Diary of an Unbroken Child: My Autobiography- Chap. VI

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. These were all city kids who must have thought that food would just start growing because they showed up and were cool. I knew better- the time with Uncle Arthur up on the farm in New Hampshire showed me just how hard it is to be a farmer. You can't get high all night and get up at 10 and expect to do any farming. 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 OD'd once but that didn't do the trick, like the saying goes: "I was in the spoon by noon." There were these two chicks up on Peterbourough St. that my friend Smitty and I had hooked up with. Heroin had lost its appeal, so I gave it up. Kicking sucked, I was sick as a dog but I just didn't want to do it anymore... plus my money was getting funny. Smitty and I were boosting houses and fencing the stuff to Bruno Bolero down at the Intermission Lounge where I played in a band.

I had met this chick named Jan and we hooked up. She did a lot of speed so I started doing that- it helped me to get away from the heroin. 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... we were living the high life, an apartment at Harbor Towers, nice clothes, you name it- it was almost like being the Acid King all over again. 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. She was shocked the first time she saw me, she said it was as if he had come back to life. 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. We had to move out of Harbor Towers because it looked kind of funny living there with no job or anything. I was going to miss the place, Derek Sanderson, "the Turk" lived in the penthouse and we hung out a few times... I'd run into him on the elevator and he'd come by the apartment. But by 71 the cops and especially the Feds were starting to pay attention, the heat was on. David, the idiot, 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.

Another reason I wanted to get out of the whole drug scene was that Jan and I had a kid, a little boy. I wasn't going to be doing drugs and dealing around him. We had moved across the river to Cambridge to get a new start... but Jan couldn't give up the speed. It was sad, I cared about her and I really loved our son- I wanted us to be like a normal family... whatever the hell that is. Like everything else I ever cared about, Jan moved in with her friend Linda in Forest Hills and took my son with her. I used to go visit him a couple times a week, but one time I went and they had moved... I never saw either one of them again. By this time I had learned that everytime I care about something or someone, just to expect to get kicked in the teeth.

So, for the first time in my life, I decided to get a job and try to be like everybody else...whatever that was. Jan and my boy might be gone, but 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 in my life, 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, plus I played in a band and Smitty and me had boosted a few houses out in the fancy neighborhoods, but I didn't like that, it was dishonest. 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 stole cars when I was a kid because I had to stay alive... but I never liked being a thief. I figure if you're going to steal from someone, front them up and take it- don't be a sneak, there's no honor in being a sneak. I never got all the details about Bobby, but like I said, he was a sneak at heart- even when we were kids. 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. It wasn't hard to learn, its all just common sense pretty much.

I also had another gig, security. My buddy Mike's dad owned a security company that had the contract for Boston Music Hall. We'd go to the airport and pick up celebrities when they came to town and protect them. We'd take them to the hotel, out to dinner and then to the concert. Some of them were pretty cool, some not so much. It was the 70's and Disco was hot, so we protected some of those guys. The Commodores, were real gentlemen, nice to be around. Richard Pryor was another guy we guarded- he was a hoot. My friend Dave Hill, a big black guy from the neighborhood, worked the concert too... I had a picture of me, Dave and Richard with our arms around each other's shoulders. Richard wrote: "To Dave, best wishes always- you too honkey." Bob Seeger was another good guy to guard and so were the ELO (they were nuts!)

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. Our softball team was sponsored by a local wiseguy who owned a bar- we were pretty good too, we won the city championship every year that I played. 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 brand new trucks and 25 guys working for me. All I had to do was bid 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, my foreman practically begged for permission to kick his ass!

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 the fuck 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. I could make a bunch of excuses about how bad my life had sucked and if you had my problems you'd drink too, but the fact of the matter is that I drank because I liked to get fucked up- that's my excuse. By the end I was so fucked up all the time I couldn't get a job sweeping floors on a construction site... So I did what any self-respecting alcoholic would do...I took my show on the road and went to where nobody knew me.