The Kid That Became A Guy Part VI: The Businessman- I Go To Work

Well, I didn't go to work right away. The whole phoney hippie thing was beginning to fade into oblivion. Peace and love and communal living just didn't work out. When I was the "Acid King" I went up to Vermont to visit my friend Omar and his band of merry pranksters who lived on a farm. I guess somebody forgot to tell them that farming was hard work and you kinda had to know what you were doing. They must have thought that food would just start growing because they showed up and were cool. When I got there they were all starving so I took them to the market and bought the place out. It seems that's pretty much how the whole hippie/communal/communist thing works. It's all pretty good as long as somebody else pays for it.

By 1969-70 most of the hippies had started shooting heroin so I figured I'd give it a try to see what it was all about. It lasted about 6 months and I had enough. I had met this chick named Jan and we hooked up. She did a lot of speed so I started doing that. There was this guy David I met that was a chemist and could make the stuff, so I went up to New Hampshire and broke in a high school and stole a vacuum pump which was all he needed to go into business. He would make pounds and give me a couple a week to sell off in ounces. It worked alright for a while. Jan had been with this junkie named Dickie who had OD'd. He had the same birthday as me and the same first name. I was older by around 4 years and we were about the same size. He was 5'6- I was 5'7. I had about 20 lbs on him but it worked out Ok. I got pinched a couple of times and used his ID so I was still clean.

David got nigger-rich. By 1970 or 71 Nixon's War on Drugs was going pretty good. Before that you could get away with having money and no job. But by 71 the cops and especially the Feds were starting to pay attention. David went out and bought a brand new Lamborghini...and of course got popped. I think he got something like 20 years. He had a good lawyer and got to go to one of those country club joints, but the drug days were pretty much over. As far as making any real money at least. It was time to go legit.

For the first time in my life, I decided to get a job and try to be like everybody else...whatever that was. I was pushing 30 and had never really had a real job, not counting my brief stint in the service. I had never been to school- I guess I was like a fish out of water. All my life I had read a lot and I learned quite a bit of stuff. I went to a place that hired people on a temporary basis and lied my ass off on the application. I was going to put down that I was a college grad but I figured that was pushing it. I put down that I graduated from high school. I also made up a Social Security number. They sent me to a place that made some kind of communication connections for the military...I was a goldplater. For the first time, I was a 9-5 guy. About a month after I started this guy I knew Sandy Mac came to work. I knew him from playing music, he was a pretty good drummer. He needed a place so I told him to move in with me- I had a two bedroom place.

I kind of liked working there. A bunch of us would go to the liquor store and grab some beers and sit in this guy's van and smoke weed and drink for lunch. I had never liked drinking much, it tasted like shit, but I liked the effect. I'd get a couple 16 oz Ballentine Ales (The Green Death) and 2-3 nips of Old Thompson (OT) and go staggering in after lunch. My boss didn't seem to mind, as long as the work got done. I drank like I did everything else...to excess. When I shot heroin, I did a lot. When I used to take acid, I did it every day. When I shot speed, I did enough to kill most people. Most people would do a quarter tsp. I did a tablespoon at a time. I had a 5cc syringe and a soup ladle to mix it in. When I shot it, I'd stop breathing and turn blue. Most people didn't want to be around me when I shot up, but I figured if you're going to do it, don't fuck around, do it! I drank the same way.

After a couple of months or so at General Connector, they figured out my SS number was a phoney and let me go. I figured I better get a real one and I went to the Post Office and got an application. I had one problem...I didn't know half of the information they wanted, like my mother and father's name. So, I made some up. I sent it off and in a month or so I got my card. In the meantime I needed a job. I had a friend named Carl. Carl was a junkie and I always felt kind of bad for him...he was honest. If you're going to be a junkie, honest is not the best thing to be. When I was a junkie, I had money from my acid days, so I was Ok. My friend Bobby Azaritti from when we were kids was a crook at heart. I had heard that he ripped off some big dealer, a Puerto Rican guy named Roberto, who shot him or gave him a hot shot or something like that. I never got all the details. Carl worked. That poor bastard worked painting apartments for about 16 or 18 hours a day so he could get heroin. So I went to work with Carl painting apartments.

If you're going to paint apartments for a living, Boston is the place to be. Boston is about 60% students who are always moving so there are always plenty of apartments to paint. Before long I had bought all my own tools and went off on my own. A studio paid $100, a 1 bedroom- $150 and a 2 bedroom paid $200, so if I worked hard, I could do two a day. So I made about $300-$400 a day. I also began to accumulate tools and branch out. I worked with an old guy that was a roofer, so I learned how to roof. I also learned how to frame, do drywall and I started taking classes at Boston Architectural Center to get my builders license. By 1975, I had a license to build any wood frame structure up to 2 1/2 stories including plumbing and electrical.

I had pretty much turned my life around. Outside of smoking a little pot, I didn't do drugs. I worked hard and saved my money. I played softball (a religion in Cambridge where I lived) and hockey. Things were going pretty good. Around this time Harvard and MIT started buying up all the real estate in Cambridge they could get their hands on and turned the apartments into condos. There was lots of work. I started hiring guys and buying trucks. By 1976 I had 5 trucks and 25 guys working for me. All I had to do was bis jobs and keep them busy. I even did an historical renovation for Harvard- I lost my ass on the job, but it was good advertising. Bob Villa from This Old House came out and started telling me how we should do the job- so I ran him off. What an asshole!

I have to tell this story. I had a buddy from the old days named Vito Caspa (I think that's spelled right). Vito was an Italian Gypsy and a master thief. One night I'm in my place and there's a knock on the door, so I go and ask: "Who's there."

"It's Vito, let me in." I open the door and there's Vito with a trash bag under his arm. "Richie, you gotta see this." he says. He opens the trash bag and he's got the first Gutenberg Bible ever printed. It had been on display at the Museum of Fine Art and Vito broke in and stole it.

So I ask him, "what are you going to do with it?"

"I'm gonna sell it," he says, "it's gotta be worth a fortune."

"Who are you gonna sell it to," I ask him. "That thing's hotter than Hell."

"You know Bruno Bolero, call him up."

I told him that nobody is going to touch the thing. It's worth a fortune, but not to anybody we know. But to humor him I call up Bruno, who laughed his ass off and asked if he could come and see it. A year or so earlier I had done a roof for this big shot lawyer, Tom McKenna, who used to be a Federal judge but was in private practice. He told me if I ever needed a favor to call him... I had given a really good deal on his roof. He wound up making a deal with the insurance company to give Vito a little money and drop prosecution if he turned the Bible in. I had to throw that in, I always get a kick out of that story.

Well, things were going along pretty good, business was good, my life was Ok, and I had begun to drink...a little more that what was good for me. Ok, a lot more than what was good. I began stopping at bars between bids and started showing up to do bids half in the bag. By 1978, my business was in the shitter. So I did what any self-respecting alcoholic would do...I took my show on the road.

Next: On The Road

https://steemit.com/story/@richq11/the-kid-that-became-a-guy-an-autobiography-of-sorts-part-i
https://steemit.com/story/@richq11/the-kid-that-became-a-guy-part-ii-uncle-arthur-and-back-to-boston
https://steemit.com/story/@richq11/the-kid-that-became-a-guy-part-iii-sonny-patty-and-uncle-sam
https://steemit.com/story/@richq11/the-kid-that-became-a-guy-part-iv-vietnam
https://steemit.com/story/@richq11/the-kid-that-became-a-guy-part-v-haight-ashbury-and-the-hippie-life