Bobby Mountain

so... here i am... it's 1970 and i'm just finished with school... working weird hours at the newspaper... basically some nights I get out at 11pm and others at 1:30 in the morning... My days off are Thursday and Friday... so, essentially, Wednesday night is my Friday night... Thursday is my Saturday... and Friday is my Sunday... and, get this... because the Sunday paper is published early on Saturday night, i only worked from 4PM-8PM on Saturdays... Sunday was a light news day so there wasn't much to do on Sundays either. So what's a guy to do in Manhattan after midnight? This is about Bobby Mountain but bear with me while I explain what happened here...

My best friend growing up (you can find him on the list) was Mel M. Now Mel went into the garment industry and wound up hanging out with a whole other circle of friends and associates. But, as was the case so often in those days, we did have one thing in common.... We both enjoyed a good smoke... And, while I was moving in a college/intellectual mode, Mel was rolling with the down and dirty. So one day, Mel and I met up and sat down to toke a bit, comparing who had the better what... Anyhow, in the course of the conversation, Mel is talking about the garment industry and how everybody is getting totally wasted. I'm talking about my roommate (who worked for Time Magazine) and his crowd getting just as wasted... Eventually, I tell Mel that I have only half a life because of my work hours... So he tells me to go meet this chick Brandy who is hanging out down in Soho at a Franklin Street loft scene. And I, still accumulating connections and customers, am more than happy to go see who Brandy is and what this scene is about...

And then I wind up calling her and getting invited downtown to the loft... When I tell a few 'connected' friends that I got an invite to a Franklin Street loft scene, they're like all 'wow!' and start telling me about rumors going around that half the best smoking dope in town is moving through a loft building on Franklin Street. So a few days go by and I head down to meet Brandy... She tells me to meet her after midnight the next day when I get out of work... and we can head down so I can meet her guy, who, it turns out, is a perversely brilliant guy that took a few dozen too many acid trips and is into believing that he's not only seen god but that god is speaking through his mouth. I end up in this loft building with three floors... and I'm only allowed onto the first floor since there is kind of a pecking order as to who makes it to the next level... something like one of today's video games... It turns out that they deal grass on the first floor, hash on two and the heavier stuff is apparently moving only on three.

Since this is about Bobby, I'll leave out the months of challenges and tests and happenings and skip on up to the third floor... and who lived there...

The first time I met Bobby, he was coming off a two week coke binge... which is what happened about every second week. and we got real close as the weeks and months went by. Bobby was an original thinker. He didn't have the major educational creds that were moving on the first floor, but he had the ability to see through everybody's bullshit. And he wound up at the top of the Franklin Street Mountain, moving pounds of coke and harder stuff... I remember one time we were cooking up some acid... Bobby went and got a little mold that was used for pills... and started fabricating his own pharmaceuticals... the ultimate generic drugs... lol

So he makes up the base... and sets out the molds... and actually manufactures the pills... and then, while they were still in the mold, he cooks up a batch of acid, and, with an eye dropper, begins dosing out the pills... one by one... and, in my best imitation of Tom Sawyer, I jump in and start squeezing out the drops... we're getting blitzed as the stuff is pretty much everywhere... it's in the air we're breathing... and I remember we're counting together... one... two... three... four... five... etc etc until we've let drops into each pill of each row... and how, occasionally, the phone would ring... and we'd look at each other... one... one... one... one... and then two... two... two... and then break up because we had just ODed some poor fucker on LSD... which was pretty fucking funny since we firmly believed there was no such thing with acid.

Bobby played a dynamite soprano saxophone that you could hear most any night... and the longer the coke binge went on, the crazier the jazz sound became... and in those days, in that place, every loft building had a coked up musician playing straight ahead until the drugs ran out...

He also had a really amazing lady... who became quite famous later on... Bobby ultimately got popped for dealing coke to a fed... did his time... came out and moved out to God's Country in the great northwest.... where he lives today...

Scott G

Scottie... I went to school with this really sultry babe named Marta. And we ran in the same circles... which means we were usually at the same parties... it wasn't anything serious... more like we were close acquaintances through a mutual friend, Caroline (who I'm in touch with to this day). So, one day, Marta is looking around for something to smoke... (it wasn't like I was seriously into it yet but I was definitely putting my scene together) and I happened to have a few really high-quality Thai doobies to share with her... and somehow, she told her brother about it (Joey R who is also on this list) and her brother was very much into dealing. He had a partner (enter Scottie) and it didn't take long before they were asking me to get them stuff.

Joey was a story unto himself... He wound up turning to real junk and was dealing pot to pay for it. I remember one time he fell asleep on the subway and lost a bagful of cash. A few years later, he cleaned up his act, got a job driving a truck and managed to hit an overpass crossing Central Park in New York City with a truck filled with a few tons of pistachios... Crunch!!

Anyway, back to Scottie... He was a kind, gentle kid who was totally honest and wound up moving to Costa Rica to open a tourist spot. I'm wanting to believe he's still there and living the life he dreamed of.

Update:  Caroline RIP...

Beanie (Bernard Frank)

Okay… so one day in 1969, flush with money and likely stoned (still working at the New York Times), I decided to take a week’s vacation to Florida. I was engaged at the time but that’s a whole other digression and Cheri didn’t come with me so I’ll just say Cheri ended up becoming collateral damage from this trip. I stayed at the Doral Beach Hotel and the first day there, I wound up at the pool, sitting next to this freak from Philadelphia named Beanie who had hair to his waist and a guru-type grin that he perpetually wore on his face. In the course of the week, I spent a lot of time with Beanie, discussing so many things in so many obtuse ways that my head was spinning at ridiculous speeds. Between sharing joints and opinions, Beanie ripped away any remaining objections I had to leaving my life and starting again. We talked about everything from the war to the cost of pot. He also happened to have a fifth booze bottle that was filled with coconut oil that he had brought back from Jamaica (along with a whole bunch of other ‘stuff’). Beanie showed me the virtues of coconut oil as a sun-tanning device and how to roll a huge spliff and by the time the week ended, I knew I wasn’t long for the New York Times. I wanted to ‘Be What I Could’ and not ‘Be What I Was’. And thus began a long journey that was unimaginable at the time but, looking back, was probably inevitable.

Max S

Max himself wasn't all that interesting... pretty much of a small-time selfish big dope who sold bales of Jamaican weed and some Lebanese hashish for a while... was partners with Jerry S and JB. Together, they were decent connections but didn't really get the big picture of things. My sense of the business was that fairness was an essential part of the picture. Just because you had a product that people wanted wasn't a reason to take advantage of them. The business wasn't about a single transaction but was an ongoing relationship that could be profitable for all sides. Jerry got the picture but Max was too full of himself to see anything beyond his own self.

So I remember Max as someone who always tried to milk every bit of product for every possible buck. His ego was huge... and if he had something that he knew you wanted, he played on it until you pretty much paid whatever he wanted and said thank you. After several years, the tables were turned and he was real surprised when I had what he wanted and I told him to go fuck himself.

He did, however, have a sweet-looking live-in who was fun to be with. That relationship lasted until Max became physically abusive. The last time I saw her, her face was bruised purple and my eyes rolled as she tried to tell me how it was her fault. I left and didn't go back. I heard later on that he got busted trying to sell some lousy product to an agent. I suspect he was asking for a price that only a cop would pay.

The Cast of Characters

Bobby Mountain
Kenny L
Gary Yukon
Randy B
Joey R
Scott G
Marvin S (RIP)
Robin (RIP)
Big Al from Red Hook (RIP)
Av
Bill
Travis (RIP)
Tom R; Gabriella
Bradley
JP (RIP)
Stu
James
Rocky
Melvin
Charlie K
Mike R
Dennis B
Vernon H
Peggy
JB
Max S
Jerry S
Norman
Bob S & Murray
Patti (RIP)
Ernie
JP (RIP)
Risa
Keith (RIP)
Steve P (RIP)
Denis W (RIP)
Glen
Gary (RIP)
Ronnie F
Mel M (RIP)
Larry S
David L
Gerry Labush (RIP)
Jack K
Mitch C (RIP)
Charlie G (RIP)
John the Beak
Don L
Donna N
Larry S
Sarah
Kenny K
Tom O'M (RIP)
Lee Lang
Mike Fowler
Michael
Emerson (RIP)
Michael S
Jeff G
Abe
Stu F
Mark F
Russ
Mark M
Jesse T
Kip (57th)
Beanie (Bernie Frank)
David K
Freddy
Schmoo (RIP)
Foot (RIP)
David P & Helen

I Meet Greg & Go To The Beach

One of the best things that happened to me at Bronx Community College was my friendship with Gregg Z. He was the boyfriend of one of the girls who hung around the Pub office. Gregg was a quiet sort of guy, but he always seemed to attract the girls. I remember one time, there was this girl I had been trying to get close to, Lois, and no matter how nice I was to her, she just totally ignored me. I told Gregg about this and he just walked up to her one day and said “Hello bitch.” Lois ran after him for two semesters after that and at the time, I never quite understood was it was that got her. Anyway, in another similar incident, I managed to introduce Gregg to the girl he would eventually marry, Mimi.

We had some good times together while working on the campaign trail and we also became co-editors of Gleanings, the school literary magazine. We seemed to hit it off pretty well, and he asked if I’d like to rent an apartment with him out at the beach in Far Rockaway for the summer. My father, by this time, was starting to look for some new companionship in his life and wasn’t terribly displeased with the idea of me living elsewhere for a few months. He gave the okay and Gregg and I went hunting an apartment at the beach.

Far Rockaway was a wonderful place before the powers that be tore it down in an urban renewal binge during the 1970s. The boardwalk ran on for several miles above a beautiful white sanded beach. Each two blocks of beachfront were enclosed by these long stone jetties that extended at least a hundred fifty feet into the ocean. It was an exhilarating experience to stand at the end of one of these jetties above the deep ocean water, with the wind blowing powerfully in your face, waves slapping the rocks, the spray dancing all around, with gulls and other birds spearing fish within a few feet from your perch. It was a favorite place for local fishermen who would hang out on the jetties whenever the waters weren’t being used by swimmers. I was quite inspired by the changing moods of the ocean. On a calm clear day, it would appear so peaceful and non-threatening, while during stormy weather the waves would scream their roar with a ferocity that was genuinely frightening. For seven months out of the year, the streets and beaches were serene and practically deserted. The other five months, however, were another matter entirely.

It wasn’t long before we found an apartment on Beach 44^th Street in one of those big old houses that were common in the area. The rent was $150 a month for a single furnished room with a small kitchen. By furnished, I mean it had two single beds, a straight-backed wooden chair and an old metal lamp without a shade. The house was a victorian-style structure with a high-peaked roof that resembled the House of the Seven Gables. The roof was covered with dark gray shingles. It was a small, dimly lit version of Norman Bates’ house which overlooked his famous motel. It had been painted an ominous shade of drab green at some time in the distant past and was badly in need of attention. There was a steep staircase leading up to our room and every time I climbed those steps, I expected to find a skeleton at the top.

Vietnam, Eggs and Marijuana

During the time I spent at Bronx Community College, from 1965 through 1967, the action in Vietnam started to become much more intense. The ‘police action’ was beginning to feel much more like a war. Our country was drafting more and more young men, sending them off to Southeast Asia, and there was no real end in sight. I found myself, at first, torn between my natural patriotic feelings and the suspicion that this war had nothing to do with patriotism. In fact, as time went on, I felt that it might be more patriotic to try to end our involvement, than to enlist and fight for Uncle Sam. Although I refrained from joining any of the on-campus anti-war organizations, because they were much further left-leaning than I believed myself to be, in mid-1966, I did show up at a protest outside a marine recruiting station on the Grand Concourse and began picketing the place. A crowd gathered and before long, the fifteen demonstrators, me among them, were bombarded with an assortment of items varying from tomatoes to eggs. I could see that the passions on both sides of this issue were going to be expressed with extreme intensity.

That term, I was taking a night course at the college annex which was located in the Bronx High School of Science. One of the protestors from the recruiting station, David Fleischer, turned up in my class and we used to talk politics while walking to the subway after class. He was espousing what sounded to me like a ‘party line,’ which seemed to welcome an American defeat in Vietnam rather than the cessation of fighting that I favored. On a cool night, while arguing some point or other, he produced a corn cob pipe and asked me if I’d like to smoke some ‘pot.’ I had been offered the opportunity to indulge with increasingly regularity lately and in fact had tried it twice with no apparent effects. I figured this would be just like those other times so I joined him in smoking his pipe. I just took two or three puffs, but by the time we reached the train station, I was having difficulty focussing on conversation. In fact, it seemed that there were five minute pauses between responses. The train was delayed, and we sat there for an hour, waiting on a bench. Finally, it arrived and I began the long trip home. Usually, the ride took 45 minutes if you made good connections but was unlikely to take more than an hour if you didn’t. The train seemed to take forever stopping and starting at the stations along the way, and I was really afraid of what my dad would say when I staggered in the door, more than two hours later than expected. Finally, I arrived at my home station and walked to two blocks home. Amazingly, he couldn’t see anything wrong with me and I actually arrived home only five minutes late. The entire delay had been an illusion, an effect of the cannabis. The next day, I expected to have a craving for drugs, the beginning of a dreaded habit, but I could discern no after effects whatsoever.