 
The Birth of the "Blue Missile"™

Written by Andrew Cohen

Published by Andrew Cohen at Smashwords

Copyright 2010 Andrew Cohen

All images and graphic designs within the body of the book are the property of and copywritten by Andrew Cohen 2011

The cover images of Miami and the Mountains are royalty free photos from stock.exchang

The photo of Bob Horrigan is by Alan Potter

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

DEDICATION

I would like to dedicate this book to all of those who are yet to go there and to all of those who have already been there and done that and survived.

Also to Bob and how I wish we could laugh together again.

Table Of Contents

Chapter 1-Black Ops 101

Chapter 2- B.B., And Jannis, And Brandy...Oh My

Chapter 3 - Life At The Academy

Chapter 4 - We're Not In Kansas Anymore

Chapter 5 - Sunny South Florida

Chapter 6 - Year Two: The Rockets Red Glare

Chapter 7 - On To Miami Beach

Chapter 8 - A Life Of Higher Education

Chapter 9 - The Hunt For Red....Oh Yeah A Car

Chapter 10 - The Birth Of The "Blue Missile **"**

Chapter 11 - Psilly Us

Chapter 12 - Breaker, Breaker, Who's Road Is This?

Chapter 13 - The Birth Of A New Me

Chapter 14 - Tested In The Wilderness

Chapter 15 - What We Have Here Is Failure To Communicate

Chapter 16 - B.B. And Barry And Kiss.... Oh My!

Chapter 17 - The Truth? You Can't Handle The Truth

Chapter 18 - Old Man River

Chapter 19 - "Blue Missile 1.5"

THE BIRTH OF THE 'BLUE MISSILE'™

©2010

By Andrew Cohen

As I look back on my life and recall these tales, it seems miraculous that I'm still around to tell them. The title of this book refers to the name given by my friends to my first car a 1973 340 Plymouth Duster. Most who have read this story describe it as "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" meets "Deliverance".

I have come to understand that there are two types of people in this world regarding cars, ones who only look at them as a means of transportation, and the others who look at them with passion. I could never have imagined I would turn into the latter. I must say that these tales of my life experiences are all true and woven with the threads that brought me to the place of wonder regarding muscle cars.

On top of that, this one car brought me to places and people who would weave the fabric of an adventure of unbelievable proportions. I start this tale well before the acquisition of my first car. You see, the streak of mad scientist / covert operative I've been accused of having, and is still with me today, started early.

Chapter 1-Black Ops 101

The mission was to silence an alarm signal heard by a couple of hundred occupants in a very large compound. There were regular sentries, and taking them out was not allowed. This particular signal was a large brass bell in a bell tower a couple stories up from the ground surrounded by a security cage. In order for us to cover our tracks, everything had to look untouched. There was no way to get the bell out of the tower and disposed of. Cutting the rope used to ring the bell was also out of the question, it would be noticed immediately.

Battery powered power tools were not yet invented; so cutting the clapper loose from the bell was out of the question, besides, that would be heard by the sentries. We discussed CAD Welding (the use of thermite) the clapper to the bell but the possibility of starting a fire down below was real. On top of that the bell tower could be seen all over the compound, so the light caused by the reaction would give us away. Cyanoacrylate (superglue) adhesives were just being developed by Kodak, so they were not yet in our arsenal. Whatever we did, we had to do it silently.

We were a team of five, and were camped about a quarter of a mile away from the bell tower. Under the cover of darkness, about one o'clock in the morning, dressed in all black and navy blue, we made our way to the objective building. This compound was located in the mountains off the north east coast of the United States. It was summer and the air was very still. Lighting was sparse, and the moon was about half full with a clear sky. All we had to work with were the hand tools and the supplies we had in our backpacks.

We left our campsite traveling through the woods at the perimeter of the compound until we were directly across from and about fifty yards away from the bell tower building. Between us and our objective was the main headquarters building. The other fly in the ointment was the fact that the sentries' office and barracks were in a wing attached to the mess hall, which contained the bell tower. If things went wrong their response time would be momentary, this also meant they could come around a corner without notice.

Using the main headquarters building for cover, we moved along one side keeping low and staying between the landscaping bushes and the building. From the corner of the building, it was about ten yards of open exposure to the mess hall. The barracks were on the opposite side of the building, so we still had a shot. We arrived at the mess hall undetected. There was a large covered patio on our side of the building we could access from the deck. The four of us got a boost from the ground level lookout man, and he then retreated back to the bushes next to the headquarters building to keep watch. From there he had a clear enough view to warn us in time to take cover.

In this case taking cover is a dubious term, the roof was a shingle roof with a 4/12 pitch and the bell tower was four feet square wrapped with a wire cage, but otherwise open to view. We laid low and flat on the flat patio roof until he gave us the all clear, then we climbed the main roof and got to the tower. We proceeded to cut our way through the cage with a small pair of bolt cutters. With each cut of the cage, the snap could be heard echoing in the compound. About half way through the process, the lookout signaled for us to cease and lay low, so we flattened ourselves against the roof which was also dark in color. At that moment two sentries came around the corner to check the camp, but they never looked up. We watched them make their rounds and go back to the barracks with us remaining undetected.

We completed cutting our way into the tower, and with one person holding back the cage, two of us were able to get inside the tower to work on the bell. We wrapped the clapper with washcloths and taped them in place. We then took towels and stuffed them inside the bell until there was no space left, and completely taped up the bottom of the bell. This left the bell mechanism fully operational from down below, but there would be no alarm when the rope was pulled. We exited the cage, and wired it back in place so it looked undisturbed.

We quietly scrambled down the roof, and made our way back to our campsite to await the continuation of the mission.

The year was 1968, we were fifteen years old, and you see, habits start young. Not only did the wake up bell at summer camp not sound, neither did the mess call. Because of how well we had done our job, and because it was almost impossible to tell what had been done by looking up from down below, it took the lighting fast waiters quite a while to figure out how to fix the problem. Oh yes, the chain link cage was installed a few years before, because some of the waiters had temporarily borrowed the bell for a few days. Since the sentries were also the waiters, for them, removing the bell as a team was not that difficult. As a result, the staff decided extra security measures had to be taken to make sure that it would not happen again.

Chapter 2- B.B., And Jannis, And Brandy...OH MY

The location of this summer camp is rural Massachusetts, and it's the July/August summer break. I was in the last of my five years of attending summer camp. All of the parents in the area I grew up in sent their kids off to summer camp for a couple of months during the summer. This was so that they could have the summer off, without the kids, and go traveling, say to Europe. They would all congregate one morning in the parking lot of a large centrally located high school, and put their children on busses for a couple of different summer camps that catered to mostly Jewish families.

The first year I went to camp was a disaster, it was a sports camp my older brother went to, and it was eight weeks of torture for me. The second year was gold. The camp had an all-around format, and yes, there was a big sports program especially tennis, but there were many other activities for all to enjoy.

Since I was not the athletic type, I tended to hang out at the science bunk, or you could find me swimming or fishing. I did complete the one thousand lap preparation, and the seven mile swim to the state road and back. I guess that's athletic.

We always had fun at the science bunk pushing the envelope, testing what we could get away with. I do remember us tossing small chunks of pure sodium, or potassium, in a barrel of water and watching the resulting explosion. There was always the obligatory pouring of sulfuric acid into a large glass beaker half filled with sugar, and watching the resulting column of carbon and steam rise out of the beaker.

We even had a demonstration of how volatile a suspended cloud of dust could be. Back then, in New York City, there were still buildings with central incinerators to handle the occupant's garbage for the building. There were stories of people throwing away partial bags of flour down the shoot and blowing up the entire system. To demonstrate this, we took a large can, put a small hose through a hole at the bottom, which we would blow through. Then a pile of flour was put in front of that hole. A small lit candle was also placed in the bottom of the can. One good blow, and the fire ball was amazing.

My final year, the science counselor was a young chemistry teacher from the Pittsfield area. One day he asked us what we might want to do over the next week or so. He planned our activities out, and then had them approved by the camps assistant director. I, being one of the instigators of the group, responded to the question with, "Hey, let's make some liquor". He said that while it was well within his abilities to show us how, he wasn't going touch that request unless I could talk Bob into it. I went right then and found Bob, who was the director of the boys' half of the camp. I told him we wanted to make some liquor in the science bunk, and asked if it was "OK." He looked at me and said, "Well, I don't think you'll be able to, but okay. Under one condition, you have to let me taste it before any of the campers drink it, for safety's sake." I said that would be acceptable. At that point I told him that we also needed some sort of fruit juice to make it out of, and asked if he could help us get the supplies we needed. He said he would tell the kitchen staff to let us have whatever we needed.

I went back and told the science counselor what Bob had said, he then said he would go by the Corning plant, which was fairly close by, and get a bunch of 'seconds' glassware they gave away to teachers for free. They just threw the 'seconds' into the dumpster for crushing and remelting anyway. He also said he just happened to have some supplies he built when he was in college, that he could pick up while he was in town. He assured us this would help.

He came back with five large, one gallon, small mouthed glass containers and some brewer's yeast. Since we had spent a lot of time blowing and bending glass tubing for various projects, he gave us directions, and we built water valves for the tops. We then put up about five gallons of apricot juice, which is what they had a surplus of in the kitchen when I went for supplies, to ferment. Three or four days later, we took all of the fermented juice and ran it through the still.

The still consisted of a large, 2-liter Erlenmeyer flask as the base, and at its top, connected by a stopper, was the fractionating tower our science counselor had built in college. The tower fed a very large Liebig condenser. Basically, it was a straight tube, set at a downward angle, surrounded by a water jacket, being cooled by running water. The tower had a thermometer stuck through the stopper at its top to monitor the temp, so as to get the highest alcohol content possible. We did small batches at a time, and the whole lot took two days to finish. When we were done, we had about a half a gallon of approximately 195 proof, alcohol. We tested it by weighing it on a triple beam, a set amount in a watch glass, then burning off the alcohol, and weighing what was left. He explained to us that you could not drink alcohol that pure, because it would make your tongue expand, and could cut off your air supply. In order to make something we could drink, we filtered the cooked apricot juice left over from the distillation process through activated charcoal and layers of filter paper.

What came out was a clear, golden fluid that tasted like apricots. We then combined it fifty-fifty with the grain alcohol to make about 90 proof, apricot brandy. In order to split it up equally, we had collected and washed out empty ketchup bottles. We put up about twenty of them. I also took some of the 'brandy' and half-filled a large test tube, about one inch in diameter and eight inches long, and stuck a cork in it.

I then took the 'sample' to Bob, who was directing the rehearsal of the senior play in the theater. Without hesitation I walked up on the stage, and simply handed him the sample, and told him we were done making the liquor. He looked at me with a smile, and took the sample and cautiously examined it by holding it up to the light and said, "Well let's give it a try." At which time he pulled the cork, and downed the whole tube in one motion. His face turned a very pleasing shade of bright red. He obviously could not breathe for a moment, and when he caught his breath, he asked me with a very shocked look on his face and only a whisper of a voice "How much of this did you make?" I told him we had twenty ketchup bottles mostly filled and we were going to take it to the concert a few days later. He was a man of his word, and said, "Well, ok," and walked off shaking his head.

The day of the big concert, we returned from a group fishing trip to Gloucester, where we had gone fishing for cod. There were five campers and the fishing counselor, Doug. We had left the day before, and driven the short drive to the coast with all of our camping gear crammed into a station wagon belonging to the camp. That evening we ate dinner around a campfire on the deck of a house in town belonging to a friend of the fishing counselor. Later that evening, the group bunked down in their sleeping bags, on the screened-in back porch. We got up very early the next morning, which was the day of the concert. It was still dark, very cool and the smell of the salt water was heavy in the air. We munched on snacks for breakfast as we packed our stuff and got ready to go. We then piled into the station wagon, and drove to the dock in order to catch the boat the camp had chartered. We boarded the boat with great excitement; you see, a couple of the kids had never been fishing in the ocean. Our vessel was a typical, forty-five to fifty foot, open back charter boat. It was a half day, bottom fishing trip that ended at 10:00, (four hours-not three). Upon leaving the dock, the seas were light, the sun was just starting to peek over the horizon and we traveled about a half an hour to the first fishing spot. Once we were there, we were aided by a couple of mates who helped us rig and bait our lines, and get them down on the bottom. After about a half an hour of catching nothing, we pulled up lines and moved to another spot to try again. We did this a few more times until roughly nine o'clock. At that time, the captain said he wanted to try one more spot, a hole he knew about. He had one of those fish finders with a paper printout, and when he got over the hole it looked like a solid mass of fish. He thought it might be on the fritz, but in desperation we all dropped our lines in for a final time. Once the lines were down, one of the campers named Ricky got a bite that almost stripped all the line off of his reel. As it turns out, he had hooked a forty pound Fluke; this is a huge flounder like fish. It took him a while to land it with much excitement on deck. In the meantime, most of us thought we were hung on the bottom. One of the mates came over to me and tried to lift the pole, and said it was just a large fish, he explained to me that cod always felt like dead weight. A couple of guys brought their fish in before me, and they were Cod in the fifty to sixty pound range, so was mine. Based on the catch we were having, Doug arranged for us to stay out an extra couple of hours. The captain was thrilled to stay, because coming back to the dock with a catch like this was great for his business. At the end of our time, we had caught over twelve hundred pounds of cod. When we were done for the day, the captain had the mates string a couple of the largest cod from the rigging for all the other charter boats to see on the way back to the dock. Once we got back to the dock, all the fish were unloaded into a pile about four feet tall. We asked Doug what was going to happen to the fish, and he said he would make arrangements for them to follow us back, and give the entire camp a great fish dinner.

After taking pictures of us standing with our catch, we all piled in the station wagon and headed back to camp. We arrived back at camp in plenty of time to get cleaned up and leave for the big concert. We cleaned up, got our bottled supplies, and left for the Tanglewood pops festival on the camp bus. The reason I mentioned the fishing trip is because Doug was really looking forward to going to go to the concert as well, but the kitchen staff made him clean all of the fish that had followed us back to camp in a large pickup truck; they really didn't like surprises that increased their workload. As we left, we all waved to him; there he was waist deep in a pile of very large fish on the porch of the kitchen, looking really pissed. Boy, what a concert he missed.

For you see, the concert was the event of the year in that neck of the woods. It was the Tanglewood Pops festival at the beginning of August in 1969, Woodstock was only a short ride and week away. The concert took place in the outdoor theater called The Music Shed. It was just starting to get dark, and being lit with stage lighting, when we arrived. When you turned the corner to enter the arena, it was quite overwhelming. On the concert bill was BB King, Janis Joplin, The Association, Iron Butterfly, and Joshua's light show from the Fillmore East.

First up was BB King, who, at the time I knew little about, but thankfully, that has greatly changed. He had a four piece band set up in front of the next bands gear. He did what I remember as a good set, and left the stage. Next up was the Association. They did a bunch of songs I had never heard, and then they did "Windy" and "Cherish," which were their current radio hits. After that the place went dark, and Joshua's light show took over for the intermission. They showed "King Kong" on a huge screen behind all of the bands setups without any sound, as the next group's people set up. Once the set up was complete, the light show never shut off and was this grand psychedelic show behind the two final acts.

All during this we were drinking the apricot brandy, and by intermission we were very well adjusted.

Next up was Janis Joplin with Big Brother and the Holding company.

Now about Janis's appearance, you see, we were drinking, but her appearance blew us all away. First Big Brother and the Holding Company did a set of their own stuff, which was pretty good. During their set there was a single stool behind a mic on a stand at the very front of the stage. Sitting on the stool was what looked like a bottle of Southern Comfort. Now the group was far enough back on the stage that they didn't knock it off. Once their set was over, they called for, and introduced Janis. She walked onto the stage right up to the mic and said hello to the crowd. After which she turned around and grabbed the bottle that was on the stool. She then proceeded to down the entire bottle in one fell swoop, and went right into 'Me and Bobby Mc Gee'. As I said, we were blown away, we didn't think that was humanly possible! She did a long set that was wonderful, but I had not yet come to appreciate what a talented performer she was.

The final group was Iron Butterfly. They opened their set with a few lesser known songs first. By that time it was getting pretty late as far as field trips went, and the counselors wanted to get us all back to camp. We all refused to leave until we had heard 'In A Gadda Da Vida,' which was their current radio hit, and the song we all still know them for. It turned out to be the last song they played , going on for a wonderfully long time.

As far as the brandy goes, the refreshments had been more than enough to keep us well adjusted all night long to the point that when we returned after midnight, the guys were literally swinging from the cabin rafters. Even then, it was cool to be the mad scientist.

Chapter 3 - Life At The Academy

The next couple of years in High School were spent uneventfully. I was an average student with so-so grades, going to school in a small suburb of New York on Long Island.

The Vietnam War was raging, and Huey Newton and the 'Black Panthers' actually came to my High school on a bus to rally people. We all thought that it was pretty weird seeing as it was a mostly white, middle class suburb. The teachers never let them off the bus.

Rock and Roll had already infiltrated the school, as well as, the soft drug culture. Towards the end of my sophomore year, there was a locker search, and a couple of my friends were busted for pot possession.

This incident, along with my mediocre grades, led my mother to decide to send me away from the influence of my bad friends. Her desire was for me to get into a "good" college, so she gave me a choice of a couple of military academies, one of which, I was going to be attending the next school year.

One was in upstate New York; the other was in Georgia with a winter campus in Hollywood Florida.

This was a no-brainer, more snow and freezing weather during the winter or the beaches of south Florida.

It was the start of the summer of 1970, my father and I drove to the school, so I could get there for the summer session. It seems my grades were not quite up to their standard for the first two years of school. If I wanted to enter as a Junior, I had to attend the summer session that year, and the next summer as well. If I did not do that, I would not graduate in 72.

The school is about fifty miles northeast of Atlanta, and the drive was through a green and lush countryside filled with vine plants dripping off of everything; I'll come to hate those plants later. Back then there were lots of farms, and the woods at the edge of the rolling green pastures looked deep and inviting. We drove through the closest town, and followed the directions down a series of two lane paved roads until we came to the campus.

When we pulled up to the campus, there was a large collection of multi-story red brick buildings, which were quite intimidating. They had keystone castle like abutments trimmed in white stone with multi-pane windows reminiscent of the pictures I had seen of West Point. There was a retaining wall that created a second level that was at the top of the front steps which were say twenty feet wide and six feet tall. We parked and climbed the steps to find large, glass double doors entering into a huge hall with a receptionist sitting at a desk. The hall had polished terrazzo floors, and was surrounded by dark, mahogany colored woodwork, which covered the walls. On the walls were military flags and pictures of the school's top brass. We checked in with the receptionist, were given a map and instructed to check in at one of the dorms. The dorm was a three quarter, U shaped, three-story building, a couple of buildings away from the main hall. The floors had open hallways to the interior of the 'U'. My room was on the second story. about half way down the longer of the two legs. This was a typical military room arrangement, with a bunk bed and shared bathroom between the two rooms. We each had our own foot-locker, but shared a door-less closet with a single shelf and a closet rod, and a desk, which was in the corner by the window. The floors were painted glossy grey, and the concrete block walls were painted with so many coats of beige paint that they were also glossy and had almost no texture. The woodwork, the desk, and the steam radiator against the back wall were painted the same glossy grey as the floor. There was a single, two-bulb light fixture on the ceiling with a switch on the wall. These were bare bones accommodations.

A teacher resided at each end of the building, on each floor, in a cozy little one bedroom apartment. They were there to keep the peace, and hopefully guide us through the school year. Discipline was handled through the cadet ranks military style. On my floor was a Major K, who taught English, at one end, and one whose name escapes me, at the other. Major K was a character; it appeared he had a sleep disorder that caused him to fall asleep at the strangest times. One day I stuck my head in his room, and found him asleep reaching for a book on his library shelves, while standing on a small step stool. Needless to say, some English classes were rather lacking in content, but we all quickly learned if we were quiet enough when he fell asleep, he would sleep until the bell rang for the next class.

As a student, I was a quiet type, and that never changed. At the academy this was not exactly a plus. There was a diverse collection of kids at the academy. Some of the students had a rough past and were sent there to be straightened out. One of those students was my roommate. It took a couple of weeks before the friction between us built up enough for there to be a physical confrontation. I really don't remember what it was all about, but he started to wail on me, and I just exploded. I was not big, or heavy, but I threw him down to the ground and was pounding on him. When he tried to get up, he grabbed the metal edge of his open footlocker, and sliced his hand to the point there was blood all over the room. There were enough witnesses there cheering us on to exonerate me as far as the cause of the blood, who had started it, and who had won, so we stopped fighting and got him to the infirmary. He was then whisked off to the hospital, for quite a few stitches. When he returned with his bandaged hand to the cleaned up room, it seems that we had become great friends, and remained that way for the rest of the summer.

It was at this time I also met my partner in crime, Ernest, he lived down the hall on my floor, and was from the same town the school was in.

The summer session focused on academics, and had a rather relaxed attitude about all the military things. We did have to dress up in the uniforms, and there were weekly inspections of the rooms, but that was all. Even the inspections were rather low key. This left us a lot of time after class to goof off.

The area around the school was heavily wooded, and we took advantage of this fact all the time; we were also within a short hike of Lake Lanier. One of the stops in the woods was a cave you could get three or four people in, made and maintained by the previous years of cadets. The entrance was well hidden, and you would walk right past it if you didn't know it was there. It was about two feet across, and was connected to a tunnel about six feet long. It was dug into a red, Georgia clay hillside, and the room at the end of the tunnel was about four feet high and about eight feet in diameter. It had a clay pipe in the ceiling to vent the cave for fresh air. We would crawl into the area, sit down in a circle, and smoke a joint before going over to the lake. Now I'm not claustrophobic, but the crawl into that dark tunnel was really a difficult one, especially the first time. Please remember the main reason I was sent there. Until I went to the academy, I had never smoked dope, so much for Mother's plan of keeping me away from "bad" influences.

We would get ripped in the cave, and then go to the lake at a swimming hole we called the "Via-Duct". This was a water pipeline over an arm of Lake Lanier, and we would go swimming at the base of the two towers. These towers supported a main water line about 30" in diameter. The top of the pipe was about forty feet above the water, and was supported by "Red Iron" towers with horizontal angle iron beams about ten feet apart. There was a fair amount of area between the bases, but they did stick out quite a ways from the steel structure. One of the things we would do was climb up the tower, and jump off into the water from the different levels of bracing. This was not too difficult, but in order to jump off of the actual pipe, you had to walk out from the top of the hill all the way to the center of the span. A good seventy percent of the walk was over land; because the land fell away from the pipe the closer you got to the center. If you fell, it was going to hurt. I, myself, never made that trip. I did go to the top rung, which was so close to the pipe you couldn't stand up, and jump off. However, I did not possess the fortitude to make the trip on top of the pipe to the center. I also remember that there were fish in the water that would constantly nibble on your feet and legs.

Since being in the woods usually meant we were well adjusted, this also meant we had the munchies.

To partially fill that need and take the edge off, there was a source of food, a type of wild grape called muscadines. They were sweet and filling and perfect for those afternoons in the woods. The vines were everywhere and easy to get to. For the more severe cases of the munchies, we would travel west through the woods instead of going north towards the lake. It was about a twenty-minute walk to the top of a hill overlooking the back parking lot of a Dairy Queen. The DQ was right on the highway leading to the school, and in order to avoid a chance meeting with a member of the staff, we had to be careful. During the summer, the owner was sure to leave the back door open, and the screen door closed. We watched for traffic, and during a lull we would run quickly to the back door to place our order, pay for it and retreat back to the top of the hill, a short sprint away. When the order was filled the owner would stand at the back door with it in his hand, and we would at the next opening run down and get it, again retreating back to our former position. Rather than trying to bring the food back to the barracks, we consumed it at the top of the hill over the rise just out of sight of the road where we started. After eating, we would lie back on the cool ground and stare at the sky through the sassafras and beach trees, do another doobie, and then later wander back to the barracks.

If you didn't feel like going to DQ, there was a little "burger joint" called 'The Grill' attached to the back of the main dining hall. When you walked through the door, the smell of over used fryer grease hit you in the face. Once you got past that, you found three or four four-tops, a couple of pin ball machines, and an AM radio playing all the time. You would walk up to the counter and order your food, which were mostly burgers, the thin patty type, and greasy French tries. Nothing fancy, just a place for the cadets to get a little something extra on the weekends. The grill was open during the week after classes, but most of the guys were in the barracks either studying or partying. If you were smart you would take advantage of the one study hall everyone had. It gave you more than enough time to get the bulk of your homework done for the classes that preceded study hall. The rest had to be done after school. That gave you three hours of free time before dinner, and four hours after. During the summer there were no after school activities, so your time was all yours.

The regularly scheduled meals were pretty good. Remember, this was the south. I was introduced to grits and eggs, collard greens, lots of fried chicken, and meat loaf that everybody called 'Mystery Meat'. You ate off of a divided metal tray/plate affair, which I had never seen before, but that I was told was standard issue in prison. You drank out of metal cups with little round handles on the side. They looked like metal tea cups, which if filled with ice and salt would freeze quite securely to the tray if given the appropriate amount of time. This made the kitchen workers time cleaning off the trays rather humorous to us. There was one meal I was introduced to that was the cause of many skipped meals. It was a cream like gravy with shaved beef served over a couple pieces of toast. It was called by all those had experienced it prior "shit on shingles" or SOS. When it was served, anything else available, such as rolls, salad and dessert, is what you ate.

The summer time was also the school's time to try out new staff. During my first summer, there was a teacher just out of college, I didn't have him for any classes, so I don't remember what he taught. One evening after lights out, I was invited to a party on the second floor on the other side of the courtyard across from my room. When I got there, the lights were out and the place was lit with candles. I went in one room, and around the bathroom to the other room where the party was going on. There were towels stuffed under the doors of both rooms and over the windows. I remember that Black Sabbath's "Iron Man" was playing, and a nice sized spliff was being passed around a circle of us on the bed and all the chairs they could muster between the two rooms. As each person would take a toke, his face would light up just for a moment then go dark. As it got around to the other side of the circle, all of a sudden this teacher's face lit up. Inside of me all I could think was, Oh, MY God! We're busted, but then reason took over, and said he's one of us; you know a stoner, not the Man. Well, for some reason he only lasted another couple of weeks, and he was gone. Go figure.

Chapter 4 - We're Not In Kansas Anymore

At the end of the first summer, I went back home, which had moved to NYC from the Island, and hung out for a couple of weeks. When I returned, I flew into Atlanta, and then took a single engine plane to the airport by the school. About that ride, I'm sure glad there was no crop dusting to do on the way, or it probably would have been on the schedule. It was rough, and it felt like the whole affair was going to fall apart in mid-air. I don't think it was turbulence, just a rickety airplane. We did, however, land on an actual paved runway, but there was not much else there. I can't tell you that it said Airport and tire care center, but that's how I remember it feeling. Someone from the school, I don't remember who, picked me up, drove me to the campus, and dropped me off at the front steps of the administration building. It then became painfully obvious that this was a very different situation, and the academy had become a whole different world.

After I checked in, I was sent to pick up my uniform and all that went with it. I had already been through part of the process the previous summer. But now, this included all the dress uniform stuff, the brass buttons and army insignias that went with the uniform; none of which was required during the summer. I do remember looking through the window this time and seeing the face of an army major they say had been hit by mustard gas. His face and hands were covered with what must have been peanut sized tumors. As a teenager, to see the visual effects of war was quite unsettling. After that blow from reality, I had to go for my hair cut. Now I had gotten one during the summer, but even that was not like this. They asked you how you wanted it, and then proceeded to cut all of it off except a quarter of an inch.

As I remember, they had us check in during the middle of the week, so we could acclimate before classes started on Monday. That first weekend, we took the school bus into town to stock up on Brasso and shoe polish, and any other supplies need for survival.

During the regular year, this was a full-blown military experience. Twice weekly room inspections, where the term anal would be a kind characterization of the basic walkthrough. You had to be able to count your teeth in the reflection on the front of your shoes. Yes, they did bounce a quarter on your bed, and if it did not bounce they tore your bed apart, and you a new one.

Your brass had to look like gold, and your bathroom was cleaned with a toothbrush. The rooms were about eight feet wide and twenty feet long, and you used a full bottle of Future floor wax each week. They were very serious about all of this, because once a year a general from Fort Benning would come to the school for what they called G.I. (government inspection), and inspect the facilities and the troops. The schools military rating was based on this along with the rating of the close order drill team regionally.

When classes started, so did Military Ed. Even though we were just an ROTC Battalion, on the first day of class, we stood up and took the army pledge to protect the flag and the constitution, as if we were enlisting in the army. We were then issued US Army rifle cards, which allowed us to check out our rifles from the armory. These were fully functional M1A1 rifles, except that they were issued without firing pins; this will become important later. We had target practice at the rifle range twice a week with different weapons, and classroom instruction three times a week; covering all that you would expect out of the army. There were three instructors, two of which were lieutenants, and then there was Major Buckley. The closest I can come to describing him is a thinner version of the captain of the aircraft carrier in "Top Gun". I don't know what the actors name is, but you get the general demeanor and picture of the person, and that was Major Buckley. We covered tactics and navigation, and such fun courses as the basics of the M79 grenade launcher, and the use of the 81mm mortar. There was even a class on the shoulder mounted M72 LAWS Rocket, what fun. The strange thing, however, was that the ROTC instructors had nothing to do with the drill team, go figure.

With the exception of the Military Ed, the weekdays were not much different from the summer in the basic school format. However, during the regular year, there were after school sports and participation in one of them was mandatory. That first year, I went out for the football team and became a tackle. There were not enough kids to make up two squads, so we rotated offensive and defensive positions. The workouts were pretty standard for high school. The only thing I remember about that first year was the after practice climb up the three-story high stairs to get up to the locker rooms from the football/parade field. The campus was on the side of a foothill and set up in a couple of terraces. I do remember that we didn't have many schools to play back then. The one I do remember was the local industrial school for boys. They were huge, and they showed up with anything but proper cleats on, golf shoes were what most of them were wearing. You know the little pointed spikey affairs. They literally, and figuratively, ran over us all day long. Now what WAS enjoyable about their games was the halftime show. Their band and drill team with a drum major out front with one of those six-foot batons, GOT DOWN! I, nor anyone else, had never seen anything like that, you need to think "Drumline" here, but this was in '73. We all wanted them to do it again. The hell with us going back out there and getting pounded for another half. Needless to say, we did get pounded for another half, this along with the strange puncture type injuries made most of us re-evaluate our pursuit of that sport at the academy.

After that, there was an incident where I was very sick, running a 101* fever and I went to practice anyway. I had a good friend who was so big everyone called him "Gargantua". That day we lined up opposite each other, and he saw I was in no shape to even be there much less going through the drills. But I wanted to show "team spirit," so I wasn't going to wimp out on practice. He said to me, "Just hit me and we'll dance until the play is over." This sounded good to me; normally, I couldn't budge him anyway, now I could barely walk. We did this for the rest of the scrimmage, and I actually made it through practice. After that, however, I had a lot of trouble making it up the steps off of the practice field. When I got to the top of the steps, I actually passed out. Gornto was there trying to make sure I was okay, when the coach came up the steps. Seeing me laying there the coach proceeded to kick me in the side, and told me to get up and get to the showers. His kicks were forceful enough to hurt and wake me to consciousness, and really piss off my friend. When I woke, my buddy was trying to explain to the coach how sick I was, and the coach said he didn't care. It was after that I quit the football team.

The first year I was there, I was put in the southern barracks in "D" company. This was a newer building than the rest of the campus, without some of the wonderful quirks of the older ones.

It was a two-story building, with the hallways open to the outside like a cheap motel. The rooms were a little larger than the north barracks, and the rooms joined in front to comprise the suite, rather than the rear.

My roommate was from the Bahamas, and quite a character. Small, but feistier than hell; he was a freshman, and as with most of the other guys, sent there by his parents to get focused.

One of my suite mates was "Ted" Neugent, whom you will hear more about later. One of the first things I had to do in order to be social was to get permission from my father to smoke cigarettes in the room. This had to be a written consent, and my mother was not going to ever give me that. Now, I didn't smoke cigarettes, but the rest of the suite did, and in order for the suite to get the special "red room" tag on the doors, every body in the suite had to get that written permission.

Once presented with that explanation, Dad sent in the paperwork for me, and so opened the door to the world of being WELL ADJUSTED ;-), of course smoking cigarettes was not the only pursuit on the menu. All of the other smoke was brought in from the nearest big city by cadets that lived nearby, and went home on weekend leave. It was relatively cheap, and of pretty good grade. We amused ourselves with stereo systems, and vinyl discs called albums (ancient technology). I remember listening to a lot of Yes and Zepplin. We would construct spinning "light" show things made out of a soda can and a candle. You cut a propeller affair in the top, and various shaped holes in the sides. You would suspend the can on a sharpened piece of wire coat hanger, so when the candle, which was placed inside the can, was lit, the heat would spin the can as it escaped. The light shining through the side holes and the top would project patterns around the room for our entertainment. "WOW, MAN!" Then there was the practice of hanging a knotted up, plastic dry cleaning bag from the center light fixture by a wire coat hanger. You then put a piece of aluminum foil, or a pie plate, underneath the bag. Now, I must mention here that the floors were painted concrete, so a fire was not likely. You then lit the bottom of the bag, and sat back and enjoyed, you see when the plastic melted, there was a ball of liquid fire that fell to the floor, and on its way made the most incredible sound. It was like the sound of a screaming MIMI round coming in, and then it hit the ground with a "BOOF" type sound. When the thing got going, it did this a couple times a second, and this lasted for a couple of minutes. After that, you had to air out the room, as a matter of fact, you had to air out the entire suite. I look back fondly on the times of getting ripped, and sitting there with your cleaning kit, and rodding your M1A1 rifle. I can still smell the gun cleaning fluid if I try hard enough. I will say though that as a company, when it came to the military stuff, we were together. Being a "good soldier", with all the spit and polish, became routine.

The first quarter ended without incident, and I do, for all of you 'Global Warming' nuts, remember that it snowed the day we were to leave for the Christmas break, which was unusual for the area. That year, my roommate Michael went home with me for the first week of break to New York City. We had brought a goodly stash with us from the academy, which was simply packed in our bags. There was no security to speak of, and certainly no drug sniffing dogs to be had. For the week he was there, we had a ball running around the city seeing the sites, and going down to the Village.

I thought since he was from the Bahamas, he would be intimidated by the big city, but I was wrong about that. Even to the point he showed me a few things, one of which, was his way to cross the street and get around traffic. He would Jay walk across the street by going up to flowing traffic, which was really not flowing that quickly, and stopping just short of the cars running over his toes. I mean REALLY close. He then would lean over the car as if he was going to fall forward. He then would throw his arms behind him and straighten up. Of course the car would screech to a halt, and he would walk around the front of it. The first time he did this, he scared the SHIT out of me. He then of course proceeded to laugh his ass off, and walk through traffic all the way across the street that way. He said the traffic in the Bahamas was just as bad, and the drivers there didn't really pay a lot of attention to traffic signals. I do remember us hanging out at a bar called Maxwell's Plum, and listening to the sound track to 'Easy Rider' back at the apartment. Other than that, the details are a little fuzzy.

A week later, we drove him to the airport, so he could spend the second week in the Bahamas with his family.

Chapter 5 - Sunny South Florida

When you returned to the academy after Christmas vacation, you did not go back to Georgia; you went to South Florida for the winter quarter. This was so that there could be year round sports, and especially, military close order drill practice, including Sunday parade.

The campus was comprised of the main barracks/administrative offices building, which was in a traffic circle, with an eight-foot high chain link fence around all but the western third of the circle. The remainder of the circle was the parade ground for Sunday Parade Formation. There was a guard shack at the building end of the main driveway, and two large gates at the street end. The main barracks was a three story affair, almost the full width of the circle, say around four hundred feet long. It also had open hallways front and back, and stairwells at either end.

The Armory was at one end of the main building on the first floor. Now unlike the armory in Georgia, which was only for the school's use, this one was an official National Guard armory. It had of course our M1A1s that we carried, but it also had M-16, Mortars, small howitzers, and all the ammo needed to defend part of the city. We frequently commented to each other about how glad we were that the existence of such a cache of weapons was not public knowledge. This was in the middle of the Vietnam War, and military folks were often the target of war protesters. At the back of the main building, there was a large expanse of asphalt that we used for daily mess formations; these were without rifles or dress blues. Since the mess hall was in the other half of the first floor, it was the logical place.

Across the street to the south were two smaller, one story barracks and separate classroom buildings. The football/soccer field was there as well. There was a sort of public alleyway between the two barracks buildings, which became an issue later that winter.

At the academy, military discipline was measured out in the form of de-merits. You would get one or two, here or there, for your shoes not being shiny enough, or your bed not being made well enough, you get the general idea. Now, they allowed you so many each week, but not many without repercussions. When you had accumulated enough to warrant punishment, you had to work them off. At the Georgia campus, the main form of that punishment was cutting back the Kudzu growing on the hillside overlooking the main parade/football fields. You know, the one with the three story stairs to get down to the bottom. You accomplished this with something called a 'swing blade,' a serrated affair, on the end of a pole you swung like a golf club. You spent your Saturdays at this pursuit, and worked off so many de-merits every hour. The parade field was the equivalent of four or five football fields, side by side, with a baseball diamond at either end, so there was plenty of fun to go around.

In Florida, however, there was nothing to do as far as busy work, so we marched in a circle we affectionately called the 'Bull Ring'. It was called the same thing in Georgia, but it didn't apply as often. In Florida, you would report to the football field, and march around it in single file for as long as it took to work off your de-merits. There was always a faculty member that oversaw the session. One particular Major comes to mind here. He usually was sitting in a chair leaning against one of the classroom buildings, which were at the edge of the field. You would do this an hour at a time, take a few minutes of break to stay hydrated, and then start the whole affair over again. This was South Florida in the winter, which stays in the 70s, so it wasn't too bad as far as heat stroke goes. You did get to take a break, and have lunch, and then return for the afternoon session. If there were enough cadets walking 'Ring,' you had the opportunity to cheat every so often. The path we walked came very close to the end of one of the classroom buildings.

If the Major was not watching carefully enough, a couple of us, with the agreement of the rest, would slip out of line when we passed the corner of the building, disappear for the rest of the session, and still get credit for doing the time. Roll call was taken at the start of the session. This applied to those of us that had enough de-merits that required us to return the next weekend to continue the fun. You did not want to have him look for you, because your time was up, and you not be there. I became VERY familiar with this practice later that first winter, that tale to come.

On Saturday, if you had no 'Ring' time to serve, you could get a day pass to go into town on the school bus. Now in Florida, this meant going to the beach.

We were in the City of Hollywood, where there was a boardwalk and a band shell on the beach about twenty minutes to the east. The bus would let you off at the band shell in the morning, and pick you up three hours later after lunch, and again at the end of the day. There was always a staff member at the beach with you. Not that any of us with crew cuts, in navy blue gym shorts and matching tee shirts with the academy logo on them, could disappear into the crowd, but they were always there for our protection!?

The other choice you had for the day was to walk east on Hollywood Blvd. to the mall and hang out. Since I originally came from New York, and going to the beach in the winter was a new thing for me, I spent most of my time at the beach that first winter.

As the war was raging, and the military was looked upon as equals to the "Fuzz," we were as a rule not liked by the "Townies", at least not the guys. They called us the "River rats," and generally harassed us when we were at the mall, or if caught not in a group at the beach. What they didn't understand was that we were for the most part not in favor of the war, and we were just as stoned as they were, but we had crew cuts. I was also told that besides the war issue, there was the fact that when we were in town, the girls seemed to like the "clean cut" boys in uniform. This didn't sit well with the local boys either.

There was an incident where the anti-war crowd decided to protest our presence in their town. I seem to remember one Saturday morning seeing a small group start to gather at the front gate with some sort of signs, which were way too far away to read with the naked eye. I don't think I was on guard duty, but for some reason I was up front in the guard shack. I was probably waiting for the bus to the beach. By the time it was time to go, there were quite a few people there. I remember driving through the crowd as we left the campus. When I came back for lunch, they were still there, and their number had swelled significantly. There were actually guards posted at the entrance to open the front gates, which had been, because of the presence of the security risk, closed. Now there were also protesters climbing the fence, not trying to get in, but just climbing for the sake of something to do. It wasn't long after lunch that the commandant had called the local police to disperse the crowd. The cadets had assembled on the balconies of the main building to watch the show. Little did we know that the show was not yet over.

The next weekend, just after lights out, someone in a white van drove through the alley between the outlying barracks, and threw rocks through some of the windows and into the rooms. It all happened so quickly. There was no one hurt, so a response never occurred. The following weekend, the same van drove between the barracks again. This time they tossed a Molotov cocktail through one of the windows. As it happens, the occupants were partying in another suite, so no one was hurt this time either. The fire department was called, and since the barracks were made out of concrete, there was little to burn in the room; there was only minor damage.

After this action, a response was truly called for. So in the words of the great philosopher Bugs Bunny "This means war!"

That upcoming Friday night, we posted cadets on the roofs of the barracks on either side of the alley. Each team had two, sealed 55 gal drums of water ready to roll into the alley, and on top of the van should it re-appear. The object was to do damage and immobilize, so as to give the police time to respond and put these dirt bags in jail. The commandant also hired a couple of rent-a-cops to patrol the campus at night, which presented its own set of problems. While all of the cadets were cool, the rent-a-cops were not, and getting busted for smoking dope was not on the agenda either. On top of that, they made sending runners to the pizza place just up Hollywood Blvd opposite the parade field quite difficult. Part of the weekend party plans were always Pizzas and Boone's Farm. A couple of suites would take up a collection, put together an order, and send someone out to the corner for the food. Now the pizza always came back cold, but we never seemed to care. The pizza and wine seemed to really satisfy a serious case of the munchies. So these rent-a-cops needed to be dealt with as well. While we did everything to make them feel as unwelcome as possible, this only seemed to annoy them. Earnest came up with an idea of his own, and executed it without letting anybody know what was in store for the rent-a -cops. He went up to the roof of the three story main building, taking one of the acid/baking soda fire extinguishers with him. This was one of those two-feet tall, seven inches in diameter, silver extinguishers that was filled with liquid and used everywhere at the time. He then waited for one of the rent-a-cops to walk under his position, and proceeded to drop the extinguisher about five or six feet behind him. It burst upon impact, and scared the hell out of the cop. He quit that evening, and his partner didn't last much longer as well. I guess they got the message that we really didn't want them on the campus.

Now as I mentioned, there was a parade field that we used every Sunday. One side was the actual traffic circle, and the other was the fence at the edge of the campus. In spite of some of the locals' hatred of us, there were a fair amount of spectators parked at the edge of the road at every Sunday parade. After breakfast, we would form up by companies, and then with the drill team and flag bearers at the front, march up and down the field a couple of times. After which, we were dismissed to relax the rest of the day.

Now one Saturday night, someone, not me, got the brilliant idea that if we all flushed our toilets at the same time, it would blow the main water line coming into the campus, which was known to be located in the middle of the parade field. It was decided at the highest level, that at the first bell for breakfast formation, everyone would flush. The next morning when we all flushed together, you could hear the event throughout the entire three story main building, and low and behold, the water main burst right in the middle of the parade ground. Since breakfast was only a couple of hours before parade, there was no time to fix it and dry out the field, so parade was cancelled. Now that's the way to have a relaxing day!

The only other thing I remember about that year that stands out, is that I got busted with someone else breaking barracks to go to a concert at the Hollywood Sportatorium. We got picked up by the Hollywood police hitchhiking west on the Boulevard trying to get to the concert. We were in civilian clothes, but the crew cuts gave us away, and they picked us up and returned us to the guard station. After that, all my free time in Florida was spent on the bull ring. I finally got done with my "Penance" back in Georgia.

At the end of the winter quarter, the school would transport us all back to the Georgia campus using their own busses. These were the standard 'Bluebird' school busses, with the regular bus drivers who were not teachers, but instead maintenance men. This was a bonus, because they did not care what we did during the trip as long as we were fairly quiet and stayed in our seats. We would all gather after breakfast to board the busses and head north to Gainesville. This trip ended roughly twelve hours later with a couple of rest stops. Because of the length of the trip, we made sure we had an ample supply of smoke to get us to our destination. On the way north that year, we spotted a guy driving a convertible sports car in the passing lane. He waved at us and we waved back and I held up our one ounce stash of pot in the window, with accompanying thumbs up gestures. He gave us the thumbs up back, and then reached down and held up a gallon sized baggie full to the brim and gave us a big smile as he sped off. As I said, it was everywhere.

The rest of that year and that summer were pretty uneventful at the academy, however...

During the summer of my final year in the Academy, 1972, I had a chance to go to a concert with Ted. Since he lived near the academy in suburban Atlanta, his father could come pick us up. So we got weekend passes to go to a concert at a venue called Lake Spivey just outside of Atlanta in Jonesborough. It would be a midday affair starting around eleven, and we took Ted's 54 Chevy to the event. (I know it's not a MoPar, but it's still a good story) Once we got near the place, the traffic became bumper to bumper. Ted was not a patient driver, and he had a fairly well built small block under the hood. So he would let the car in front of us get three or four spaces ahead, and then he would smoke his tires, take off for a second, and then slam on the brakes stopping just short of them. After doing this a half a dozen times, the people in front of us just got out of the way. I figure they were just plain scared of him, I certainly would have been. We then got to the event in more than enough time. We pitched our blanket on the grass, and started to socialize with the other people that were there. While we were well adjusted, there were other folks there, forget about reality, that were barely still attached to the planet, forget about reality. There was one guy, who was tripping his brains out, and was carrying his three or four year old son on his shoulders. It got to the point that others there actually intervened, and took the kid off his shoulders, and sat the kid down on what they thought was his blanket. Needless to say, it was quite a zoo.

We were there to see Chicago, with Ritchie Havens opening up. Ritchie and his band did their set for about an hour, and then the roadies did the teardown and set up. Because it was a beautiful day, everything was done at a mellow pace. The guys from Chicago then came on stage and did their sound check. They went off stage for a few minutes, and then came back on. With everybody plugged in, the guitar player stepped up to the mike and greeted the audience. After his greeting he went and did some sort of a power chord to start the first song. During that chord, there was a fairly large explosion behind the stage with an accompanying small mushroom cloud becoming visible after a few seconds. We all thought, "COOL." Well,... not so much. The stage went silent, what lights were on, went black, and everyone left the stage.

After a few minutes, the guitar player came back on stage with a bullhorn, and proceeded to explain to all that the explosion was the main transformer for the venue blowing up. He then said that they were going to stick around and would not leave until they had played their full concert. He said that Georgia power and light was flying another transformer in by helicopter, but it would take a few hours. He asked everybody to stick around and enjoy the beautiful day. This was around 1:00 in the afternoon.

A little while after that Ritchie came back on stage with his acoustic guitar, a stool, and a single mic and proceeded to say "well, I've done this before," and did an acoustic set by himself. Of course, he did an extended version of 'Freedom'. I assume they found a small generator for the amp he was using. That particular part was really great. In my opinion, he was much better with just his guitar than he was with his band. Around 3:00 a helicopter with a transformer hanging from a cable underneath it swooped in overhead, and placed the transformer behind the stage. By 3:30 or 4:00, the transformer had been replaced. After that, Chicago did their entire catalog of tunes until well after dark. What a concert! Afterwards, we returned to Ted's' place, and then back to the academy the next day.

Chapter 6 - Year Two: The Rockets Red Glare

The next year when I arrived, I was given the rank of Sargent First Class, and assigned to the older main barracks I started in my first summer at the academy. I was told that I would have been made an officer because of my grades, but because of getting busted for taking the trip down the boulevard, I was not officer material. That was fine with me. My only concern was getting into a good college. Had I known what getting non-commissioned rank entailed, it would have been better for me to have become an officer. At the start of the year, each company's officers initiate the non-coms with a little ceremony. They would assemble the non-coms from the company one floor at a time in one of the rooms on that floor. Starting with the PFCs, we were instructed to grab the top rail of one of the bunks, then one of the officers would give each cadet that got rank one hit on the ass with a dress saber (a long highly polished chrome plated steel sword) for every stripe awarded. A corporal got two a sergeant got three, etc. I was given the rank of sergeant first class with five stripes. I didn't do much sitting that day.

One of the "charming" idiosyncrasies of living in that barracks was the steam radiators used for heat. During that first summer they were never turned on so I was not aware of this trait, but it gets chilly in north Georgia in the fall and early winter. When they come on for the first time in the late afternoon, they ping and pop and make a chorus of sounds for about fifteen minutes.

Sometime during the late fall, I was a couple of rooms down the hall from my suite when this charming event occurred. Having finished what homework was left for the day, I went to get mellow with a friend and listen to some tunes. Everyone in the room was well adjusted. When the symphony started up, we all commented on the event. Then at the height of it, there was the sound of what can only be described as a jet engine taking off. Within moments of takeoff, one of my Hispanic suitemates comes stumbling into the room dripping wet exclaiming that it was raining in our rooms. Of course thinking that there was a language problem, we all said, "What the hell are you talking about?" This time he yelled, "It's raining inside the room!" Having fully peaked our curiosity, and in spite of the fact we were all well lit, we all decided it was worth the effort to actually get up and venture down the hall to investigate. All during this time, the sound of the jet engine we heard at the onset had not stopped. When I got to my room, the main steam feed to my radiator had burst at a fitting, and the cold concrete celling and walls were causing the steam to condense and literally rain inside the room soaking everything. At that point, the crowd started to gather, including the teachers, one of whom went back to their suite to call maintenance, and had the system shut down. Once it stopped raining, I had to strip the lower bunk I slept in and remake it for the night. Since the upper mattress took the bulk of the damage, I actually had a place to sleep, but it was a chilly night for all in that wing. This event actually made the year book.

During the first weeks of the fall, recruiting for the various activities took place. I was actually approached to join the close order drill team called the Fusiliers. They convinced me that this was a cool thing to do, and best of all, you got out of government inspection as far as your room was concerned. Little did I know how really cool this was going to become.

There were twenty some odd cadets in the drill team of all ranks and ages. We drilled almost every day after school, and one of the things that kept us all together as a team was that we were all stoned. I'm sure you are now saying just how could that possibly be an advantage?

Here is the point, we were trained to perform a choreographed routine, and after a while we had learned all the moves and memorized the routine. The problem with memorizing the routine is the commander of the team was still out front calling the routine. It the event that he made a mistake in what he called, because we were well adjusted, we would not be relying to our memories. We instead would actually be listening to what he said, and we would perform it the way he called it.

These routines were not simple. They contained a lot of rifle twirling, overhead exchanges, face to face exchanges, and so forth. It seemed that the more challenging the routine the more fun we all thought it was.

During that fall, we did have the privilege to perform at a number of Georgia Tec games.

We would form up under one of the goal posts, travel down the field, do our routine, and travel back. I remember the reception as warm, and the applause and cheers as overwhelming.

We were later told that we were ranked as the top drill team in the state of Georgia; this was including all of the college ROTC programs.

While we were in Georgia, we also had a chance to serve as the honor guard at the military funeral of one of the members of staff who passed away. NO, the cadets had nothing to do with it!

Now in order to serve as the honor guard and perform the twenty one-gun salute, the rifles had to actually function. In order for that to happen, the armory had to issue firing pins and ejectors for our rifles. The entire core of cadets carried M1-A1 rifles that were fully functional except for lacking pins and ejectors. The ceremony consisted of seven rifle bearers and a commander to call the salute. All of us got the pins and ejectors, and practiced the ceremony for an afternoon, with the best seven being chosen to go to the funeral. We were also issued a couple of full ammo boxes of blanks to use for the occasion along with clips. I can't tell you the fun we had with a thousand rounds of ammo at our disposal.

As it turns out, later that year in Florida, we had to perform another military funeral for another member of staff. Just like the last time, we reported to the armory and were issued pins, ejectors, ammo and clips for the occasion.

Normally we practiced on the asphalt behind the main building, which is where we gathered for this particular practice. As a matter of fact, there is a picture in the yearbook of that gathering, and as it happens, I am in the center of the group sitting on the ground rolling a joint. Remember... we had to keep it together. Now for some reason, which escapes me, we were having practice for this event on the main parade field outside of the fence in the grass, rather than behind the building on the asphalt. Perhaps it was because the graveside was in the grass, who knows.

The social climate was no better this year than the year before. The military was still hated and the Vietnam War was still raging. It had also come to our attention that the "Townies" besides just hating us, had come to the conclusion that the entire core was just a bunch kids with fake guns, playing soldier.

Now as I stated, the parade field was bordered by the actual traffic circle. Even though we were only a group of twenty plus, we never felt that there was any danger from the town's folk during the day.

During the middle of this practice, a couple of guys in a VW Beetle stopped by the edge of the road, pulled off the shoulder of the road onto the edge of the field, and parked. We thought they were there to watch us practice, because this is what the town's folk did every Sunday to watch the parade. They sat there for a little bit, and then they got out of the car. They so typified the South Florida stoner look with long greasy looking hair, tattered genes, tee shirts and sneakers. Up until this point, we were paying little attention to what they were doing. However, when they got out of the car, we noticed that each of them was carrying a baseball bat, and that they had started to walk across the field towards where we were formed up, forty yards away. At that point, their actions were brought to the attention of the team leader Curt, who was facing us and away from them. Please remember, we were quite stoned and we had full clips and the ability to take advantage of that.

Curt turned around and saw what was happening. Since we were marching parallel to the fence up the length of the field, with a big grin on his face he ordered the squad to do a left flank and then halt, he then ordered the first row down on one knee. He then gave the order to fire at will. The magazine of an M1A1 carries twenty rounds. So in a matter of seconds, there were four hundred plus shots fired towards these two Bozos who were about twenty yards away. While these were blank rounds, at the end of each round is a plastic plug so the powder doesn't spill out of the round during handling. I don't know if they were actually hit by any of the plugs, but their reaction was priceless. At the time this was happening, there was a wall of smoke and flames coming sideways out of the flame suppressors on the barrels. The look on their faces was of pure terror; their eyes were a big as saucers, and all of the color had drained from their faces. Our response caused these two to drop the bats and run on air back to their car. They jumped in and sped off with little regard to even looking for traffic going around the circle as they drove off the grass onto the actual road.

We, however, like good military men, all fell on the ground laughing our asses off. Needless to say, that was the end of the practice for the day; we then all had to go spend a fair amount of time cleaning our rifles before returning them to the armory.

After the service, we turned in our pins and ejectors. I, however, collected all the spent brass and started a small business making hash pipes out of two shells fastened together. They even had a military fashioned, leather holster. I continued the business until graduation, in spite of the fact a certain Major busted me doing the books for the business during study hall. To thank him for not turning me in, I gave him one _after_ graduation.

Once we returned to Georgia, all thoughts turned to the upcoming government inspection and final grades for college.

There was also the culmination of the Military Ed classes, a portion of which entailed practice in setting up and firing dummy rounds with the 81mm mortar. The dummy rounds were ten pound aluminum and steel replicas of the real rounds, so they would function in the mortar correctly. The mortar was set up at one end of the main parade field closest to the baseball diamond. At the other end of the field in the right-hand corner, was the practice equipment for the football team. This included the brand new seven-man sled, purposely put in the opposite corner from where the shells were designated to land. Up on the top of the hill by the road, the football coach was sitting on the bank and watching the practice. I can only believe he knew payback was coming. Most of the kids in my Military Ed squad were no fans of the coach. When we were briefed on the operation of the mortar we paid close attention. We agreed among ourselves that as each one went up to take his practice shot, we would move the trajectory two clicks to the right. Now we got away with this because the instructor had his back to the down range end of things, and was paying close attention to the tube, making sure everyone was clear of it, and no one got hurt by the exiting round. As it happens, the winning shot of the mortar being fired was the one after my turn, but it is immortalized in a photo in that year's yearbook. These rounds were just dummies, but ten pounds traveling downrange two hundred yards comes in with quite a wallop. When it hit, it snapped the bottom frame in half. Up on the hill, the coach just sat there with his head buried in his hands, while we all were cheering at the taking down of our PE enemy.

That year, physics was one of my favorite subjects. I was the only student the teacher had that had ever gotten a one hundred in a weekly grading period.

For my final Physics project, I thought building a shoulder mounted rocket launcher with an exploding warhead might be fun. Come on! You know it sounds like fun.

But first a little background is in order.

When I was ten or eleven, my father spent a lot of time at a textile plant in Stafford Springs Connecticut., owned by Burlington Industries. He was one of their head textile designers, and his specialty was paisleys. Chances are if you were wearing them in the sixties, they were his. When I went to visit him in Connecticut, I always hung out at the chemistry lab. One of the chemists had a very large book on how to make fireworks of all kinds. From this book, I even learned how to hand roll and fabricate rocket engines, and make 'sky rockets'.

Now I had already gained a reputation for liking exotic pyrotechnics by making an iodine based explosive that was quite pressure sensitive. This was another one of those things I picked up at camp. After making a batch I had failed to clean up completely. Later in the day the director of the lab placed something down on the counter, and small crackles and pops were heard and little purple clouds of smoke were seen. Needless to say, I did a lot of cleaning in the lab after that.

One day while helping them process some samples, I had some bleaching agent dissolved in some boiling water. While transferring it to another container, I spilled about a cup of it on the floor. In the lab there were no towels or even kitty litter, this was the early sixties; they used blotter paper to soak up messes. So I threw a couple of pieces of blotter paper down on the spill, and sort of forgot about it. When I finally got back to it, the blotter paper looked good as new, so I threw it back on the stack. Later that day, there were a couple of guys from DuPont in the plant trying to sell the idea of using a new cellulose/paper fabric they had developed to make tweed suits. The lab did wear tests and wash/bleed tests and the sort. After one of the wash/bleed tests on their new fabric, they were drying the sample in sort of a big fabric press with a heated top plate like the old fashioned presses you see at the drycleaners. When you dried the fabric, you would take and put it between two pieces of blotter paper, throw it on, and close the press to dry the sample. Well, I guess their number was up. They grabbed my two pieces of blotter paper and put the wet sample between them and threw the whole affair on to the press and closed it. It seems that as long as there was water to evaporate off everything was cool. However as soon as it all dried out, the blotter paper exploded with a flash coming out from between the top and the bottom of the press, and blew a horizontal piece of the front of the guy's suit away. Then when he opened the press there was nothing left of the sample, or blotter paper, to see. Of course at that point everyone looked at me, I explained to Mary, the assistant director of the lab, and to the guys from DuPont exactly what had happened. They looked at her, and then at me and said, "Well, OK!. It looks like you just invented a new type of explosive!" and were on their way.

After that I got involved with model rocketry (why build motors when you can buy them), and never really lost my love of watching things go zipping by. Which brings us back to the main story.

During our training we had an opportunity to handle a real bazooka and a M72 LAWS-rocket. I really liked the compact size of the laws-roc, and made that sort of design a feature part of the project. What I chose to do was make the launcher out of two sections of chromed metal vacuum cleaner tubes (you know the type for the old Electrolux vacuums that would slide into each other to extend the hose, and that had little slits on the large receiving end of each tube). They were thin and light, and happened to be available for use. I fashioned a hand-carved wooden affair that I hose clamped to the front of the back tube, which served as the front handle, and contained a momentary toggle switch I used as a trigger. There were two large, square, six-volt batteries (3"x3"x6"long) hooked in series. They were clamped to either side of and at the very rear end of the back tube, they would sit quite comfortably on your shoulder, and power the ignition circuit. I used Estes igniters, which worked quite well with the twelve volts the batteries supplied.

Now in order to test this set up, I put together a static sample rocket with a stick for balance instead of fins (like a bottle rocket). I then got a large soda bottle, and set it up on the outside window ledge to support the rocket and its stick. We hooked the igniter and power leads up to the rocket, and ran the wire inside the room, attaching it to the workings of the rocket launcher, and then shut the window. The general trajectory would take it over the deep woods at the edge of the campus. We chose to test fire the setup one weekend evening when we thought everybody was in the study hall watching a movie after dinner. We connected the batteries as if the rocket was in the tube, and pulled the trigger letting her fly. Unfortunately, at that exact moment the movie had already finished and was letting out. This was about twenty yards from the other side of the barracks. When the rocket took off, it let out a surprisingly loud whoosh; it went about four of five hundred feet straight up and off into the woods. The flight was visible to everyone who was leaving the movie, including Major Wilson. As soon as it launched and we saw the result, we pulled the wire in the room, threw the whole affair in to my footlocker, and slammed the top shut. Within a minute of us putting everything away, the Major came bounding into the room expecting to catch us in the act. All he found was Ernie and me sitting at the desk smiling. Because the window had been closed, there was no smoke in the room, or any other evidence of our involvement in the launch. He looked puzzled, shook his head, and muttered something about "I could have sworn" as he left the room. He would figure it out in a few days.

The launcher also had a ten-X scope attached to the rear tube that I borrowed from Earnest. We bore sighted the scope on a telephone tower about three miles away so it was accurate enough to hit something say a hundred yards away. The rocket was powered by the largest Estes motor available at the time, and had hinged fins that centered it in the tube, and then folded out and back after it left the tube. I will not describe the warhead, but suffice to say it made an impact when it hit fifty yards away. This occurred when I fired it for my final Physics grade, with half of the academy in attendance. OK, really, I got an 'A' in Physics, and the project was built with the complete approval of my Physics professor, you know this was a military academy after all. As a matter of fact, he drove to the mall to pick up the supplies for the project. But after the demonstration, the weapon was immediately confiscated by the ranking military official, Major William Buckley. My room was then torn apart by the staff, and all construction materials were confiscated. We were then later asked to report to Major Buckley's office. When we got there, the Major looked at us with a smile, and told us what a good job of improvising we had done. It was at that time I noticed the launcher hanging on the wall over and behind his desk. He was, however, nice enough to give us back the scope, since we told him it was borrowed. And as far as I know, for as long as he was in command there, it remained on the wall over his desk. Who says science isn't fun!!!

There was also an incident that year at the mess hall one evening that caused quite a commotion. As it turns out, one of the cooks had accidentally set off the foam fire extinguishing system, all over the chicken that was originally supposed to be for dinner. About an hour later, there were several Kentucky Fried Chicken vans delivering food to the back door of the mess. Let it be said there was no food left over that night.

A food server from that year also sticks in my memory.

It was the night of the senior prom, and we were all excited about going. The girls from a private school in town were going to join us. As I went through the line, I looked up and about fell over backwards. Now, YES, I was stoned, but to look up and have what appeared to be Jimmy Hendrix putting your portion on your prison tray was too much to take. I mean this guy didn't just look like him; this was his twin down to the hair! I stopped and asked him directly if he played guitar? He said no. So I asked him if he would make an appearance at the dance just to mess with everyone's head. This he did gladly, and mess with everyone's head it most certainly did.

Government Inspection that year was a hoot. Not only did I get out of all the inspections, but I pulled Guard duty that night. This meant that I had no extra polishing, or dress to do. I just sat in the shack.

I did have to be formed up with my company when the inspecting general arrived, and oh boy did he arrive. Unlike my first years general, this one arrived in a twin bladed Sikorsky helicopter, and he had the pilot land it right in the middle of the road in front of the school. He didn't get permission from anybody, and it blocked the road to both directions of traffic. After the police arrived, he had the pilot move it down to the parade ground. But it sure was fun to watch it come swooping in when he arrived. I graduated that year with a scientific diploma, and was accepted to the University of Miami.

Chapter 7 - On To Miami Beach

It was June 1972, and I had just graduated from the military academy, and my mother had moved us from Long Island New York to Miami Beach. This was so we could be near her parents, who also lived on the beach in a penthouse in one of the large condos just south of our place. We had a seventh floor condo right on the ocean at 73rd street, and Miami Beach, as a whole, was a sleepy little town. There were private houses still on the beach just north of our place, where now there is nothing but high-rises. The South Beach of current fame was a collection of run down motels that no one I knew ever ventured near. The Miami Beach of the sixties, you know Sinatra and Dean and the rat pack, was fading into the sea. The hotels, including one of my old haunts, the Playboy Plaza, was still there, but not that filled, and they were barely hanging on. Life was at a slower pace than I was used to. There were a few kids my age that used to congregate in the poolroom in the building where we lived.

One named Luis lived a few floors above us, his parents had left the country for the summer, giving Luis keys to the two family cars. The first was a new yellow and black Lincoln Town car, and the other was a two-tone brown Rolls Royce. We cruised up and down the beach in the Rolls during the day, and took the Lincoln to the Plaza at night.

 Another one of them was Larry, who also had a constant companion Bob. Larry owned a new, powder blue VW bug that we would take all over. We were musicians, and traveled in many circles up and down the South Florida coast. He was the only one I knew that had even a remote interest in cars. He had fixed up the engine, and done some interior work, but nothing radical. There was also Mindy; we spent many afternoons at her apartment smoking out of a hookah I had made out of a large powder blue plastic Amway flask like thing with a stopper, four hoses and a glass funnel for the bowl. We would sit and get high while watching "Sesame Street".

Let me tell a quick Luis story. One afternoon after spending time on the pool deck and in the pool room, we were very stoned, and we went up to Luis's apartment to hang out, where he showed me the effect of putting a large marshmallow into a microwave oven. I had never seen a microwave oven, or this effect before, and being stoned and seeing the marshmallow double in size was real entertainment. So to keep the entertainment going, I pulled a survival smoke flair out of my bag of tricks. I had gotten it at Hammacher Schlemmer in the Bal Harbor shops. It was housed in a plain aluminum, thirty-five millimeter film canister with a screw on top. You would unscrew the top, and there was a pull chain with a finger sized ring at the end. I had never set one off before, and I thought this was the perfect time. The apartment was on the twelfth floor overlooking the pool and the ocean. So we all went out onto the balcony, and looked down to the pool deck, finding it empty. I looked at Luis, and he looked at me as I pulled the chain and tossed the flair with a long lob, out far enough to make the pool. We watched the flair arc into the water and sink to the bottom. Crap! Nothing happened. We continued to watch the pool. A few moments later the flair surfaced, and with a circular motion on the top of the water, started to generate a thick column of red smoke that finally extended up to the balcony where we were. At that point, we ducked inside and laughed our asses off and did another doobie. What we didn't know was that there was a table of ladies, including my mother, playing cards in the shade under the overhang of the building on the pool deck. The ladies had witnessed the whole affair after the flair hit the water. The way she told it later, it was quite mysterious, and the pool guy had one hell of a cleanup from the Sulphur left by the flair on the surface of the water. I will say it took a lot of self-control not to crack up hearing her tell the story.

A small aside that may help to give you the picture of how undeveloped and slow paced the area still was.

There was a small jetty going out thirty feet or so at the base of the seawall which formed the pool deck. You could actually snorkel and collect stone crabs by hand along this jetty, which Larry and I did regularly. There were all sorts of larger fish to be seen and caught surfcasting. You could swim in the ocean there off of the small twenty foot beach that still existed between the wall and the water. One day Larry and I were on the pool deck after getting well-adjusted. We were leaning over the rail overlooking the ocean just hanging out. You know when you're loaded, small things, like a bright blue ocean, can hold your attention. It was during the summer, so it was ninety degrees and one hundred percent humidity. This helps to account for the slow pace of life there.

All of a sudden we heard a series of small explosions, which turned out to be rifle shots from the roof of the condo. We didn't think terrorists, or assassination plots we just thought crazy person. As it happens, there were also sharks that would come right up to shore where you were swimming. One of the occupants of the building had gotten tired of this, and decided to take action. I don't know how good a shot Ozzy was, but he scared the hell out of all of us. To put this into perspective, the building was twenty stories tall. So the shots, as far as we were concerned, could have gone anywhere. I have no doubt that he thought he saw a shark, and that was what he was shooting at. The police were never called, but the building manager went to the roof and just told him to quit. You see, this was still a small community of people, mostly old and retired, and problems were handled internally. Hot Rods and that scene were nowhere to be found.

There are also another couple of characters that have to be introduced to the story, one was the head valet of the building, Thomas was his name, but we all called him TK. His second in charge, Will, was another character that is of note. TK was forty-five, and about five feet, two inches tall. He was thin, clean shaven, and had medium length grey hair. Will was six foot two and rail thin with short dark hair. All the valets wore white, short-sleeved dress shirts and black slacks. At that point in time, the closest I ever got to performance driving was watching Will and TK taking the assorted cars in and out of the underground parking garage at terrifying speeds. You know the car parkers in the movies you would never give your car to, Will especially, was worse.

But to his credit, I don't know of any wrecks he caused. However, the burn out pit at your local strip had nothing on this place. Let me explain.

The condo had an underground parking garage with an entrance ramp at one end of the building, and an exit ramp at the other end of the building. The building is about two hundred and fifty feet wide and seventy feet deep. The ramps extend about thirty of those feet to the other side in one incline from the street to the parking level. Facing the building, the ramp on the left was the entrance, and the one on the right was the exit.

Larry said that one day Will backed a Cadillac Fleetwood Brougham against the base of the entrance ramp facing the other end of the building. He power braked it and spun the tires until the entire parking garage was so full of smoke, you could not see your hand in front of your face. The smoke was billowing out of both the entrance and exit ramps in such huge quantities, they became concerned about it. He said after the event, they all went down to survey the scene, and found bits of molten rubber on the floor and the walls. So do you still think it's really worth a five dollar tip?

I guess I should also address the fuzzy aspect of this time. The only thing more plentiful than smokable grass in Miami at that time was the water in the ocean and the water in the air. My first experience at the building with getting 'well adjusted' was being invited by Will and TK into the main return air plenum for the building's air conditioning. In this case, it was a room about six feet across and ten feet long. The ductwork, which made up the ceiling, went straight up to the roof, causing it to fade into infinity when you looked up. It was right behind the valet booth, and the intake grill was about four feet wide and six feet tall. They had taken off the screws that attached it to the wall, and used it as a doorway. They had a few chairs in there and would go in and spark one up. Actually, that's not quite correct. Because of the incredible flow of air, you had to light up outside of the 'room,' and take it in. The benefit of this location was they could watch for the customers, and no one could smell what they were doing. You could see out the grill, but because of no lighting inside, they could not see you. We would go to many parties with the both of them, and it was after one of these that Larry took me to meet one of his friends, another valet at the building.

His name was Jimmy, he was five foot eight and had dark shoulder length straight hair parted in the middle, big glasses, and a Cheshire cat grin, he had a 1970 yellow 340 Plymouth Duster with the black stripe package. It had big rear tires, and a 340 in it that had been built to the hilt, and according to Jimmy, it had belonged to an aircraft mechanic that had been drafted and sent to Vietnam. Even in my ignorance, I could tell this was not your ordinary car, and was probably the reason for the grin. Jimmy spent a half an hour every Saturday morning adjusting the rocker arms to make sure the solid tappets were just right. The thing idled with such a violent lope that the antenna would rock back and forth like a conductor leading an orchestra. Once we met, we all hung out together, and went for many rides in his Duster. The Duster was his daily driver; this was not a problem in town, because at that time we could buy Amaco 101 at many locations for about forty cents a gallon. But it had a 4.10 posi in the rear, so he could not take it on long highway jaunts. We tried this, and because of the rear end gear, the engine would whine at 3000 RPM at highway speeds. So every fifteen minutes or so he would have to pull over and let it cool off. For road trips, we used Larry's bug, but for in town there was nothing like that duster.

One day Jimmy and I were going south on Biscayne Blvd in the Duster, Jimmy was driving and I was in the passenger's seat. I cannot remember what the trip was for, but we had just stopped at a light, and there we sat happily rocking back and forth as the engine idled. Next to us pulled up a large four door brown 'boat', a Buick maybe. The driver was an old, white, overly sun tanned obviously Jewish man who rolled down his window and shouted out to us with a typical Jewish accent, "Hey it sounds like that thing needs a tune up." You see he had to shout because Jimmy had a pair of blown cherry bombs for his mufflers. It was LOUD, very loud, as if there were no mufflers being used at all. Jimmy turned to him and shouted back, "Hey, old man, you want to race?" The old man grinned and gunned his boat. Jimmy told me to hold on tight and enjoy.

Once the light turned green, he punched it and pulled a wheelie half way to the next light. We looked back, and the old man was still sitting at the light dazed in amazement. It was at that point that I was hooked!

Chapter 8 - A Life Of Higher Education

It was now 1973; I was going to the University of Miami and living in the dorm.

When I showed up for registration, I was assigned a room on the fifth floor of one of the dorms.

The main cast of characters is as follows: My roommate was a guy named Joe. His father was in the jewelry business, mostly diamonds, and Joe would get the family business someday. This put him in the position of looking at school as more of a chance to make some money, rather than get an education. He was in the commodities business, if you know what I mean. Joe was about 5'6" tall, very fit, and had long, dark hair parted in the middle with a goatee. I cannot for the life of me remember what he had declared as his major, but he had a never ending supply of all kinds of exotic things to smoke. He was from New Jersey and sounded, and acted, the part (BADA-BOOM).

There was Paul from a few doors down, who had a crazy looking blond Afro, and could make an unending number of sounds with his mouth. For example, when we took the elevator up to the fifth floor, he would do all the sound effects from the bridge of the Enterprise, such as the doors opening and closing, the control sounds of the command console when someone pushed a floor button, and generally entertain all during the ride. He could also pick up the phone, and dial it by generating tones with his mouth. While he never knew what number he would end up with, he always got someone. He also, on occasion, would take control of the PA mic in the cafeteria, and give everyone a taste of the Amazon jungle, with ear shattering bird calls and such. He generally hung out in our room as well.

Then there was Henry. We met Henry under the strangest of circumstances; at least that's what I thought. One morning at the beginning of the year, after partying late the night before, both Joe and I woke up to a tall, very thin guy with sandy blond hair, wearing shorts a tank top tee shirt and flip flops, sitting in one of the chairs at the end of my bed. We never locked our doors in the dorm, so he had just walked in and sat down. What woke up us was the sound of him taking a credit card and sifting the seeds out of some pot, by lifting the material up and dropping it at one end of a tilted one inch tall 8"x12" aluminum baking pan. First, I thought, what a concept, being impressed by how efficient it was. My second thought was, who is this guy and where did he come from? While he rolled a joint, I asked him who he was, and all he did was smile, light it and hand it to me. When we were done, without saying anything he just got up and left.

Afterwards, I called a few people I knew on the floor and asked if anyone knew him, and all said' "OH! You got a visit from Henry!" Yes they knew him, and he was harmless. According to those I spoke to, he at least at one time went to school there, but nobody was sure anymore. He was a former student who wandered the dorm just turning people on. He later told me that he had been drafted, and rather than go to Viet Nam, he swallowed some 'Drano' while in boot camp to get out of the Army. This resulted in him having some surgeries, getting a section 8, and getting booted out of the Army. He had returned to school to finish, but was not really studying much, he just liked to party. He also had his finger on the pulse of the university. He would come get us so that we would not miss some of the cool happenings on campus. One such event was the time that Hound dog Taylor was sitting in the back room of the student union with his bass player giving an impromptu concert for all those of us that showed up. I can't remember who he was there to open for, but we did get to see some great concerts at the student union. I do remember seeing Focus, and having the concert shut down by the Coral Gables police for being too loud and lasting too long. After a time of negotiations, they did allow the group to play "Hocus Pocus," the one song we actually wanted to hear.

We also saw John McLaughlin and The Mahavishnu Orchestra on his "Birds of Fire" tour, and Rory Gallagher who opened for him.

Because of that first encounter, the 'Henry Pan' became a fixture in almost all the rooms on the floor.

The general social scene was comprised of the occupants living at the end of the fifth and the sixth floors of the dorm. We would use the fire escape at the end of the hall to commute between floors, rather than walking to the center of the building and using the elevator.

I vividly remember all of us running up the stairs to the roof one night to watch the first night launch of the space shuttle. WOW, Man! ;-) The normal parties were always small, but they were frequent.

I do want to remind all that it was a different set of circumstances then, The Vietnam war was still raging on, and weed was just an accepted part of university life. Even the president of the student council getting busted with a couple of pounds in his dorm room had no repercussions!

I can still remember the campus wide party that took place when Nixon cancelled the war and the draft. I was particularly grateful for this because my draft number was 15, and I was only exempted from the war by a college deferment. Otherwise, I would have been enjoying the 'Tropical life'.

It was during this time I was also introduced by Joe to something called a 'bong', for technical specifications contact Tommy Chong in LA, I'm sure he can help.

One of those small parties of note occurred after Christmas break.

That first Christmas vacation at UM, I spent at mother's condo on the beach. I've already told you how undeveloped the beach was at that time. While I was walking down by the waterline, I found a four inch thick, six foot piece and some smaller pieces of bamboo washed up on the beach. In my mind, little is ok, but bigger is better. I then, during the break, proceeded to make a three foot tall bong, with a two inch piece of bamboo for the bowl. I took it back to campus for the start of the next semester. When Joe walked into the room and finally noticed it leaning in a corner, his response with a silly grin on his face was, "Where did that come from?" It sat in the corner of the room for quite a while before Joe decided it needed to be broken in.

The timing of this was important, because of the rivalry between the fifth and sixth floors, more about that in a minute.

It was a few weeks later that Joe decided to break in the 'BIG BONG'. One evening he shut the door and said, "Let's fire it up." Now there were six of us in the room. There was a guy from further down the hall towards the elevators, who's name escapes me, that wanted to party with us. He had also brought his girlfriend with him, and she, being a born-again Christian, had never done any drugs. She was only going to keep him company and hang out while we partied. There were Paul and Henry in attendance as well.

We put about a foot of water in the bong, and filled the bowl which held roughly an ounce. Since Joe supplied the smoke, he was the first to try it. I held the match, and he took a draw, then when he released the vacuum he had created by drawing on the pipe, the returning water pressure blew the match out. We tried again, and this time the smoke lit, and Joe got a huge hit, but when he let go this time, the pressure blew partially lit weed all over the place. After a few more tries, we decided the physics of the device really didn't work even with just a little water. He said to hell with that, and emptied the water out of it, and preceded to 'shotgun' (that is blowing through, instead of sucking through, the pipe) the entire thing into the 12'x15' room after he got it lit. We then put towels under the doors, after which we just hung out and listened to music. After a little while, we were all very well adjusted. This guy's girlfriend had just laid back on one of the beds listening to the music, which was the usual mix of Steve Miller/Yes/ELP/Deep Purple/Jethro Tull, etc., paying little attention to what we were doing. Now let me say that after we were done, you could barely see across the room, it was very difficult in spite of the fact there were lights on. A little while later she told her boyfriend that she felt sort of dizzy, and wanted to leave, after she sat up she could barely walk out of the room with help. When the door to the hallway was opened, we got all kinds of looks from those who were standing in the hallway, because the smoke rolled out of the room like cheap theatrical fog rolling across a stage.... Time to order pizza!

Now back to the rivalry.

You see, there was a team type rivalry between the floors to establish who had the better dope. There was a match between the floors every so often to establish this.

There were even team tee shirts; ours had the Zig-Zag guy and "fifth floor smoking team" on them. It wasn't until after the Christmas Break that I experienced the thrill of combat.

The rules were simple. Your opponent would smoke your dope, via your method, and the last one to maintain consciousness would walk away with all the stash. The entrance fee was three or four ounces of incredible stuff.

This combat was the motivation for building the BIG BONG, but because of the technical difficulties encountered, we decided not to use it. It was, however, quite a conversation piece for the rest of the year.

We showed up at the first match I attended with just one joint, as well as, the entrance fee. The guys from the sixth floor looked at us like we were crazy. This one was my idea.

They of course wanted to go first, thinking this was a no brainer. We handed their guy the joint, a book of matches, and a very large dry cleaning bag. Oh, did I forget to mention the dry cleaning bag? He asked us what was he supposed to do with that? Our response was, get inside it and smoke the joint! Well, being young and dumb he complied, so as to not blow the match and forfeit the stash.

While he was sitting on the bed, he proceeded to put it over him and tuck it under his crossed legs. He then lit the joint and started smoke it. It took about two minutes before he ran out of anything to breathe, and he abandoned the quest forfeiting the match. Thus securing our party supplies for a while.

A little while later in the year, Henry, Joe, his girlfriend, Mary, and I decided to take a road trip in her white fastback Mach 1 mustang. They all wanted to go to Disneyland in Orlando. It was fairly new, and it sounded like a great Idea. We set the trip up for the next morning. Henry arrived and said he had some special treats for the road. We got our stuff together, met Mary in front of the dorm, and we took off for Disney. Henry then pulled out some 'blotter' LSD, which he and Joe took. Mary and I refrained; she was driving, and at that time it was not in my repertoire. One thing you should know about Joe was that he had a black belt in Karate, and even though he was fairly short he could be a bit feisty. The trip went fine until we got to Disney; by that time Joe and Henry were feeling no pain, OK they were tripping their brains out. We paid to get in and started to explore the park. At that time Epcot had not been finished yet, so it wasn't open, only the 'Magic Kingdom'. There were quite a few people wandering about that also included the usual larger than life characters in costume.

All was fine until later in the afternoon 'Goofy' came up to us and started to try to have some fun. We told him or her to leave us alone. Joe especially did not want to be harassed. Well, Goofy picked up on this, and focused in on Joe. Well Joe, who was still tripping, finally had had enough of this, and proceeded to plant a 'roundhouse' kick on the side of Goofy's head, sending him half way across the park. It was at that time we decided to go back home.

Chapter 9 - The Hunt For Red....Oh Yeah A Car

There was very little car action at the university, except for my request of my mother to let me buy a 1950s completely restored Jaguar. It was the one that looked like a Rolls Royce. It was snow white, and had red leather and red velour interior, it also had a kickin' sound system, with a quadraphonic eight track player, and the guy was only asking $5500 for it. Now on the performance scale it rated negative numbers, however, on the party/chick scale, it was off the chart.

I was making the request of my mother, because my father had died just after I graduated the academy, and there was insurance money she had control over. I was eighteen, but the age of majority bill had not yet been signed. You could be drafted, but you couldn't vote or drink, and you couldn't sign contracts yet. So I was beholding to her for use of the small amount of funds left to my brother and me.

It was after her turning down my request to buy the Jaguar, that I actually talked her into taking me to look at used cars at a Ford dealership. I sit here chuckling still remembering the look on her face when I showed her the used car I wanted. It was a DeTomaso Pantera, a few years old for about the same price as the Jaguar. She went off on me like a Roman candle. "How could I bother wasting her time to look at something like that!" Unless you have a Jewish mother, or maybe you are a member of the Musad, you have no idea of this level of wrath. This explains why most Arab nations don't screw with Israel, too many Jewish mothers to deal with!

I have to explain that in Miami at that time, public transportation was almost non-existent. So getting a car was a necessity if you didn't want to be confined to where ever you happened to be at the time. Larry did come to the dorm from time to time, and we would take jaunts all over. Later that year, the age of majority bill was signed, so I went to her and demanded my money now that I was 'of age'. She gave in, and within days I was at the Broad Causeway Plymouth Dodge dealership to buy a car.

I walked into the dealership with shoulder length, sun bleached. brown hair and a coco brown tan, in shorts, a tank top shirt and flip-flops. Larry gave me a ride, and was actually more excited than I was. He knew exactly why I was there, and exactly what I was going to walk out with.

I told the salesman I wanted a Plymouth Duster with a 340 in it, and asked him to show me what they had in stock, and what my options were. He told me they had two in stock. One was yellow with black stripes, this wasn't going to do (Jimmy had one of those), and they had a fire engine red one with white stripes. Well, red it was. It had air conditioning, disk brakes, a 727 torque-flight automatic transmission and the center console shifter. It had a black and white interior with white bucket seats. It looked like a great place to start.

I was then ushered into the little sales cubicle by the salesman, and we sat down to talk about the money part of the buy. They were asking $4200 on the sticker, now keep in mind that you have a guy in a suite looking across the table at an eighteen year old kid dressed for the beach. He asked me how I wanted to pay for the car. Well I said, "first of all we need to talk about how much I'm going to pay for the car." He looked at me in shock. I then said "look you are going to make enough money on the financing to let me have it at a much better price. Why don't you go and see what you can do?" He said "I have to go talk to my manager." He then left and, I assume, went to go smoke a cigarette. He returned with a sales contract and said, "OK, we can do it for $3800. Now let's talk about the financing."

It was then that I said, "Ok it's financed," and took my checkbook out and wrote a check for the cost of the car plus the tax tag and title! There is no way he was thinking this kid has cash. His mouth was on the floor; he just watched his commission go out the window. I signed the papers and he took the check, and I told him I would be back tomorrow to pick up the car.

Now for my first of many confessions; I didn't know how to drive yet! Larry and Bob were going to have to drive me there, and one of them was going to have to drive it back to the garage apartment I was occupying. I picked up the car and signed up for driving lessons the next day. You see at the military academy you were not allowed to have a car, nor was there any sort of drivers ed for the cadets. The course took about a week, and after that I got my license and was off.

Once I was in the driver's seat, I knew I wanted more of everything, power and flash. Jimmy then introduced me to his mechanic Tommy, who was the spitting image of Duane Allman.

As it happens, Tommy was a MoPar man also. He had a sublime green van with a punched out big block in it. Now when I say he could pull wheelies with his van, he could pull wheelies! I personally did not get to experience any of them, but Larry told me his side of that form of ecstasy. Tommy and Larry had gone on a beer run when we were at Tommy's house in Hollywood.

"The time I met him (Tommy) he took me for a ride in that '61 van with the 3 speed manual shifter on the dash, an uncovered blueprinted 426 Hemi sat 6" from my left leg, that had a carburetor as big as my 1.6 liter VW engine, he popped a wheelie, that in a flash, I was looking at the nice South Florida midday sun!."

I do remember Larry returning from that experience, and him jumping out of the van as Tommy pulled it under the carport. Larry's eyes were rather big, and he would have been pale if he weren't already. Let me describe him. Larry was six feet tall, slender build, very light skin with typical freckles of someone with naturally fire red hair. That hair was to the middle of his back, as wide as his shoulders and very wavy. A red headed Robert Plant comes to mind.

His hair was of such note that when we would use the elevator at the condo, women standing behind him used to stroke it and tell him how nice it was. This was very disturbing to him for he was naturally very shy, and the women were his grandmother's age.

Tommy suggested that I take the stock Thermoquad carburetor off, along with the stock manifold, and replace them with an high-rise manifold and a much better carburetor. So we put on an Edelbrock LD340 and a Holley 3310 with vacuum secondaries. Wow, what a difference! Larry and I then put a set of Hooker headers on, it just kept getting better. Now the headers that I put on were basically the same as the ones you can get today. They did hang low, but South Florida is flat and speed bumps were not invented yet, so the ground clearance was not as big a deal as it is today.

At that time I was attending a junior college, because my party major at U.M. was discontinued along with underwater basket weaving. I really did not take well to the big university system where there were three hundred students to a class in the lecture hall, and you were not allowed to ask questions. I was used to small classes at the academy, and a working relationship with my teachers. One day while leaving the parking lot, I was trying to get in line to turn left and there was someone letting me into line. A lady turning into the parking lot entrance road actually tried to get in front of me, and ended up hitting my driver's side front fender. She also hit a couple of cars that were in the right lane waiting to turn right. I was almost in the line, and she just wasn't paying attention, or didn't care. This made little sense, because it was two lanes in each direction, and she was the only one coming in at the time. She had plenty of room behind me to enter the parking lot, go figure. Florida was and is a no fault state, so she got the ticket. She was unhurt, but did try to sue me because her clarinet case slid across the seat and hit her in the thigh. Too many people looking for a free ride, sound familiar?

I was insured to the hilt and took the car back to the dealership to be repaired. The service manager told me they could fix it good as new. It was only the sheet metal, no frame damage, because the accident was at about ten miles per hour. He said they would match the paint and I would not be able to tell it was ever hit. I told him that if it did not match exactly, I would not sign for the car.

This was a fire engine red paint job that had been fading in the South Florida sun for about a year, there was no way they were going to match it. He then said to me, "Son what color do you want the car?" I said, "It came in here two colors, red and white. I want it black and Chrysler blue, like this," and proceeded to show him a picture of Don Carlton's MoPar Missile. He said fine, it was an insurance job so he didn't care, but he said that I would have to help tape off the blue to make sure it was done to my satisfaction. I was fine with that.

About a week later I got the car back and it was all black. They did it right, the jams, the doors and the trunk, were all done. Only the engine compartment wasn't done. I was told the paint would need to tighten up for about a week before it could have tape put on it for the blue, and I should come back in a couple of weekends to do the blue. I had left the picture of the MoPar Missile with them, so the paint guy already had a good idea what to expect. I showed up early the next Saturday, and we taped it up and he sprayed it on the spot, no paint booth involved. I walked down the street for lunch, and after eating, we took off the paper and tape and got a look at the results. Even the paint guy had to admit it looked cool.

Chapter 10 - The Birth Of The "Blue Missile"

The next time I got together with the gang, was when they decided it should be called the Blue Missile. After that I got a set of aluminum mags and a set of wide M-50/15 tires for the rear. It still had the drums on the back, and I have to assume it was the large bolt pattern the mags had the three position Uni-lug inserts for the lugs and they were on the largest position.

It also had an 8 ¾" rear with a 3.23 diff. The tires did rub a little, so I also did what everybody at the time did, and put on a set of air shocks and jacked it up a little in the back. After that I had Tommy put a B&M auto/manual shift kit in the tranny, so I could safely down shift it without destroying the tranny. I also put in what at the time was a cutting edge stereo, a quadraphonic eight track player, with either Zepplin, Hendrix, Deep Purple playing at deafening levels, or John Mayall, to which I was constantly jamming on harp while driving with the other hand. Oh, I also still had the Duster front plate from the dealer. I used some of the extra blue paint and painted the 'duster' and lettering blue. I also painted the side emblems and the tail emblem that say "Duster" the same blue inside.

It was at that point that I got more involved with electronics. I put together an alarm system using an old siren/radio unit out of a trashed highway patrol car. There was lead foil protection on all of the windows, and a round key to arm and disarm it on the side by the driver's door. It had mercury switches for tilt and bump, and a momentary panic switch in the center console ashtray compartment, with the sliding door, behind the shifter. We used to call that switch the South Florida Idiot Horn.

Now let me explain.

Even in the 70s, when the roads were not that crowded, some people drove like real idiots. There is a traffic maneuver that has become known as the 'Cuban Glide'. This is when you cross five lanes of traffic at full speed without signaling from left to right at almost a ninety degree tangent to traffic to exit the freeway. Well, when it became obvious that there was a cluster of folks trying to behave in such a fashion, that danger was imminent, I would hit that momentary switch and let out a short 'WHOOP' and everybody would act like sane drivers for a minute or so until they could figure out where the cop was. By that time I had cleared the situation, and was on my way with no harm. Let me say I never pretended to be cop or harassed anyone. This was only a defensive tool .

OK there was this one time. I was with Larry in the car following behind Bob and one his friends, we were traveling to a gig together, and when I was right behind them and I leaned on the SFIH . Bob new very well who it was, but his friend didn't, and tossed his lid out the window going right past our car within arm's reach. Bummer! If Larry had the window down, and been quick enough, he could have caught it! That never happened again! Lesson well learned.

It was a little later that I decided that I was going to fulfill my love of driving and take some long distance cruses. So I would need a CB radio, no cell phones yet. I bought a Lafayette electronics CB radio that looked like a car phone, and installed it with a single trunk mounted antenna. I mounted the radio to the console on the passenger's side within my reach. It worked well for short distance talking on the highway.

We, the three musketeers, Larry, Bob and I spent much time zipping around Miami Beach in the Missile. One of our challenges in life was to see exactly how fast we could go and still get the quarter in the basket for the Broad Causeway toll. Thirty-five mph was my best. There were no gates, and if you threw it ahead of you far enough as you went through, you could watch it turn green as the tollbooth faded in the rearview mirror. One of the other pleasures in life was a road called Pinetree drive. It is a winding, divided road that goes the full length of Miami Beach on the mainland side of the inter-coastal waterway. There were never any cops, only a few houses at that time, and a blast to go eighty or ninety around the curves. Larry would drive it in his bug like a madman, but the duster was more fun and a lot less scary.

Chapter 11 - Psilly Us

This next little vignette is here, because Larry reminded me of its significance, and it is one we both remember with fondness.

I would also like to say that Larry and I both wish Bob could be here to share these memories. Bob took the path that slid him into the dark abyss of hard drugs and a street lifestyle. So for you young guns out there please don't go that way. He died in his thirties, some time in the late eighties, and is buried in an unmarked grave in Miami's pauper field. Let me also say that at that time it was still legal to go on such hunts. The farmers didn't care so long as you didn't harass the cattle or destroy their fences. I also want to say that we all start out as 'young and dumb', I am happy to say that I have greatly matured, and these kinds of stunts or behavior are not part of my lifestyle anymore.

One day while hanging out at the valet booth, TK asked me if I had ever been on a mushroom hunt? I said no, and why would you hunt them? He then explained that these were psychedelic mushrooms that only grew in the summer rainy season in the cow fields of South Florida, and that you hunted them so you could make tea out of them and get high. Well let's see, an adventure with a free high as the reward, count me in!

That weekend I went on my first hunt, afterwards, we went back to TK's place and he brewed up a batch of mushroom tea. The hunt was fun, and hanging out with his girlfriend, and one of her hot friends wasn't bad either. However, in spite of the fact that the tea was sweetened with large amounts of honey and ginseng extract, it was one of the foulest tasting drinks I had ever had. While waiting for the effects of the tea to take place, we did some hash and listened to tunes. When the resulting effects arrived, they were a mellow felling of euphoria and giddiness with heightened visual acuity, no hallucinations for me. I did later find some herbal tea ingredients that almost did away with the taste completely, now we're having fun.

But back then, after being introduced to the wonders of South Florida's mycological flora by TK, we all had many adventurous hunts.

At that time my place was still the garage apartment off of 71st street and Biscayne Boulevard that had a side walk up stair case, and was basically two rooms with a bathroom and a closet over a two car garage. As you entered, facing you to the left was the dining room/kitchen with its typical cased opening, a card table and chairs along with a single bed/couch against the far wall. To the right was the bedroom with a four panel wooden door. The bathroom was to the left and the closet was to the right, also attached to the entry foyer. In the bedroom, I had a king size bed with a couple of small end tables at either side. On each was a large three-way JBL speaker pointed towards the center of the bed, sort of very big headphones. The tuner and turntable were on a dresser across the room. On the bed was a black and rainbow colored tie-dyed velvet bed spread I had made. Back then black lights were all the rage. I took full advantage of this by painting the celling of the bedroom black, and then painting an entire galaxy on it with black light paints. I even took little plastic fluorescent balls and made our solar system by hanging them on little wires from the ceiling. To paint the infinite number of stars needed I took the different colored Day-glo paints and dipped the end of a clear Bic pen tube in the paint, and holding it a little ways from the ceiling, blew through it propelling the paint onto the ceiling. The resulting spatter formed thousands of points of light when you turned the black lights on.

On the back of the door in each panel, I painted black light art, the final one being the Hindu gods artwork from Jimi Hendrix's "Axis Bold as Love". So hanging out there was a full sensory experience.

Larry, Bob and I were hanging out at my place one Friday night listening to albums and decided to take a 'field trip' in the morning.

As Larry puts it, "We were going on a fungus-collecting safari in North Miami, where we were doing some research on how territorial male cows were at daybreak!" The partying supplies were running short, so I decided to ration them. I told them we would get well-adjusted before we left in the morning. Larry and Bob really liked to party, and had little patience for such measures. We were going to leave 6:00 or so.

They crashed at my place, so we could be sure to leave on time. I set the alarm for 5:30, and we all went to sleep around midnight, or so I thought. The alarm went off the next morning; we had breakfast, we sparked up a doobie, got well-adjusted and left. We climbed into the Duster and started out on our hunt. It was still dark as it should have been, we turned north onto Biscayne Blvd, and as we went up the street, I spied the clock on top of the bank at the corner of Biscayne and 79th street. The clock said it was 4:30 in the morning! Because of their impatience, those guys had set my clock ahead!

We turned back and hung out for a while. We needed to get to our destination at daybreak, where we were going, you were so far out in the country (I know in South Florida?) that there were no city lights, and it was pitch black before sunrise.

  When the sun came up, it would cause the incredibly thick fog to glow a caramel color, and you could not see more than a few yards in front of you.

Now as the sun actually came up, the fog would lift, and it also went from being sort of cool, to hot and steamy in a matter of minutes. This incident happened before the sun was fully up. When you went on these hunts, you would get started as soon as you could see the ground, so you wouldn't trip over anything and could see what you were hunting for. You went from cow pie to cow pie and picked the mushrooms that had come up overnight.

  There were acres of fields and a lot of ground to cover, so there was always something to find. The part of this story that makes us both smile is when we were on the hunt; Bob would not leave one of the local residents alone. Bob was definitely the craziest of us three. Now he was not yelling or acting in a goofy fashion, he just wanted to get past the cow to look in another part of the field. We decided to take another route, and follow a fence line further away in spite of the extra walking, to avoid the potential problem. Bob wasn't willing to take the extra effort.

 These cows have relatively long horns pointed to the front, not like the Texas long horns, which are to the side. Larry and I were at least ten yards from the fence line and Bob was at least forty. Because of the distance now between us, Bob and the cow were mere shadows in the fog. It would appear that as he continued to approach this particular cow to get past it, he finally violated the cows 'personal space' and the cow charged him. All of a sudden through the fog we heard a snorting sort of sound, and Larry and I climbed over the fence with relative ease just in case. Then through the fog came Bob, with the cow behind him, making a mad dash for the fence and diving over it. These fences were three strands of barbed wire about four feet tall on metal posts. Larry and I lost it; we were laughing so hard. The rest of the morning was spent without incident, and we returned back to my place, with memories of a hunt we will never forget.

Chapter 12 - Breaker, Breaker, Who's Road Is This?

The "Missile" now had enough miles on it to be considered safely broken in. This chick I was hanging with had some friends going to the University of Florida in Gainesville that she wanted to visit. One day while dashing around town she suggested the visit, when all those in the car said, 'ROAD TRIP!', sounded good to me. There were four of us in the car; Francy, Brian the lead player from the band I was in, his girlfriend Lori, and myself. After making sure we had enough partying supplies, we left right then and there and headed up the turnpike. We got outside of the greater Miami area, and joined up with a line of vehicles going north. We of course all had CBs and kept in touch with the whole group. This 'convoy' was traveling about eighty miles an hour. The trip would be about three hundred miles long.

The current thinking at that time was that if a trooper saw us from the other side it would not look suspicious because we were all traveling together. You know there could not be that many people speeding all at once. Radar units were around, but not that common yet. At that time the turnpike was relatively empty the further north you went. So after about a half an hour of this, I decided to break from the pack, and open the Duster up. About this time we saw a state trooper going south on the other side. After the last person in the convoy could no longer see him, I got on the radio and told everyone I was leaving and headed up north. I got over in the passing lane, got to the front of the line and bid my farewell to all. I centered the car on the stripe, and brought it up to one hundred and ten, cruised there for a little while, and then brought it to one fifteen. After only a few minutes the front end started to get a bit floaty on me, and I backed it down to around one ten. During the course of this, I did pass a couple of cars. One of which was a VW bug filled with chicks. They were probably going seventy, and I was doing one hundred and ten. They did not take kindly to this. After about a half an hour of this the oil pressure dropped a couple of pounds, so I backed it down to around fifty five maybe sixty, until I could get to the rest stop just up the road to check things out (the current speed limit was 55). Oh yes, I had put a real oil pressure gauge under the dash, but I never did install a tack.

Just about that time the Florida State Trooper (you know the one who was headed south) came over the hill in his tan and black Dodge Interceptor with his lights flashing. He was going so fast, that when I spotted him in my rear view mirror coming over the hill about a quarter of a mile behind me, I saw him leave the ground momentarily. Obviously he had also been listening to the eleven-meter (CB) band when I decided to leave the group and open the Missile up, and he wanted a piece of me. He pulled alongside of me, did a rolling speed check and pulled me over. Let me try to convey a proper picture here. He caught up to me, and 'stuck' along side of me so suddenly, it was startling. I looked over at him in his tan Stetson, all the troopers wore them at that time, with a very stern look on his face, he then hand signaled me over to the side of the road. You know he could have been chasing someone else; I was just doing the speed limit! ;-)

After pulling in behind me on the side of the road, he stepped out of his car squared his Stetson and came my way. He gave the car the once over as he approached me to ask for my license, registration and insurance. Keep in mind he only caught me doing roughly the speed limit. He asked me to step out of the car, and this was of concern because I had no shoes on. At that time in Florida you could get a ticket for driving without shoes, don't ask me why. It was obvious that the occupants of my car were convinced all of us were going to jail, and they freely told me so before I got out of the car.

The trooper asked me if I had been speeding. I said "yes sir". He said "like how fast?" I was up to the consequences of getting caught say, doing eighty, so that's what I told him. He said "BULLSHIT! I just chased you for a half an hour doing one hundred and forty five!" I had nothing to say, knowing he was only able to clock me maybe doing sixty. He said "Son, let me tell you, I have a Charger with a 440 in it. My wife and I take it out on this road at three o'clock in the morning and do that kind of speed, but this is my road. **You** are not allowed to do that. Do you understand?" "YES, SIR!" I replied. He then said "Let's see what you have under the hood."

As we walked to the front of the car and I popped the hood, the VW full of chicks passed us and yelled "Yay, they caught him—they caught him!" as they passed. All I could do was bow my head. He looked at the 340, said it all looked great, but wanted me to remember this encounter, so he wrote me a warning for doing sixty! We went our separate ways, I to the rest stop a couple miles up the road, and he to the south.

When I got back into the car, the gang could not believe all I got was a warning! Of course as would be the case, we bumped into the chicks at the rest stop where I had to explain to them that all I got was a warning. MoPars rule!

By the way, the trip took about three and one half hours, even with the interruption and the rest stop.

I will say that at this time the Missile was getting about twelve MPG in the city, and eighteen to twenty MPG on the highway. On that trip it got a little less!!!

After we arrived at the University, we partied for a couple of days, we met lots of people, including a couple of guys trying to steal the M-50s off the back of the car. All I can say is thank God for the McGuard wheel locks I had on at the time. Because we caught them in the middle of the act, when they ran off, they also left the other lug nuts on the ground, which we were able to put back on. We went back home the next day.

After that trip, I got a hankering for something James Bondish on the car. So I installed an under the hood rocket launcher. Larry recently described it this way in one of his latest E-mails, "Don't forget about your ¾" copper pipe, alligator clip, guitar string, Estes rocket sidewinder missile contraption."

It was really a one inch copper tube, a couple of feet long with a ninety-degree elbow just slid on the end so it was removable.

The exhaust part of the elbow was pointing towards the inner fender wall, and the ignition wires were run through the back of the elbow going to the igniter in the motor. The back of the tube was clamped down to the top of the inner fender. The front of the tube was sitting in the 1" round hole on the passenger's side of the radiator support that clears the hood when you pulled the inside hood release. The hood would pop open, and the secondary hood latch would engage, the spring would hold it up and the rocket's flight path would be clear of the hood. You could then arm and launch the rocket electrically from the console ashtray. I really never used it for an ashtray anyway. The rockets did use Estes engines, the nosecone and body were about six inches long, with three sticks (like a bottle rocket) for fins. Unlike my final Physics project at the academy, the one for the car did not have a warhead.

Chapter 13 - The Birth Of A New Me

Because of the next sequence of events, let me digress here for a moment. You will need this to make sense of it:

When I was born, I was given up for adoption by my natural mother and adopted by a reformed Jewish family in Roslyn, Long Island, New York. As I was growing up, we rarely attended temple, except for the high holy days.

My father Stanley, however, did want me to get Bar-Mitzvaed, which is the Jewish ceremony celebrating the age of accountability, or "becoming a man". The Catholics call it Conformation. When he gave me the books used in Hebrew school, which were the Torah, Hof-Torah (the book of the prophets) and the Hebrew language Texts, he told me, "I don't know all that is in these, but believe whatever you read in them."

While we were studying in the book of Isaiah, we came to the scripture that foretells of the coming Messiah (Isaiah 7:14), where it says; "Therefore the Lord Himself shall give you a sign; Behold a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel." I raised my hand and said, "Rabbi, didn't that already happen? What about Jesus? (I had heard about Him from our backdoor neighbor, Victor, who was a Catholic). The Rabbi replied to me, "We don't discuss Him here." It was at that time, that I knew something wasn't right; he acted as if he was hiding something or was not telling the truth. So the seeds of salvation were sown, but didn't get watered for many years.

Now back to the story:

One day during the summer of '74, after doing mushrooms and getting well adjusted, we were sitting at TK's kitchen table. TK lived in a little, one bedroom house that quite completely represented the sixties culture. There were the required beaded curtains at the entrance to the kitchen. The bedroom contained a wooden platform bed, with a four sided plywood pyramid over it attached to the four posts for "Pyramid Power" while they slept. There were bean bags, and three tone orange shag carpet throughout. The kitchen was clean, but cramped and had a round three foot table with four chairs. The mushrooms had basically worn off, and we got to discussing spiritual things. TK asked if I had ever heard about Jesus. I told him that I had heard of Jesus, but I knew nothing much more about Him, or the Bible. TK then told me the good news that Jesus was sent as the Messiah, told me to go buy a King James Bible, and read about all that He had done, for myself. I took his advice, starting in Genesis and read until I got to Isaiah 7:14. It was then that I realized that I was still in the Old Testament. All of the old feelings from Hebrew school came flooding back, and all of a sudden it all made sense.

I got on the phone and called TK in tears, and told him that I believed that Jesus WAS the Messiah, and he said that because I had been willing to confess Him publicly from my heart, that I was now saved. He said that I should skip to the New Testament and read about all that Jesus did for me, which I did.

It was during this time of discovering the good news that I was at a movie theater with Larry and Bob. We were sitting in the first row of the balcony, looking over and leaning on the rail. All of a sudden I heard a voice say to me, "I will send you into the wilderness to be tested as my son." I did not hear it with my natural ears, but it sounded so real that I answered out loud, "God, I don't want to be like Jesus!" at which point Larry and Bob turned to me and asked, what's the matter? I asked them if they had heard what I had heard, which of course they had not.

Having forgotten all about that incident, later on that year, I found my way to what was called a 'Friday night Break'. The best way to describe it is, it was a tailgate party for CB users, lots of food and lots of smoke, and lots of neat cars. There were about fifty people at these gatherings.

There were a lot of characters among the group. One of note was "Shaker" (his handle). He had a 1960s delivery van that looked like today's SUVs. I'm not sure what make; it had rounded corners to the top and dual door at the back, with regular driver/passenger doors at the front. It had a 1/8th wave solid metal antenna on the roof, half a dozen car batteries bolted to the floor on the inside. It also had twin alternators to charge the batteries and power the 1000watt linear amplifier he used to boost the power of his CB. He regularly talked 'Skip' to California, and could light up entire storefronts and florescent signage by the street when he key'd up the mic. They called him shaker because when he keyd up, your radio and anything near it would shake, because of the volume he broadcasted at. He had to be careful where he parked, so as not to give away his position, because the FCC was regularly looking for him. Yes, in those days the FCC had mobile triangulating rigs, and were forever trying to bust amp runners.

There was also a guy, who shall remain nameless, that worked for the 'Company', who had a regular looking radio in the dash of his truck, and a strange short antenna on his roof. Remember this was the mid seventy's. One day while I was hanging out at the CB shop, a white tired looking pickup pulled up in front, and the driver got out and came in to greet TJ(You'll meet him in a moment). After talking for a while, he said you want to see something? With TJ looking on grinning from ear to ear, he got into his truck and turned on the radio loud enough for us to hear standing outside. Nothing special just AM garbage. He then said, "Do you see that microwave tower? Listen to this." He then pushed two of the buttons at once and dialed in the tower. We were then listening to a telephone conversation where a couple of ladies were talking about a recipe of some sort! He moved the dial a little and we were listening to another conversation. I looked at him and said nothing; he then punched a single button, and put the radio back on the AM band. And you thought 'Q' didn't exist, and big brother really wasn't listening!

My 'research and modify' gene kicked in about that time, and I was not satisfied with the measly four watts allowed by law. I didn't want to run a linear amp, but there still had to be a better way. I did some research on how antennas work and what makes them efficient. Base style antennas, called ground planes, are among the most efficient and use the electrical ground part of their design to bounce the signal off of. There are also what we called beaming affairs, or a set of 'beams', based on the same concept, but with three vertical parts that favored one side with the ground plane being more efficient on that side than the other two. You would rotate the entire antenna remotely from your base location electrically (in many cases your Barco Lounger) to favor the direction you wanted to transmit in. So I took that concept and designed a mobile set of 'beams' using two 1/4 wave fiberglass whips and the trunk-mounted center antenna. I lengthened the trunk-mounted antenna's stainless steel part above the load, and wrapped the whips with lead foil tape from their base to an elevation just above the top of the trunk antenna. This had the effect of forcing the signal to the tips, and not transmitting back into the center antenna, which would have created a problem called a high standing wave ratio (high SWRs). When I was done, everyone I talked to swore I was running a linear of twenty watts or so. That was the way the Duster was set up from then on.

After attending quite a few of these Friday night Breaks and getting involved with the C.B. radio crowd, I got a job at a radio repair shop called "T.Js". TJ was short for the owner's C.B. radio "handle," "Tennessee Jim". Jim was a citified mountain man from northern Tennessee, who did a lot more drinking whiskey and playing pool than selling radios, which he left up to us. He had a habit of giving people nicknames, and the one he gave me was "Jew boy". That summer, which was the slow season, he was planning on taking a vacation, and going back to his home in Tennessee to go hunting and visit his family. In celebration of his pending time off, all of his CB buddies in Miami planned to give him a going away party (as if they really needed a reason to party)

The week prior to the party, I decided I should be baptized as instructed by the scriptures. TK, his girlfriend, and one of her friends and I went to Hollywood Beach at sunrise. I will say that this was the kind of a ceremony you could only pull off in those days. The two girls were as hot as they get, and were wearing the skimpiest of bikinis. When the sun was an orange ball just coming out of the water and the ocean was like glass, they proceeded to baptize me in the ocean while reading Mark 16:16 and Acts 2:38. It was a few days later that in spite of all that I was doing that was not of God, God convicted me of and told me to stop doing just one thing, premarital sex! This was not good news to the woman I had just become involved with. The day before the party, I broke the news to her, which ended our relationship. Little did I know how valuable that decision was going to become.

The party started in the afternoon when most of the crowd got off work and were able to show up. There was lots of smoke and beer, and we were mostly congregating in the large back room, which is where the pool table was set up. As the party went on, Jim got so drunk that he actually stumbled into the front area behind the counter, and pointed to a clock on the wall. He said, "I bet you think I'm too drunk to hit that thing on the wall." He then proceeded to take out a pistol from his belt, and put a shot right through the center of the clock. Well his aim was good, but we all gathered around him and took the gun away, telling him that he had had enough to drink and he should get some rest for the next day's trip. He went out into his car and slept it off until morning.

Early that next morning it became obvious that because he had gotten so drunk the night before, he was still unable to drive. That being the case, he told me I was going to drive him to Tennessee, and he would pay me for the time off. After thinking this over for a while, I agreed. There was not a lot of money to be made installing CBs, and I needed some.

He then told me to disassemble the back seat of the station wagon, and pack his hunting rifles into it, so that if we were stopped, there would be no questions by the cops. This should have been a red flag, but it was not. I knew that he really did hunt on the farm, and it kind of made sense not to have all of those weapons exposed. I popped off the seat part of the bench, unbolted the back, and carefully slid all the weapons into the seat back being supported by the springs. I reassembled the whole affair, and we got ready to leave. We drove all day to arrive at his mom's farm just after dark. He then told me that we were going hunting in the morning. After dinner he took me out into the local area looking for some of his friends, who he said would know where to find some real moonshine. Praise God we didn't find any, I wasn't looking forward to dealing with TJ drunk again. We then bunked down on the front porch for the night. The next morning we awoke to my first real country breakfast of ham, bacon, eggs, fried okra, biscuits and gravy. Boy could his mom cook! We then proceeded to pack up and go to his hunting cabin, which was two hours further northwest of the farm.

Upon arriving at the camp, I told Jim that I didn't hunt except with a camera. He then told me there was no choice in the matter. Being out in the middle of the Tennessee woods, I decided that I would go along with the plan rather than start a confrontation. Besides because of my experience at the military academy I knew how to handle a gun. A little while after we arrived at camp, his buddies arrived with Fred the guide. After we had a chance to unpack, we all went out into the woods so Fred could show us our stands for the next morning's hunt. That night we ate and hung out by the campfire where I found out we were on the edge of a government game preserve we would be hunting in. This meant I was in the company of real poachers. They also laughed about the mysterious disappearance of a game warden, who by the occasional smell of something dead they claimed they couldn't find, was probably buried in a shallow grave nearby—which also meant one or all of them were murderers! At that point I knew they were not about to let me pass on going hunting, so I prayed that I would not have to kill anything the next day.

Chapter 14 - Tested In The Wilderness

Just before sunrise the next morning, we ate and got our weapons. I was handed a police 12-guage riot gun (shotgun) loaded with rifled slugs (one single chunk of lead instead of small shot), and was told that all I had to do was point it at the bear and shoot. It was sure to kill, no problems. I was quite dismayed that we were hunting bear! The thought occurred to me that if it were only wounded, we could become the hunted! Not being the accomplished woodsman, I went to where I was sure Fred told me to sit, and I waited. About an hour later I heard some crashing in the bushes in the next small valley, about ten yards away. About an hour after that I heard T.J. whistling for everybody to gather and go back to camp. When we all got together they asked me where I had been. I then proceeded to show them where I had been sitting against the base of a tree. Fred said that I had been in the wrong place, and showed me where I was supposed to have been. They then told me, while they laughed, that they had sent the bear my way. If I had been sitting where Fred had told me to sit, the bear would have run right into me!

We then went back to the farm for some supplies and to do some target shooting. When it came time to be my turn, we all discovered to everyone's horror, that the safety on the shotgun was broken, and that even when the safety was switched off, the gun still wouldn't fire! This meant that if I had met the bear, I would have had to beat him to death with the gun! God had delivered me out of the jaws of death, Praise God! It was then decided that when we returned to camp, I should stay in camp and cook for the guys instead of going hunting, Praise God. We then picked up some more food and ammo and returned to camp.

They had constructed a rather impressive cabin out of cinder block, with bunk beds and a wood burning stove, so staying another night didn't seem like it would be so bad. I then found out that the moonshine would be coming to camp with one of Jim's friends who was bringing his dogs for tomorrow's hunt. This gave me a very unsettled feeling.

All throughout this time Jim never stopped calling me "Jew Boy," and some of his friends started to do likewise. This was getting old. The other friends and the moonshine arrived after dinner, which consisted of stew made of locally grown potatoes and a squirrel. Fred had shot the squirrel in midair jumping from tree to tree. Everyone was getting drunk, and there was still a lot of the original three gallons of shine left. I personally have no physical tolerance for alcohol, because it simply puts me to sleep. So I had a capful, which was remarkably smooth, using it as a sleeping aid, and retired to the cabin to sleep in one of the bunk beds.

The next morning when I got up, Fred was already up, and TJ's nephew John, who had been up all night, was still drinking. Of the original three gallons of shine, there was the better part of one left, which he was attempting to finish. The main group went hunting, leaving me alone with TJ's nephew, whom they deemed too drunk to hunt. Most of the men had brought their own weapons, so the original cash of guns we brought from Miami was still in camp leaning against the side of the cabin. While John was sitting quietly in a folding chair drinking, I set about cleaning camp and started to chop wood for the fire. The cleared area of the camp was about forty feet square with the cabin being in one corner. John was sitting next to the cabin and the weapons, I was in the diagonally opposite corner of the camp tending the fire and stacking chopped wood.

All of a sudden he spoke up saying, "Hey Jew Boy, where ya from?" I answered "America". He responded "No, where in America?" I chose to use our new home, knowing the kind of response New York would get, and said, "Miami." At this there was no response. Then all of a sudden he started firing a high powered rifle at the ground very near my feet. He then said, "Hey Jew Boy, where ya parents from?" I answered, "America", and left it at that. I could see where he was going with this. All through this time I was watching the gallon jug of moonshine being consumed. He continued to fire at the ground near me, and it was all I could do to control the anger; fear was not even part of the picture. Must have been God! I then moved back to just in front of the cabin where there was a large tree stump that I was using for a chopping block. I then started to chop a three inch thick pine tree I felled earlier in the day into one foot lengths, getting angrier as I went.

At this point he had used the rifle ammo up, and switched to the 12-guage shotgun, which had since been fixed. When I went back to the wood pile with the wood I had just chopped he sent rifled slugs whizzing past me through the laurel bushes. At this point I was so angry that when I returned to chopping wood, I was cutting through the tree with single strokes, sending some pieces clear over the cabin. After I finished cutting the tree into pieces, while still holding the axe I gathered a few of them up, and was bringing them to where the stack was, again catty corner from the cabin. At this point he asked me, "Hey Jew Boy, where are your grandparents from?" My response was again, "America". A few more shots and he asked, "Hey Jew Boy, where are your great grandparents from". My response was "Europe". They had come over from Germany long before things went bad over there.

Now he's got about a quarter of the gallon of shine left, and he's run out of rifled slugs. So he switches to birdshot and asks, "Where in Europe?" I responded with reluctance, "Germany". His response was very quick, "So what we have here is a commie Jew! I think I'll kill me a commie Jew before lunch."

At this time I knew that he was serious, and things were taking a turn for the worse. My back was turned to him and without turning I replied, "Why don't you let me cook you lunch first?" There was a pause, and then he replied, in a voice that had changed noticeably "No, I think I'll get it over with." When I turned around and looked at him, all of the moonshine was gone and he had the shotgun leveled right at me. His countenance had also changed, it seemed that his cheeks were slightly more sunken in, and the dark circles under his eyes were even darker and larger, and his irises had all but disappeared, and there was nothing but blackness in his eyes.

It became apparent to me that I was now dealing with something more than just a drunken mountain man. I knew inside of me I was dealing with the devil himself, and he really was going to pull the trigger. The first thing that went through my mind was that all he had in the gun was birdshot, and at that distance, even a number of rounds would not be instantly fatal. At that point I decided a slow, probably very painful death, was not the way I was going to go out.

So I picked up the ax and held it right under the head with the handle pointing down, in a non-threatening manner. I then slowly walked across the camp and came right up to him until the business end of the shotgun was against my chest.

I then very calmly said to him, "If you're going to kill me, kill me, but I have no intention of bleeding to death in the Tennessee Mountains." I have to say in retrospect there was a great peace within me, and I was quite sure that I was going to get to meet Jesus that day! For I had obeyed God, and had a clear heart and conscience. With fire in his eyes he replied, "What happens if I do?" To which I replied, "I go to heaven and you clean up the mess." He then said, "How do you know?" With what I'm sure was a smile on my face I replied, "I just got baptized, and I haven't been laid yet!"

Now what happened next was a shock to me, having never seen the power of God at work. The power of God knocked him backwards, still in the chair, still holding the gun with his finger on the trigger, and without the gun going off. When he hit the ground, he rolled to the side and dropped the shotgun, and at this point he was in sort of a fetal position and had started to weep uncontrollably. Within less than a minute, the others broke through the bushes coming towards camp with Fred yelling, "What's the hell's going on here? It sounded like World War III! There must not be a living thing within miles of here!" I still hadn't moved, and was just beginning to understand what had just happened. The others gathered around John with puzzled looks on their faces as I told TJ what had occurred. He then took John, and put him in the station wagon, and said he was going to take him back to the farm.

After everyone asked if I was OK, the impact of the events started to take effect. I think in order to try to smooth things over Fred offered a suggestion. Fred then said, seeing as I had shown some interest in seeing the woods and learning about Fred's other occupation, which was picking wild ginseng, he would show me around. Since there was plenty of daylight left, this sounded like an enjoyable way to spend the afternoon and de-compress, so off we went. Now Fred only carried a 22cal. rifle for what he called "protection". He said if we met a bear, it would only sting enough to make the bear think about not attacking us. He was a very good shot, proving this by having picked off last night's squirrel in midair jumping from tree to tree.

Fred was about two paces behind me as we left camp. To enter his woods we took a clearly defined trail that had seen plenty of foot traffic. Because the camp had been cleared out of virgin forest, the thick woods with their undergrowth started immediately. So being surrounded by shrubbery on either side of the trail, we climbed a small hill, and when we got to the top all of a sudden he said, "FREEZE!" I thought, "Oh no! Here we go again." I froze and Fred took his rifle and put it about two feet in front of me and fired it against the ground, or so I thought, making almost no sound at all.

He then took his rifle and lifted the four foot copperhead snake he had just killed, and draped it over the bush by the trail saying, "This will let others know they are in the area." If I had taken the next step I would have been bitten by the snake. Praise God for delivering me from death three times in two days! I will say at that point God had my attention. We then had a great time picking ginseng and exploring the woods the rest of the day. That night we all went back to the farm to stay the night. The next morning when I awoke, there was John sitting on the porch with TJ's mom. He said that he had been crying for about twenty four hours, and that he really was going to kill me back at camp. He said he was never going to drink and use guns again, and that he was really sorry. I accepted his apology, and forgave him in the name of Jesus, life goes on.

Let me say something here for all you religious folks that just had their world shattered. I didn't speak the bible at the devil, I spoke what God had spoken to me, no matter how colorful; there is supernatural power in confidently speaking the words with authority God has given you. But remember this, they only have power if they are your words coming from inside of you. Once God's words become your words, nothing can stand against you.

After the wonderful vacation, I took my leave of TJs and went to work at a trophy shop and continued to cruse south Florida with Larry and Bob.

One day: Larry and I were going from the beach to the mainland. We took the 79 St. causeway west, and just as it hits the mainland, it splits and goes around a spit of land before it intersects Biscayne Blvd. At the fork was a Burger King.

In the parking lot of the BK were two Miami city motorcycle cops just talking, but right at the edge of the lot next to the street.

I noticed them when I started to make the corner, I was going just 'slightly' above the speed limit so rather than hitting the brakes, I decided I would downshift and slow the car down.

The problem was that I missed the shift, and accidentally missed second, passed first and landed in reverse. Since I was running M-50s, the tires broke loose and smoked the entire turn before I could get the thing back in drive. Of course my thoughts were about the health of the tranny, Larry's thoughts were shit we're going to jail. As it turns out, they just sat there and watched me go around the corner never batting a lash, it really was the time of the muscle car.

Chapter 15 - What We Have Here Is Failure To Communicate

The next road trip was to New York to visit my brother Bill, with a stop in Atlanta to visit one of my roommates from the academy, Ted Nugent. His real name was Terrance, but we just called him Ted. No, he is not the guitar player, but the IRS did send him the other Ted Nugent's tax bill one year! Ted was a gas to hang with and well worth visiting, lots of very loud Southern Rock and partying. It was the Fourth of July weekend, 1976, the bicentennial.

After driving all day we made it to Atlanta at about midnight, and I was sort of lost. I had gotten us to the general area of Ted's development, but I was having trouble finding his street from the directions he gave me. I pulled up over a small hill, and there was a cop just parked in the middle of the road. So I pulled up to him, showed him the directions, and asked him for help finding the street. He said well its right over there, but in the meantime, pull over and get out of the car. I did and got out of the car and closed the door behind me. Glen who was traveling with me got out of the other side and closed the door behind him. The cop asked me for my license and registration, and then asked what I was doing there at that time of night. I told him we were visiting a friend from school, and that we had driven all day from Miami to get here. I told him who we were visiting, and gave him the address. In the meantime his partner was looking through the windows with his flashlight. He came back and pulled his partner aside to tell him something. I was then told that they were going to arrest me for having controlled substances in the car. He then said he was going to do an inventory search of the car. I was not asked for permission.

To put the record straight, we were perfectly straight and very tired. He then started to go through the car, and this was of great concern to me. When he slid the console ashtray open looking for debris, it was filled with switches and indicator lights. Yes... there was a rocket in the tube. It was not armed, but if he fiddled with the switches he could arm and launch it with the hood closed. All I asked him to do was don't play with the switches. He asked why? I told him you could start a fire. Since he was looking for drugs he backed off. You see his thinking was any car from Miami had to have drugs in it. He then had me open the trunk and searched my luggage. He found my stash of pipes I had made, and that I was bringing to show Ted. They also found the beanbag we had been throwing around the cabin containing about a pound of pot seeds, Ted wanted to plant a field. When asked, I just said it was a beanbag. About that time his partner shows up with a Seconal that he had found, obviously someone had dropped it and it had rolled under the seat. It wasn't mine, if I did such things I just went to sleep; there was no getting high about it. That fact had become sort of a running joke among my friends, the same with drinking.

When the first cop saw the pill, he said up until this we were going to let you go. But the possession of this is a felony, and we now have to book you. I told him that everything other than the pill was mine, and my passenger had nothing to do with it. So he didn't impound the car, and he let Glen drive the car to Ted's house, where he told Ted what had happened. When the cop searched my suitcase he found something called a Japanese 'Hopi' coat, which is like a light weight Gee, he asked me if I knew any martial arts. I said no, and he quite nicely handcuffed me with my hands in front of me, and put me in the back of the squad car. I was escorted to the Decaulb county jail. Once we arrived, I was escorted through the front doors past the front desk to the booking room. There I was searched and relieved of all of my personal belongings. This was becoming a very scary deal. Until then, and since then, I have never had a run-in with the law. It didn't get any better. (Now I'm going to quote here so please understand these are not my words) The booking sergeant after taking my prints and my mug shots then told me, in a very typical southern drawl, "Don't worry, boy I won't put you in with no niggers or faggots." OH MY GOD!!!!!! Please keep in mind this is the bicentennial Fourth of July weekend, I'm not going to be able to call anyone or certainly get to any funds until Monday! I was walked through a couple of guard stations and gates down the main hallway. We stopped two 'rooms' from the end on the left hand side of the hallway. The jailer used his key and opened the door, which had a Plexiglas panel its full height, ushered me into the cell, and shut the door behind me. Because of all of the hard surfaces in the hallway and cell, there was a resounding echo to slamming of the door. They tell you that that is a sound you will never forget, they are right.

They put me in a group cell with ten other guys. These cells had waist high cinderblock walls and Plexiglas windows instead of bars at the front. There was also a partial Plexiglas wall between the cells, so you could see from cell to cell as well. It seemed all of the cells on the floor were built that way, I don't know about the rest of the jail. As you walked through the door, to your left was a bank of five or six bunk beds along the wall. To the right was the half wall you could see through lined with four foot round tables and chairs. All the way against the back wall was a stainless steel toilet, and next to it was a shower with a frosted vinyl shower curtain in its opening.

In the cell next to us were a bunch of Black Muslims, which was obvious by their dress, and one very young white kid. Within the first couple of hours the next morning I noticed that while the white kid was sweeping the floor, the Muslims ganged up on him after exchanging some words. They proceeded to jump him and started beating the crap out of him. While others in my cell noticed, no one did anything about it. The kid then took the broomstick and stuck it half way through one of them, actually impaling him. At that point everyone in my cell went to the front glass and started to beat on it in unison until it had almost come out of its frame. When the guards showed up to see what the racket was we pointed them to what was going on in the next cell. They immediately took the white kid out of the cell and stuck him in with us. They took the impaled prisoner to the infirmary, he was really hurt. This kid was fairly beat up, but had managed to hold his own. I asked him what he was in for, he said taking a joy ride in a car. He might have been all of sixteen. After the excitement of the morning, one of the other prisoners asked me if I wanted to get high? I asked if that were possible, and was told to go into the shower and take a few hits and come back out. So I went into the shower, pulled the curtain closed behind me and there on the soap shelf was a joint and a Bic lighter. As instructed I lit the joint took a few hits and left the remainder behind, and was followed by the next inmate. That evening for dinner we had sandwiches and a very quaint square of cake with red white and blue frosting and little American flags stuck in them. Oh yeah, this was a Fourth of July I was going to remember.

While in jail, I read one book, 'Papillion', which was strangely appropriate for the location, and played a two day long game of 'Risk' with a few of the other prisoners. One of whom was Leon Russell's base player, Ebo Walker. He was in for drug possession, but he was reasonably sure it would come to nothing, because the 'narcs' that busted him continually beat him up all the way down in the elevator. You would say so what. Unfortunately for them, this was the glass elevator at the Atlanta Hyatt, and there were all sorts of witnesses on every floor. There was also a guy, who was a professor with some sort of a master's degree, in for missing alimony payments. This was quite a diverse collection of people.

Once Monday came around and the banks opened, I called back home and explained to my parents what had happened, and had them wire the money for my bail. Since I had money in my bank account, and since they still had access to it, they used my money, so it was not as big a deal as it could have been.

After I got out, I contacted NORMAL's Atlanta office and hired an attorney. Because I did not know my way around Atlanta, Ted went with me. When Ted and I got to his office and met him, he was a fully bearded, pipe smoking, plaid suit wearing child of the sixties. For the record, I don't think he was smoking tobacco in his pipe. He pulled the arrest report, and told me that in his opinion it would come to nothing because it was an unlawful search and seizure. The cop had sited that they had probable cause because they found a marijuana seed on my seat by looking through the window with a flashlight. Because it was in plain sight it constituted just cause. My lawyer told me to gather a sample of as many seeds that looked like pot seeds and put them in Baggies with labels folded in half. I was also to include some real seeds in a bag as well. I did as I was told, and when the trial came around, which was only a week later, I found out why.

Chapter 16 - B.B. And Barry And KISS.... Oh MY!

While we were In Atlanta hanging out waiting for the trial, we went to visit a friend that Larry and I used to play music with, Barry. Larry is an accomplished drummer who, when John Bonham was doing it, also figured out how to roll his bass peddle. When I say that I played, I was playing Latin percussion things, nothing to really speak of. We did do a bunch of Santana, but Barry loved Zeppelin Jeff Beck and Hendrix. To date I have never heard any other guitarist play with such a range of talent and such abilities.

A quick Barry tale:

While he was still living in South Florida some time in 74, I had a chance to take him to a club I had been jamming at. I would bring my harps, and the band would let me sit in and play.

This was at a club called Art Stocks Playpen in Lauderdale. The club had three or four stages all in different rooms with the appropriate bar in front of the stage. There was a closed circuit television system in every room that would let you see what was going on in all of the other rooms at once.

So I brought Barry there with his guitar to meet the band. Let me describe the band. It was a two-piece band with a guitar player that also played the keyboard, which had a bunch of tunes he had programmed in it. There was also a drummer who would play the drums with one hand and play the trumpet with the other. Actually he was quite amazing.

When we arrived, they anxiously said, "Hey, are you gonna come up and jam?" I said, "No, I have something better," and introduced them to Barry. They said cool come on up. They asked what kind of music he played. I jokingly asked if they knew any Hendrix. Without skipping a beat, they broke into Voodoo Child, and Barry was off. He did things I had never seen him do before, like play the guitar behind his back and with his teeth. I can't explain to you how expertly he ripped them a musical new one. These amazing sights and amazing sounds went on for twenty minutes or so. Before he had a chance to quit, the manager of the club approached me and asked, "Is he with you?" I said, "Yes, why?" He said, "Could you ask him to stop playing?" I asked, "Why" in a very puzzled fashion? He said, "Since he has been playing we've not sold a single drink in the entire club!" Remember the closed circuit TV? Well, it was a short night for Barry, we left and went back to Miami.

When we caught up to Barry in Atlanta, it was dusk and he was sitting on his porch jamming with a couple of old delta blues players. They were doing a slow twelve bar blues thing. And all I remember is the old black blues player constantly telling Barry to slow down. "Take it easy, Boy, take it easy," he would say, while he laughed. He knew taking it easy didn't come naturally to Barry. Barry was just sitting there ripping it up. It was flawless and seemed effortless. Barry said he wanted to go down town to a 'supper club' sort of place that BB King was playing at that night. We agreed to take him, and off we went. We got to the club, I can't remember the name, I think it was either on, or just off Peachtree Street.

When you entered, it was a well-lit one large expanse of a room with a bar the full length on the left side and a four-foot high stage with dark red curtains at the far end. It looked like it could have been an old converted theater. There were about fifty tables, seating four, in the center. You showed yourself to your own table, and a waitress was there in a flash. We ordered some beer and waited for the show to start. Now there was an opening act we had never heard of, so we really weren't paying any attention. Without any sort of announcement the lights dimmed and all of a sudden the curtains opened up. Revealed to us was Kiss in full makeup; they immediately started playing, screaming, and carrying on doing their thing at full volume! We both looked at Barry and asked him if he was sure we were there on the right night? Looking mortified he said he would check. He got up from the table and went to talk to one of the staff and returned. He said that yes, BB King was playing that this was the warm up act. Well, after some length of time, whatever it was it was wayyyyy too long, their set ended and the curtains closed. A few minutes later the curtains opened up again without any sort of announcement, and there was BB King with his band. He stepped up to the microphone, with one of his famous grins and said, "Well, wasn't that interesting?" Obviously, he wasn't aware of who they were either. He was marvelous that night, and played all the songs we wanted to hear. We went back to a club across the street from where Barry was staying, and watched him amaze the folks there for the rest of the night. I actually remember in the middle of him playing, half the place emptied out, so we followed them all.

It turns out that a smuggled shipment of Coors had arrived in the back of a semi and everyone went out to help get it inside fast. We all then went back to nickel beers and listening to Barry play. We crashed at Barry's, and went back to Ted's the next morning.

Chapter 17 - The Truth? You Can't Handle The Truth

A few days later the trial took place. The courtroom was a small county court. It was a very formal dark oak interior with the normal pew-like benches for the gallery, a table for each of the prosecution and the defense. There was also the requisite box for the witness next to the Judge's bench. I was dressed in jeans and a tee shirt, a nice one though. You see I wasn't really planning to be in a courtroom on that trip, of course everyone else was either in a suit or a uniform.

The prosecution went first by putting the arresting officer on the stand, who described the encounter and subsequent arrest for the court. During his testimony, my lawyer remained silent, and did not wish to cross examine him, much to my amazement. To my low key protests, he leaned over and very quietly said to me, "Relax I have this covered." Then the other officer was sworn in. He also gave a fairly accurate account of our encounter that night, including his search with the flashlight and the discovery of the seed on my seat. At this point my attorney spoke up, and told the court he wished to cross examine the witness. With the courts permission he approached the witness box and took the bags of seeds I had provided him and spread them out in front of the officer on the ledge of the witness stand. He then asked him to pick out the pot seeds. He said to him, since his 'Probable cause' rested on his identification of a pot seed on my seat in the middle of the night through a window with a flashlight, there should be no problem in him identifying a whole bag of them two feet from his face in the well-lit courtroom. Well I will confess, see it keeps happening, the real pot seeds were all the dried out shriveled ones I could find in Ted's stash, so they did not look the part. He picked out a sample, and said he was positive they were pot seeds. My attorney snatched the bag up, and threw it up on the bench in front of the judge. The judge asked my attorney what they were, and my attorney said there is a label inside of the bag. The judge opened the bag and opened the label, which was blank. He looked at my attorney and said, "The label is blank, what are they?" My attorney then said you'll have to ask my client. Then addressing me the judge asked, "Son, do you know what these are?" while he held up the bag. Since there was only one sample with a blank label, I knew which bag he had opened. I said "No Sir, All I know is I got them out of the pickling jar in Mrs. Neugent's kitchen." He looked at the officer and slammed his gavel down and said, "Case dismissed!" He then said, "Officer this is the third one this week. I want to see you in my chambers now."

We all were relieved and went back to the Neugent's and got ready to leave the next day. What I have not told you is that there was a small stash in the car tucked between the console and the seat, which the cops never found, but that my 'buds' consumed while I was in the JOINT. How could they?

The other thing I remember is the water pump's seal went out, and I had to change the water pump in Ted's driveway with a pair of pliers. I remember that Ted could not get to his dad's tools and we were on a tight schedule. I was not yet smart enough to be carrying a road kit of tools, yet another confession. But here is what I love about MoPars, doing the work with pliers was a pain in the ass, but it was still possible!

The rest of the trip was fairly without incident until we got to New York. We stopped only once, and crashed at a rest stop about half way there. We continued the next day taking turns driving. I also remember there was a very slow oil leak at the back of the intake manifold, and we had to find some oil in Virginia. Back then I was running Castrol R, which is castor bean based oil, it was far superior to the petrol based oils of the day. At the time, synthetic oils were not invented yet, or at least not available to the public, so I was running the best available. Since it was bad mojo to mix Castrol R with conventional oils, I had to find an actual distribution warehouse, and they would only sell me a full case. Well, at least finding oil for a while wouldn't be a problem.

When we got to New York and were about to get on one of the freeways, I was asleep in the passenger's seat. All of a sudden I awoke and the world was spinning at a freighting rate of speed. OH SHIT! IT WAS THE CAR! Glen had come over the hill at the full legal speed and traffic was stopped about fifty yards in front of him.

All he could do was put the car in a spin and try to absorb the forward motion that way.

By the grace of God we did not hit anyone, and he managed to drive it out and come to a safe stop at the back of the line. We hung out with Bill for about a week, and returned to Miami without any further incident.

I continued to work at the CB shop, and took a part time job at a restaurant a couple of the CBrs also worked at. It was News Year Eve at the end of that year. A young lady and I had just gotten off shift at the restaurant; we hopped in the Duster and were on our way to a party of CBrs of course. While driving through a small residential neighborhood, I entered an intersection where I had no stop sign, but cross traffic did. We got hit broadside by an obviously drunk black couple who ran their stop sign. Before the car had stopped spinning RHL (her handle was Red Headed Lady) had grabbed the mic, and was on the radio with the REACT monitor calling the police. When the police got there, the other couple was still in their car, and both of us were on the street looking at the damage. My car was totaled, this time the frame really was toast, and I was in tears. Keep in mind that we both were stone cold sober; we were on the way to the party. After all the paper work was done, and they were issued the ticket, I had the car towed to the CB shop.

There was an empty slab at the end of a small driveway behind the shop. I put it there, and started to dismantle the car. I pulled the engine/tranny and all the electronics out. I boxed up anything I could get off the car; I also pulled the rear end with the leaf springs attached. While the engine was out, I contacted Crane Cams, which was in Ft Lauderdale and asked them about porting and flow benching the heads. They dissuaded me from that by telling me, that just by gasket matching the pieces I could accomplish 90% of what they would accomplish, for very little money. I did drive up there and purchase a set of crane high performance hydraulic lifters. I borrowed a Dremel tool from Tommy, and proceeded with the gasket matching process on the heads and the intake manifold. I also did a lapping type valve job on the heads.

Chapter 18 - Old Man River

About this time the CB thing wasn't making enough money, and I got a job working on the Miami River as a welder/general construction hand on a research vessel called the 'Sea Searcher'. The one thing that has to be mentioned here is that the company I was working for doing the retrofit, was owned by my step-sister.

With my sisters help, I moved to an apartment right on the river, and had a 50 yard walk to work, so the lag time needed to replace the car was not a problem. The ship was 110 feet long and had a twenty foot beam. It was a lighting research vessel that we were retrofitting for mineral nodule research. I would leave my apartment, cross the main road, and walk twenty yards or so to the driveway of the marina. You then would make a hard left down the driveway as if you were going under an overpass on an expressway. In that area of town, the river was fifteen feet or so below street level. As you walked down the sidewalk to the dock to board the ship, on your left against the retaining wall which was a story high, was the new Waukesha diesel motor, which was the size of a school bus. The first phase of construction was to gut the interior of the engine compartment of the old diesel/electric power plant, and install the new Waukesha. At the time I arrived, demo had just started. I will say that the ship was well equipped to do the work, which was about to become key in my survival.

There was quite a collection of characters in the crew. There was the project chief Bill, who was of medium height, had sandy blonde hair, and as all of the crew had a dark tan. He was intense, but seemed fair and loved to party after work, and hailed from the northeast. There was Stanley, who was second in charge. He was 5'10ish and had medium length dark curly hair, a full beard, and a very deep voice. He seemed to run the day to day operation assigning tasks as needed. There was a dedicated crane operator who was as crazy as Stanley, and lacked a certain light touch with the crane. There was a wood smith who worked in the wood shop below decks, and there was another couple of laborers, and myself. Then there was Mark, my brother-in-law. He was obnoxious to everyone, and took great pride in being that way. He also thought he was in charge.

One day Mark let it become known that I was the business owner's brother, and that was all the excuse the crew needed to find me the dirtiest job on the ship just for their amusement. I guess in their eyes, this was also a rite of passage to see if I was really going to fit in with the crew.

With Bill and most of the crew looking on, Stanley came up to me with a grin on his face, and told me that it was time to demo out the bridge. He said first thing to go had to be the head (toilet) behind the bridge. It had become known that sometime after the water had been shut off, someone had taken a dump and since they had no way to flush, it was all still there and had been maturing for quite some time in the Miami heat. So it had become my chore to take a bucket and empty the offending substance and wash the toilet down, so the fixture could be removed.

I was not about to be put off by this obviously objectionable task, and decided to turn the whole thing around to become my revenge. I went and collected the tools my experience told me I would need to pull this off. I got the obligatory bucket and long black chemical proof rubber gloves. I got a soda can and cut the top off of it with a pair of tin snips to ladle what had become all liquid out of the bowl. I then went to the wood shop area and asked if they had a NIOSH style mask for when they were spray painting the clear finish on the cabinets they were building. They did, so I borrowed it. I donned the gloves and mask, and with bucket in hand slowly made my way to the head. Because everyone knew the chore I had been assigned, they all started to follow me to see if I really was going to do it. I climbed the stairs to the bridge, went to the back and opened the door to the head slowly and deliberately. I then walked into the head, put the bucket down, I got down on my knees, opened the lid of the toilet, and stuck my masked face in and took a good and long whiff. Because of the mask I smelled nothing. I then proceeded to empty the bowl into the bucket using the soda can, and walk as slowly out of the area as possible. I'm not sure why, but people seemed to run in the opposite direction and dive through hatchways to get out of my way. After I made my way off the ship, I dumped the contents of the bucket into the porta potty, washed the bucket out at the dock, and then took off the mask. They decided that that was enough fun for one day, and they let me be about my business of cutting assorted steel out of the way of the new construction to soon start. One of those chores was to remove a couple of pieces of the second story walkway that extended aft from the bridge. These were fifteen feet long and were left over from the original demolition. All of the decks on board had a six inch kick board to prevent items from rolling off while at sea. Stanley set me up on one of them, and told me to cut the kicks off so we could cut the deck plate up for future use. So I took the cutting torch and got busy. I had cut the kick loose about half way down the first side when Bill walked out from under the deck and asked, "What are you doing?" I told him Stanley had assigned me this task, and I was doing what I was told to do. He told me I needed to stop right away and get off of that piece of deck. He further explained that the supporting column had been removed earlier, and the kick was the only thing holding the deck plates up. He then went to find Stanley and explain life to him.

It wasn't too long after the 'bridge incident' that I was cornered to do another 'loverly' job. My family ties seemed to be following me, and constantly getting in the way of doing the real work I was hired to do. I was hired, because I was a certified welder and that skill was needed for the build. The chore behind door number two was cleaning the fuel tanks. The existing diesel fuel tanks needed to have the remaining sludge cleaned out of them before they could be refilled and used again. The walls also needed to be scraped down, and the entire thing was a mess. I was assigned with three laborers to get this done. We were shown where the tank access was and we got a couple of wrenches and unbolted the plates covering the holes. We lowered a six foot ladder through the access hole in the deck, got some extension cords and drop lights, and we went down to take a look. The tanks were about ten feet square and five feet tall inside, so I could not completely stand up. When we got down there, what we found was about three inches of sludge on the floor, and roughly an inch of black tarry crap on the walls. There were two of these tanks to clean, so there were four of us, two in each tank. We set up fans to push fresh air into the tanks, so the air was mostly breathable.

The first thing we had to do was get the sludge off the floor, because walking through all that crap was incredibly slick and very hazardous. We tried to use shovels and put the sludge in five gallon buckets, but we ended up getting the stuff everywhere including on ourselves.

It was at that point that I had one of those divine epiphanies. I asked a couple of the other laborers who were not down in the other tank to go the wood shop, which hadn't been cleaned for months. Take all the large garbage bags they could find and fill them with all the saw dust they could round up. They did so and brought them back to our little corner of heaven. Because there were two separate tanks, I had no idea what the other crew was doing to solve their dilemma. We proceeded to dump ten or fifteen large bags of sawdust on the floor, spread it out, and take a couple of clean five gallon buckets, turn them over, and sit and wait.

Of course while we were waiting, we lit up a doobie and relaxed. After the sawdust had absorbed the majority of the sludge, we took flat shovels and loaded it back into the garbage bags. We could only half fill them because of the weight, and handed them up to the laborers for disposal. We then took six inch drywall knives and scraped down the rest of the crap, and loaded the dry stuff into five gallon buckets, which were then emptied and returned for refills. We didn't take lunch, because we were so filthy, we just wanted to finish the job and go get clean. We emerged from the tank 1:30ish and announced we were done.

When we walked over and looked into the other tank, those bozos were still fooling around with the stuff on the floor. At which time mercy was called for, and I told them what we had done, and how easy it had become to finish. They did the same and got out of their tank a few hours later.

A little background on the prior life of the research vessel is called for before I tell the next tale.

In its prior life, the ship was used for "lightning research," these guys were "green" before it was fashionable.

The ship was an electric/diesel power craft. In the forward compartment (where the wood shop now was), there were a huge amount of capacitors the size of five gallon rectangular gas cans, around two hundred.

This capacitor bank was used to store electricity to supplement the diesel generators that powered the electric motors that turned the screws.

There was also in this room, de-gauzing equipment to keep the stored charge from dissolving the ship's hull, along with the zinc ingots welded to the exterior of the hull.

I'm sure there are some who are getting ahead of me with "you've got to be kidding"...Just because you're "green," doesn't mean you are smart or even have a firm grip on reality.

OK... here is where the lightning comes in. Their mission, which they obviously accepted, was to get lightning to strike the ship, and store some of that energy in the capacitors. After which, it was sent on to the motors for propulsion.

I want to see the hands of all of those who think, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out, this is crazy dangerous.

However, it did take a rocket scientist to make it work. They would launch two different size rockets into the storms, towing an ultra-thin wire, which was attached back to the ship's capacitor bank. The smallest was a 2" line throwing rocket (with a range of a thousand feet or so) used in merchant shipping rescue operations, and a 6" rocket that had a two mile apogee, which means it had the potential to land four miles away.

The third method was to take and tow a 1/8" stainless steel braided cable up into the storm with a helicopter. The other end was attached to a large reel mounted to the main deck.... That must have been much safer. The movie "Jackass" comes to mind here.

The new owner did tell a story of one of the mates walking out on the deck during a storm, not knowing the helicopter had picked up the line, seeing the reel freewheeling, and throwing the brake on the reel almost yanking the helicopter out of the sky.

When we got the ship, all of the rockets were still on board. They were taken off the ship, and stored at Stanley's house in his garage. After many months of work, we got the new diesel motors installed into the ship, and most of the main systems were functional, the investor flew down from up north, and we took a sort of shakedown cruise.

We went down Biscayne bay past key Biscayne to the ocean side of marathon key, and spent the day diving for lobsters, spear fishing, consuming large quantities of beer, and getting well adjusted.

We thought since we could send it out into the middle of the Atlantic, it would be fun to launch a rocket that night from the bow of the ship.

So the day of the cruise, we went to Stanley's house and assembled one of the six inch rockets. The six inch rockets were about eight feet tall and had fins that were about three feet at the base. The nose cone was threaded onto the one piece body, and the fins were attached with screws onto the casing. Just one of these barely fit into the back of his small pickup truck. We then covered it with a tarp and strapped it down. So here we were, well-adjusted as usual, going down I-95 with one of these massive rockets in the back of the truck from North Miami to the river. Talk about a paranoid bunch of guys in a truck.

We made it to the ship without incident, and took our cruise. That night we strapped an improvised launch rail to the front railing of the ship, and slid the rocket on it. Stanley got some zip-cord and a twelve volt battery, connected the whole affair to the igniter, and we lit the thing up. The problem we had not counted on was that the threads for the nose cone were incredibly fine. Even though the rocket looked properly assembled, those threads had stripped during assembly. So when he ignited the charge, there was a big boom, and all we managed to do was launch the nose cone a hundred feet from the boat.

In retrospect, this was probably a very good thing. You see we had forgotten to take into account that right off the coast of south Florida is the Atlantic shipping lane, which has cruise ships and super tankers running up and down the coast at all times. Let's say within four miles of the coast. You fill in the dots.

After that incident, we all decided launching those rockets was a lost cause, and Stanley became the very proud owner of all that stuff.

Sometime after the ship had lost funding, we all went our separate ways. Word did, however, get back to me that Stanley had gotten busted, not by the DEA, which was not that big back then, but by the ATF.

For some reason they went after him. When they walked into his living room ( what we now would call a man cave) they found his arm chair, which was strategically located right in front of and centered between his massive stereo speakers, surrounded on either side by two eight foot rockets with the smaller ones on either side of the end tables. What can you say, Bubba existed even in Miami, and he was well armed.

Chapter 19 - "Blue Missile 1.5"

When the funding for that project dried up, I got a job in a general motor shop in down town Miami. A friend and I transferred all the pieces to the shop, so I could rebuild the car.

Since at the time of the accident I was still insured, I contacted the insurance agency and got a settlement of $750 for totaling out my car. I was blown away, the car was only a few years old, I could never get a good looking replacement car for that. I ended up settling for a '72 duster with a slant six.

Schumacher was not around, so I dropped the 340 into that body and had to fabricate the engine mounts. This was an effort that in retrospect was not fully successful. The engine sat hard against the firewall at the tranny tunnel, and at a slight downward angle. I still had the headers, so they were installed. But from the collector back, I ran flexible exhaust pipe without mufflers. This was just to get the exhaust out from under the car. Boy was it loud. The car ran, but I knew I would have to do something about the way the engine was sitting. I installed one of those dual level AAR prostock hood scoops, but put it on facing the rear. I cut out what used to be the leading edge of the base, and fabricated a vertical piece to fill the void, and installed the oil pressure and temp gauge, so they were visible from the cockpit. One more thing, during the time the wreck was on the slab, someone stole the two bucket seats, so I was without proper seats in the new body. I was using a couple of orange crates for temporary seating. When I took the car for tuning rides down the alley next to the shop, I was also shifting the tranny with my fingers through a hole in the floor board.

During one of these late afternoon test rides, while going down the alley, a guy in a brand new, emerald green Thunderbird with the sticker still on the window ran a stop sign, and broad sided me. Now understand when I would pull the Duster out of the shop you could hear it for blocks, and a large number of the workers in the surrounding business would go hang out on the corners of the cross streets to watch it go by. After the accident, I walked back to the shop, told the owner what had happened, and he said, "Don't call the police, that guys the mob." Of course my response was I don't care, and the police were called, and all the witnesses convinced them that the other driver had indeed run the stop sign. The frame again was trashed. Hey, but at least there was less to take off the car this time. I pulled and boxed up everything, put it all in the back storeroom. One other thing during the crash, because I had solid motor mounts installed, one of the driver's side motor mount tangs was cracked. After a couple of years I got all the stuff that was left, strangely some things had grown legs and walked off out of the shop, and brought it to the house. Through the years I gave up the rear axle and springs, I sold the two M-50s and rims to lighten the load. But I held on to the motor/tranny and all the boxed parts. I started to put together a plan to rebuild the car and started to build a number of electronic systems, including digital gauges, and an electronically controlled, anti-dry start system. I designed the circuits, and actually etched the boards. Most of the boards used simple transistors and early integrated circuits.

In 1983 I got heavily involved with windsurfing, and ramped up my involvement with music. So the work on the car basically came to a stop.

My obsession with windsurfing gave birth to my composites business, and took up every spare minute I was not working and the sun was up. Music was every waking hour after dark. I spent the time either in practice, in the studio, or building studios.

While I continued to live in Miami, I lubricated and turned the engine, on the dolly I made for it, every couple of months or so. I got married in '86 and continued the affair with windsurfing and music. When we moved to Texas I brought all of those items with me. That was in 1998.

In 2000 we moved to central Texas, and because of distance to good sailing on the coast, windsurfing took a back seat to music and church. A few years later I joined the local MoPar club, and went to most of the central Texas car shows. I don't know what kind of ratio exists in y'alls neck of the woods, but here MoPars are a very rare breed. Chebbys and rice burners are the invasive species. At one of the meetings, an owner of a Texas muscle car shop showed up and introduced himself and his shop. I ended up selling him my 727 and some other items off the original car. In passing, I mentioned I would EVENTUALLY be looking for a replacement 73 duster.

About six months later, out of the blue the Lord spoke up and said, "Call Jeff he has your car." OK you have read enough of my life to know I have a relationship with the Lord, but I am still human. I brushed off the suggestion for about a week and then called him. He was surprised to hear from me, and I told him what had happened. He said as a matter of fact, I just picked up a 73 Duster out of San Antonio with you in mind! I drove out to his shop and took a look at the duster and knew at once it was just what I had been looking for. At that time there was no money in the budget to get the car, but a month or so later someone who owed me a fair amount of money paid me back more than enough to get the car. It was the end of 2006 when I purchased the current project Duster.

It is a '73, six cylinder, gold Duster I picked it up for $2500. I thought the price was a little high, but there were only a couple of quarter sized rust spots on the trailing rear edges of the rear quarter panels that I could see, and a little rust to deal with on the front floor boards. There was no rust in any of the gutters or window channels. There are a few minor dents and the two front fenders need to be reworked or replaced. There were a few interior parts that disintegrated when I stripped out the interior, but overall it is a very solid car. Once I got a chance to crawl under the car to inspect it for rust, to my delight there was virtually no rust and there was also no undercoating forward of the back of the rear floor pan. What it looks like is that there was a massive oil leak, and the entire underside is coated with oil, and has been for some time.

And so the rebirth of the "Missile" and the second half of the story begins...

