Change in the air in 1974 Jan. 22, 1986
The year 1974 started off on a sad note when Dallas notified
that they were closing the New Jersey warehouse down.
Carlson cried. Nancy, Teri, me and the new kid were simply
numb.
This was my first taste of troubles that would soon plague
the rest of the country, and which had already been infecting other parts of
America without our knowing.
I kept feeling like it was the beginning of the end, since
the rooming house I’d lived in since late 1972 was also undergoing significant
changes.
Ed, my first friend at the house, was long gone. Sue Roe, a
girl who came to my door naked my first week in the house, was just on her way
out. Meatball and Ellen, who had moved in together for a short time, had found bigger
digs elsewhere. Only me, Danny, Doug, Wanda and Vern remained of the original
cast. And some of them were making noises like they wanted to leave. New people
had moved into rooms across the hall from mine.
When Sue Roe finally left, Dave, the landlord turned her
room into a community kitchen, questionably legal. But he and his brother were
often on the wrong side of the law when it came to their properties, crafty
businessmen who should have been more successful than they were, but somehow never
managed to get the pieces together right. While Florida showed the world that
condos were the new trend, these two clung to the notion of rooming houses like
ours, cutting up the old Victorian places in Montclair to house college
students and aging hippies.
I worried about what point they might catch on and I might
have to find a new cheap place to live.
This was particularly troublesome since Dallas had given us
at the New Jersey warehouse until June to pack everything up and close
everything down. I got worried about not having another job as well.
By May I was in a panic.
Carlson, the warehouse manager, liked me a lot and vowed to
make sure I was secure by the time the warehouse closed. He did his job too
well, finding me two job offers, from which I had to pick one.
Donald, who owned the cosmetic distribution warehouse next
to ours, needed a pick up and delivery driver.
Some calculator company that was spreading its wings into other emerging
technologies needed a warehouse manager. Both prospects scared the hell out of
me. While I knew how to drive, I didn’t like the idea of driving for a living,
convinced I would get into an accident and possibly kill myself. The other prospect
was worse because I knew I was not management material – at least not yet. So,
I took Donald’s offer despite my fear of driving.
An ill omen occurred on the weekend before I was to start at
Donald’s place when a boy who used to hang around the rooming house for the
drugs and the chicks asked if he could crash in my room – he was apparently
very high. I agreed. But in the morning, he would not wake up and apparently
had died over night of an overdose. His body was very cold.
Mike Riotto, my pal from the Boy Scouts, who lived in the
room next to mine, tried to shake the kid awake and then pronounced him dead.
The police were convinced I had supplied him with the drugs
that killed him. I was on probation. I was not supposed to associated with
known drug attics and faced restoration of my original sentence of 20 years if the
police pursued the matter. Dave, the
landlord, raised a ruckus, telling the cops to get the fuck out and they did. No
one questioned me further. No one charged with anything. Two days later, my
second day on the job, I got to drive, got lost, got into two accidents, and
eventually made the pick up although not without some serious frowns from
Donald when I got back.
A week later, two drug addicts in the room across the hall
from mine on the third floor set their mattress on fire filling the whole upper
floor with smoke. I recalled waking up, tasting smoke, thinking I needed to give
up cigarettes. When I opened my eyes, there was a wall of smoke above me. Life
got better the rest of the year, although I was always looking over my
shoulder.
Comments
Post a Comment