The Big Picture Chapter 9

A special thanks to Ed for editing this chapter.

And to William F. Laegler for Content Editing.

1976

Working full time allows me to put some money aside. I smoke at work when I take breaks. My boss smokes and he doesn't care if I smoke or not. There's a cigarette machine at work so I have no problem getting them. I don't feel I'm hooked on them because I only smoke at work.

It's amazing how fast three months can go by when you're working full time. My boss really likes my work and says I can work all I can handle during school. I pick up my schedule for school and my jaw drops. I have Miss Busaid for US History. I had more than enough of her last year.

I get my driver's license back and I'm going to buy the Mustang back from my sister. I have saved up enough to buy it.

I turn 17 and in just one year I'll be able to go to the bars and drink legally. I'm not sure it will be as much fun when it's legal.

I'm curious about smoking pot again. Mike Babraj sits in front of me in my US history class and I heard he gets high. Perhaps I'll ask him if he knows where I can get some pot. I get to class and he turns around and asks, "Hey, Bill, do you want to buy some pot?"

Talk about reading my mind! I was just about to ask him if he knew where I could get some.

"What kind is it?" I ask. I don't want to sound like I know nothing about it.

"It's Colombian."

"How much is it?"

"I've got dime bags for $10.00. Meet me at my locker after class."

"Ok."

After class we went to his locker. He reached in his jacket and tossed a baggie in the locker. I handed him $10.00 and grabbed the baggie and put it in my pocket.

"I'm going out partying after school today. I just bought a van. You want to go with me?" Mike asked.

"I can't today. I have to work."

"Maybe tomorrow then."

"Ok."

I lied. I really don't have to work. I just wanted to be alone with my pot. I stop at a party store on my way home and buy a pack of rolling papers. I get home and examine the contents of the baggie. It's green, leafy, and dry. It smells like old dead leaves. I roll up a joint and I don't do a very good job so I try again. I light it and smoke the joint. I really don't feel any different than before I started.

Mike asks me the next day if I want to go partying with him again. I tell him I got plans. I go home and get a quart of beer. I drink the quart of beer and smoke another joint. I feel good. It's different than just the buzz from beer alone. I smoke another joint and I feel really good. I lie down and fall asleep in about 5 minutes.

Let me tell you about Mike. He's tall, almost 6'. He has black hair and blue eyes. He asks again if I want to go partying after school and I say yes. We get in his van and I'm surprised that it starts. It's a real piece of junk. He has a mattress in the back. We go to a local park and he rolls us several joints. For the first time I get high just smoking pot. I like the buzz.

"So tell the truth. This is the first time you really got high?"

"Yep."

"I thought so. You should have been with us last night. I was with Phil and we picked up this girl named Carol. She likes to have more than one guy at a time and we each had her several times."

"Wow, sorry I missed that. Who is Phil?"

"He's this guy from Author Hill. He's 16 and can buy anytime he wants. He's 6' 2" and about 240 with a full beard. He looks like he's 25 years old. I'm sure you'll meet him soon. I call him 'Charles Manson'. He's a bit crazy."

Mike and I just seemed to click. Like finding a long lost brother. I found out that he worked at another restaurant as a busboy. He lived in Saginaw his whole life and was born in town. After our first day together I knew we would be best friends.

For lunch the next day we go get high. Mike brings along several friends. One is named Kevin Gaudreau - Mike calls him 'Sponge'. He calls him sponge because Mike says he is always sponging up weed and never buys. His dad owns a flower shop. He's a good-looking guy. He's about 5' 8" and has light brown hair. Mike says he's gay but Mike says everyone's gay. Mike seems to have a nickname for everyone. Dicky Compau also comes along. Mike calls him 'Air Head.' He's the type of guy that should never get high. He's not too bright to begin with and when he gets high he totally spaces out. He has dark black hair and is about 5' 9". We go to Mike's house and get real high and then go back to school. We end up sleeping in Miss Busaid's class.

After school Mike and I went out and picked up Phil. He is everything Mike said. We get a bottle of Southern Comfort and drink it down. We smoke a bunch of pot and I'm pretty drunk and stoned. I get home late and go right to bed.

For the next several days I we followed the same routine. We go out at lunch. Sleep in the afternoon classes. And go out and get drunk and stoned at night. The only exception was when I have to work.

Soon I'm out of pot. Mike scored a quarter pound of what he calls red bud. It's a lot different than the first pot I bought from him. It is dark brown with a red tint and has lots of seeds. It's also much better. We smoke a joint together and I get really stoned. I buy an ounce for $40.00. Different people come along but it's always Mike and I.

My mom takes me out shopping for some winter clothes. I get a red goosedown winter coat. It's real warm.

I buy my sister's car for $600.00 and I now have my car back. I have to be careful. Any more tickets and I could lose my license until I'm 18.

Mike and I go pick up Phil and get high. Mike has to work but Phil offers to pay Mike if he doesn't go into work. So we go out and get drunk and stoned. Mike's been trying to come up with a nickname for me. Phil wants to call me 'trowel'. He says he'll give me $25.00 if I go into McDonald's with a dog collar and a leash. If he gets me to do that, God only knows what he'll be trying to get me to do next. Mike finally decides to call me Rollo. He calls me that because I'm so low and if he turns me on my side he can roll me around. I have noticed that everyone has a nickname except Mike.

I have about a half ounce of the red bud left. I have it in my coat pocket. My dad tries on my coat to go outside and check to see if the car doors are locked. He jokingly says he better not find and contraband in the pockets. I knew as soon as he grabbed my coat that I'm busted. Dad walks back in holding my pot. He takes it in the bathroom and flushes it. I get a long lecture about how he can go to jail if the police find marijuana in the house. He doesn't try to ground me or anything because he knows that just doesn't work any more.

Mike sells me another ounce of weed. It's not as good but I don't mind. We get high for lunch and go into Miss Busaid's class.

Mike says loud enough for the whole class to hear, "Rollo, you're stoned."

"The only reason he's stoned is because you just sold him some pot. But you're really stupid. You smoke up all your profits!" replies Miss Busaid.

That's Miss Busaid for you. She doesn't care what we do but she still lets you know what she thinks.

Both Mike and I freaked out.

My dad's really mad at Mom. They both work in the same school district. My dad comes home from work and tells my mom about his superintendent talking with him. He tells Dad that there is a single parent family in his neighborhood and the mother often leaves her little kids home alone and he asks him for advice. My dad tells him to contact social services and report it. My mom put two and two together and it turns out that Mom knows the single parent and she is a friend of Mom's. Dad asks Mom not to tell her friend but she doesn't listen to him and calls her friend. The next day the superintendent of schools fires my dad. He would have fired my mom too if he could have but she is a member of a union.

My dad finds another job but it's 90 miles away. Now he only comes home on weekends.

Mike has a bunch of marijuana growing in pots. He has them in the woods but it's getting cold and he doesn't want them to die. I tell him we can put them in our attic and I have a grow light that we can put on them. There is a crawl space up there and a doorway in the garage. We move all the plants up there and I splice the grow light into a power line. When the light is on you can see light coming out the cracks of the attic from the garage. I figure I'll have to keep it unhooked on weekends when my dad is home. He will notice. Mom doesn't have a clue.

Dad decides to come home on a weekday and I wasn't able to disconnect the lamp. He goes out to the garage to get something and as soon as I hear him open the garage door I know I'm busted. I hear the ladder go up and I just want to hide. We have a fire in our wood-burning stove going and Dad comes into the living room carrying all of Mike's plants and stuffs them in the stove. Talk about up in smoke. I wanted to run up to the roof and stick my face in the chimney. Dad's really mad.

I'm to the point where I don't ever drink beer any more. My favorite is 151 rum. I drink only to get drunk. Every Friday night there is a party somewhere with beer. I find that I need to drink like 12 beers just to get feeling good. That's a lot of liquid and I usually find myself getting sick as a result. We can drink at Mike's house anytime we want. His parents don't care. With my dad gone all week and my mom gone much of the time, my house is also a good place to party.

Mike and I have been hanging out for a month now and we have become best friends. No matter who else is with us it's always Mike and I. I get Mike a job at Howard Johnson's as a bus boy so we're together at work too. Mike has a different girl friend about every week. He gets more than anyone I have never known. I think he is on a quest to have sex with a waitress at work.

I have noticed that I can't seem to lie to Mike. Even the littlest things he picks up on. It's almost like he can read my mind. It's weird. I'm pretty happy. I have a bunch of new friends. Kids who never talked to me before are now my friends. My boss is letting me work all the hours I want and I work all the time. When I'm not working I'm getting high or stoned with Mike.

Mike got some acid. I beg him to let me try it. He says that I won't even probably get off on it. Then he says I'll like it too much and become an acidhead. He finally gives me a hit and tells me to take it at home. I take the hit and go over to Tom's house and play ping-pong. I'm doing real good. I'm beating him game after game. I start having a hard time remembering the score. I then start losing. Then I start laughing and can't stop. Time to go home. I get home and go to my room. I'm really stoned. I'm not out of control like when I'm drunk and my mind is really racing. I like it. I stay up all night and feel fine when I go to school.

I don't get much for Christmas. I guess you could say I've been a bad boy. I passed my classes with D's. I got some jumper cables for my car. I go to a New Year's party with Mike and get drunk. 1976 comes to an end and I'm perfectly happy with my life.

1977

I sold my car back to my sister and buy a 1966 Cadillac. It has much more room for partying. I buy it from a friend of my dad's who owns a radiator shop. I no more than get to work with it and it won't start. It has a bad battery. Good thing I got jumper cables for Christmas.

Phil, Mike, and I go out partying. We want to go some place safe and Phil says he knows some place we can go. He knows this old guy he calls Pops. He says he's gay but he won't try anything. He says it a safe place to go and party so we go there. His house is on the edge of town. It's also very small and old. We go inside and there is this nude girl. Pops says she's a prostitute that is staying with him. She sits on my lap and starts wiggling on my lap. I get all embarrassed and everyone laughs at me. We have a good time there and none of us seem to mind that Pops is gay.

Mike and I don't just get high and drunk together. We also play pool (he has a pool table in his basement), basketball, board games, cards, chess, and play Frisbee at the park - we're the best of friends. We're together so much that his parents think we're queer for each other. We go to movies together, concerts, and drive all over the place. We also party like there is no tomorrow.

Mike gets two tickets to see Led Zeppelin at the Pontiac Silver Dome. My mom is going to drive us down there and visit a friend while we are at the concert. I have pot, acid, and a pint of Southern Comfort to take with me. We leave early in the morning and get there about 10:00 o'clock in the morning. There is a large crowd already. We have general admission floor tickets and so we need to be early to get a good spot. We push down two fences and get in about 12:00. We are about 10 yards from the stage.

We spend the next 8 hours getting wasted. Everyone around us has pot to smoke. As it got close to the time of the concert we had to stand to keep our spots. We were packed in real tight. The concert starts and I can't believe how good they are. I've heard some of their songs but they sound much better in concert. The concert lasts 4 hours. It's the best I have ever seen. It is the largest indoor concert ever, with over 90,000 people there.

I have found that I can get high at work anytime I want. Sure I do smoke weed on my breaks but I have found another way to get high. They have tanks of nitrous oxide for making whipped topping. Mike tells me it's safe to get high off. We fill a plastic bag with the gas and breathe it in and out. Within a few seconds I start feeling great. Then I stoned. I almost pass out and within a minute I feel normal again - it's a real rush.

Monday night is slow at work. I bring in a pint of rum and drink it. I'm pretty drunk by the time I leave. Elaine is the manager on Mondays and she doesn't have a clue. I forget the bottle I have stashed in the lettuce but Nick, the night manager, discards it for me.

I cut school about every other day. When I'm at school I'm drunk or stoned. I drink and get high every day. Mike tells me speed and coke aren't any good. He says that speed just keeps you awake and makes you really hyper and coke is a rich man's drug. He says that I can get high and drunk for two weeks for what it costs to get high on coke just once. Despite all of this partying, I'm in control. I can handle it.

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