Robert Currier was sixty years old but years of alcohol and Chesterfields had done evil things to his body. and he looked ready for the box. He carriedAlka-seltze packets in his shirt pocket behind his smokes and now he dropped two tablets into a glass of water and waited while they fizzed.
Mike and I were busy stocking shelves and other store maintenance.
We knew Robert as Bob at the auto parts store where we worked together. Bob was the manager. I worked there with Mike Cullens. Mike was the assistant manager. He was paid one dollar and ten cents per hour. I was making ninety cents an hour stocking shelves and mounting tires in our single car garage bay. Ninety cents an hour was terrible pay, and I was always broke. The only way I could make ends meet was to sell marijuana. I kept a grocery bag with lids in it stashed under the cash register. People who wanted to buy grass would come in and ask for a spark plug for a lawn mower. I would take them back to the spark plug section of the store and give them a spark plug, then back to the cash register. They would give me twenty dollars, I would ring up the spark plug, then reach under the counter and grab a small bag, and drop a bag of grass inside with the spark plug, and hand it to the customer with his change. Bob would sit in a folding beach chair next to the counter and doze. One day after I had just made a transaction, Bob opened his eyes as the customer was leaving the store.
“Dear,” he said. He often called me dear. “Dear? You wouldn't by any chance be selling drugs from the store would you?” I looked at him. I had been doing just that for more than a year, but I knew what Bob wanted to hear. “Why, no Bob. That would be wrong.” I said. “Okay,” he said. “I was just checking.” It was never mentioned again. Bob knew we were working for next to nothing but he was powerless to do anything about it. To help us make ends meet, whenever someone bought tires, he would always ask if they wanted the tires balanced. It was one dollar per tire to have them balanced, and bob would let us keep the balancing money. Four dollars for balancing a set of tires was half a days pay. Not a small deal.
We had a bathroom in the garage bay for employees only. It was nothing but a tiny room with a toilet and a filthy sink. The toilet was filthy too. Someone had painted the toilet gold. They had painted everything. Even the inside of the bowl right up to the waterline was painted gold. One afternoon, Bob was in the toilet taking a dump when Mike took an old bicycle inner-tubeand tiedit to a support steal support column and then tied the other end of the tube to the door knob of the bathroom. When Bob was finished crapping, he tried the door which opened inward. It wouldn't budge.
“Very funny you schmucks.” he said through the door. Mike and I were laughing as Bob yanked on the door. “Okay, guys. Let me outta here.” Mike grabbed a can of starting ether and began spraying it under the door. “Hey!” Bob yelled. “Cut the shit, all ready.” Then Mike flipped open his zippo. Bob heard the familiar sound of the Zippo lighter opening, and the sound of the flint wheel sparking. “No!” Bob yelled a split second be for the flame lit the ether. There was an explosion inside the bathroom that was powerful enough to flush the toilet. I looked at Mike horrified. Mike began to frantically untie the inner-tube as I pushed the door open to find Bob standing on the other side, hair smoking, eyes and face red. “Next person that uses starting fluid is fired.” Was all he said.
Bob would often fall asleep in his beach chair. One day as he slept in his short sleeve white dress shirt, I taped a battery tester to Bob's arm. The battery tester looked a lot like a junkie's eye dropper syringe. I taped to Bob's arm just inside the elbow. It looked like a syringe hanging out of Bob's arm.
He looked just like a junky on the nod. A woman came in and saw Bod sleeping with the thing hanging out of his arm and panicked. “Is the old man all right?” she said in a frightened voice. “Oh, he's fine,” I told her. “He always takes a nap after he had his medicine.” The lady left the store with a very distressed look on her face as we all laughed. Our laughter woke Bob who notice the thing hanging out of his arm. “Holy shit, you guys. You tryin to get me fired.”
Bob had a very gravely voice. If you didn't know him it was sometimes difficult to understand him. He took advantage of this. One summer, as people would enter the store, Bob would greet them with,
“Cock today.” After a quizzical look, the customer would usually say something along the line of,
“Yeah, it's hot all right.” One day a black woman came in the store. “Cock today.” Bob said. To which the woman responded, “There's not any today, but there's going to be plenty tonight.”
Mike and I had been saving our money for a trip to California, but after six months I had only save about three hundred dollars. Mike was a little ahead of me at five hundred. It wasn't enough to make it to the west coast and we knew it, but we also knew that if we didn't go, we never would. We had made the commitment to each other that we would leave on September first, and that was what we were going to do. We were talking up our trip in the parts store one day when a customer overheard us.
“You guys can't go to California with that kind of money. You'll starve or end up in jail as a vagrant.
How much money do you have saved?” We told him. “You'll never make in California without money. What you want to do is go to Jamaica. A round trip ticket from Miami is only seventy two dollars. Once you land in Montigo Bay, you take a cab to Negril. Look for a place called perseverance.
It's run by Jules and Dolly Jackson. You can get a room there for a dollar a night.” It sounded pretty good. I'd always wanted to go to Jamaica. Mike liked the idea too.
There was a service called Aacon Auto transport. People who moved to another city and needed a car delivered called Aacon. We called them and asked if there were any cars going to Miami. We paid fifty dollars and Aacon gave us a car to deliver. We made a fifty dollar deposit, and we were told we would get that back from the owner when we delivered the car. A pretty good deal. Bob was sorry to see us go. We had become very close to Bob during our time together. What Bob didn't know was that Mike had stolen an eight track tape machine, we sold auto sound systems as well as auto parts, an he installed it in the car we were to drive to Miami. He had also stolen a number of eight track tapes for the trip.
When we were leaving for Miami we went by the store to say goodbye to Bob. He was very emotional.
We said our good byes and got in the car which was parked right in front of the store. Before we could leave Bob came running out of the store to say one more good bye. He was leaning in the window talking to us when he notice the tape player and all the tapes in the car. “Holy shit, you guys. Why don't you take the whole fucking store with you.” Mike looked at Bob. “I'm so sorry Bob. It's just that these assholes don't pay us anything. We didn't mean anything against you though.” Bob agreed. “Wait a minute,” Bob said, and ran back into the store. He came running out a moment later with a stack of tapes. He tossed them in the window. “Fuck these guys,” he said. “Have a nice trip and call me if you get in trouble down there.” He drove off. “He really loves us,” Mike said. “I feel bad about taking all that stuff, but he really loves us.” We rode along until we hit ninety five south towards Miami.
We drove straight through. It took us twenty two hours to get to Miami. We Dropped off the car and got our fifty back, then checked in to a cheap room for the night. I was concerned about how little money I had. Less than a hundred fifty. The ticket to Jamaica cost seventy two. When we got to MontigoBay we had to go through customs. They wanted to know where we were going, how much money we were carrying, when we were coming back. We told them we were staying three weeks which was how long the ticket was good for, but we has so little money they gave us visa for one week. “Don't worry about it,” Mike said. “We can easily hide from immigration. All they do if they find us is bring us to the airport and put us on a plane back home.” We found a couple girls who were also headed to Negril. We shared a cab. It was about fifty split four ways. Still a lot of money if all you have is seventy-five.
When we arrived in Negril, there was nothing there. Just a single two lane road with a house here and there and jungle everywhere. There was a sign hanging on a chain between two palm trees that read,
“Perseverance” hanging over a dirt road. We walked on down the road to a cement house.
The place was owned and operated by Jules and Dolly Jackson. Jules was a local preacher with a love of rum. He was drunk most of the time. Dolly was his wife. She and Jules had nine kids and everyone, all nine kids and grandma too lived in a single room bamboo hut on stilts. The room had carpets hanging from the the rafters which served as room dividers. There was a large four bedroom house that Jules had build out of concrete. The only bathroom was in the cement house. There was no electricity in the house. Everyone was given a kerosene lantern to light there room. We were told it was two dollars a night for a room in the house, or one dollar a night for a bamboo hut with a hammock. We took the grass hut for one dollar. There were just openings in the wall where the door and windows should have been. No security at all. Still, we had nothing to steal. We both had a small back pack with a three or four tee shirts and a couple pairs of pants. I was wearing a pair of world war II combat boots with no socks, but that was okay because we went bare foot most of the time except when we were hiking.
After we paid twenty dollars each for our bamboo hut in advance, I paid another twenty for meals in advance. They charged one dollar for one plate of food at dinner time. So now I had one meal a day, and my room covered for there weeks. I still had thirty bucks left to live on. “Where's the beach?”
“Just follow the path across the main road and stay on the path. It's not very far to the water.” We walked barefoot down the path. When he got to the road, there was a Jamaican boy, about fifteen years old riding a bike. “Hey mon,” he said. “You want to buy some Ganja?” “Hell yes.” “Soon come.” he said. We followed the boy down the road a piece and into the jungle. He took us to a clearing where hehad stashed a big grocery bag full of Ganja inside a hollow log. He had some of those long bags that you buy baguettes in. We watched as he tore the bags into pieces to use as cigarette papers and rolled three big spleefs. A spleef is an ice cream cone shaped joint. One spleef could make about five regular joints; five fat ones. We were used to sharing a joint but not today. He gave us each one of those giant things and we sat there smoking. It was very good weed, or maybe we had just smoked five times what we normally smoked. “Okay,” said the boy, “You buy.” I looked at the giant bag of buds. I usually bought it by the ounce. I held up my hands together making a bowl shape. “I want this much.”
“No. You buy it all.” “I can't buy all of that,” I said. Just this much.” “No. You buy it all.”
“How much?” Mike asked. “Twenty dollar.” There must have been two pounds in the bag. “Twentydollar?” I said in disbelief. The boy thought I was complaining that it was too expensive. “Okay. Two.”
I looked at Mike. “Did he just say two dollars for all of that?” The boy lifted the bag and handed it to Mike. “You give me two dollar.” Mike and I both gave him a dollar. We stashed the Ganja back at our hut and started again for the beach.
Along the path there were trees of every kind. Some with beautiful orange flower. Some with limes or lemons or mangoes or bread fruit. Then we saw the beach and the clear blue ocean. We were in paradise. There was a beautiful blonde girl, about twenty, wearing a bikini bottom and no top. She was standing up to her knees sta in the water. When she say us she came over to say hello. She was also staying in perseverance. She showed us around. There was a little bar near by where we went for beers. I only had forty buck left, but Red Stripe beer was only twenty five cents a bottle. They also sold a local delicacy called “Meat poddies.” It was doe stuffed with meat, and then it was fired. They were ten cents a piece. Thirty five cents for lunch an a beer. Suddenly I didn't feel so poor.
We found out that there were about a dozen white people in Negril. A few from Germany, a few English blokes, and the rest from the US. Everyone else was Jamaican. Very poor but if you had to be poor, Jamaica was the place. We swam in the blue ocean and smoked the ganja and baked in the sun.
In the morning, I would pick leaves from the lime tree and boil them to make lime tea. Also the blue mountain coffee at ten cents a cup was the best.
The shower for the people who lived in the huts was just a concrete pad with a pipe sticking out of it with a shower head on the end of it. It was surrounded by bushes for privacy. I striped down and began washing off the salt water when a the beautiful girl from the beach stepped naked and began showering with me. I was very embarrassed because the water was ice cold and my dick and balls had retracted all the way into my abdomen. I rinsed off quickly and reached for my towel. I was quite inexperienced with women at that point. My few conquests were disappointing and I was very shy as a result. Mike on the other hand was an old hand with the ladies and had a steady girlfriend by the second day.