Meth A Memoir Read online

  On the bus ride home, I was sitting with this black kid I knew who lived in the apartment complex that was behind the trailer park. I showed him the cash, and lied, saying I had earned it from a part time job.

  This kid’s dad sold weed, and the kid asked me if I wanted to buy some joints. He said he could steal some from his dad and, thinking this would be a fantastic financial investment for a thirteen year old, I agreed.

  I ended up giving him forty dollars for fifty joints. I sold most of the joints at two bucks a piece, and made a decent little profit. Naturally, I also ended up smoking several of them as well.

  I never reinvested in more weed because I ended up spending all of the money while I was high. That was the point where I became an almost full time casual drug user.

  I liked getting high. I didn’t care if it was weed, alcohol, or whatever. I just genuinely enjoyed being high. It wasn’t at all because it “made me forget about my hard life,” or any of that other bullshit that people use as an excuse. I just liked the feeling.

  Speed eventually would become my drug of choice. Back then it was pink hearts, .357’s, and white crosses. Things of that nature. I had heard of the harder stuff; coke, crank, crystal, but I hadn’t tried any of it.

  Another person I knew who lived in the apartments behind the trailer park was named Sharon. Sharon was a friend of Junior’s, or a friend of one of Junior’s friends, or something like that. In all honesty I don’t recall exactly how I met Sharon, but I spent a lot of nights at her house.

  Sharon had several children. Some were hers, and some were adopted. She liked having me around and I liked being there. I think part of the reason I liked being there was because the two oldest girls would supply me with beer.

  One day, Sharon announced that she would soon be moving to New Mexico, where she was from. I was pretty upset about it and she knew it. Before she left, Sharon offered to take me in as a foster child, and let me move to New Mexico with them. She knew quite a lot about my unstable life.

  Unfortunately, mom wouldn’t let me go, so I was forced to say good bye to her, and my friends. Before they left, Sharon gave me a picture of her and the other kids in front of their home in New Mexico. The home she was returning to. It was a large house with a beautiful mountain behind it. I think I could have been happy there.

  When I was fourteen, I came home from school one day to find out that we were moving to Arkansas. This really sucked because I had made several friends where we were currently at. I liked my school, and where we lived, and pretty much everything else. Hell, I was more than even content, I was happy.

  Unfortunately, we had to pack and move. Mom wasn’t leaving Junior, all of us moved. We ended up living with some people Junior knew in Wynne, Arkansas.

  I don’t remember how long it took, but soon after the move, I pretty much lost my mind. I was tired of always being uprooted, always moving, and never having a steady home. I was tired of making friends and leaving them all behind. I was tired of never feeling any sense of security. I was tired of worrying, “Will we have somewhere to go when we leave here? Will we get anything to eat today?”.

  As adults, we don’t always realize that children have worries and they know when their parents are having hard times. The way I grew up, I had shit to worry about that most people couldn’t even imagine.

  I remember a time as a kid when someone “borrowed” me to run a scam. The guy who borrowed me had a broken fan belt from a car. We would walk around grocery store parking lots asking for money to “buy a new fan belt” so we could fix the car and get home. My job was to wait for the sucker(s) that fell for this to start handing over loose change, then I’d say “Daddy, I’m so hungry...” This was followed by a stern, “I don’t have any money for food right now..” by the guy. The result? A few extra dollars for hamburgers.

  My worry during this scam wasn’t that someone would figure out that this was actually a scam. Though that did happen once when we ran into the same guy at a second store. My worry was that someone would want proof that this dude was really my dad. I’ve got no idea why I was worried about this, but I was. Chalk it up to being a kid I guess.

  Picture this and tell me that it’s normal for most kids, if you dare. One way mom would feed us from time to time would be to beg from restaurants. She would march into McDonalds and ask to see the manager. When the manager came out, she’d explain that we were hungry and she had no money for food. Granted, it worked. We got fed, but this is still one of the most humiliating things I can think of to do to a child. My biggest worry during this scam? That the manager would think I’m too old to eat for free, so I really would go hungry. Though now, I don’t think I was. I was about nine at the time.

  So anyway, when I say I was tired of worrying, I mean it. All I could think of during this time was how I could have gone to New Mexico and have been happy. Well, since Mom wouldn’t let me go, there was only one thing I could do. Go anyway.

  I threw a couple of changes of clothes in a bag and headed towards the interstate. I knew Sharon was in Alameda, New Mexico, and so that’s where I headed. Fairly sound reasoning for a fourteen year old, right? I walked to a rest area so I could look at a map to figure out my route. With all the traveling I had done in my life, I could read a map very well. Once I had my trip planned out, I started hitching. This was back in the early 80’s, when it was still safe to do this sort of thing. I also knew to ask truckers at rest areas and truck stops for rides because they’ll get on the CB radio to get you a connecting ride from where they’d drop you off.

  I made really good time getting to Alameda. Once I was there, it was just a matter of finding Sharon’s house. It was at this point in my plans that I ran into two very important problems. The first being, I didn’t know Sharon’s actual address. I could have looked it up in a phone book, except for the second problem. I didn’t know her last name either.

  Okay, no big deal, right? I still had the picture of Sharon’s house. It was in front of a mountain. Except that there are mountains everywhere in Alameda. It was then that I accepted the fact that my plan had fallen completely apart, and I was seriously screwed.

  Suddenly, I found myself standing on a sidewalk with no place to go, and no money to get there. I must have even had the look of ‘screwed’ tattooed on my face, because it was at this moment, that something strange happened to save my ass.

  I was walking down a sidewalk, thinking that I should start hitching back to Arkansas. (What other choice did I have?) This is when I heard someone ask me, “Are you lost?”

  I turned to see a mini-van driven by a young woman in what appeared to be her mid-twenties had stopped in the street. I just stared at her for a few seconds, dumbfounded, then said “Yes.” I figured, Fuck it; what did I have to lose?

  I don’t remember the girl’s name, but she told me to get in the van. I got in. As we rode to her house, she asked where it was I was trying to get to, and I told her the same story I just told you.

  Once I finished telling her just exactly how I got to New Mexico, she simply smiled and said that I was welcome to stay with her at her house until I figured out my next move. I had told her that I didn’t want to go back to my mom’s if I didn’t have to.

  The girl’s husband came home from work that evening, and she explained the situation to him. This dude didn’t seem upset about any of it, thankfully. The girl did explain that she and her husband were deeply involved in their local church so maybe that explains some of it.

  I spent the next few days there, mowing the grass and straightening their garage in order to earn my keep. The fact that these people didn’t even act like I was intruding was kinda freaking me out a little bit. I was starting to go a little crazy, and wanted to get the hell out of there.

  One night, at supper, I mentioned to them that my dad would most likely let me stay with him if I could contact him. They got on the phone to try to get a phone number for him, but had no luck. I knew my dad lived in Oil City, Pennsylvania, but
there was no number listed under his name.

  We talked a little while about other ways to find him, and before long, we ended up with some luck. I somehow remembered my grandfather’s name and we were able to contact my dad through him.

  When I talked to my dad, he said that my mom had already called him. He told me that he was expecting my call, and that he would send me a plane ticket to come to Pennsylvania the next morning.

  The ticket was waiting for me at the airport the next morning as promised, and I got a ride to the airport from the people I was staying with. We said our goodbyes and I got on the plane. In my duffel bag with my clothes was a really cool bong I had found while cleaning the garage. I felt a little bad for stealing it, but, as I said, it was really cool. Besides, it wasn’t as if they needed it anymore. They were Christians.

  Chapter 4

  I was met at the airport in Pittsburg by my dad and step-mom, Butch. I don’t really know why she went by that name. I guess she was just weird like that. I also had a step-brother whom everyone called “Goober.” He was born in Georgia, and got the nick-name at birth. Unfortunately for him, the nick-name stuck.

  A few days after arriving in Pennsylvania, my dad said it was time to call my mother. I really, really didn’t want to talk to her, but my dad thought it would be better if I was the one that told her I’d rather stay with him.

  I got on the phone with my mom, and she tried to get me to come back. I told her I wanted to stay where I was, and that was my final decision. I wanted a stable home.

  Dad went to a court hearing and took me with him. I had to tell the judge that I wanted to live with my father, which I did. The judge granted my dad custody of me and we left. The whole thing was rather anti-climatic. It only took a few minutes.

  Now that my dad was my legal guardian, he enrolled me back in school. I was in the ninth grade and the school year had just started, so at the very least, I wouldn’t be too far behind.

  I got enrolled to the same school as Goober; Oil City High School. Since Goober was four years older than I was, but had been held back a year in grade school, he was a senior, while I was a freshman.

  Despite our age difference, Goober and I got along great. Around school, I was known as the “little brother” by Goober’s friends, most of whom were seniors as well.

  The “little brother” title had a benefit. I got to hang out with the seniors. This gave me a little bit of status with the rest of the lower classmen. I was looked upon with awe by my freshman friends when one of the seniors would take the time to stop by my locker to see how I was doing.

  Okay, maybe I wasn’t looked upon with “awe”, but I at least felt like I should have been.

  Along with the benefit of being Goober’s little brother, there were also drawbacks. The first of these was that Goober and his friends were known as the troublemakers of the school. This, of course, meant I was labeled a troublemaker as well.

  I’m not going to try to say that I was unjustly considered to be a troublemaker however, because I did get into a lot of shit. Little brother or not, I was still a freshman, and was expected to earn my place in the pack, just like everybody else. Usually, this was accomplished by me having to pick a fight with someone who had offended one of the older guys who would get into too much trouble if he handled it himself. Unfortunately for me, these guys were easily offended, and I got into a lot of fights.

  I skipped school a lot, and would end up in detention for my trouble. Skipping detention always got me a two day out-of-school suspension. I never did realize exactly why, if you didn’t go to school, your punishment would eventually be, not going to school, but I guess that’s neither here nor there at this point.

  Dad gave us two dollars every morning for our lunch at school. I always used my two dollars to buy a joint to smoke before school started. This would be my daily routine you see, which usually led me into the ‘‘trouble” that I would “make”.

  After I was in Pennsylvania for about six months, Butch, my step-mom, found out that I was smoking weed. This got me sent to a psychologist once a week for about two months. I never knew what the point was to all of that.

  Goober never did drugs back then, but he did drink beer whenever he could. I would drink when I didn’t have any weed, or pretty much anytime I was offered any sort of alcohol.

  One night, while I was at a school dance, a friend of mine showed up with two large bottles of schnapps. One was apple flavored, and one was cinnamon.

  We drank both bottles between the two of us, and before long we were both puking our guts out. I’ve never been so sick in my entire life. I managed to get home just minutes before my dad got home from work. By the time he walked through the door, I was out cold.

  Sometime later that night, my dad woke me up by yelling up the stairs to tell me to get up, and come to the living room. I thought I was busted. I got there, and he handed me the phone. It was my uncle. Apparently, my cousin Gail had ran away from home and he was wondering if I knew where she was or not. I told him I had no idea, and then promptly went back to bed.

  While in Pennsylvania, most of my drug activity was weed and alcohol, but I did do acid one time. The only time I was able to come across any speed, was when I found a bottle of Fastins, (A.K.A Blue and Clears) in our bathroom at home. The Fastins were prescribed to Butch for low blood pressure. I stole them and spent the next three days speeding my ass off. It felt awesome!

  After graduation, Goober moved out of the house. He stayed with different friends for a while, but most of them were leaving to go to the military. It wasn’t long before he didn’t have anywhere left to go at all.

  Goober had no job, no car, and no money. He also had no intention of moving back in with us. He was grown, and didn’t want to live by anyone’s rules but his own. That’s what he told me anyway.

  Goober wanted to leave town. He had no idea where he wanted to go, but he wanted out of Oil City, and out of Pennsylvania altogether. My mom was still in Arkansas, and Goober started talking to me about how cool it would be for us to go there. I called my mom, and she told us to come on down.

  We scraped together what cash we could get our hands on and got a ride to the Greyhound station in Franklin, PA. Unfortunately, we only had enough money to get us two tickets as far as Louisville, KY. From there, we’d have to hitchhike the rest of the way to Arkansas.

  Once we got to Louisville, we walked straight to the interstate to start hitching. Within two minutes, a car stopped. A cop car. Apparently, it is illegal to hitchhike in the state of Kentucky.

  The cop started asking questions and, upon learning that I was a minor, took me into custody. Goober was told to get off the interstate, and left to fend for himself.

  Goober ended up contacting Dave, one of his friends from high school, who moved out to Kansas right away after graduation. Dave sent Goober money for a bus ticket, and Goober went to Kansas. The cops called my parents, then put me on a bus to my mom in Arkansas.

  I was fifteen, about to turn sixteen, and back to a life of uncertainty. Again. This sucked.

  Chapter 5

  The next several years would be eventful, to say the least. Goober would end up getting married, then divorced, while in Kansas. Dave moved to California. After Goober’s divorce, Goober pretty much just mooched off of other friends he had made. He wasn’t much into working and supporting himself.

  I quit school soon after getting to Arkansas. I would eventually go to prison for a string of burglaries and thefts, but at least I was able to acquire my GED while I was locked up. After being released, I moved to Mountain View, Ark. Mom had moved there, and it was the only place I had to go.

  I ended up meeting a girl in Mountain View whom I got pregnant. Before the baby was born, I violated my parole, and had a choice to either leave the state, or go back to prison. She didn’t want to leave, and I didn’t want to go to prison, so I ended up leaving alone.

  I went to Kansas where Goober and I joined forces once again. We lived in
Wichita for a little while before stealing Goober’s girlfriend’s car and heading to Mississippi where my mom, brother, and sister were moving too. Even though I didn’t like moving, it seems to me at least, that everyone I knew, and myself, were pretty good at it.

  After a few weeks in Mississippi, Goober decided to join the United States Army. This idea lasted about a month into his basic training before he went AWOL. He made his way to San Francisco to hide out with Dave, from Kansas.

  Goober kept in contact with me, and once he got kinda settled, he invited me out. Dave was all for it, so I packed a bag, and went to California.

  Now California was a lot of fun. Dave had a ‘71 Buick with a bad master cylinder. This left us cruising around San Francisco with no brakes. I honestly don’t believe any of us had a driver’s license, and I know for a fact there wasn’t any insurance on the car, so all in all, I have no idea how we avoided getting arrested or killing ourselves.

  None of us worked. We were all living with a girl Dave had been friends with since he first arrived in the area.

  Dave, who happened to be a pretty good drummer, was trying to “make it” as a singer with a heavy metal band. He wasn’t as good a singer as he was a drummer, but we never told him this. We would spend all our weekdays in the malls and on the streets trying to sell tickets to whatever show his band would be playing at that weekend.

  The way the clubs worked was, the band paid the club to be allowed to play. In return, the club gave the band a stack of tickets. It was up to the band to sell enough tickets to make their money back, and some profit to live off of. Selling these tickets, however, was harder than door to door vacuum cleaner sales. Something I now know a little about.

  On the nights Dave’s band would play, Goober and I would carry the equipment in for them. Playing “roadie” got us in for free, and it got us into the band room. The band room of course, is where the guys in the bands got ready for their shows before they played and partied their asses off after they played.