September 4, 1978 - Journal - Labor Day

Nothing happening today. No invitations to BBQs, but it's still early and Alice and I are still recovering from our cocaine night with Guadacanal. Yesterday afternoon I went over to his apartment and knocked on his door. His frail from DC answered the door in underwear. Only the bottom. She said nothing and returned to the bedroom. My friend was at the table packing palstic bags with grams. He was wearing a mask and motioned for me to sit.

" Thanks for the other night. I woke up in the emergency room without any idea how I got there. Still don't, but I figured you got me there."

"I threw you over my shoulder and carried you to 1st Avenue to get us a taxi, then brought you to Bellevue. I left after seeing you were in good hands,"

"Was I close?"

"You were beyond dead, but you got back in one piece."

"A miracle thanks to you."

"How you feeling?"

"Hard to tell. You want a line?"

I shook my head. He cuffed me a gram. I took it to sell later. I needed the money more then the blow. Walking home I stop at Gem Spa to buy the Times and ordered a chocolate egg cream. The Red Sox had lost to the Yankees 15-3 last night. I had watched the first innings at Grassroots. My home team looked dreadful. Yaz is hurt. They all look banged up and the Yanks keep winning.

On St. Mark's a runaway poodle begs food. I have none. Only the egg cream and cocaine, I give it neither. It 's cooler than Sunday with gray skies promising rain and an early autumn. It had been a hot August in the East Village. I only have a levi jacket. Three sweaters. Same as last winter and sneakers for footgear. Rent is over due. I called my landlord, Jerome Golding, to say we'd have the $183 this week. I'm sure I can get $100 for the gram, covering my half, plus my landlord wants me to paint his Upper East Side penthouse's bedroom and boudoir. I said yes, but worry about screwing up. I'll have to put down a lot of drop clothes. I don't need any mistakes. Another probelm is that I should be looking for real work instead of spening my nights at CBGBs. A day job. Steady income. Winter isn't far away.

Back at the apartment, I told Alice that Guadacanal had survived his near death experience.

"He wouldn't have survived, if you hadn't taken half that line. I'm off that shit." She lay on the bedroom futon. The fan did little to clear the air.

"Me too." I hoped it wasn't a lie.

I went to living room and turned on the TV. Nothing on. No old movies or sporting events. Eight channels of nothing. Not even wrestling or the Three Stooges on The UHF channels. I get up and shut it off. I have no money. $10. More once I sell the blow. It keeps calling my name. I don't answer its call.

That evening I went to CBGBs only to find it closed for tax reasons. Hillary hadn't paid his debt to society. I sold the gram to Anthony Scibelli, who was in Phebe's with Frank Holiday. I hadn't even touched the stuff until now. The two huffed lines at the bar. I left them befoer I joined them.

I walked across the Village to Alice's restaurant. She wasn't getting off until 1.

"I'll see you later, hon."

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September 3, 1978 - Journal

CBGBs was packed for the Dead Boys recording a live LP. At the bar Alice had drank bourbon with Kim like a cowhand off the range. The two werevmore than a little drunk and fought off anybattempt stop their drinking. Various girls flirt with me at the pinball machine. I refused them. Neither Kim nor Alice were safe. Mostly from their selves.

After the end of the show we accompanied Guadacanal from the Geeks and his frail from DC to his place on 3rd Street. Alice was legless and lurched across the sidewalk. I shoukd havevtaken her home tomour place, but she wasn't done with the night. We went up to his apartment and sat at the kitchen table in his apartment. Alice slips onto the floor. Everyone laughs, as she says her bones have melted to butter. I lay her on a sofa and Guadacanal breaks out an ounce of blow. We huff thick rails, almost like we have a death wish. His girlfriend joins Alice. We stay at it, then he huffs a finger thick line, coughs and flops on the floor. Not breathing. I thump on his chest. He coughs and vomits on himself. I slap his face. Nothing. Two comatose kittens on the sofa. A dying man on the floor. I lift the phone. No dial tone. Guadacanal's breathing is shallow and getting ready for a flatline. I toss him over my shoulder, grab the keys, and hurry to 1st Avenue to hail a taxi.

"Bellevue."

I throw the driver a twenty.

"Fast."

It's almost five. Traffic is light. Still dark. No pedestrians. Five mintues later we're in the ER. Doctors ask questions. I tell the truth. They know it before I say it. My friend is swept into a recovery bed IVs sprouting from his arms. The doctors and nurses see ODs all the time. Hevhas regained consciousess and wants to leave. interns restrain him Guadacanal will be fine. I return to his apartment. The DC girl is gone. Ske took the blow. The dawn is rising. i huff thedregs on thebtable and I wrestle Alice home to East 10th Street and tuck her into bed.

I can't sleep.

At noon Alice wakes, surprised to find herself in the apartment.

"I had a dream I was in Morgantown with my brother. I want to go to some open spaces. I need the country."

It's a sunny day. I still haven't slept.

I had visited her grandmother's haunted house outside Charleston. Two days of rain. Water dripping inside the house. A cold damp in the middle of the summer. I had felt trapped by the weather and the mountains and hollows. Almost as if there was no where to run, but Alice had been inspired by a photo of the glammed-out New York Dolls before Gem Spa and run away from her hometown like some many of us in the East Village.

"New York has gotten to me."

I said nothing about Guadacanal's OD. I could have been him. I doubt he had been in any condition to carry me down the street.

"I want to go somewhere."

"It's Labor Day weekend." Everyone in New York has left the city, but us and everyone we know, except Guadacanal. All I want is a hot dog from a BBQ. Instead outside the streets are steamy and garbage line the sidewalks, mostly because there are not enough trashmen, since the President told the city to go fuck itself two years ago and the sanitation workers went on strike to protest the layoffs. It was either money for the police or trash. The police won out. Tourist remark on the swirling trash. The cops raid drug dens. None of the middle class feel safe. I'm not scared and Alice is brave. This is our city. Nothing is going to get better soon. But swe aren't asking for better.

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SEPTEMBER 3, 1978 - JOURNAL ENTRY - EAST VILLAGE

Last night at CBGBs I offered kisses to eager high school girls from Dalton, they acted sexy as if they had rehearsed the wanton kisses and yearning smiles before the bathroom mirror at home. The music at the clubs was tolerable, but I wished I had been alone instead of with Alice. Not to cheat, just to be free.

After CBGBs closed at 4am, Guadalcanal, his frail girlfriend from DC, Alice and I once more went to his place to snort cocaine. He had another pile of it, since he was dealing to Johnny Thunders, the Heartbreakers, their groupies, and entourage. It was a good business and Guadalcanal didn't have to cut his blow. The yellow Bolivian flake was the purest in the Lower East Side.

Alice and I left a 6:30 AM and she said walking up 1st Avenue in the early dawn light, "I want open spaces. I'd like to see my brother, Bobbie, in Morgantown."

"Even after you fled your grandmother's house there?"

"I was spooked by the rain falling on that old place."

"I want a holiday too. Maybe Boston."

I had family there. My mother and father woulld take me to eat at Tony's Clam Shack on Wollaston Beach. I might even get a little money from them.

"I have had enough of New York City."

That was the cocaine speaking, but I admitted, "I've had my fill too."

My heart was in this city. My heart also wanted to be in Boston or better yet Maine. Not here with all the garbage on the sidewalks. I kicked a sack.

"Why isn't this city clean?"

"Because the city can't afford the sanitation workers," answered Alice and added, "The city can't afford anything. It's bankrupt. It's falling apart."

"Right into our hands." The city belonged to the people. "Tourists complained about the garbage. We just live with it."

"Until they take it back, it is ours."

Not forever. The banks love being in one place. Wall Street. A couple of billion and the city is good as new, at least on the surface. The 1980s are less than a year away and 1984 closer than ever.

The radio announced the hundreds of national car crash deaths over the Labor Day Weekend.

We sounds like we will top last year.

I've survived two major car collisions and one pedestrian-car crash over the years.

Drink was involved in none of them and nothing bad ever happened on a highway. The interstates are my paradise of speed and skill with smooth roads late at night. 'Hit The Road, Jack' is my modus operandi.

By thumb or car I headed West, but now I am anchored to New York by commitments to nothinglessness. Everyone here says I have drifted too long and it's true, but also a lie. I love the road.

I used to sleep in desert motels Cheap ones to spend the night Crashing in a field When the towns were too far apart.

I've huddled in city alleys I knew no one. No one knew me. Golf courses had soft grass. Little League fields too The towns had no name. I forget some of the places. I remember most.

Meeting you ended my shifting A woman to whom I owe it all We settled in the big city A drifter quit running to the sun A hillbilly woman never going back home. The bad times are still bad, but you stop my shouting.

Your love steered me away from a bad ending The one drifters dream about without ever wanting to live. Now I can tell you, I ain't going nowhere.

Believe me, baby, I'm telling the truth And I'm not leaving, because every day I keep drifting to you. A surprise to you, a happy ending for me, A drifter at the end of the road.

2022 - For Labor Day Weekend I rode the Lucky Star bus from Chinatown to Boston's South Station. BBQ traffic was tough on I-95. There were no accidents. My sister-in-law picked me up in Harvard Square. We drove back to their home on the Watertown line. Nothing was open around them and now that I'm not drinking, I settled for a hummus vegetable wrap and a glass of water.

No cocaine either.

Guadalcanal is in Kansas City.

Alice is in LA.

She hates that I refer to her as a hillbilly. Her father was a lawyer, her separate other was a teacher or something like that, and the family home in Charleston was located in a suburban development.

The streets of New York especially Manhattan resemble the bankrupt city in the 1970s; encampment of homeless, drug addicts openly dealing and shooting in the streets, and young thugs getting mouthy with their elders. Once Old Bill from Frank's Lounge said to me, "The worst thing about getting old is that no one thinks you're dangerous."

He unbuttoned his elegant suit coat to reveal a holstered .38.

This changes the young punks' mind real quick, because they can also see in my eyes that I will pull the trigger."

Damn straight, Old Bill.

I'm lying on a bed at 8PM. It is quiet outside in Cambrige. Too quiet to be life.

I'm reading a book.

Philip Kerr's METROPOLIS

Berlin 1928.

Paradise.

George Grosz to Bernie Gunther

"I draw drunkards, men puking out their guts, prostitutes, military men with blood on their hands, women pissing in your beer, suicides, men who are horribly crippled, women who have been murdered by men playing cards. My chief subject is this Hell's metropolis, Berlin. With all its wild excess and decadence the city to me seems the very essence of humanity."

Not so New York.

I sense the threads of society to humanity fraying to the breaking point.

Then nothing and I know nothing well.

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AUGUST 16, 1978 - JOURNAL ENTRY - EAST VILLAGE

Last night I snorted nine thick rails of cocaine with my nerves on edge and my penis soft as a worm. I came back to our apartment from CBGBs well past midnight. Alice was asleep on the bedroom futon. I knew better than to wake her and lay on the living room couch. Not a breath of air from the open windows. I wrapped my naked body in a sheet and futilely attempted to masturbate. No wood and I fell asleep slightly before dawn.

My restless sleep lasted until noon. Alice had already departed for the early shift at the yogurt shop. I have no work, but hopefully can pull off a coke deal for money for a friend of Mark Amitin.

I call Mark.

"$2100 for an OZ."

"That's fine. It's not my money."

The buyer is an entertainment lawyer from Long Island. The end of the line starting with a Bolivian farmer, a local buyer, a muleskinner transporting the leaves, a lab turning the leaves into powder, a pilot, a wholesaler in Florida to a Dominican dealer, and finally my friend, Rick Guadalcanal. My piece of the action will be $150. I should have charged 2200, but decided 2100 was going rate. The buyer is going to test it, then say 'yes' or 'no'. I hope yes, because I only have $11.

Elvis the American Dream
A young Memphis trucker sings rock to become an international star.
HOUNDDOG to VIVA LAS VEGAS
Private jets, Grilled PBJs, sold-out concerts, and Graceland.
The light are off in Graceland.
The King died alone.
None of his fame or fortune forestalled his fate
Priscilla had deserted him
His Mom died at 42.
His body grew fat, but his fans only saw the glitter of the gold suits.
Poor Ole White Boy was never his own
After BLUE SUEDE SHOES hit the charts
The Colonel ran his life.
Elvis was sold out every second of his life
He was the King
And a King can not trust anyone,
But he gave away things to the poor. Cadillacs, houses, money.
He was the common man. Long live Elvis.

Alice came back shaken to her coreby the death of her idol. A hillbilly God.

"I can't feel good about myself."

"Nobody can, because no one hates you more than yourself."

We get drunk and getting drunk solves nothing. Not when the King is dead__

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JOURNAL ENTRY - AUGUST 5, 1978 - EAST VILLAGE

AUGUST 5, 1979 - EAST VILLAGE

No sign of Hakkim on East 10th Street, but the two young boys, Flacco and Manny, warned, "He ain't done with you. Hakkim a stone cold junkie, but he's stone cold baddd too."

"Fuck him. I fucked him up once. Next time will be worst," I boasted,but walked around the ower East Side looking over my shoulder, especailly in the morning taking Alice to work at the yogurt shop.

Last night Rick Guadacanal, the Heartbreakers' roadie, turned me onto cocaine. We snorted blow in CBGBs toilet. Cocaine is everywhere in New York City and the USA. Last month I dealt a little. It's easy money, if you keep your nose out of stash, a feat for men stronger than me.

Living on East 10th Street means cooking at home instead of eating at Greek diners, although there's nothing like bacon, eggs, and toast at the Kiev after a night of punk music.

This morning I woke up in a hospital. The only time I stayed overnight was at birth.

May 29, 1952.

Sixty-nine years ago.

It's forty-two years upstream from my first days at that apartment at 256 East 10th Street. Alice is living in LA with her husband. I haven't told her that I ave been hospitalize at NYU; my blood count in low after the surgeon stoped the bleeding from my cancerous liver, my blood sugar count was 450, and the doctors have scheduled an ultra-sound for tomorrow.

With all the tubes in me, I can't move around too much. Just to the toilet. I called Guadacanal to keep him the loop. I had visited the punk guitarist in Jersey City during his COVID quarantine. He was now home with his wife in Kansas City. Rick listened to the news and said, "Don't worry, you'll be fine. I got what you probably have ten years ago. No cancer, but my liver was shot. Medicine has advanced since then."

"Yeah, right," I said with the enthusiasm of a hypochondriac. My belief in eternal life had been challenged by the fact that I was wore a shameful 'johnny' with my asss hanging out on my truips to the toilet.

"You'll be out soon enough, but no more drinking."

"No more, unless the doctors tell me to get my affairs in order, then it's back to the 169 to imitate Dylan Thomas body and soul. THe poet had drunk himself to death at the Whitehorse Tavern.

Oh, the glory.I researched on the internet for John Thunders.

Cocaine By John Wieners versus White Lines by Peter Nolan Smith

Hurrah Nightclub

Hurrah disco on West 62nd Street died after the opening of Studio 54. The owners experimented with a dance club featuring mainstream rock with video monitors hanging from the ceiling. When this scheme didn't work, the owners called on Jim Fouratt to animate the ex-dance studio with New Wave and Punk and the impish impresario booked punk and new wave bands. The queer activist hired his friends to work the door and DJ booth, since they were all into this music. I was put out front as the doorman, my security was an old black boxer Jack Flood, and a moonlighting cop named Bobbie Gardiner, Haoui Montauk and Aleph Ashline sat at the desk dispensing tickets and free passes to the VIPs, and upstairs George Wrage took the tickets, Carlos Rodriquez was the lightman, Sean Cassette spun reggae, punk, and new wave, Randy the bartender was so so handsome and Jhourry his partner was so very wicked, Barney and the Odinesque Ron Jaggar, one blue sapphire eye and another blank white, paid our salaries every Saturday night.

The owners fought with Jim about paying the bands so much money.

It was the height of the cocaine era.

They asked Jim to leave. He was rightfully pissed at them. They wanted me to help him leave. I asked him nice. If I had been more honorable, I would have left with him, instead he told me to fuck myself. I was a hothead back then. Still am a little bit, but that night I escorted him out of the club.

I owe Jim Fouratt a big apology.

He was a true radical and visionary.

And not only with music.

But then this is about Hurrah and it was simply sex, drugs, and rock and roll.

To view the entrance of Hurrah circa 1981, please go to Merrill Aldighieri VDO

WANTED MAN by Peter Nolan Smith

Staten Island was formed by the melt-off of the Ice Age. The fifth borough doesn’t exist to most New Yorkers, but my doctor lived next to the Tibetan Museum on Lighthouse Hill. Nick and I attended the same college and every year he invited me out to his house for my annual mdedical examination.
Last weekend I rode the subway from Fort Greene to South Ferry. Saturday was a sunny day and the starboard side of the Samuel I. Newhouse was packed with tourist snapping thousands of shots of the Statue of Liberty. I sat on the port-side to survey Red Hook NYCHA projects.
Back in the 90s those forlorn houses had been named the city’s worst neighborhood and my friend Rocco had worked under cover for the NYPD narcotics. He had been off the force for years, but his brother was working as liaison between the Mafia, FBI, and NYPD on Staten Island and I tried the retired detective’s cell on the off chance that he might be on there.
“Where are you?” Rocco was a big fan of my writing. I had almost ruined his career as a movie producer with his seeking support for NORTH NORTH HOLLYWOOD, my screenplay about pornography in the 90s.
“Where do you think I am?” We were used to answering questions with questions. No one could know our answers.
“You’re not upstate.” Rocco never picked up the phone at home, almost as if he was in the witness protection program. “I’m guessing you’re on Staten Island.”
It was a long shot and I wished that I had bet $100, because Rocco said, “You motherfucker, you have someone tailing me.”
“Nope, just playing the odds.” I believed in planned coincidences. “I’m seeing my doctor at Rose Avenue. Maybe we could meet up later. Are you with your brother?”
“Nah, Johnny’s done thirty. He’s down in Florida collecting his pension. I’m with my old partner, Frankie, you remember him?”
“Sure.” Frankie was the scary half of a duo playing bad cop/bad cop. His partner looked like Dean Martin and got all the girls at the Milk Bar. “Wasn’t he related to someone in____”
“Yes, he was, which was he couldn’t get nowhere in the job, because everyone knew his connections, so after I busted out of the job, he became a union delegate.”
“A dead end for a good cop.”
“You got it.” Rocco and Frankie were basically straight in a time when being crooked was easy.
“We’re at Great Kill Yacht Club. You should come by. I’d like you to talk to him.” Rocco was producing a indie film about crooked cops in Red Hook. FIRST MAN IN wasn’t even close to being semi-autobiographical.
“Is he still on the force?” There was no one near me.
“No, he did his twenty and out, but then opened a couple of bars with ties to his family. They went under and he ate the debt, then he tried a deli and pizza shop. Each one was a failure.”
“I know the feeling.” My jewelry store in the Plaza went bust in 2009. I noticed that the ferry was approaching St. George and the tourists were flooding to the bow. I got up and lingered at the rear of the crowd. “What you want to speak about?”
“I’ll tell you when you get here.” I hated secrets almost as much as Rocco hated talking on the phone.
“I’ll call you after my check-up.” I got off the ferry and proceeded through the terminal to the trains. Nine stops later I exited from the train and walked over to Nick’s office. He was waiting in his BMW SUV. It was good to see him. The doctor and I had been friends ever since European History pre-1500 at college.
“Get in.” He popped the locks.
“What about my check-up?” I sat in the car. It smelled brand-new. Nick took care of his things.
“You look great.” He peered over the top of his glasses and pulled away from the curb.
“That was my check-up?” My legs hurt from too much basketball and I had a little hangover.
“I see enough sick people every day to recognize a healthy one.” Nick had been practicing medicine almost thirty years. His name symbolized health care on Staten Island. “You lost ten pounds in Thailand. You stopped drinking hard liquor. My eyes are clear and my skin is in good condition. You look great for a man twice your age.”
“Thanks.” His bill of health backed up what I had heard from the Thai doctors during my summer vacation in Sri Racha. “You mind if we stop by Great Kills Yacht Club.”
“Why there?”
“I have to meet a friend.”
“He connected?” Nick shrugged to say that was the only kind of people who hung out there.
“He’s an ex-cop making a film. He wants to help me with my screenplay BET ON CRAZY.” I had a name actor for the lead. Bill was going to play ‘me’ in the drama about a goy selling diamonds on 47th Street. “Do you mind?”
“Not at all, Rose is cooking dinner. We have an hour.” Nick drove past Hylan Boulevard past the various clusters of strip malls selling nails, sun tans, and pizza. He turned left on Hillside Terrace. “You know where his boat is.”
“I think they’ll be easy to find.” Rocco liked to see any approaching danger. I figured that it ran in the family. We pulled into the parking lot and I scanned the boats in the slip, then spotted Rocco and his brother supervising the storage of a SeaBreeze 25. The white hull was gleamed in the late summer sun.
“That’s them.”
“I thought as much.” Nick parked his car and we strolled over to the two ex-cops.
“Love to see yah.” Rocco shook my hand and I turned to Frankie. He was as handsome as ever, although the lines in his face aged him a little more than his years. At least he wasn’t balding like his partner. I introduced them both to Nick.
“I know you. In fact I knew your father. He was my doctor as a kid.”
“His father was a good man.” He always had a good word for me as did late Nick’s mother. I loved her bacon and eggs.
Frankie reached into a cooler and pulled out four Tecates. We spoke about Staten Island, their years working the Red Hook houses, and our connections to each other. We went back decades. Nick and Rocco wandered off to look at the boats and I stood with Frankie. He had something to say and started with a confession.
“You know me, I’m not a bad man.” He was posing a question.
“None of us are, but we do what we have to do to get by.” I had never killed anyone and Rocco had never spoken about any shootings resulting in a death.
“Yeah, well, I got into financial trouble a couple a years ago. I have three kids and an ex-wife. I needed to get straight and one night I met a guy I knew from the job. He was retired too. I had heard something about him, but couldn’t remember what. For some reason I thought that he was a little like me, but he starts talking about cocaine. I don’t know nothing for it. Maybe a few lines once and awhile.”
“It isn’t a sin.” I stopped, because coke wasn’t cocaine anymore.
“Anyway he tells me that he has a connection from Florida with pure stuff. He’ll front me a couple of ounces and I can sell it to my friends. I knew he was talking about my family. Shit, I wasn’t going to sell the shit to strangers. So I ask around and make a contact. We sell ounces and then a kilo. I get back on my feet and I’m almost ready to pull out of the deal, when this fucking scumbag turns out to be undercover for the DEA. They want me to rat on my family.”
“But you can’t.”
“No, I can’t, so they take me into custody until I make bail for a million dollars.”
“Who’d you shoot?”
“No one. Fucking G-man prosecutor thought he was Rudy fucking Giuliani and I was his case to ride into politics. They have me every which way; wires, tapes, every fucking thing. I felt like John DeLorean. I would have never gotten involved unless they suckered me into it.”
“I understand.” The good are good only because they are too weak to be bad.
“I’m looking at major time and I was wondering what you thought about doing a runner somewhere.”
“And Rocco told you about Thailand.” My old home Pattaya had been a refuge for fugitives. “You have any money?”
He mentioned a number. It almost had enough zeroes.
“If you live quiet that’s good for five years, but most farangs live fast in Thailand.”
“I’m looking to disappear.” A million dollars was a good incentive against flight, but time for cops was hard time in prison.
“You have a passport?” The Feds normally confiscate it on arrest.
“I got one,” he said it in a way that I knew it wasn’t his.
“And you can leave and never come back.”
“All I got waiting is a cell.” His kids were grown. People were going to be looking for him, but he was good-looking and Thais like good-looking people.
“At my age that’s going to be my retirement plan.”
“This isn’t funny.” Frankie wasn’t in the mood for jokes.
“Okay, I’ll tell you what to do.” I laid out a plan for him. The route was direct. I knew a village in the western forests. The headman was a friend. He had a nice sister. Vee had one eye, but spoke English. No one else in the village did. Frankie might last there a couple of months before the peasant food and the quiet of the rice paddies drove him into Bangkok. I wrote down the information with my left hand. My script was almost as unreadable as NIck’s handwriting on his prescription.
“And these people will take care of me?” We exchanged phone numbers.
“For a price.” I lived there some of the year. The tranquility was brutal, but I had my children and second wife. She loved me. I had no idea why. It had only been a month since I left her and I missed Mam.
“No one does nothing for free.” Frankie eyed Nick and Rocco coming back to us.
“I’m doing this for you.” I was waiting for him to ask me to be his guide. We had no history.
“Thanks.” It was a simple thing to say, when you were trying to disappear as a wanted man.
“It’s just a couple of phone calls. You have to do the rest.” He had been a fool, but all that bullshit about not doing the crime, if you can’t do the time is exactly bullshit.
We shook hands and I told Rocco that I’d see him soon. If Frank took my advice, i would see him in the western forests come the new year.
Back in the car Nick asked, “What was that about?”
“You really want to know?” I was getting hungry and his wife was a good cook.
“No.” Nick had his own troubles.
“Good.” And I had mine.
We were good friends. We knew that we didn’t need to know everything anymore and that was a good thing on Staten Island.

Pryor Love

How Hot Was It?

"How hot was it?" Ed McMahon.

"It was so hot, the musicians were snorting ice cubes." Johnny Carson

The master.

ROADS OF THE FLYOVER Part 3 by Peter Nolan Smith

Threatening clouds huddled over the Iowa cornfields. Monstrous flashes strobed through the thunderheads. The still air was charged with electricity.

"Have you ever seen a tornado?" Brock asked with his video recorder out the window.

"Only in WIZARD OF OZ." Twisters killed people and I stepped on the gas. Brock studied the map. We hadn't seen a single human being for an hour.

We're heading north, right?" The Scotsman couldn't drive, but as a covert agent he knew the points of the compass.

"Yes." I was headed away from the storm front.

"You know where?"

"Roughly."

The unpaved rural road paralleled US 169. No one in New York or London had ever traveled this route through Iowa.

"When you think that family left that house?" asked Brock, as we passed a one-story farmhouse haunting an overgrown yard.

"Back in the 90s." The paint was peeling off its wood like potato chips.

"Stop."

Brock was the boss and I punched the brakes to batslide to a halt on the dirt road.

I got out of the rented Ford and shut of the engine.

The storm lurked farther to the south. The mutter of distant thunder invaded the still spring fields. I didn't feel safe.

Brock set up his camera and explained more about his documentary on a dying Irish sculptor.

"Barry once said to a journalist, “I enjoy the third dimension and I appreciate material in time and space. I find it exciting to the eyes.”

"Then he'll love this." The strengthening wind bent the trees. The four elements were gathering force.

"Barry will love this."

The Irish sculptor was losing control of his body back on Ibiza.

"Let's go." I didn't like the look of the sky.

Thirty miles down the road we stopped at the Blackcat Fireworks store.

The sky was clearing. We had outrun the storm.

Brock tried my cellphone.

There was no service.

"I love a little pyrotechnics." He entered the store and spent $100 on rockets and M80s.

Four days ago Brock had been in Afghanistan and he was homesick for the sounds of war.

Twenty minutes later we braked on a empty road. Iowa had thousands of them. We pulled out the fireworks. I lit the fuses and Brock watched the explosions.

"Not even close to the real thing," he said, as the report of the last M80 faded into the treeline.

"Much louder?"

"Much." He didn't want to talk anymore about it and we got back in the car.

Our next destination was Des Moines, which was Iowa's capitol.

We arrived after 5.

The city was devoid of people.

"Is America dead?" Brock said, as if a plague had killed my countrymen.

"After work people flee the cities for the suburbs."

Des Moines has suburbs?

"

They were the great social experiment of the 60s." I had grown up in a pink split-level ranch house south of Boston. It had a two-car garage. "Cars gave Americans freedom to go where they wanted."

"Away from blacks?"

"Yes." Iowa was 95% white. My hometown had a population of 25,000. Only three families were black. "Segregation is the American Way."

I drove to the Flanagan hare at the city's Art Center. I stayed in the car, as Brock focused his camera on the statue. He interviewed homeless people for their impression of the hare. No one else's was left in the city. I called Thailand.

My son Fenway was better.

His mother was angry at me.

"Why you go trip? Why you not see son?"

I said nothing, because a man is always wrong in the eyes of his woman and I missed Fenway

We spent the night on the outskirts of Des Moines. Brock and I ate ribs at the restaurant was next to the motel. The TV over the bar showed fast cars. This was Nascar Country. At the end of the meal I ordered a doggie bag. Neither of us could finish our ribs.

"Why did Barry sculpt hares?" I discerned no difference between hares and rabbits.

"One day he bought a dead rabbit from a butcher in England and remembered a jumping hare. To him the hare represented freedom. All kinds of freedom."

"Freedom is a rarity in America these days. All kinds of freedom."

"Better than Afghanistan."

"I'm sure."

"What about your hippie friend? Doesn't he live in Iowa?"

"Thanks for reminding me. No one was freer than Rockford back in the day."

I loved being a hippie almost as much as being young.

Before I went to sleep, I called my friend Rockford in Iowa City.

The old hippie was looking forward to seeing us.

"I have a surprise for you."

"What?" I hated surprises.

"You'll see when you get here."

The next morning we left Des Moines. Silos towered over the old highway.

"This is farmland." Iowa was the center of America.

"Corn and wheat."

"Tortillas and bread."

"And prisons. My friend Rockford spent two years at the state penitentiary. It's across the Mississippi from Illinois."

"I doubt he had a room with a view. What he get done for?" Brock was very open-minded for a spy.

"The police raided his farmhouse for pot." Rockford had been growing weed on his Back Forty. Someone had snitched him out on a plea bargain. Snitches were a problem everywhere. "Growing pot is a felony, but the police also found some cocaine and the judge hit Rockford with a three-year bid."

"Better here than Bagram prison in Kabul."

"Bad?." I had seen pictures. The government claimed the abuse was an isolated case, but the US military and CIA had tortured thousands.

"Very bad."

"Rockford doesn't talk about it.

"Most people don't. Are we're meeting him tonight?"

"But of course. Rockford and I go back to an acid trip on Moonlight Beach in 1974. "LSD? Do tell."

I told the story of speaking with seals, as we followed the train tracks out of Des Moines. Brock laughed upon hearing about my attempt to speak French with the seal.

"What's for lunch?"

It was getting near noon.

"There's this old Pietist colony in Amana." Iowa had plenty of religious sects. We had passed through several Memmonite communities and seen Amish in horse-drawn buggies.

"Pietists?"

"An old German sect rejected Lutheranism back in the 1700s." I had no idea about their tents, but hazarded a guess. "The Lutherans were too zealous. They fought wars over their beliefs. The Pietists fled Germany and then America. Iowa is a good state for freedom of religion. They were skilled craftsmen and now make refrigerators."

"I knew Amana sounded familiar." Brock had lived in America for a decade as a playwright. The Arts were a good cover for covert agents. "Their food has to be better than McDonalds."

"We'll soon find out." I turned off the highway.

Only a few tourists were visiting the Heritage site. It was still too early in the season. I ordered chicken pot pie and Brock chose a ham steak. The waitress served us water. There was no beer on the menu.

Brock filmed our meals.

"Barry likes to see everything."

"How much longer you think he has."

He had been a young man as had Brock and I had once been back in the 70s.

"He might last to the end of the summer." Brock intended on visiting the artist in Ibiza after our return to New York and aimed the camera in my direction.

"Hmmm good." I knew how to act for Brock.

Nice and natural.

At the end of our meal Rockford called from his farm to make a rendezvous at a sports bar in Iowa City.

"What do you think he has for us?"

"I can only guess."

Something told me it was something good.

Rockford and his son met us at a bar on the outskirts of town. I hadn't seen John since he was a baby. He was a teenager now.

I gave John a Ferrari jacket from my defunct internet site. He loved it being red. His friends picked him up. They were going to a movie.

"What?" I hoped it wasn't a blood and guts slasher film.

"Star Trek."

"Cool." I had been a Trekkie from the beginning and said "Live long and prosper."

We ordered another round and spoke with the bartender. Jake was back from a 3rd tour in Iraq.

"It sucked and my commanding officer wants to go again."

"Bastard."

"You got that right."

Three right-wingers were drinking Bud-Lite at the bar and I overheard the chubby one said, "This country was founded on conservative values."

I slammed down my PBR.

"This country was founded on Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, so shut the fuck up about your conservative values." I liked Obama as president. These three said nothing and drank their Bud-Lites.

Brock shook his head. He liked sleath instead of brawn.

"Was he like this when he was younger?" asked Brock.

"Our friend has always had a good temper, but with good cause." Rockford stared with eight ball eyes at the threesome and suggested we move to the Deadwood, which was Iowa City's best dive bar.

"Sounds good to me>"

Brock and I had more front teeth than any of the regulars at the Deadwood. The Iowa U co-eds danced to punk. They accepted our offers of tequila. After a few minutes Rockford broke out a small bottle packed with powder."

"Here's my surprise. Bolivian Pink 1975.

"No way." The Cali cartel had destroyed cocaine in the 80s with the help of the CIA an the Mexican gangs were even worse.

"I've been keeping it for a special occasion and nothing more special than an old friend visiting me." Rockford offered me the first blast. I did it at the bar.

1975 had been a good year.

"Was he a hippie back then?" Brock's 'he' was me.

I hated being third-person.

"Not even close, but he was good people." Rockford knew my soul.

I got another blast.

2009 was even better, because we were alive and alive was all there was everywhere in the world.

At closing the coeds asked, "Are you going?"

"Going where?" I was hoping a cheap hotel.

"To River City."

"What's in River City?'

"It's the future birthplace of James T. Kirk."

A minute later we were in a taxi heading south. Brock, Rockford, and I were in no condition to drive.

We arrived at the small town to discover that there wasn't a statue, but a plaque.

I cried just the same and had the taxi driver take us back to the hotel. I was ready to call it a night, but Rockford wasn't in the mood for sleep and poured out the rest of the Bolivian Pink. Brock and laid our heads on the pillow.

"This is a night to remember. The night you came to Iowa City and my ice let me out of the town.

I slept until dawn.

I sat up in bed and looked out the window.

Prairie grass ran up to the hotel.

"Hope I didn't keep you up." His voice was a growl native to the Hawkeye State.

"Not at all."

"I guess I'll be going. My wife will be real happy to see me, but I have a good excuse."

I was certain that my name belonged to that excuse.

"It was nice to meet you." Brock stirred from his bed.

"I wish you could stay longer."

"Me too." Brock was no angel, but a museum in Minneapolis was expecting him tomorrow.

Rockford said good-bye and drove back to his farm. We skipped the motel's complimentary breakfast. Our stomach were in no condition for food. We drank black coffee on I-380 northbound.

It wasn't a pretty road, but it was fast.

I pushed the Ford to 90.

We had to make some time.

And time was easy to make on the highway especially with James T. Kirk at my back.

He liked fast too.

Warp speed fast.