After getting the party started at Scott’s house we decided to head on down to our favorite bar Wilson’s ( the place I used the phone at on the day I left ), It was great to see all those friendly faces again and for the first hour it felt like I had never left, but soon the paranoid feelings began to creep in. I started thinking about the two thousand dollars that the city offered to turn someone in and whether someone there might be thinking that way too. Soon the uneasy feeling became overwhelming and I told Scott we had to get out of there. He said he knew just the place and we headed over to the other side of town to a new pool-hall that had recently opened, after scanning the place and seeing no familiar faces, I relaxed into some good fun shooting pool and drinking beers with my best buddy. We stayed there until the party favors Scott brought had run out, we went back over to his house to get some more and while there he called my old friend Jeremy. It seems that since I had been gone that they had done some business deals together and had become friends. It was great to see two of my best friends were hanging out and that the party had gone on just fine in my absence. Jeremy showed up thirty minutes later with a pocket full of party favors and things kicked into high gear. When 3 a.m. came around, Scott said he was calling it a day and headed to bed, if I had been smart then I would have called it a day as well. Unfortunately the wild party side of me was in control and when Jeremy said that we could go and party with some of the old crew from Buck’s, I did not hesitate and off we went. We partied for hours and most of it is a foggy haze in my mind, I do remember that I quit partying around noon and fell asleep around 1. When I woke my first thought was where the hell am I? Followed closely by what time is it? My heart sunk when I realized it was 8 in the evening and I had totally blown off my parents for dinner. I called to offer an apology and explanation but they were not interested, especially my step-dad. I had developed a bad reputation when it came to reliability with my family and this was the final straw as far as he was concerned and of course I couldn’t blame him. I had really screwed this one up, lucky for me my mother was a bit more forgiving and she said we would try it again the next evening. I returned to Scott’s place and we spent a quiet Saturday night smoking bongs and reminiscing about the good times of the past.
After a good night sleep and watching some play-off football, I headed over to the folks house for dinner. I knew straight away that it was going to be a tense evening when I saw big Jim’s face (my step-dad), he had the familiar look of disgust on it. It was not a new look as he had been a hard ass while growing up and I had seen this look many times, but in recent years things had mellowed and we had developed a nice relationship. That was all gone now and it was like being a kid again with all the ridicule and criticism that went with it. I soon realized that it was going to take a long time to get back to a good relationship with Big Jim, if ever. We finished dinner and with the tension still as thick as fog, I decided it was time to leave. I said my good-byes and hugged my mother tight not knowing when or if I would ever see her again. I spent my final night in town hanging out with Scott and a couple of other friends from the neighborhood as we smoked bongs until we passed out. The next morning Scott dropped me off at the bus station, I thanked him for the hospitality and said we would do it again soon, not knowing when or how.
I couldn’t leave the state without seeing my cousin John, he lived between me and Chicago and it was not that far out-of-the-way so I got a ticket to his town. John was doing well at this point as he was managing his father’s bar and had a nice place above it. He lived with his girlfriend and their son, not really the scene for a party animal like me, but fortunately his brother Pete lived across the hall and he was a party freak, so I stayed at his place for the next few days. It was a great blend of hanging out in the day with John, being mellow smoking joints, and then partying the night away with Pete. The time passed much too quickly and before I knew it, it was time to go. I thanked John and Pete for everything they had done for me, especially John, without him I would not have been there and I made sure he knew how much I appreciated it. On the way out the door he gave me one more big surprise, all the clippings from one of his friends grow, it was about a half pound and while it was all shake, it was shake from some kick-ass bud. Now I had no worries about finding weed in South Carolina and might even make some money on it depending on the weed scene there, either way I was stoked as I boarded the bus and headed down to Chicago.
When I arrived in Chicago I saw that the next bus to S.C. was not for a few hours and decided to give my friend Mike ( Grateful Dead shows ) a call. He was happy to hear I was in town and said he would be over to pick me up, thirty minutes later we were headed over to his place. As we neared his building we came to the stop sign at the corner of his street and he blew right through it. Something I’m sure he did on a regular basis with no consequence but today was different as he failed to notice the cop car coming down the street until he was halfway through it. The adrenaline surged when he said we were being pulled over, I had a half pound of weed in the vehicle and no I.D., hopefully this would be a routine ticket. Those hopes were dashed when the cop tells Mike that he has a warrant and he was going to jail. That’s when the cop looks at me and asks “do you have a licence”? When I tell him I don’t, his next question totally throws me, he asks “can you drive this vehicle”? When I start to reply that I don’t have a licence he says he does not care about that only if I can drive it? I said yes I was capable, not knowing if it was a trick, but when he told me to drive it to Mike’s parking lot (half a block up the street), I said ‘no problem’ and jumped into the driver seat. He gave me a number and address where Mike could be bailed out and off they went leaving me with Mike’s truck. I parked the truck and went into Mike’s loft where I found his room-mate Dennis and told him the situation. When he was finished laughing about it, he went down to the cop shop to bail him out. They returned about an hour later minus a few hundred dollars but otherwise in good spirits. Mike pulled out the 4 foot bong and the 3 of us spent the rest of the day in a cloudy haze.
The next day I was back on the bus and headed to S.C. with a good feeling about what was coming. Although it had been nearly 2 years since I had last seen Bec, I felt very confident that we would get along great. That confidence only grew when I saw her waiting when the bus pulled up in Aiken. After a warm greeting we loaded my bags in her car and off we headed to her place. Along the way she told me that she was now living with her boyfriend and he was cool with me staying. This was good news to me as I was a bit unsure of what type of relationship Bec and I would have there. Back in Madison we had been friends and then friends with benefits, so it was nice to know where we stood from the start. When we arrived at her place she introduced me to her boyfriend Danny, we hit it off right away and when I showed him the weed I had brought down, the smile on his face said it all.
A Continuing Story About Life On The Run