Diary of an Unbroken Child: My Autobiography Chap. VII

And so my Odyssey begins...Having drunk away my life in Boston it was with little regret that I put my hometown in the rearview and began an adventure that continues to this day. The construction industry in Boston and outlying areas is a fairly small community and by 1978 I couldn't get a job sweeping floors on a jobsite. In the course of a couple of years I had drunk away a promising career, five brand new trucks, thousands of dollars worth of tools. I fought to keep my company going out of a sense of responsibility to my employees- I had let them down, that bothered me more than anything. I didn't really care about myself, but these guys depended on me for their livelihood, that's what really hurt. When it became clear through my alcoholic fog that I couldn't keep things going, I sold what I could, kept my hand tools and bought a Chevy stationwagon and headed out.

I first headed to Ohio to visit my old friend Larry who lived there. Larry was a friend and neighbor in Cambridge whose father owned a town in Ohio. Larry had a job in a brewery (imagine that) and we partied for a week or so before I took off. He had a friend named Joanie who had a little boy and she and I hit it off. She lived in Elyria nearby and she wanted me to stay around, but I had this yen to head South. I had heard that Houston was having a building boom and I thought it would provide a fresh start. Nobody knew me there so they didn't know I was a drunk. I stopped off in Columbus to grab a burger and a beer at a pub just off the Ohio Statecampus. When I came out, my car was gone. I had grabbed a $20 out of the air vent and the rest of my money (about $800) was in the car along with the rest of my possessions. I had two options, return to Boston, or stick out my thumb and continue on to Houston- I picked option two. I guess I could have gone back with Joanie, but I would never mooch off a woman- it just ain't right.

My first ride took me almost to Cincinnati. Then I got a lift from a pretty good looking young chick with two kids. She said it was Friday and I probably wouldn't get a ride over the weekend so she invited me to stay with her in Covington Ky for the weekend. Sounded good to me. Monday morning, she dropped me off at the highway with a twelve-pack, a carton of cigarettes and $20. My next ride was from two guys heading to Houma La to work in the oilfield. They said I could get a job in no time there, so I went along. The first place I tried hired me as a dishwasher and that was my introduction to oilfield work.

The oilfield was a different universe, completely alien to anything I had ever experienced. I worked 2 weeks on and a week off. It was good for me because it kept me away from booze for two weeks at a time. On my weeks off, I got a hotel room in New Orleans and stayed drunk. My Uncle Arthur had taught me to cook, something I had a knack for, it seemed. My first time back in from the rigs I went down to the French Quarter in New Orleans. I was in the Abbey Bar one day on Decatur St. down by Jackson Square. I ran onto a guy I knew from Nam there who was recruiting "consultants" for Central America... $100,000 for 6 months worth of work. I didn't have a passport, but he laughed and said not to worry and within a couple of weeks I was on an old DC-3 on my way to Central America to consult for Coca Cola. When I got back (which truthfully I hadn't really planned on) I bought a 57 Jaguar XK-150. Then I went back to the oil field. The Jag lasted almost a year until I wrapped it around a bridge in Chauvin... don't ask me how I got there or why I went. The last thing I remember was being in a bar in New Orleans.

So, when I went back to work, I took the cook test and became a night cook/baker on the rigs. The money was much better and so was the prestige...a dishwasher is kind of the low man on the totem pole as far as the rigs were concerned. While I was out there I met a guy that was a hand from one of the service companies. Out in the Gulf, all the jobs are done by contracting companies, not the oil company itself. This guy worked for a company that pumped mud down the hole and monitored for natural gas. He offered me a job at his company, so when I went in the next time, I began training to repair and calibrate gas detection units and mud pumps. The money was incredible, within 6 months I was taking home $2500 a week! For doing almost nothing. The gas units are on a timer, it goes off after 1 minute, 1 hour and 24 hours. All I had to do was make sure the readings were the same- so after an hour I came back and calibrated. Then after 23 hours off I came back again and did the same thing...but I got paid for the full 24 hours. If I was on the rig, I was getting paid. But, like all good things, this too came to an end. By 1980 or 81 the oilfield went down and me with it. I hung around Houma for a bit, worked as a chef in an Italian restaurant for about three or four months just to keep from spending what I had in the bank. It was a lousy job, the owners were assholes, but I did have one interesting encounter. Carlos Marcello, the godfather of New Orleans, ate there once a week- veal almond and a double order of Fettuccini Alfredo. One day one of his goons comes back to the kitchen and asks: "Who made Mr. Marcello's dinner?"

Everybody looks at me and I'm thinking "I fucked it up and now I'm a fucking dead man!"

"Mr. Marcello would like to see you," he says.

I go out there and Mr. Marcello invites me to sit down. He says, "this veal is the best I ever had. What would it take for you to come to my house and make it for five or six of my friends?" I didn't know quite what to tell him. "How about $200? I'll send a car for you and you bring your stuff and come to New Orleans."

So the goon came into the kitchen, gives me $300 to cover supplies plus my $200 and made arrangements for me to come make lunch for the Godfather and his friends at his mansion. I gotta tell ya...the experience had a pucker factor of about 9! About a month later I left Louisiana.

So, with plenty of money in my pocket and a nice El Camino, I headed for Texas. Houston was a terrible place. The economy depended on the oilfield and there was almost no building going on, so I headed for Austin. In Austin, I got a job driving a backhoe for a guy that was into Scientology. After a few months he tried to get me to join and when I wouldn't, he fired me. I worked building condos for a while and met a guy from Alabama named David. David had a job in North Carolina and told me I could get a job there as well. So we headed out, first to West Virginia to see his wife and kids and then to North Carolina.

David was a pipefitter, by trade so I couldn't get a job with him. I took one sweeping floors. I had gotten a job with a drywall company but I didn't have the tools. One day I was sweeping and this Indian guy comes up and asks if I was "the drywall guy?" I told him yes and he had me write down what tools I needed and the next week I was working finishing drywall. These Indians were a strange bunch, I lived with them for about three years. They were called the Lumbees, after the river that goes through Pembroke where they live. According to their legends, they were the Croatans who rescued the settlers from Roanoke Island and took them into the swamps to keep them from getting wiped out. The government wouldn't let them use the name Croatan so they called themselves after the river. Over the years they interbred with the settlers and are some of the weirdest looking Indians you ever saw. Most are named either Locklear, Lowery, or Hunt. My good friend Johnny Locklear has piercing blue eyes, but his features are Indian. I understand that the actress Heather Locklear's family is from Red Springs, not far from Pembroke. According to tribal legend they are descendants of the Croatans... The same as from the "Lost Colony," on Roanoke island in Virginia. From what I was told by many Lumbees, the Tuscaroras were advancing from the north to make war on both Indians and settlers alike. The settlers were gathered up and taken by the tribe into the swamps of what is now southeast North Carolina. Both ethnic groups intermarried over the years and slaves who had run away into the swamps were also welcomed. I became friends with them and was adopted into the tribe as "The Italian." (pronounced Eye-talian). My friend, James Earl Lowery remarked a year or so later: "You ain't no white man- You're just another sorry f**king Indian!"

Johnny Locklear (Blue-eyed Johnny) and I rented a big farmhouse together where we lived with his wife Virginia, their 3 daughters and my girlfriend, Claire. Johnny was actually married to two women so he did some bouncing back and forth... his wives were cousins- you figure that one out. I enjoyed being an Indian very much. I lived there for a couple of years until my popularity with my friend's wives made it necessary for me to relocate. I would have never considered doing anything but after they kept inviting me over (mostly while their husbands weren't around) things became a bit dicey so- disgression being the better part of valor- I moved to Florida. None of my friends called me by my name, to the Lumbees, I was called Italian (pronounced eye talian). We worked all over North and South Carolina, Georgia, Florida and we even went to Memphis to do the drywall on Fed Ex's headquarters. Mostly we did hospitals (for HCA) and government jobs like senior housing. After about 3 years the work was starting to run out so it was time to go again.

It was late 1984 and my drinking was getting worse. I had no car so I hitchhiked to Florida hoping to get some drywall work there. I still had my tools and I could almost always find some work somewhere. In Florida I wound up working out of day labor in Ft Lauderdale and West Palm...we called it "the nigger pool...The few, the proud, the unemployed." In West Palm we camped on a landfill near both the day labor and the airport. I got a steady job working landscaping on PGA National golf course, but after about a month the boss took off with payroll so I was "fucked again." Florida wasn't working out.

I started hitchhiking up I-95 where I met this lunatic from New York named Ritchie who kinda grafted himself to me. I couldn't get rid of the guy. He seemed like one of those people who hadn't been far from his family and although he was big and tough, you could tell he was afraid. So, I took him under my wing and we headed for Mobile. I don't know why Mobile- because it was there, I guess. We hitched into Mobile and looked for a bar where we could get a drink. All the bars had signs that said "Private Club." Finally around 3:00 we find a bar without a sign and we go in and start drinking. Around 5 the place started filling up and I start looking around. There's guys dancing with guys and women dancing with each other. I turn to Ritchie and said, "notice anything different with this place?" He jumps up and yells "it's a fucking fag bar." So I grabbed him and got him out before he started any trouble. We met a guy a few streets away that asked if we wanted to go to a bar on the way to the mission. The place had one of the Private Club signs. We pointed it out and he laughed and said, "that's just to keep blacks out." We worked out of day labor for about a week. Ritchie had enough of the road and his parents sent him a ticket home. I was relieved to be rid of him. I got a job doing drywall on a senior center and hooked up with a chick I met on the job. After about two months I had enough of her and Mobile, so I headed out for Texas again.

On the way to Texas I got picked up by this old school bus with some weird cult in it. They went from rest area to rest area bumming money off people. I wasn't having this and told a guy named Rodney I was leaving. Rodney said the "leader" had a gun and if anybody tried to leave he would shoot them. I told Rodney "fuck this guy and his gun." I beat the living shit out of him, took his gun (which I broke up later and threw away) and took off. Rodney came with me. My cult life lasted under 2 days...I guess I'm not cut out for that stuff. When Rodney and I got to Austin, things had changed drastically from when I was there before. You couldn't walk 2 blocks without the cops being on you. I could see this was going nowhere fast so I asked another transient where there was a lot of building going on. He said Ft Smith Arkansas. So, we headed for Ft Smith.