From: pez@manhattan.com (Gizmo) Subject: The Adventures Of Smacks Past (Part 14) The Mail Must, ahh, Should Go Through Date: 1996/09/20 newsgroups: alt.drugs.hard In 1981 a few years before I hit my absolute bottom I was working as a receptionist for a major New York funeral home in Manhattan, when I got the hiring call from the U.S. Post Office. I had taken the clerk/carrier exam about nine months earlier and I guess they finally got around to my number. So off I go to work for the U.S. Government. This was my second time working for The Post Office, the first time being in 1967. Being strung out as I was, this job turned out to be my downfall. All of a sudden I was in a position to get my hands on all the money I needed to fuel my ever increasing habit. It started the first day I went to work. It was a Sunday, and I was assigned work inside the station, and as luck would have it, a parcel containing someone's wallet had a rip in it. I couldn't resist. With nobody looking I tore the envelope open and took out the wallet. Voila, there was about $40 there. Someone had found a lost wallet and was returning it to it's owner. I left the wallet, but took the cash. Thus began a one year "adventure." The first thing I noticed is that everybody sends greeting cards to each other for birthdays and holidays. And remembering how I used to get "money gifts" as a kid, I figured that the same thing was going on all over this great country of ours. So each day, after I did my delivery route, I was supposed to go and pick up and empty the big mail boxes that they had on the streets of Larchmont. As I dumped the contents into my truck, I would separate the greeting cards from the rest of the business mail and stack it up to be "looked at" later. When I had 50 or 60 envelopes and it was time to go back to the station, I would pull the truck into the basement of a big shopping mall and turn on the cargo light and flash each envelope across the cargo light. The strong light easily showed if there were any dead presidents inside! In this way I would net an extra $40 to $80 per day. The other thing that helped/hurt was we were right near Loungine Whittnauer, the watch company. So there were always little insured parcels containing a broken watch that needed repair. Some of these watches never made it to the company! As my habit grew exponentially so did my need for extra money. One day, I was sitting home shooting up heroin and coke and it occurred to me that I had accumulated two hundred of so evelope/greeting cards that I needed to dispose of. I couldn't flush them down the bowl, and I didn't want to put them in the garbage for fear that they might be found. You see, the coke was making me very paranoid. So after running back and forth to my apartment door, to "see" if the cops were out there, I decided I would light my barbecue grill, pour lighter fluid on them and burn them. As the envelopes started burning, and coked out as I was, all of a sudden I was overcome with a wave of grief and sorrow over what I had done. I suddenly say all those little children all over the country that were slated to receive there birthday or X-mas gift, but thanks to me, they never got it. This fucked me up the rest of the night. Well, the end was coming soon. What I didn't know was that the "postal inspectors" were already on to me. Within a couple of months, it would all be over. One day, I was working inside the station. That morning I had taken a parcel for the watch company and stashed it in my car. An hour later I saw someone walking quickly in my direction that I didn't know. Before he got within 30 feet of me, I just knew in the pit of my stomach that something was up. Sure enough, he gets up to me and pulls his badge out. Busted again. They had the whole thing on video tape. I was taken to the Postal Inspectors headquarters, fingerprinted and taken down to a federal building to be arraigned. The neat part of this story, is that the inspectors told me that if I confessed, I would probably be released on my own recognicence. Well, of course that's what I did. But what happened that night, going back to the Postal Inspectors headquarters, and a couple of days later was definitely interesting. The man in charge of the team asked me what was I going to do now? I told him that I guess I needed to go into a rehab program or something. But he wanted to know what I was going to do about my habit now. I told him I didn't know, since I had no money. Well, believe it or not, he took me into his office, opened his petty cash box and handed me $50. He said the government could afford it!!! You see, he kind of took a liking to me, having watched me for a month or so before they nailed me. But three or four days later, I went back into his office again and told him I was desperate for money. This time he said he would only give me some if I let him drive me to the cop spot. Not to try an arrest anyone, but because he was just curious. He assured me that he had no jurisdiction outside the confines of the post office. Well, hell yea, I agreed to let him drive me. And sure enough we drive down to Harlem and I go and cop. When I'm done coping, the "connection" asked me for a ride uptown a bit. I tell him that I have a postal inspector driving the car, and I manage to assure him that he's in no danger. On the drive uptown, the Postal Inspector has a ball asking this Harlem drug dealer all about the business he's in. Years later I looked back on this as almost being something out of Hollywood. Also, years later I finally tracked the Postal Inspector down and thanked him. In a way he sort of saved my life. I plead guilty to a misdemeanor and got 18 months probation. Someone was looking out for me. Copyright Gizmo 1996