 and ran through 1976. I think about it as if it was an almost perfect time, but as I put the words on paper I remember a lot of mistakes, and regrets, too. And yet, that entire care-free period didn’t really hurt me much except for scaring me once in 1976. I have a three-inch scar on my chin to help me remember.

            I’m 48 as I write this, in good health, sober and rich as an owner of stock in one of the first video game companies, Boot Corp., represented on the Nasdaq exchange by the letters BOOT. Andy Fannuke wrote a little game called Bitey-Man and made millions for us. The irony, of course, is that I’m Andy’s sidekick now. He runs the company and I basically baby-sit important potential customers. He’s still married to the former Log Lodge Cafe waitress Alicia June May, and has two sons and a daughter.

            You learn as you get older. Regardless of what F. Scott Fitzgerald said in “The Great Gatsby,” new money is as much fun to have as old. Here’s the more important truism: It’s better to be young than rich.

            I’ve been back to Manitou Springs a number of times, and the town has lost its sheen, if it ever had one. I don’t remember the arcade or the tourist hotels looking quite so rundown. The main road bypasses Manitou entirely now; in my day, Colorado Boulevard handled all the traffic. The Glass Cage is still there, but shows no sign of being a hot spot. I was told the ownership changed years ago. I didn’t find a one of my old friends, and I had some telephone numbers I thought might still be good.

            I suppose that’s what happens when you remember your youth; it must be impossible for anyone to remember accurately. I’ve found that every cliche in the literature that examines youth is true. You will idealize your own youth. You will be open to the concept of a revolution. You will remember the times you were at your best, and gloss over the things that were your fault. In your youth, you think your place in the sun will last forever.

            I saw myself as living out my youth on the big screen with the music of the era as the soundtrack. History for me was Credence Clearwater Revival, Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix and the Rolling Stones. My soundtrack included Bad Company’s Paul Rodgers as he sang, “Chose a gun, and threw away the sun.” In Alice Cooper’s “Desperado,” he sings, “You’re a notch and I’m a legend. You’re at peace and I must hide.” The anthem of the 1970s drug dealer, of course, was “On the Border,” by the Eagles. It must sound like a cliche now, but I assure you the music reflected the times.

            I remember myself in this motion picture with smooth, taut skin, thick brown hair, a flat stomach. All the women I went out with were young. I was, in fact, healthy and strong. Every rich old man would buy youth if it were a commodity.

            There was a zeitgeist in the air at the time, 1973, and I recognized it. My youth was a passport. I could sell marijuana if I made some connections, if I was charming, and if I could manage some basic business practices. I could get rich.

            Before the publication of this book, the publishers said they would put out an “advanced reading copy” to generate publicity. It was 2005 and it worked. It gave the business press yet another chance to beat up on me. I was criticized for writing in the first person. Well, I’m a salesman and not a writer. They said the police would have caught up with me for sure in three years. They said I don’t understand drug addiction. In the beginning, let me tell you, I was there.

            Here’s my problem. After years of success at Boot Corp., I met a pretty woman and fell for her. Later, when she dumped me, I was devastated. I know it happens to everyone, but when it happens to you, well, it hurts. The business press, used to covering fairly boring stuff, came alive with sensational stories at a time I was trying to hide and wait out my depression. So, I started making notes, writing.

            Now, I’m in middle age and since things have turned out well, I suppose I should just laugh and think, “Well, damn, I sowed some wild oats.” That’s not how I think of it, though. I had potential never realized, and sometimes I wasn’t a nice person, and I was into a bad thing, really, at the end of my drug dealing days. I wish I’d been a better son to my mother and father. I’ve been redeemed by a video game, Andy Fannuke’s video game, then trashed again.

Chapter three

            In 1973, when I quit Schenaker’s Construction, I was making $3 an hour for a 40-hour week. The minimum wage at the time was $1.60, although construction paid better. After taxes were taken out, I made about $100 a week. The profit Andy and I made on the drive to Dodge City, then, seemed like a lot of money. A couple of days later I sold another pound to Jessie Barlow, and ounces to a hippie named Nick and an African I knew, Ayodele, pronounced Eye-Oh-Deli. I met the son of the owner of the Glass Cage, Bleu Morrison, and sold him an ounce. Andy and I thought we had it made.

            Andy bought a derringer with a pearl handle and two chambers that held .22-caliber bullets. In the 1970s, there were all sorts of people who worked leather, making belts and trying to sell to the tourists. Andy had one of them sew a holster into the inside wall of his left boot, thus he could pull out the derringer easily with his right hand.

            Andy wore t-shirts, bellbottom Levi blue jeans and his cowboy boots. I wore Levi 501s, which have a straight leg, dress shirts and tennis shoes. We were both clean shaven with long hair, but I looked like the ex-jock and Andy, the science nerd. Indeed, whenever Andy got down, a little blue, he would say maybe he’d just open a television and stereo repair shop. Andy was always questioning whether he should be in the business. I think he was always hurt by the fact he’d disappointed his parents and hadn’t gone to college.

            I was busy thinking of ways to expand the business, and the way to do that was to continue to make friends, sometimes called connections. I was always putting together the map. The idea I came upon was a party every Saturday in the fall. It’d start with the University of Colorado football game, or whatever Big Eight game was on the tube, and then switch to music and food in the evening hours. Our large house on Colorado Boulevard, with three floors, was perfectly suited.

            We discussed the fall parties at great length, and whenever we met people we’d ask them to comment. There weren’t any big-screen televisions in those days, but Andy did the next best thing. He set up a bank of three televisions in the living room, plus one in the kitchen and one in the bathroom. Football fans liked the idea of being able to go into the bathroom, take a leak, and not miss a play. If there were three games on the networks, we showed three games, but often without sound. There was sound when a game was close, or if it was a Big Eight game. Otherwise we played music. We went to garage sales and bought solid but inexpensive chairs. We picked up couches and put them in the rooms upstairs, so couples could pick a room and make out if they wanted. I mean, why have parties if you aren’t going to meet women?

            We wanted women to like the parties, so we may have purchased used couches but they had to be clean and not broken down. We purchased many straight-back chairs. We had every style of chair, I thought, orphans some of them. We didn’t have any broken chairs. Over time, we learned to take chairs apart, clamp and re-glue them. Since those days, I’ve always noticed chairs and been able to repair them.

            Upstairs, there was a large room, and on the other side of the hall a small room and a bathroom. We put a “Women” sign on the door. We put a nice, little couch in the small room and a couple of chairs. In the large room, there was a couch and straight chairs. We had a lock on the small-room door.

            Women liked having a bathroom, and women waiting to go to the restroom often waited in the small room upstairs, sitting and talking to other women, in that first year. The large room became a place of a second party, without TV. People would sit in a circle and pass round joints, talk and joke. Sometimes a couple went to sit on the couch in the large room, and would shut the door for privacy. But we didn’t put a lock on the door. We didn’t want a couple to go up and stay for too long. People like to change places during a party, and I often watched people go up the stairs to see who was in the large room.

            The entire house, inside, was painted white. I thought it had a yellow base. Regardless, it was a clean look with wood floors except in the basement, which had tile over a concrete floor. Downstairs, there was a kitchen, bathroom and two bedrooms. This is where Andy and I lived.

            We were conscious of getting busted, of course, but we’d thought that through as well. We allowed people to smoke at the party, but Andy and I never kept more than a dozen joints at the house, plus alcohol. We didn’t play the music too loud. We tried to be conscious of the neighbors.

            Our house, being just off Colorado Boulevard, wasn’t in a particularly nice residential area. It was a busy street and there was lots of pedestrian tourist traffic in the summer, people who parked and walked to the arcade or visited the strip of candy and t-shirt shops located in the business district. It was the place to stroll on a cool Colorado summer night while the rest of the country was baking hot.

            I kept ounces of pot in a car parked about two blocks away, and if someone wanted to buy an ounce, we’d take a walk. We’d get into the car, make the deal, then I’d drive and park the car somewhere else. Andy always stayed with the party.

            Our first party was the last day of August, a Saturday. All through the day, perhaps 30 people stopped by, almost all the people we knew in Manitou Springs. We had a keg of beer, and a good spread of food, and I enjoyed watching the game. Then, when the party might have died, four young women, on vacation with one of the women’s parents, stopped in.

            I think the women, girls really, were still in high school. They were attractive and liked our party, and the free pot, and Andy and I both got in a little make-out action. The rumor spread, all summer, that there were hot women at our party. That first party lived on until about 1 a.m. We considered it very successful. I got a letter from the girl I’d met, Annie, and she said they got in trouble with the adults when they got back to the hotel. Still, she said if I was ever in Springfield, Missouri to give her a call.

            Early on, the issue of a second residence or office was discussed. Andy and I wondered where we should stash the marijuana if it wasn’t at our house. We had two cars then, Andy’s 1964 Ford Falcon and my Mustang. We would keep a couple of pounds of pot in the trunk of one or the other, and continually move the car around town. Neither of us were comfortable with this. If someone wanted to rip us off, we provided a fairly easy target.

            We talked with Mr. Wang, pronounced Wong, our landlord. He had emigrated from China and we knew he managed several properties. We called him one day, and said if Andy or I wanted our own place, did he have anything to show us? He said he’d come by and talk to us.

            Mr. Wang asked, first of all, why two men shared such a large house as ours, and secondly, why one of us would want to move out and leave the other with such a large house. We said we just wanted to consider our options. In the end, I suppose, as long as we paid the rent and kept up the property, he didn’t care. In those days, in Manitou and Colorado Springs, property was relatively inexpensive although the area was always seen as a place with growth potential. You could buy a nice home in Colorado Springs at the time for $40,000. Rental property was inexpensive and readily available. I think there was a limited job market in those days.

            Mr. Wang, Andy and I had a great afternoon, driving around Manitou in Mr. Wang’s Ford pickup looking at houses. There was a third-story apartment, in a really tall house, that we thought had potential. He also showed us the office/medical complex he managed for his brother, a doctor and the first member of his family to move from Hong Kong to the U.S. A person had to listen carefully to Mr. Wang to pick up what he was saying. He was 45, which seemed old to me then. But, I liked him. We told him about the girls we’d met on Saturday night, and he seemed to like being included in the news. He said, somewhat sadly, that his wife mostly refused to learn English and it was hard for them to make friends and do new things.

            Andy and I decided against getting a second apartment. Although we had money, pot and customers, we still thought it important to manage our money carefully for a while. Maybe we’d hit a dry spell.

            Since we didn’t have jobs, we had time on our hands and became tourists. We went to the Garden of the Gods, a place with large, red sandstone rock formations. We went to the Cog Railway, a train up the base of Pike’s Peak, and hiked down from 7,500 feet to Manitou, elevation 5,980. We drove up Pike’s Peak, elevation 14,110 feet, in the Mustang.

            We hiked to the waterfalls in North Cheyenne Canyon Park. We visited the limestone caverns of Cave of the Winds. We played a lot of miniature golf, the loser being required to buy the root beer at A&W.

            Every Friday, we’d take an LA turnaround, crank up the music and clean the house from top to bottom. We were maybe hippies, but there were some things we knew. Women appreciate a clean house. So on Fridays we would do a thorough cleaning. We wore clean clothes and washed our hair.

            There was the party on Saturday, where we always made a few hundred dollars in sales. On Sunday, we went for hikes. On Monday, I admit, we felt a little let down. Everyone else went to school or to jobs, but it was just another day to hang out for Andy and I. Miniature golf only held so much appeal. We played games at the arcade sometimes, pinball and Skeet, and schemed of ways to make the games better. Bitey-Man was in the formative years.

            Here is the thing about the 1970s, which Andy and I didn’t think about. There weren’t any metal detectors and only NASA had computers. There weren’t any cellphones, but pay telephones were plentiful. There weren’t any property seizure laws, which would eventually become a great detriment to illegally got gains. In 1973, a narcotics agent wouldn’t smoke a joint with you. If a person came to our party and didn’t partake, we wouldn’t have sold him or her any marijuana. However, we didn’t notice anyone not partaking.

            It was in the fall that I began to see the importance of keeping a routine. I’d go to breakfast at the Log Lodge Cafe every morning at 7. People could find me if they wanted. You wouldn’t believe how much marijuana I sold early in the morning. Then, I’d go for a long walk, exploring residential neighborhoods. In the evening, about 7, I’d go to the Glass Cage for a beer. The drinking age in those days was 19, and though I was only 18 no one made a fuss. I’d never drink more than one or two beers, so people knew they had to catch me between 7 and 8.

            Everything was going OK and yet, something was missing. Andy and I knew it was time to find girlfriends.

Chapter four

            My high school girlfriend was Amy Schneider, a pretty girl with medium-length brown hair parted on the side. In some way that I can’t explain, it was a nice haircut. She wore tight turtlenecks in the winter that showed off her figure. She was a banker’s daughter and serious about school. She could’ve been a cheerleader, but that would’ve interfered with debate so she chose not to do it. We went out for two years, and in some way I felt I was part of the Schneider family.

            As we neared high school graduation, she said she would go to the University of Colorado if I would, and we could continue our relationship. I said I wasn’t going to college, so she chose the University of Texas, where her father had gone to school. It took away the temptation to drive to Boulder every weekend and perhaps regret my choice not to go to college.

            In Manitou Springs, in the fall, I started dating Melody, a well-built woman who worked at the A&W. She had what we called dirty blonde hair and a pretty smile, nice teeth. Andy dated her friend, Monica, who had fine, large breasts and a chunky body. She had black hair and pretty brown eyes. Melody had a better body but Monica was prettier. I teased Andy that I was worried she’d break him. We made other jokes about Melody and Harmonica.

            It was a nice time, just the thing for two sex-starved boys. I remember we went to Red Rocks for an Elton John concert. We played team miniature golf. We saw movies. “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” was one, if I remember correctly. Melody never tried to stop me from dealing.

            It was interesting, but I began to see class differences. My father was the owner of the unlikely named John Datsun Ford. We didn’t sell Datsuns. That was the family name. I’m John Avery Datsun. My grandfather purchased the Ford dealership with money he made repairing cars at a garage behind his home. I remember him once, wearing a simple brown suit and white shirt – his uniform for years – selling a used pickup to a sun-hardened truck farmer. These farmers would grow watermelons and tomatoes, and sell them on the side of the highway. Later that same day, my grandfather sold a new Lincoln to a well-groomed banker. I was a young boy at the time, perhaps 6 years old.

            My father was not a salesman, but more of a caretaker, manager type. He had one year of college, then dropped out to work as a mechanic for his father, gradually moving to the sales floor – not for long – and then to the ownership duties.

            I didn’t mind washing cars, changing oil or turning a wrench, but I must admit putting on dress clothes and showing cars, then trying to get the maximum value for a car, weighed on me although I could do it. I sold many cars while still in high school, but I couldn’t imagine doing it until I was older and out of options in life.

            My father was disappointed in my lack of enthusiasm for auto sales. He said at a young age I seemed able to engage people in conversation, a gift he never had but one he appreciated, seeing it in my grandfather. It would be years before I appreciated my own father’s skill as the caretaker of a business. Not everyone can fill this role, either.

            Melody’s father was a produce manager at a grocery store. I don’t think there was any expectation she would go to college, so she was quite different from Amy Schneider in that way. Melody was impressed that I read books on my own. I remember Bob Tejon had given me some Joseph Roth novels. Roth was a writer of Jewish descent who chronicled the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. I loved reading about Europe between the World Wars. Roth wrote of everything, the characteristics of people from different countries, politics, the stock market, romance. He covered all the themes of life.

            I liked novels, which had so much more depth than television in the 1970s. I used to hate it that every half-hour show had a moral and everything wrapped up tidily. I knew life wasn’t like that; I like to think I was never a popular-culture kind of guy. I developed a theory that anyone who voluntarily goes on television is not that bright.

            Andy’s father was an executive at a construction company. He put together the electrical bids on company projects. Andy remembers his father as always being stressed out. Well, we agreed, that was no way to go through life. We were young and didn’t understand the pressure of making one’s own way. Melody and Monica, the M&M girls, were on birth control pills. So, we had easy money and easy sex. No stress and no babies. Honestly, we couldn’t figure out what was wrong with our parents.

            Andy and I shared a joke for a long time. I left a note once, for Monica, saying I knew we had made movie plans, but Andy and I would be late and would they accept dinner in lieu of a movie.

            When we met up with Melody and Monica later, Monica confided to Andy she didn’t know what I meant when I wrote “in lieu of” and could he tell me to please not use French words in the future. Well, Andy and I weren’t rocket scientists, either. Not yet.

            We learned a little about capitalism, though. Just before Christmas, money enters circulation into the economy via Christmas bonuses. We sold a truckload of ounces as people began to prepare for Christmas parties. Andy and I drove to Pueblo, celebrated Christmas with our families, then headed back to Manitou.

            My father was angry that I couldn’t really explain what I was doing. Andy and I both said we were just picking up odd jobs here and there. Melody and Monica welcomed us back. It was only a two-day absence, but they treated us as if they hadn’t seen us for months. I can’t tell you how happy that made us.

            It gets bitter cold in Colorado during the winter, but the cold doesn’t seem so bad when you have a girlfriend to snuggle in with some nights. Still, we were house-bound at times and things got a little crazy, a little emotional. Monica cheated on Andy with a good-looking carpenter we knew. Andy was crushed, and in January we learned a little more about capitalism. People were short of cash following the Christmas spending binge and no one was buying pot, so we had to curtail spending on entertainment, a hard thing that first cold, dark January.

            Melody got angry with Monica because she was afraid I’d drop her out of loyalty to Andy. For about a month, you never saw a woman so eager to please her boyfriend.

            Monica was happy with the carpenter, but then he dropped her for another woman; he was a good-looking guy, the Carpenter Jim. So Monica came begging back, wanting to hang out with Melody, Andy and I, but by this time Andy had determined it wouldn’t happen. Oh, Andy accepted some make-up sex, but he didn’t take Monica back.

            I got tired of the whole thing and quit calling Melody. She stopped by several times, and it was never angry or painful for us, but the truth is I’d had enough. Spring was on the horizon and I wasn’t ready to settle down at 18, not with a woman – sexy though she was – of limited brain power and even less ambition. Did I get some degree of ambition from my father and my grandfather, a characteristic that comes from your birth place in society, or was it genetic, a restless gene? Environmental or biological? I didn’t think about it long.

            Our first non-football party of the year was a “wall hanging gift party.” It may have been March, 1974. We had the Final Four basketball tournament on, and people could bring a picture or painting or anything decorative for the walls. Until this time, people agreed our big house was rather spare looking. There were TVs, stereos, chairs and couches, but that was all.

            Ayodele worked as a nurse’s aid at a nursing home. He brought us a picture of a black family that had been left in one of the resident’s rooms. Everyone liked it. It was a handsome looking family, all dressed up, and no one knew anyone in the picture. It was also some kind of politically incorrect joke. Two white guys with a family picture on the wall, but obviously it wasn’t our family. Ayodele would buy an ounce, then sell joints for a dollar to people he worked with. Another locale at the end of the road.

            Melody and Monica showed up at the party with a copy of the Mona Lisa. Monica never seemed able to get over that French thing. It looked expensive and was in a nice frame. I think everyone knew Melody and I broke up, and in fact we hadn’t invited either of them, but our parties were never a secret.

            A few people felt uncomfortable, seeing the expensive gift. They knew the goal was more of a joke, the gift part, and it was obvious to people Melody was pained that we weren’t going out. Or else Monica was pained she wasn’t going out with Andy.

            A friend, Donna, gave us a nice painting she had made of an outdoor Colorado scene, the mountains near Cripple Creek, with aspen trees. We hung it prominently in the living room. Bleu Morrison brought us a color photograph of the Glass Cage, the lights inside shining brightly through the windows on a dark night. Bob Tejon brought us a painting of Elvis on velvet. They used to sell those velvet Elvis paintings like crazy in the tourist shops on Colorado Boulevard and we all thought it was funny. Hippie Nick, a diesel mechanic for the Cog Railway, gave us a black-and-white line drawing of early Paris. Nick was in on the “in lieu of” joke.

            After the gifts were opened, Andy and I broke out the yellow doubledomes. This was a kind of LSD, very mellow, that was bright yellow and the shape of a peanut M&M. Most people took one, but a few declined. Not everyone was comfortable with the easy availability of drugs in the 1970s.

            One by one, I circulated the party and offered anyone who wanted one a pill. One pill. And they had to take it in front of me. A woman, Lilly Ferrazi, was at the party. It was her first, and she was there with Donna. Lilly was 29, recently divorced from the son of a rich developer in Denver. She wore jeans and a white fur top, open enough to show a lot of cleavage. She wore nothing under the coat. The fur top was appropriate because it was still cold at night. She had straight brown-blonde hair parted in the middle and a confident look. Melody hated her the moment she saw her.

            Lilly was in the dining room, a room off the main room, when I got to her. I told her what I had and offered her one.

            “Only if you put it in my mouth,” she said.

            I took a yellow doubledome out of the baggie, held it in my fingers, and Lilly made her mouth into an “O” and sucked the pill out of my fingers. I laughed nervously and she smiled.

            “I owe you some kind of decorative gift, I guess,” she said.

            “I suppose you do,” I said, playing along.

            She got up, walked to the nearest wall, and freshened her lipstick. All eyes in the room were watching. She puckered up and kissed the wall. She left bright red lip marks in the middle of the white wall in the dining room. I laughed. The people watching were trying to be discreet, but I can assure you we were the center of attention.

            “I’ll never wash that wall again,” I said.

            “See that you don’t.”

            We looked at each other for a moment. The party started back up.

            “So, what do you boys do?” she said. “Party, and sell marijuana?”

            “That’s about it,” I said. “Do you have a problem with that?”

            “What if I do?”

            Feeling bold, I said, “Well, you could spank me.”

            She laughed. “Promises, promises. What does a girl have to do to get a drink of whisky around here?”

            We left the party in Andy’s hands and drove to the liquor store. We purchased a bottle of Glenfiddich Scotch Whisky and a bag of ice. Lilly offered to take me to her house, but I said Andy had never taken care of a house full of tripping people before, so I’d better go back. She said OK. In the car, a block from the house, I could feel the yellow doubledome kicking in.

            Everything was nice, the cold and the way the stars twinkled. My car, the shiny red Mustang. The older woman in the seat next to me. We began to make out, and it was perfect, two warm bodies together on a cold night, holding, touching, kissing.

            Finally we went in the house to have a glass of whisky. The televisions were off and candles were lit. There were serious and intimate conversations all through the house. I saw Donna as I poured the whisky into glasses of ice. “Where’s Andy?”

            “Upstairs with a woman,” Donna said.

            “Anyone I know?” I said.

            “It’s not anyone I know,” Donna said. “Those yellow doubledomes are really good,” she added. “Very nice.”

            Steppenwolf’s “Magic Carpet Ride” was playing on the stereo. The music sounded more alive than I’d heard before. I watched a speaker. The cover was off, of course, and the speaker danced in rhythm to the music. I saw someone smoking a joint, and when the joint went down to the ashtray, a trail of orange light followed. I also heard a “Buzzzz” noise. It continued as I watched, fascinated, as they smoked the joint. Light with a sound. This would later be one of my contributions to the game Bitey-Man, the orange fire bombs shot from cigarette guns.

            Lilly and I moved to a couch and watched the party. She was an experienced woman teaching me about whisky. “The Irish, first in whisky,” she said, toasting me. We talked about her relationship, which went bad, and how she was OK and got a bunch of money to boot. It served him right for cheating, she said. She owned a house. She’d been to Europe. All the sudden, between Lilly, Joseph Roth and Scotch Whiskey, there were so many things I wanted to know and do. Donna came by and said she had been to Paris, to the Musee d’Orsay, and saw 22 Van Gogh’s.

            “That sounds marvelous,” Lilly said. I felt like the most inexperienced man in the world.

            For hours, we didn’t sleep, but watched the party, talked to people, took hits off joints, sipped whisky. As the ice melted, the whisky assumed a nice taste, not hot but smooth. As the sun rose, I saw Andy and a woman trek through the house to the basement, where we slept. I began to ask people to leave. By about 8 in the morning, everyone was gone and I locked the front door. Lilly took a shower and came to bed with me.

            We made love, and I know it was the yellow doubledome, but as I was about to climax I heard a train whistle. I was in a tunnel, the train was coming, and the pleasure was exquisite. “Strawberry Fields Forever” was playing, a Beatles song, and at the end, one can hear a train in the song. I’m sure this contributed to my experience. I wasn’t able to work the train into Bitey-Man. I thought about the experience for months, years. I lay back, and Lilly put her hand on my chest.

            “I may have just completed the best evening of my life,” I said. “The last five minutes were especially good.”

            Lilly laughed softly. “John,” she said slowly, “you are just what the doctor ordered for a woman going through a divorce.” She kissed me, and I think we fell asleep, although when you are on LSD you never really know for sure.

Chapter five

            I rested a couple of blissful hours when there was a loud banging at the door. The first thing I thought of was the police, and I got up quickly, put on jeans and shoes, and went to the front door. It was Carpenter Jim. Even as he saw me, he banged more loudly. I could see he was angry.

            “What is it?” I heard Andy yell from downstairs.

            “It’s Jim, the carpenter,” I said. “I’ll handle it.”

            I put on a jeans jacket and stepped quickly outside. I didn’t want Jim to step inside, but in the process I realized I’d locked myself out. I felt my jeans pockets and I had a joint and cash, but no keys. I tried to appear friendly. “Hey, what’s up? I’m John. I’ve seen you around before. We have mutual friends.”

            “Andy’s in there with my girlfriend, Marcie. He’s going to have to pay. I’m going to kick his ass. He has to learn his lesson.”

            Suddenly I understood. The small woman with dark hair, sneaking though the house with Andy in the early morning hours, was Marcie. My stomach knotted up, and I was thinking of ways to buy time, to think of what to do.

            “You and I have no beef,” Jim said. “Open the door, I’ll kick his ass, then I’ll be on my way.”

            “Andy left the party last night,” I said, a bold lie. “I was at the liquor store. I don’t know anything about this Marcie person. Do I know her?”

            “We started going out a month ago. She’s a teller at the Colorado National Bank. I like her a lot. It killed me when she left last night. Then, this morning, I realized she was over here.”

            “How do you know that?”

            “That’s her car,” he said. He nodded at the orange Ford Pinto parked nearly in front of the house. I thought of how hard it must’ve been for my father to try and sell orange Pintos. “She wanted revenge,” he said, and then he began a loud, obscene and angry diatribe. It was blatant and graphic.

            “Please,” I said, “the neighbors can hear. We don’t want them to call the police.”

            “I don’t care. Let them call the police.”

            I took a deep breath. “Let’s think this through. If the police come, and you’re cursing and threatening to physically hurt people, it’s you who’ll get charged, not Andy. That wouldn’t be such a good result for you.”

            “Maybe I’ll just get you both arrested for drug dealing.”

            “Now, Jim,” I said. “I’m the one who sells a little marijuana, not Andy. And, you and I, we don’t have anything going on between us, do we? I mean, I might even be on your side on this thing. We have friends in common.”

            “Send him out,” Jim screamed. The language was more obscene than that, but I don’t like to use the words. He tried the door himself, but it was locked, a lucky break for me. I breathed a sigh of relief.

            “Please,” I said, “the neighbors.”

            “Oh yeah, OK,” he said. He took a deep breath and suddenly looked a little defeated. I was a little cold, standing outside in jeans, tennis shoes and a jeans jacket in the shade, slightly hungover. It can get pretty cold in Manitou Springs, even in March.

            “I’ve got a joint in my pocket,” I said. “Let’s take a little ride, have a few hits, and I’ll buy you breakfast. We’ll go over the whole thing. I can tell you Andy’s not here. After we talk, if you still want to kick Andy’s ass, I’ll get out of the way.”

            Jim nodded and we walked in silence to his 1956 Chevrolet station wagon, which was repainted pearl white. It was a nice, restored car and I complimented him on it. He was able to haul construction supplies in the back, so the car was practical as well as showing some style. As we drove away from the house, I lit the joint. It was good weed, a red-green in color.

            I handed the joint to Jim. “He took a hit, held it, exhaled. Then he took another. He held the joint as he drove. “I never buy weed,” he said. “I’ll smoke it if somebody’s got it, but I never buy it.”

            “Why is that?” I said.

            “Somebody’s always got it,” he said with a laugh. He took a hit.

            After a few minutes he handed it back, and I put the joint out in his ashtray. “I’ll leave this half joint,” I said. “Don’t forget it’s here.”

            He nodded, and parked, and we went inside the Log Lodge Cafe. We sat in a booth, not the usual long table, and I ordered cereal and a banana. Jim ordered coffee. But, after watching me eat my corn flakes, he ordered ham, eggs, hash browns. Now, I’m young, but I also know when you’re really blue over a woman, you don’t eat. There are degrees of being blue, and I relaxed a little when Jim ordered food.

            I was embarrassed. My hair was looking a little wild, and I hadn’t shaved. I was stoned, my eyes bloodshot, and wearing a jeans jacket for a shirt. I had it buttoned up, but it wasn’t a look I would have favored. I reminded myself the goal was to buy time for Andy, and hopefully get Jim to cool off. Still, I noticed some of the after-church crowd looking at me.

            “If you ever need a joint, say for a special occasion, come by and I’ll roll you one,” I said. “I went to see Elton John. Two tickets set me back $20. Can you believe that?”

            Jim nodded. “You took Melody, and Andy took Monica, huh?’

            “Yeah,” I said. “It was a good show.”

            “Was Andy pretty messed up when I went out with Monica?”

            “When you slept with her, you mean?”

            Jim laughed a little, taking the teasing. He was about 30, and I hate these kinds of comparisons but he looked a little like Sting, from the band the Police. Thin blond hair, handsome, slender but strong body. Maybe six-foot tall.

            “Andy was OK with what happened,” I said. “At the time, you know, it hurt his feelings. That’s all. It’s not like he was going to marry Monica or anything, but they were pretty steady. It was an insult, a slap in the face. Let me talk privately, just you and me. You’re a good-looking guy, can go from woman to woman. Andy, he has to work harder. It doesn’t come naturally to him.” I didn’t believe this, by the way, but I was trying to feed Jim’s ego. Andy did well with women.

            “I know what you mean,” Jim said. I cringed at his conceit.

            “Anyway, I thought you were going with Carey,” I said. “Now that’s a buxom girl.”

            “What’s buxom?”

            “Busty,” I said, “strong body.” It was a funny thing to say as Monica was every bit as buxom as Carey, but I didn’t point out the irony.

            The Log Lodge Cafe has rough-hewn logs on the outside, but has an inside finish of polished pine, very nice. It was clean with a black and white linoleum floor. There was a decorative stone fireplace, and pictures of old silver mines and miners on the wall. It was not a large place, with six tables and six booths, plus the long table and the counter. It was busy in the summer when there were tourists in town, but it handled the crowd in Manitou Springs easily the rest of the time.

            “I broke up with Carey a month ago to start dating Marcie,” Jim said. “I really, really like Marcie. Carey showed up two nights ago, trying to convince me to take her back. We had sex. Somehow, Saturday, Marcie figured it out. She was pissy all day. Then, about 9 in the evening, she said she was leaving. I begged her not to go, but she was determined. It wasn’t until this morning I figured out she went to your party.”

            “You know, now that she’s leveled the playing field, she may take you back. And, all things considered, it was your fault.”

            Jim nodded. I’d finished my cereal, but Jim ate the rest of his meal. I picked up a sports section off another table. “Look at this,” I said, “Colorado signed that quarterback from Loveland, Vince Acocella. He passed for 1,000 yards as a senior.”

            “I hated the jocks when I was in school,” Jim said. “They were all bullies.”

            “But you would’ve kicked Andy’s ass this morning if I hadn’t taken the time to show you how it would have hurt you, not helped you.”
            Jim smiled and said a curse word.

            “Really, you should come to our football parties in the fall,” I said. “We have fun, it’s all the people from the neighborhood that you know. And, if you’re single again by then, there’ve been a lot of nice women there.”

            “If Marcie takes me back, I’m going to stay with her. I’ve never been invited to your party,” Jim said.

            “They aren’t the kind of parties you need an invite to,” I said, “but now it’s official. You have an open invitation.” In a way, I didn’t like this guy, but I could see it wasn’t in my best interest to have enemies. When Jim dropped me off at home, we both saw that Marcie’s car was gone. Any tenseness between us was over.

            “She may be looking for you right now,” I said, knowing this was unlikely. Marcie had got her revenge so she obviously wasn’t thinking about Jim.

            He couldn’t wait to get home and see.

            Andy had the NFL on television while he cleaned up after the party. As I walked in the door I saw a quarterback complete a beautiful pass. Andy immediately walked up to me, a smile on his face.

            “John, I just spent an hour with Lilly. That woman is killer; I’ve never seen anyone so sexy. She was wearing a white fur coat with the front zipper down. Damn. Anyway, she said to tell you she’d call.”

            “Marcie looked cute. I’d say you’re doing OK yourself.”

            Andy laughed. “Best party of my life. Did you save my life this morning or what? I heard Jim’s voice and Marcie was freaking out.”

            “I talked him down,” I said.

            Again Andy laughed; he couldn’t stop smiling. “I owe you, I know. I want to hear all about it.”

            “I’ve got to shower first, change clothes. These 36-hour parties are really hard on a guy. I’m going to show my age fast.”

            “I’d never be having this much fun living in the dorm taking freshman algebra,” Andy said. “I owe you. I mean it.”

            I shook his hand. “It was a challenge. I wondered if I could do it, talk him down. We’re partners, Andy. We’ll always be partners.”