Figbuck Chronicles...

[Figbuck]

I make stuff out of wood in my little shop. Some of my products are a series of wine racks and wine storage console tables and wine storage cabinets. Sometimes I go to wine festivals and wine tasting events, set up a booth and sell my stuff, get contacts for custom work. A couple weeks ago, I made a short trip to the heart of the Oregon wine country, to McMinnville and the Evergreen Aviation Museum.

 

A few years ago my wife and I were driving out to the beach in Lincoln City. As we passed through McMinnville, I noticed that there was a big, strange looking structure, in the process construction. Parked out in front was an enormous aircraft that I recognized instantly. Even though it didn't have any wings, I knew it was Howard Hughe's Spruce Goose. Back in the early '80s I used to go to Long Beach, California every april for the Formula One Races and in later years the IndyCar races. The Spruce Goose was on display there next to the Queen Mary and I took a quick look a few times but never really toured it.

 

I remembered reading in the paper about how they floated the plane up the river on a barge and then on a specially built truck got it out to Mc Minnville. When I signed up for this three day wine and food festival, I thought I would have time to go look at it. I was amazed to find that they had built a second building and an Imax theater.

 

So here is a little photo essay for my Ratsun friends.

 

 

They just started building another big structure that will be a 50,000 square foot indoor water park. This 747 is supposed to be on the top of the building. somebody told me that it will have slides coming out of the doors or something.

 

 

I got to walk around the Space Museum where the event was held. It was early in the morning before it was open to the public and I was the only one looking around. This aircraft is just freakin' huge! It is an SR71 spy plane. It has cameras that can read the time on your watch from sixty thousand feet.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The architecture of the building is very cool and they way they display the aircraft is like looking at a twelve year old's room with models hanging from the ceiling... except the kid is a giant!

 

 

I ran into an older gentleman that is a docent at the museum and he gave me a private guided tour. I wish I could remember what all these thing were. He told me some mind bending facts and figures. He was a retired engineer that lived through all the evolution of this stuff. His take on it was from the perspective of what was going on politically and historically in the world at the time.

 

 

This exhibit was the "bomb". No lie. This is the war head and the rocket sits on a launch pad that is three stories in the ground. I didn't have time to climb the stairs and see all the stuff down there.

 

 

 

A Titan Rocket motor.

 

 

A Russian rocket motor and some melted heat shields.

 

 

Assorted missiles...

 

[datto510]

WOW....Cool stuff! Thanks for sharing. :cool:

[Figbuck]

All this stuff is the real deal. I will have to go back sometime and spend all day looking at the exhibits and reading all the information. I was kind of working, so I never go to go next door to see the Aviation side and the Spruce Goose up close. Someday I will. I met a lot of really cool people and had some great conversations. There are lots of aircraft parked around the grounds I would I would like to know about too.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Russian lunar vehicle.

 

 

 

The view from my booth in the corner of the hall. It was pretty much a party all weekend. They had lots of good food and live entertainment as well and juried arts and crafts vendors. There were something like seventy-five wineries represented. I wish I would have had a chance to taste more wine. I'm not really a big wine drinker and only drink on occasion. I had a couple sips from my next door neighbors the Dukes Family Vinyards, 2006 and 2007 Pinot Noir. Really great stuff from only a few miles away in Amityville. I also have a buddy named Wende, that I know from these wine fest things, who works for Willamette Valley Vinyards. She poured me a taste of 2008 Pinot Noir that was unbelievable.

 

 

 

My friend Ellen Whyte played Saturday night with a trio. She is a great blues singer and has a new CD out with a fifteen piece big band. I saw her play all that stuff at the Portland Waterfront Blues Festival last summer and it was great. She was inducted into the Oregon Music Hall of Fame two years ago.

 

 

The old Datsun pressed into service. A shot of the "retreat" back to Portland after a long weekend.

 

Anybody up for organizing a Datsun run out here to tour this place??

[mklotz70]

Anybody up for organizing a Datsun run out here to tour this place??

 

If it's on a sunday...ME!!! :) I wish I would have made it to the wine fest....but it looks like there was a huge crowd. Be nice to go sometime when it's not so crowded.

[Skib]

 

Anybody up for organizing a Datsun run out here to tour this place??

 

 

we (north west Z) took a cruise out one time before the space section was done and it was a really nice trip :cool:

 

 

I havent been since the space part was opened :lol: looks like Im over due for a trip too

[Str8_69]

That place really is amazing. A few years ago a friend of mine's parents were visiting from the UK, and we took them there. They said it was the highlight of the visit. His old man stood there and stared at the Spruce Goose for like an hour before he remembered he brought a camera! I wanna go back and check out the new additions.

[izzo]

id be down for a cruise to that. :D

[christ510]

I was living in Oakland Ca when i got my 1st 510... it was a 1971 datsun 510 lite blue 4 door it was my moms car and it was bone stock, I was 17 yrs old it was 1989 the year of the loma preatta earth quake, i did everything imageinable to it - Lets start with the 1st thing i went to the junk yard in search of an old Le'Car front bumper haha got that on and next got a gt grant steering wheel and some new euro mirrors, Then next thing was the izuzu impulse front seats ohh yeah,next was the limo tint job,alpine cd player/12" cerwin vegas the beat ofcorse and a sherwood 240 watt amp, enkie wheels cookie cutters with some low profile bfg's next lowered it and carpeted the dash with that speaker box felt stuff,next was the electronic distributer and some dual SU's those things where a blast and a glass pack muffler,than put on some blue Limo lights between the pillars on the doors that was trick and a long rear view mirror for better viewing,Most of my teen age years i hung out with my 510 club friends in oakland like 510 Rick and Darren,, there was about 20 of us with all kinds of 510's they were 2 doors / 4 doors / wagons ecttt... We used to work on em and help each other all the time, i remember i lowered 3 of my friends 510's in one night,We used to swap parts and buy and sell anything 510 man those were the days.I will never forget the good times we had, i can talk about the dumb shit we did all day...like the day i got the SU's put on and i jumped off the biggets hill i could find and the hood flew open and smacked the roof there i go barreling down that big ass hill with the hood infront of my windshield im hanging out the window to save my ass from dyeing lol fuck that was insane, than there was the time when i was on my way to work it was 6am and i was flying down Hwy 13 in the oakland hills i was going as fast as my little fukin 510 would go i remeber seeing the speedo was hittin about 111 mph and i was barrelling down the hill i was fukin flying cuz i was late to work in concord all of a sudden at the bottom of the hill was a fukin deer omg there was no time to react i hit that sum bitch like it was nobodys buisness it was the craziest thing ive ever experienced because what im about to tell you was the complete truth of what happened, i hit that fuker doing 111 mph and all four wheels left the ground i must have launched perfect plus nailed that poor deer square because all that happended was my head hit the roof and i never touched the brake i actually think i hit the gas harder when i launched because i remeber hearing the wheels spinning ohh man i slapped my ass cheek and laughed my ass off, all i could think of was damn that was just like the good old duke boys and if i could i would turn around and do it again,unbelieveable but there was not a scratch on my car i diddnt understand because my le car front bumper was low as hell.all i could think was that the deer must have been laying there sleeping and i crept up on his ass and flattened him out...

i did get in a hight speed pursuit with 15 police one time and diddnt get away and my lil 510 got towed but it wasent me they were after well it was me they was looking for but i diddnt do the dirty dirt...it was my friend supposdly he did it and he was in another car that was faster smart kid huh..

one time a weed plant actually grew out of the door jam and im not shitting ya seeds were everywere in my car, big fat tiger eyes.

Well finally i sold to buy a 2 door ,i sold it to a stranger but i kept the wheels and sold em to my friend for his 510 turns out my friend lived 2 blocks from the guy i sold my 510 too.well long story short but the cookie cutter enkie wheels mysteriously made its way back to my old 510 that i sold...funny shit huh because i seen the car one day and stopped and looked over the wheels and low and behold it had the tires still on it that i recently put on before selling the 510 - they was all missmatched and only i would remember the names of the miss matched tires well because i matched up the sizes but diff names.

so i made a phone call to my buddy which his car was still stuck on the corner with no wheels and said hey i found yer wheels he was like no way! he said meet me there so we did and got the wheels back with a little persuwazzing 25 caliber revolver. i did so much shit in that car it was the best time of my life....lil blue 510 where ever you are i miss you buddy.

[Str8_69]

^^^ :blink:

 

 

Uh, maybe post yer own thread in Datsun st... oh, nevermind.

[Figbuck]

I love Oakland. I have fond memories of Oakland. Used to go over and ice skate at the Oakland Ice Arena I think it was called in the early '60s when there were regular working class neighborhoods and the downtown was nice. In my teens I used to go the the House Of Woodwinds on East 14th street to try clarinet and sax mouthpieces and buy reeds. Things had not changed that much yet and my Clarinet teacher introduced me to George the owner. He was the best horn tech in the Bay Area and all the symphony guys either taught private lessons there or went in and hung out. Sometimes the heaviest players in the world would be on the road and be in there getting their axes tweaked or trying mouthpieces in the practice rooms.

 

My best memories as a kid was going the the first years of the Oakland Grand National Raosdter Show at the old Oakland Auditorium. I saw Big daddy Ed Roth and George Barris and all that stuff that was featured in Hot Rod and Car Craft Magazines. My Dad was hipper than I ever gave him credit for to take me and my brother to see that stuff. I went to the Roadster Show almost every year from when it moved to the Colosseum and even a year where they had it at the Cow Palace. Damn, makes me cry a little tear.

 

As urban renewal or urban decay started in the late '60s and through the '70s, it got a little sketchier to be downtown, but I was a City kid and I never let anybody fuck with me. I bought my first tenor sax, an old King Super Twenty with bitchen engraving and silver plating on the bell from a hock shop down there. It had worn mother of pearl buttons, was well used, and the case was trashed, but had cool red flocked liner. I wish like hell I still had that horn. I paid $40 bucks for it. A lot of money back then, but it would be worth three of four grand today. I always wondered who the guy or guys were that owned it and the circumstances behind how it got pawned. If that horn could talk! I traded it for a Fender Harvard guitar amp that I still have and is pretty rare. I just had it gone through and it is flawless now. That little sucker has the prototype vintage Fender sound. The volume and tone knobs go to 12! No hum and it cranks.

 

In the '70s I had a musician friend that lived near Park Avenue and Fruitvale Blvd. There were more that a few times I thought I could get my white ass killed over in there. In the late '70s, I was in a jazz/rock fusion band that played at a nice club that was we used to call a meat rack. It was called Barclay Jacks over by Jack London Square. That was a great gig and we made good money. All the beautiful people used to hang over there and it's sole function was for people to hook up and it was always sweaty packed.

 

My friend had a punk/new wave band that would invite me to to jam or sit in with them. There was this big old brick warehouse on like 18th and Webster it think. It took up most of a square block and it had an illegal club in side. It was like a modern speakeasy with no signs or indication that it was anything other than an old industrial warehouse. There were guards at the door and you had to know somebody to get in. There were lookouts posted in the windows of the second floor. If you parked on the street or alley, they wouldn't let you in until you moved somewhere else

 

The band would drive all the way inside and they would shut the doors really fast. It had three stages and three bars on the ground floor. After one band played a set the next one would start. There was a mezzinine that ran all around the perimeter of the building. It had offices, big open rooms with arcade games and bathrooms. There was a small room that you could go in, sit down at a small table and buy coke by the line. There was another big bar upstairs with pool tables and you could hang at the railing to look down on all the stuff going on on the main floor. The drinks would knock you on your ass and people were walking around woofing on splifs like they were smoking a Winston. There were people geezing junk and sharing needles in the bathrooms. If you went in, they looked at you like get the fuck outta here, you ain't gettin' any of this.

 

They usually had five or six bands and it didn't really start until about ten at, night but ran until dawn. The people that hung out there were so weird and underground that it was hard to understand how they could function in life. I mean how did they have a job or even be in society. Today you see kids with tats, spiked hair and rock n' roll thread on all the time. In those years, freaks like that only came out after midnight. There were some seriously hot chicks that hung out in the back stage area, real man eaters, the kind you wouldn't bring home to meet the folks. It was the era of sex, drugs and rock and roll, pre-AIDS, and Cocaine was used as a vitamin with anti-oxidant properties. The BAC lever was still 1.0 too. You really had to be blowing it to get a DUI.

 

On night I got pulled over in the Datsun after I came out of the loading dock doors about four in the morning. The cops ask me what I was doing. I know I reeked of party but I was way more into the music that anything else and was sober. My friend was about to pass out after playing two sets and washing Quaaludes down with tequila. I had all my license and registration right up on my visor easy to grab without opening the glove box. They ask me to step out and shined lights in the cab and back of the camper. It was full of equipment and I told them we were musicians and stored our stuff at the warehouse. We bought our PA back after a gig in the City and the equipment in back was for a Sunday afternoon rehearsal. They could see I hadn't been drinking, ran me for wants and cut us loose.

 

In the '80s and 90's I used to go hang at Eli's Mile High club and Yoshi's Night Spot on Claremont near the Berkley border. Man I miss that place soo much. I saw jazz history and the most amazing music. Way later in the '90s after Yoshi's lost their lease, I used to go to the new Yoshi's club at Jack London square. I doubt if there is a better place to hear music in the world right now. They spent three million bucks to design and built a 350 seat jazz showcase lounge from scratch. It was like my alternate living room and I used to go there four or five times a month. I miss Yoshi's so much. The grilled calamari with Japanese mayonaise and an ice cold Sapporo while watching Robben Ford, or McCoy Tyner, Yellojackets or Phill Wood, Marcus Miller or Joe Lovano play duo with Gonzalo Rublacaba. I saw Stanley Turrentine and Freddie Hubbard, Joe Henderson, Mongo Santamaria and Tony Williams before each of them passed away. Yeah, I saw history.

 

One evening a ten year old kid stuck a .25cal Baretta in my face as I was coming up the stairs out of the BART Station. He said gimme some money. I had my wallet in the inside of my motorcycle jacket but I had a little cash in my back pocket for the BART train. I pulled it out and a middle aged black woman, nicely dressed came down the stairs behind him. I don't think she saw the gun but heard him demand money. She fucking beat him over the head with a big Gucci bag and goes off on him. The kid runs away and the lady start on a rant about young whippersnappers today. I was just trying to start breathing again.

 

About 2002, I was on my Honda VFR750F coming back from Yoshi's about midnight. I didn't have enough fuel to make it all the way back over the San Mateo Bridge and didn't want to run out, so I stopped at a gas station near the Oakland Colosseum off 880, (used to call it highway 17). I spent all my cash for killer sushi and the show. I get my wallet out of my leathers and a scary looking guy with Tyson tats on his face, comes up to me and says, "Hey dude, I just got out of Folsom and need some money". I open my empty wallet, showed him it was empty and said, "Man, I'm tapped out, I gotta use plastic for gas to get back across the Bay. I had gotten in the habit of saving a couple bucks for bridge toll and rolling it up in my glove, so I didn't have to fumble with my wallet at the toll booth. I unzipped my side pocket and fished out three quarters for him. The guy about broke down in tears thanking me.

 

In' 04, the last time I was in Oakland, I was just driving through from Oregon to Monterey. I was toast after driving 12 hours and fell asleep on Interstate 80 in the Datsun. I stopped in Oakland and went into the first motel that had a vacancy sign. It was about eleven thirty and in a totally ghetto part of of town. I went into the office and there was like a bank tellers booth with thick bullet proof glass sporting a little hole above the counter and a intercom like thing in the middle. There was a sign that said CASH ONLY! I said, I need a single for one night. The three hundred pound brotha said, "OK, one person and no guests. You got to park inside and we lock the gate to the parking lot at one thirty and open it at six. Seventy-five bucks. Let me have your drivers license". He made a photo copy and I didn't have to sign a register card or give them a vehicle license number. He give it back to me and says, "Room ten, the TV remote is busted keep the volume down and don't mind the security guard, he leaves after he locks the gate". I only stayed on one worse room in my life down in Salinas.

 

Yeah, fond memories of Oakland. Makes Excremento look like the suburbs.

[Figbuck]

I don't know what happened, but I was not able to log onto Ratsun for months. I couldn't get the page to load through a Google search or anything. For a minute I thought it was gone. Just recently I got an e-mail that I had a PM, so I tried to log on. It worked but the next day it didn't again.

 

I am amazed that over 5100 people have clicked on this posting. I'm not sure what to make of that.

 

I was going to post a Datsun story back in June for the Summer Solstice, but I couldn't. I thought I was banned or something.

 

Now the earth has tipped half way back between the longest and shortest day. This is the time of year I dislike the most. It is very depressing to feel the year decaying. I try to think of the good things in life but it is getting increasingly difficult. I have to do it from memory because what is going down now is draining me fast. It is hard to be optimistic. It is all I can is to not be pessimistic. I'm just trying to maintain a low profile, mind my own business and keep forging ahead. It seems like fun has been cancelled for the the duration.

 

Today is John Coltrane's birthday. I haven't celebrated my birthday for many years, but Trane gave me a gift of music. I try to play my saxophone every singe day. It is the only thing that makes me feel right. Music is something that nobody can take away from me. So many booby traps have blown up in my face the last couple years. Just about everything I have tried to do has failed. Even the most simple things day to day have just not worked out. I play the horn and I have control. It's the only thing that does work for me. I'm thankful that I was able to walk on the earth at the same time Coltrane did. Thank you for all the great compositions John!

 

I have a story to tell about this Datsun... but if nobody cares, I need to use what little energy I have to play some 12 bar blues.

 

 

[izzo]

A lot of people like to read your stories and what you have to say, so do tell if you feel inclined, if not. Go ahead and play your instrument lol. Just dont forget to come back and tell the story sometime.

[hang_510]

happy b-day, if you remember when it was ;)

 

 

I'm not sure what to make of that.

surely you cant be serious??? <_<

 

"That? Why I could make a hat, or a brooch, a pterodactyl... "

 

 

 

I try to think of the good things in life but it is getting increasingly difficult. I have to do it from memory because what is going down now is draining me fast. It is hard to be optimistic. It is all I can is to not be pessimistic. I'm just trying to maintain a low profile, mind my own business and keep forging ahead. It seems like fun has been cancelled for the the duration.

 

 

I have a story to tell about this Datsun... but if nobody cares, I need to use what little energy I have to play some 12 bar blues.

get out of my rut, there isnt enough room this winter!!!

"Loneliness, that's the bottom line. I was never happy as a child... Christmas, Ted, what does that mean to you? It was living hell. Do you know what it's like falling in the mud and getting kicked, in the head? With an iron boot? Of course you don't, no one does, that never happens."

 

 

 

 

so, is it story time yet? :wub:

 

the music never stopped

[Figbuck]

Events are still unfolding and I don’t know how it will all turn out. It is such a bad soap opera that I wouldn’t watch it. It's just the comedy and tragedy we all go through.

 

Everybody wants to be cool and think they are a unique personality and special. Everybody else is un-hip by comparison. This story is about the cool kids. I haven’t been cool or hip for so long, I don’t even know what it means anymore. I have been a fool and done some stupid things out of ignorance in my life... but I’m not stupid. I try really hard to educate myself and pay attention so I’m not ignorant. I’m still a Figbuck sometimes. Reeet!

 

I believe that on a an elemental level we are all responsible for creating our own reality. If you don’t understand that, then ignorance is bliss... or hell. If you do get it, then you probably want to try to create a great reality for yourself. How to do that is maybe life’s lesson. It sure is an intriguing thing to try and pull off.

 

Lau Tzu the Taoist said something like, “We are all learning the perfect lesson through each moment”.

 

I have been busy trying to deal with my own problems. I’m working on keeping my own situation from making me depressed. Depression has paralyzed me in the past and it is a sneaky thing. The more depressed you allow yourself to get the more depressed you get.

 

I have a couple of escape mechanisms. One is to play music and another is to work at my shop. They are both kind of the same thing. Fill my time and thoughts with something potentially productive.

 

I have a poor social skill in that, whenever somebody starts to tell me about how hard their life is or all the problems they have, I usually can top any of their problems with five of my own. I don’t want to hear other people’s problems. Nobody wants to hear my problems! Usually it shuts them up. I don’t win any friends though.

 

Sometimes people have experiences that are just heart breaking and there is no way I could or would want to top them. They genuinely need sympathy or empathy. Still on some level, they are just working their stuff out, like we all are.

 

So I know this young guy named Jon. He just turned thirty one in jail. He was seventeen when I met him. He lived next door with his mother and sister. His Dad had just walked out on his Mom, sister and him for another woman. He dropped out of school because he just couldn’t function. He was diagnosed with ADD at a young age.

 

Jon went out and found a construction job, made some money and moved out. It looked like for a while that he was going to create something cool for himself. He rented a big house on the outskirts of town with some school friends that became party central. He bought a Datsun 260Z car that somebody had done a lot of work on, but lost interest. All the modifications were good except for the sunroof. Stupid thing to do IMHO. It was a pretty fast car for a young guy and it wasn’t to long before he got tickets and started to drive it into the ground. He didn’t know that you actually had to do maintenance and that it cost money to burn gas and rubber.

 

He was lucky that he didn’t get in any serious trouble. It could have been a function of the poor Zcar not running very well after a few months. Time passed and things entered his life that were far more dangerous than a fast car.

 

Jon had school buddies that took advantage of the fact that he had a job, house and car. He started to smoke cigarettes, dope and drink alcohol regularly. Even worse he had a series of hot girlfriends. It’s always the hot ones that are psyco-bitches... but they give the best sex. Until you have been chewed up and spit out a few times, you don’t know that.

 

I didn’t worry about him, because I went through all of this same stuff growing up and he just needed to get it out of his system. Jon is a sharpt guy and pretty capable. I needed help on a couple finish carpentry jobs I had a few summers ago and he worked for me. He learned really fast and was producing some clean, tight work very quickly. During this time, I told him about some of the things I had gone through and watched friends go through when I was his age. I’m very lucky to have burned more than my nine cat lives and still be here. More than I can say about some of my friends who aren’t. He seemed to get it. I think he could identify with me because I have been an adrenaline junky riding fast motorcycles and spending years playing music in bars. At one point, Jon fell in love with a cute stripper.

 

She was making lots of money, had a nice pad, car and wanted a relationship outside of the clubs. How do you tell somebody that this is probably not going to work out? They got sort of codependent and did the kind of burning the candle at both ends partying that you can only do in your twenties. Finally he got his little heart broken by his little stripper love. He didn’t miss a beat and took up with one of her hot girlfriends who was a pharmacist.

 

She had a good job, lots of money, owned a big house and nice car. She had a big family that was into having regular parties all the time. I didn’t realize Jon was starting a downward spiral. Hey, I ain’t his mother and he is a big boy. Things were kept from me because he knew that I had no tolerance for drug use. I have watched too many people’s lives destroyed. I should have known that dating a pharmacist was not the hot-set-up.

 

Fortunately or unfortunately, that relationship didn’t work out. He went on to start dating one of her friends. For a few years he had been getting tattooed. Much to the chagrin of his mother, Jon has a fascination with skulls and stuff that would torpedo any job interview in a heartbeat. The new girlfriend Jane, was really cute and all of her tattoos made them a matching couple. She has turned out to be truly unstable mentally.

 

One morning I get a call. He was out drinking with the gang and a block from their apartment, he came ripping around a corner and sideswiped another car. He was drunk and just kept going. When they woke up the car was not where they parked it. He wanted to know what I thought he should do.

 

After an hour of trying to figure out how to see if the cops towed the car, or knew he hit and run, and what to do about it, he decided to call police to file a stolen vehicle report. Sleazy I know, but he sounded really scared like he knew he had screwed up badly.

 

He had all his clothes, papers, wallet, cell phone and tool boxes for work in the car. He couldn’t go to work and was hung over too. Later in the day he gets a call that the Datsun was not towed by police, but had been towed to a yard. He was so wasted that they parked in somebody's driveway right under a No Parking/Tow Away sign.

 

It cost Jon some money to get that little mess sorted out, but he skated away from that unscathed. Time passed and the economy was starting to fail around here. He was getting his hours cut and laid off for days, then weeks at at time. She lost her job and talked her Mom into paying for her to go to school.

 

The same thing was happening to lots of their friends too. Unemployment checks and free time turned into nonstop partying. They had to get out of their expensive apartment and tried to find and cheaper place. They blew up credit cards and borrowed money from the Moms to pay first, last, cleaning, security and pet deposits on a studio apartment that had just been remodeled. It seemed OK, but a week after they moved in, the landlord came around and told them that they needed to have the next months rent to him before the first or he would charge them a late fee. They had to borrow more money to get that together. They had had such a hard time finding a cheap place with no jobs and pets, that they were intimidated into paying the guy early.

 

I had the 11:00 news on one night. I hear familiar voices. It’s them being interviewed on TV! The whole building had been condemned by the Fire and the Building Code enforcement departments. All of the tenants being evicted! The sprinkler system was not functional, and every unit except theirs, had safety and heath violations. The City was going to send the Sheriff out in a couple days to throw everybody out. The condemnation notice was posted weeks before the landlord took money for credit checks, all the rents and deposits. The landlord was already under enditement for fraud, drug and weapons charges, so he fled the country.

 

After moving all their stuff in, they moved it out again to a warehouse that some friend of theirs worked at. The friend said they could park the Datsun and store boxes and furniture. Another partying high school buddy that gets cars at auction and flips them, gave them a crappy mini-van. They would drive it to the warehouse every night after nine and sleep until six when they had to be out so the owner of the business wouldn’t know they were camping out.

 

After a few weeks of this they couldn’t find work and ran out of gas over at some friends house. They camped out there for a while. In the meantime the owner of the warehouse went in the back of the building and ask what is all this stuff doing here? The “friend” didn’t say a word and the owner had three employees get rid of everything.

 

Don’t know what happened to the Zcar. I just disappeared. When the Cool Kids went back to get some clothes, papers and stuff, the owner said everything went into a truck and got dumped. Yeah, right! You know they went through everything and just ripped it off. Sony play station, TV, CDs some nice furniture and clothes, to the dump? More like into the back of employees cars.

 

One Sunday morning I see them coming out of Mom’s house. She says, “Oh it is so nice to see the kids, they came over for breakfast.” I see them get into the van and leave. Later that night I see the van parked out on the street and think that it is a little late to be visiting. The next day I see the girlfriend walking the dog down the block and realize that they are camping out on the street, out of gas, money and lost all of their stuff. A few more nights on the street and sneaking into Mom’s place to raid the fridge and take showers I take pity on them.

 

Like an idiot, I tell them they can stay in my spare bedroom so they don’t get popped. The van has out of state expired tags and a tire goes flat every day while leaving a puddle of oil every place it’s parked. Even dumber than me, the Mom gives them a couple hundred bucks for food.

 

Most of this stuff I don’t know at the time, so I’m trying to be a nice guy. They proceed to go over to a cousin’s place and get drunk. Late at night, they run the stop sign at the corner and pull into the driveway next door. A cop comes zooming up and Jon gets out, hops a fence and runs away. Jane has a failure to appear for some traffic stops and she get hauled away and tells them who Jon is.

 

A few weeks later he is sitting at a bus stop with a beer in a bag. City cops hassle him and take him in because he has no money or ID. Then they find the evading police warrant and he is gone.

 

In the mean time Jon’s cousin Jak who is the same age and went to school with the same cool kids, is busy flushing his life too. He finished school and got a good construction job. He got married, had a kid, nice house, bought a new Mustang and made it look good and go fast. When he got laid off, he drank his unemployment check and started to do prescription opiates. When Jak ran out of money he started to take it from his wife and lie to her about things. She came home one day to find the big screen TV gone, then other stuff. She had a short fuse and kicked his deceitful ass out. She didn’t want him around their kid. In a while the car was gone too. He was using a lot of stuff and began dealing.

 

When ever Jon and Jane would be around Jak he would get everybody in the group high with a couple pills and they would smoke and drink. You know what is next!

 

Jon and Jane wake up feeling hung over and go see Jak for a free pill. He says, oh man they are like twenty bucks man. So they come back to the house and sit in the room watching TV. They tell me they got food poisoning or picked up a bug. They hit the Moms up for more money with some sob stories and go see Jak to get well.

 

Jak is going through a bunch of money to keep his habit up and is not selling enough product. He goes to his wife Joan and says, I got a good carpenter job with Joe Blow. Lend me your car Baby, I want to take him up to my favorite fishing spot to make a good impression on him and thank him for hiring me. Joan lets him take her brand new Jetta. Two days later she gets a call from Jak. He is in jail in Arizona. He got popped with eighty pounds of weed headed for New York.

 

The guys that were supplying Jak with pills set him up to make deliveries for them. Then to keep him from ratting them out, sent a lawyer down there to bail him out. Eventually Joan gets the car back. Jak has no previous record, so might not have to go to jail, but he goes right back to pushing pills to the cool kids.

 

Jane takes some checks from her Mom. She tells Jon’s Mom that her Mom paid them $600 to paint her living room and dining room. She says, give us two hundred bucks in cash and deposit the check, keep $400 as a payment on all the money you have loaned us. Mom deposits the check and doesn’t find out it is no good until she has bounced five checks.

 

Mom can’t call them because it looks like their phones are shut off. Trying to be funny,I say they are probably in jail. I get to thinking and look on the county web-site. No shit, Jane is in jail on six counts of felony check fraud.

 

 

The cool kids start to be honest with the Moms and say they want to go to rehab and clean up. All that happens is that the Moms give them more money while they try to get into some county program. They go on Methadone and after a couple of months of sleeping all day and sitting in front of the TV all night, they never get into any program. There are hundreds of people just like them, lining up every morning to get a dose and try to get into a program.

 

When I finally start to find all this stuff out, I kick them out. Fortunately, I never gave them a cent and they knew that if they took anything from me... uh, you know.

 

They were sleeping in the flat tire, expired tags van with a cat and dog, living on food stamps for weeks. They can’t afford the Methadone, so they are back to street drugs and being sick. If you could call that living. I can’t believe a neighbor hasn’t called the cops or the van hasn’t been towed.

 

In the mean time, Jane OD's on a whole bottle of nasty prescription stuff she stole somewhere. She was in intensive care and then the psychiatric lock up. Then she went back to jail because she violated her parole from the check beef.

 

A week later, Jon ODed on opiate pills and the cops took him to detox. he was in psychiatric lock up and then jail, and now it looks like he has entered into a nine month program. The first 30 days he is in a locked room for observation with no privileges and no outside contact.

 

After a month in jail, Jane is a couple blocks away in a different program. It looks like it takes felony convictions and suicide attempts to get any kind of help.

 

I guess I’m getting old. All that shit is waay too cool for me. I ain’t cool no more.

 

 

 

 

 

The latest episode of bad soap opera. I just got checking statements for my personal and business accounts. There were two checks made out to Jon that basically wiped out the balance and made the account $280 overdrawn with new fees occurring every three days. The checks were in my office in a little locked fire box with my important documents. He forged my name and cashed them with his thumbprint on them.

 

I’m not sure I have a word for how badly this has hurt me. I have not been making very much money and every cent I get goes back into my business, so maybe some day if the economy ever recovers, I have a way to survive. I have been doing this for over thirty years and I don’t really know what else to do. I am basically stuck until I get this sorted out.

 

So here is the deal. I can cover all the overdraft charges,return the check amounts to my account like nothing ever happened or I can close the account, file fraud charges. There will be two felony bad check charges filed. In talking to Jon’s Mom, I hear that when Jane swiped checks from her Mom, Jon cashed some of them with his name on them, so now he has a bunch of felony charges to deal with too.

 

I basically don’t care. I’m very disappointed that he ripped me off, but worse, a bunch of time has gone by here and he could have told me what he had done. So much for trying to help people out, but I know better. I have seen drugs turn people into pathological liars and just warp their personalities... as well as kill them dead.

 

I told Jon’s Mom what happened and she was just crushed. She talked with him briefly the other day and said that he was still kicking and having a hard time, but that he seemed more like his old self than any time in the last six months. She wants to give me money so that I don’t have to file fraud charges. I know she doesn’t have any money either and is struggling. Mostly because of the bad check they wrote on her and because she has been giving them money for other stuff like hospital co-pays and Methadone. She had some car problems last week and had to put fifteen hundred bucks on a credit card.

 

I don’t want her to bail Jon’s ass out on this one. It’s probably way worth the money if Jon wanted to give it back to me and not face two felony counts. I don’t care how much you love somebody and want to help them, it’s just not her deal to have to make right.

 

What haunts me is thinking about the Z car. What happened to it? Where is it? Are there a lessons here?

[johny5]

Good to see you posting up again , I look forward to reading your thoughts and story's. Shitty to hear about your situation.

Goes to show you don't help people by helping them.

[TheCiscoKid]

Love the stories! Keep it up

[Figbuck]

It's the shortest day again. The little dried up turd we are spinning on will start to tip back again in a couple hours. The vibrations have been so wierd and messed up the last few days... weeks... months... Uh, this years has been the most screwed up that I can ever remember. And that is saying something. I had such high hopes this time las year.

 

There were one or two days that were I felt like I was really glad to be alive or felt alive. The were far out stripped by all the cosmic bullshit I managed to create for my self.

 

I'm typing on a library computer. It took me forever to remember how to log on, because my Mac remembers the password. A cat knocked over a full cup of coffer on my iBook. The keyborad is toast. Then another act threw upon my cell phone and killed it. It looks like the power adapter for the Mac is toasted too, and i can't find one anywhere. Doesn't matter, I am flat broke have no gas and just dumped my spare gallon in the 620 to get groceries.

 

That lunar eclipse lastnight must have been pretty intense. I how that is the end of this crap and things woll start to get back on the up swing. Won' take much to make any thing better. Sorry... I feelike a sour dogshit sandwhich.

[datzenmike]

" Sometimes you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right" ” .... JG

[]2eDeYe]

I how that is the end of this crap and things woll start to get back on the up swing.

 

 

Good thoughts your way from here my friend.

[johny5]

Good to hear your still alive and kicking , its too bad about your current situation hopefully the new year brings better things around.

[Advans521]

I read all your stories today and I was very touched by all the memories you shared. Some made me laugh, some where sad, others were inspirational and all very well written. I know we are all going through some shitty years due to the economy and all. By reading your stories and by seeing all the changes through your life and the others you've come in contact with gives me hope that we'll all get through this shithole. I'm from the sacramento area and frequent the bay area regularly and it was interesting to hear about the adventures you had around my parts. Thanks for taking the time to share with us your chronicles. I hope to hear more from you Figbuck and hope you get out of your rut your in. I've also lost some good friends to drugs and I know the feeling of getting fucked over with that, just makes you a better person I think. Karma will come back around. Sorry to drag on with the post just felt I needed to give a good replay for the awesome stories you've shared. Carry on Figbuck.

[Rob W.]

Amazing. I don't know what to say. I'm truly glad I took the time to read all this. After all the awesome stories I know anything I say here will just be like blah blah so come back and write some more

[skibum315]

I haven't made it through the whole thread, but I just wanted to say (and I can't believe it's my first post here ... ) how awesome it was reading through the first three pages of this thread. I can't wait to come back and finish the rest. I grew up running around the South Bay and Peninsula (just about 30 years after Figbuck), so I was rivited to read about places I feel I know fairly well; it also made me have a thought, which I have occasionally, that maybe I was born about 30 years too late. Figbuck, you're a scholar and a gentleman ... as well as a gifted writer. Thanks for sharing your memories!

 

Editing to add: Just finished the rest of the thread ... I can't say enough how enthralled I was by the stories, and how saddened to hear of the rut you've fallen into. Carry on and best wishes moving forward ... thoughts headed your way from this wayward soul.

[810wagn]

"I remember this from time to time, when I�m trying to make sense of events in life. My human tendency is to be the curious cat, but there is a reason that cats have nine lives. What have I done? What little leaves have I pulled on? I try to monitor the ideas that I should fix things or that what I think or do, doesn�t have any effect on what happens. I try to accept the way things are and try not to change them to fit my view of how I think they should be. This is a tall order. It is difficult to beleive how very small thoughts or actions effect lifes realities. It is a never ending game of passing judgment on one�s intentions."

 

i never thought one paragraph could have such an impact on my thinking, your stories are fantastic to read and the messages that come with them are real. thank you. keep them coming i know ill keep reading.

[south of reno]

WOW! that's a pretty amazing story, i guess sludge can be a good thing.

I use Valvoline max life oil and Lucas synthetic oil stabilizer in my goon which i was proud there is no sludge in.

There's no telling what would happen if your engine was sludge free never allowing it to get stuck, you could have gotten so real damage.:blink: