Salad Days, Volume #48: Toledo Friends of the Opera

The following exerpt is taken without permission from my forthcoming novel, tentatively titled, 'Men have a Penis and Women Come from Bars', or, Everything I Ever Needed to Know, I Learned on the Job-Site', availible on Flybynyt Publishing.

It was the best of times, it was the best of times, to paraphrase Dickens. It was, as it always was, some time in the early mid-80's, and me in my natural prime was still working the trade with some of my most esteemed cronies in Uncle Frank's ZVI Construction Rolling Thunder Revue and Commercial Construction Contractors. We were, in this instance, in the highly urbane and sophisticated environs of Toledo Ohio, along the Great Lakes and the majestic banks of the Maumee River. We were holed up in a low grade Motel called the Westgate, on the less reputable side of town, because, and I am not making this up, there was a really big women's bowling championship in town, and all the good hotels were booked. The best perk about the Westgate was that it was near the job-site, the rooms could be rented by the hour, and and we got Porn channels for free. Also, as we came to find out, the manager was a drinking man, and he didn't mind buying.

After settling in to the Westgate, the job was going along swimmingly in the usual manner, all things considered. This was good, because the trip out to Toledo from the home office in Boston had gotten off to a less than auspicious start. On the way there, for example, our caravan had gotten separated somewhere in Buffalo, when yours truly, distracted from a wicked contact high from my weed-smoking passenger and co-worker Greggy, who was puffing on a fatty the whole trip, followed the WRONG panel truck all the way into the heart of Buffalo, into a gas station, before I realised, 'holy fuck, that's not Uncle Frank'!

Wait, let me retrace a bit. Perhaps you should take a minute and get to know some of he ZVI Construction 'Rabbit Killers'. I believe this would help you appreciate my position. Of course, there was Ol' Uncle Frankme, Top-Hatted ringleader of this underpaid, under talented band of 20-something knuckleheads who got to be paid $10 per hour to travel the country and drink, under the auspices of construction work. He was the man who really knew better, but somehow was still out there on the road, despite himself, if nothing else, out of obligation to all our Mom's to keep our asses out of jail. Then, of course there was Stu Augenstern, alias 'Auggie the Blade', or 'the master of the Idle Threat'. Stu was about 5' 1' and 140 lbs. ringing wet. But when Stu was teased, or drunk, he was often want to throw out ridiculously unlikely threats, way out of proportion to his ability to implement, like, 'I'll cut you a new asshole', or, 'I'll cut you 4 ways, fast, wide, deep, and often. See, Stuey carried a knife. Right. He carried a knife in the same sense that Barnie Fife carried a pistol. Anyway, beside Frank and Stu, there was Greg Liberty. His claim to fame was that, in 1969, he drove from his home town of Linneus Maine, with his first wife, in his VW micro-bus, to Woodstock N.Y. to attend the big show. Oh yeah, and at this time, he was also doinking his first cousin Wanda, and the bastard once sent me in to a one-hour photo shop in Chicago to pick up pictures of him and his paramour, nekked as God made 'em, doing who knows what, embarressing the bejeepers out of me in front of the hot photo-shop attendant. I swear, I don't make this stuff up. Greg was the guy who got me stoned on the trip out to Toledo in the first place, from the Bob Marley Spliff he was smoking with the windows rolled up. Anyhow, beside these two mooks, there was Mark Cote, also known as Animal, the mad Potugese mellanzana described in earlier episodes, his Italian partner Joe Paglioni, and my old cousin Billdo, from Florida. Of the group, Joe was the only guy on the crew who seemed to have a fucking lick of sense. That I'm not even too sure about. Rounding out the team was the guy from the head office, sent out to check on us, name of Gene LaFrancios. The only thing I remember about Eugene is that he crashed his rental into and through the hotel room door one time, and he had a penchant for cocaine. Along with yours truly, that rounded out the crew.

So, as I said, things were going along well. We were building the store, and we were coming in on budget thanks, in large part, to Frankme bribing the living fuck out of the Fire and Building Inspectors. We had secured a really good 'package store' in the neighborhood that sold 'Old-Style' at about $2/six-pack and, like I mentioned before, free porn. Life was good. One particularly fine Saturday morning, Greggers decided sitting around the motel room drinking beer and watching porn wasn't good enough. He wanted adventure. He had brought to Toledo, strapped to the roof of his 'Weed-mobile' a 16 foot canoe, with which he intended to navigate the mighty Maumee River. He asked me if I wanted to come along. I had already forgiven him for the '1 hour photo' incident and since he had the bag of Ginch and a cooler of Beer, and a plausible plan, I decided to go. A friend with Weed is a friend indeed, I alway said. At least, I thought, he could regale me with stories of his trip to Woodstock. We get to the river and have a marvelous day out on the water, dodging Barges and Oil Tankers in our little canoe, absorbing the magnificent sky-line of Toledo Ohio, and waxing philosophic. But after an afternoon of this our cooler was empty, and we were pretty sun baked, so we decided to shizzle back to the Hizzle for a night-cap and a nap. When we got there, the rest of the fellas were getting shined up for an evening on the town. The plan for the night: Booze Cruise. Our Motel manager friend knew some people, and he and the crew were going to do a night water cruise of the Maumee River and out into Lake Eerie. Sounded great, except the fact that Greggers and I were already pretty well polished at that point. Coincidentally, so were the rest of the crew. It seemed that while we were plying the silky waters of the Ohio Vally, the rest of the crew were plying the hospitality of Tom, the motel manager. Did Iention I loved this Westgate Motel?

Anyhow, one of Tom's friends was mostly sober and rode us downtown, and we find ourselves down on the waterfront, loading onto some sort of Mark Twain looking craft, with big-assed paddle wheels, if I'm not mistaken, which I could be. All of us grungy construction types sallied up onto the craft, mostly wearing the ususal array of filthy t-shirts and ripped dungarees, basball hats and two day beards. For some reason though, Greggers was wearing some sort of outfit, which I think was a matching set of red and black flannel pajamas. I don't actually think I'm making this up. Anyhow, even for Toledo, home of the Toledo Mud Hens and Jamie Farr of M*A*S*H fame, we looked like a bunch of friggin' hillbillies.

Well, one drink led to another and about half way along our aquatic journey we started getting hungry. Stu had taken a quick reconnoiter to the upper deck, and had reported that there were hors'd'ouvres up there, and they smelled really fucking good. He offered to go up there and cut someone a new asshole, but Cousin Bill was able to calm him down. So Greggers, the drunken, stoned, cousin fucker, wearing the plaid p.j.'s takes the lead and suggests we go on up there and commence to bogarting said snacks. However there happens to be some sort of high falootin' private function going on up there, he says. But who's gonna notice if we mingle and enjoy a few snacks. Well, to be specific, the private function on the upper deck happened to be the 'Toledo Friends of the Opera'. This was, in it self, surreal: to hear Toledo and Opera in the same sentence seemed a bit incongruous. But hey, snacks are snacks. To make a long story short, after about two platefuls of stuffed shrimp and scallops on a toothpick, it was readily obvious to any one wearing a tux that we were no friends of the opera, Toledo or otherwise. Somehow a summons of the Captain was made and it was gently requested that we leave the upper deck immediately. To be honest, I think there was a somewhat seious discussion of throwing us over board, if Greggers didn't cut the shit.

So the night kind of went on about like that from there. The cruise was pleasant enough , except the0 part about almost getting keel-hauled. After, we ended up going to a strip club ( you knew that was coming, didn't you?), but there was some kind of fight between some of us who wanted to go back to the room, and some of us who wanted to hang around and meet some of the entertainers. What I remember is me and Ol' Joey Paglioni staying then hitching a ride from downtown and getting picked up by a couple of deaf girls. I swear I don't make this shit up. Either that or the benefiicial effects of the last two strip club shots had rendered me inaudible. No, I remember now, it was two loveley hearing impaired girls who were ever so patient with my and Joe's drunken asses and not only drove us to the west side of town, but arranged to meet us for a double date for the next night. It was all a bit bit Jimi-Hendrixy at this point. Anyhoo, me and Joey P. get back to the room, wake up Greggers, have a night-cap, and look back on our busy day. We didn't see how we would have changed a thing.

I rememeber thinking to myself, the next afternoon, as I was hiding out in Tom's office, hung-over, slouched behind his desk, hiding from some double-date that I had arranged with two nice Ohio girls; Jesus Christ, to think I could have been working today.