From: pez@manhattan.com (Gizmo) Subject: The Adventures Of Smacks Past (Part 24) "Neither Rain, Nor Sleet, Nor Snow" Date: 1996/10/03 newsgroups: alt.drugs.hard THE ADVENTURES OF SMACKS PAST (PART 24) "NEITHER RAIN, NOR SLEET, NOR SNOW" Maybe if the Postal Service had an army of dope fiends. Nah... Bad joke. But the header to this adventure has something in common with the original Postal Service's resolve. I mentioned a few times that I seemed to run into my fair share of bad weather when out looking for dope. Maybe god was trying to tell me something? So here are two stories about bad weather. The more recent one was in 1982. I was still working for the ahh, Post Office at the time and in the late afternoon, a hour or two before it was time to go off duty, I called my ex-wife and told her to pick me up. She had our roommate with her as we were "going in." We were heading down to Harlem to score. I had a couple of hundred bucks with me and as usual, I was "ready for Freddie." Well, no sooner did I get off the phone with her, it started to snow. And snow, and snow, and snow. I'm sure this snowstorm went down in history as a major New York blizzard. I stood looking out over the truck deck at the lovely white powder than was coming down in sheets. In no time, we had six, seven, maybe eight inches. Reason told me that the thing to do was to just go home. If it continued at the rate it was falling, what chance did we have of driving all the way from New Rochelle to Harlem? How many dope dealers would be out in this shit anyway? Well, as happened so often, reason did not win. We were going, no matter what. At 7 PM my ex-wife and our roommate arrived to pick me up. It was almost dark as we headed out of the parking lot. Both of them asked me if I was really gonna go and score? I told them I had to. And so we headed for the New England Thruway. It took over 40 minutes to reach the entrance ramp of the Thruway. This was a ride that should have taken about 5 to 10 minutes. By now there was over a foot of snow on the ground and it was still coming down. The roads were almost empty. Hell, the thruway was almost empty as day faded into night. But I'm a skilled driver. I'm convinced that I could do this. And with all the skill I could gather, we got on the thruway and headed south for the Bruckner Expressway. The snow had not let up either. My ex-wife and our roommate started bitching. They were convinced we would get stuck sooner or later. Well, we didn't. It took damn near forever, but we reached Harlem in about two and a half hours. Three hours to do a drive that should have taken about 35 minutes! Was I determined? By the time we reached Harlem it was about 9:30 and there was over 18 inches had fallen. I comforted myself that all we had to do now, was cop and go home. I slid into 114th Street off Seventh Avenue and looked for signs of activity. We were looking for a very special package that was being sold back then called, "Parcel Post." The "Post" was an off-white colored heroin that beat the hell out of anyone else's product. That's what we were after. Seeing what looked like some dope fiends waiting to cop, I parked the car on Seventh Avenue and checked out the scene. What I found was about thirty people standing in line on 114th Street in the freezing snow, waiting! "How long have you been waiting," I asked. "A couple of hours, man," is the reply. Apparently they had been told that the drug crew WAS going to be doing something soon. I went back to my car and told my passengers what was going on. I got out of the car and waited on line with the rest of the addicts. I really hoped that this was gonna happen. Finally a little later, a touter says to us, "Have your money ready." For those of you who don't know what this was like, I'll try to describe it. Starting somewhere in the early seventies, the nicer, more hospitable "house connections," gave way to drugs being dealt out of the hallways and entrances of abandoned or semi-abanded buildings. It seems that house connections were too easy for the police to raid, so the heroin dealing game changed. It's not that house connects didn't exist anymore, it's just that they were harder to find. The complete insanity of twenty or more dope addicts standing on a line, waiting to cop in the middle Harlem, The South Bronx, or Brooklyn, in freezing snow driven weather was something you had to see to believe. Even the cops took it as being "par for the course." They knew what was going on. And when they had to, they hassled you. Most of the time, they just drove on by! You had to be there to know what it was like, I guess. Anyway, finally "the store" is open. One by one, we get sent into the building, cop our shit and leave. If finally stopped snowing. But there was enough of that snow on the ground, that the ride home takes another two hours. I got stuck a bunch of times and had to push the car into motion again. But we almost made it home. A quarter of a mile from our house, I hit a snow drift that held the car fast. No amount of pushing was going to get it moving again. After several attempts, we got out and walked the rest of the way. At midnight, we were the only three idiots on the road. The things you'll do for dope. __________________________________________________________________________ Another snow adventure took place many years earlier. I belive it was in 1967 sometime. In this case, I called a buddy of mine, who had some stuff. I planned on walking to the bus station which was about a half mile from where I lived at the time. But when I looked out the front door, I realized that it had been snowing all night. There was at least 18 inches on the ground and it was still snowing. Not having a car, I started walking to the "avenue" where the trains and buses were. I got there only to find that no buses or trains were running. It was freezing cold, and by the time I got to the station I was already starting to go numb on my hands and feet. Well, I'll make this short and sweet. Did I go home? No. I walked the three miles it took to get to my buddy's house. By the time I got there I was almost frozen solid. It took a couple of hours to thaw out. There's nothing like the motivation you can muster when you want/need junk real badly. Of course the good news is, that when you get past the addiction/recovery phaze, you can, if you want to, turn that motivation into other areas that have a whole lot more reward. But that came later. Copyright Gizmo 1996