With my dad, gramps, and a car load of uncles (the Kaszkas') are motoring our way forward to their favorite watering hole into the town of Delray --down Jefferson Boulevard. I catch sight of old ladies and their kin sitting on porches with tilted chairs against the wall of some house, talking, while young kids are parading about in their blue jeans, t-shirts and sneakers in their junk-ridden yards and di·lap·i·dat·ed houses.
Suddenly, we take a left turn and we see a figure standing on the lonely road ahead, a quarter-mile away. All we could see is a blur of dust, as he stood there. We all noticed: he was some wretched old 'drunk.' My Gramps (John Sr.) who is sitting in the front passenger side, commented: "Look at that oddball over there acting peculiar, with his head down and arms waving in the air --like he's a conductor of some symphony. Uncle Michas (a.k.a. Fats) looks out and states: Yeah! "That's Eddie the Wacko!!" Looks like he is having the time of his life? I rolled down the window finally, and stuck my head out to get a better look and breathe some fresh air from all the stale smoke in the car. By now, I'm smelling like an "El-Producto.
My dad screams!!... stops, and bolts out of the car. " Where you going!" --We all respond in unison!
"You're right, it's Eddie!" - my dad YELLS out!! Nobody actually recognized him, except Fats; it was my dad's boyhood friend, Eddie Kubek!
"Eddie, what's going on," my dad shouts! Eddie looks at my dad and barks out: "Who are you?"..."It's Johnny!'' Eddie exasperates. - Johnny Boy!" They shake hands, and dad puts his arm around his shoulders and they hug each other, and continue shaking hands. After about 10 minutes, we all see Dad and Eddie walking back to the car, arm in arm. They get to the car and Eddie looks in the window and says, "Hey guys, great to see ya' all. They all respond with a - "Hey Edju"!! ... Eddie was known as Edju' as a kid. Gramps opens the door. I bolt out to get some air and take some deep breaths and to take a piss. Eddie gets in, and sits in the back with my uncles. I'm in after I take a piss on the side of the road. Dad spouts out that were taking Eddie to the shelter mission where he wandered from; not far down the road, about a mile. While cruising slowly, I hear them laughing in the back, talking about the old days. Gramps is getting edgy, starts shaking and tells everbody: "I need a drink." We're about a block away from the shelter, and Eddie announces: "Stop here, Johnny." My dad pulls over and lets Eddie out, they shake hands and bid each other farewell. We all wave and say "Goodbye." Gramps remarks, "good riddance!!"
I look out the back window as we are leaving, and I see Eddie with his ragged clothes as his attire - dance into the "liquor store" where we dropped him off at, smiling and talking to himself. I say to myself, "Sad, really sad!"...Dad with moist eyes, rubbing his face says, "It was good to see him; I wondered all these years where the hell he took off to." Gramps voices his opinion and remarks: "He went to some hell dump and came back; "he stunk like shit!"
Uncle Szmuel (a.k.a Sammy) interrupts: "How much money did you give him?" -- "I gave him five bucks!" .. dad responds!
Now were passing by some old creepy ass cemetary. We turn right down the road and I see old grave stones hidden in the brush. Big memorial tombs with names carved deeply into their marble surface. I gaze intently out the window, as I look at the names. The boneyard dates way back. Their carvings looked like artistic and religious expressions and their epitaphs reflect the times of their making. There are many interesting old monuments in this garden of remembrance, and although many are in bad condition, it looks like something out of a Frankenstein movie.
Suddenly, a big ragged dog is running along side the car. Sadly, Fats struggles to speak, wakes up from a slumber, he's already half tanked drinking in the back seat with Uncle Leszek. Sammy staring out the window, half asleep-- also. I'm in the front seat between Gramps and Dad. Sounds from the car, are now eventually drowned out by the rush of air struggling to enter the barely cracked windows to get some of the stink air out. The dog is still running along side the car. Uncle Leszek who is barely awake and finished drinking a bottle of beer in back seat, rolls down the window and throws the beer bottle at the crazed dog. Everyone starts laughing. I'm looking weirdly at the entourage, saying to myself: "That's suppose to be funny?" Gramps lights up a smoke and looks at me and says, "Why aren't you laughing, kid!" I hesitantly burst out with a roar of: "Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!"
One of the uncles, can't remember which one, says: "Hey kid, your funny!" I say: "Oh-yah! yah! Then he tries to fake me with an air punch and starts to make some funny faces, I think it was Sammy. I take a poke at his face and he slips it with a head fake. "Not fast enough, kid," --He laughs! I come back with a shot to his ribs. He pretends to curl over and grabs and hugs me, playfully. Gramps yelling, "settle down you two punks." My dad who is driving, is now laughing, with a cigarette dangling from his mouth. The car inside is filled with fog from the tobacco smoke. My eyes burning and I'm coughing every minute. Believe me, I've held my own, mostly through all of this wild masquerade. But somehow the cloud blur in the car is more ghostly looking as I hear a thunder of farts from the back seat.
As our journey continues through this potted creviced road as we are leaving the vicinity of that spooky cemetery. Dad wants to get to the''beer garden" in a hurry for the first round of drinks. Gramps agrees! Suddenly, we take a sharp right through this desolate row of abandoned houses with boards nailed upon the window openings. Unexpectedly, I smell this stench, even through the stinky smoke and ass farts in the car. I see over to the left, not far from the intersection piles of garbage filled with sand, brush, tree limbs, dumped in this empty lot, piles of debris --some up to 10 feet high.
Now far away from that graveyard, we arrive at this intersection, more sewage slop lying around. We stopped for a red light. A few yards up the road, I see a very dark creepy viaduct underpass. I thought for sure, we were going to run into, either, winos or some hobo camp. I knew we were going straight ahead because, my dad didn't have his arm out the window, signaling to turn (back in those days, I don't think cars had turn signals yet) on the adjacent boulevard. Straight ahead we go into the tunnel of darkness. Filled within my dreamy disbelief of the moment, expecting something chilling to happen as we are awaiting our entrance into the lair of shadowy blackness. All of a sudden, I catch a glimpse of some wild scramble ahead of running feet on the viaduct overhead. "Why are they all running about," I asked. One of my uncles chuckling away responds..."They're street zombies!" What I was about to see is the cops chasing these so-called "idiots" on foot. In the shadows, the glazed eyes of these street banshees slide into view, stumbling in front of the car ahead of us. Dad, swearing, honking his horn, repeatedly, and swerving around to get away from the street rumble that is going on.
NOW THEY'RE all singing in the back seat to loud polka music on the car radio.
Rolling along, now not too far away from this scary viaduct, we come upon a row of "beer gardens." I see a lighted neon sign in the window that says: 'Bolo Joe's.' Ha- ha- ha!!
Suddenly, as we're strolling along, Gramps informs his son to speed it up to "Bolo Joe's Beer Garden" which is now about 2 blocks away. "I need that boilermaker," he calls out.
"Yah, I need another beer," Fats barks out. Leszek's eyes light up with joy. Sammy looks up blandly, as he brought his hand down on his knee with a resounding slap. I'M THINKING TO MYSELF, WHAT A BUNCH OF DRUNKS!!
"Yeah, let's go for it, Ah!" We pull up in front of Bolo Joes. As we were getting out of the car, Uncle Michas sees one of his cronies across the street. "Hey Ziggy," he yells! Ziggy turns around and squawks: "Fats" how you doing, you old son-of-a-bitch!" Fats runs across the street, almost gets hit by a 'juiced up' junky speedster with two other drunken bums in the car, waving his fist at the trio. "What you doing in this part of town," Ziggy growls. Fats responds, ''I don't know, just came up here for the hell of it, for some action. [''And you brought the 'kid' with ya..."]
Fats grumbles! "Hell yah! -we got the kid with us, he makes us laugh. At that moment, Gramps cries out, "come on, Fats!"
Michas looks over and yells out: "I'll be there in a minute, go on in." Ziggy twitching as he's talking, waving his arms, tells Fats quietly: "Last Thursday at about 11:30 p.m., a drunk leaving Boozer's Bar on the corner there was approached by a lone thug." Later as we all find out, the hooligan mugged the tanked up boozer and stole his wallet, watch and ring. South Detroit's most notorious bar is once again in the news. The drunkard was shot in the leg, but how he was shot is not clear. The punk escaped.The drunkard agreed to cooperate with investigators, saying that "he couldn't remember anything," according to Detective Victor Czap, who was laughing at it all.
There has been a rash of robberies in recent months near these bars as well as reported shootings. One of those shootings was fatal. Two years ago, a 40-year-old drunk was shot to death after he had left Boozer's with some doozy. Later on, they found out it was some jealous boyfriend, who she was shacking up with.
While in Bolo's, I smell the stench of stale beer, and piss-perfumed air. I notice low lights, sticky carpets that have never seen the light of day. A perfect place for those needing to get lost in the folds of darkness. Over in the rear of the bar by a pool table, I see an old sloshed up drunk hugging and kissing the jukebox and slugging down beers from brown bottles.
Gramps shouts out at me, "go out and get your uncle Fat's in here." As I stumbled across the floor to the front door, I noticed the bright red neon lights in the windows. One saying 'Stroh's, and the other saying, Goebell. My eyes transfixed on them as I'm scooting out the big front door. Once outside I yell, "Hey Uncle Michas c'mon in."
As I'm standing in the shadow of the door, a carload of young grubby punks stop in front of the next house abutting the bar on the left. They're parked right square in front of the doorway. With their windows rolled down, they're yelling at an attractive dark skinned lady about the age of 40 climbing up the wooden steps of the house. When she didn't respond , they just kept on heckling her. All the other traffic on the street had to go around the jeering idiots.
Fats now strutting across the street sees what is happening and goes over to the car and tells the creeps to "get the hell going." I see this and I'm thinking, trouble. I open the bar door and I screech loudly inside, "trouble, hurry, trouble!" As my remaining uncles, gramps and my dad are running out the door from the bar, Fats has the kid driver halfway out the window; banging his head on the roof of the car. Fats throws the young grub back into the car. The kid quickly drops it in 'drive,' tires squealing. Sammy runs up to the passenger side window, uses his fisticuff mastery, clocks the other jerk with a right hand in the face as the car is getting ready to speed away. As I see blood gushing out the nose of the other troublemaker. I turn to my right and two beer bottles, sailing our way, out the back window of the black '48 Dodge that they were driving.
Dad, Gramps, and the rest of the bunch apologize to the attractive lady. As they are humbling themselves to her, she wants to invite them in for a cup of coffee. Fats spouts out, "Naw, that's allright. We got the kid with us." Leszek speaks up and says, "why don't you come into Bolo's and have a beer with us." The lady verbally accepts, smiling. As we're all walking back in the old watering hole, two cheap perfumed whores were walking past us slowly, as I'm standing there watching them wiggling their asses. I was first at the entrance way, I pushed open the door and the sound of loud polka gypsy music from the jukebox blasted me in the mug. An old sloshed up drunk dancing wildly in front of the juke. For a few moments the faces in the bar were a slight blur, but I finally managed to focus in on everyone, as I am sitting there in a daze.
Yup, there it is. You've got the random girl dancing by herself, the toothless drunk sitting at the bar, and the sleepy sleeperton who maybe had one too many.
Then I see, Sammy at the bar, standing erect, quickly sloshing them down one after another. Dad and Gramps sitting at a table with their head down toasting each other. Leszek and Fats, laughing, dancing with each other...My breathing became deep and broken as the smell and the sight of BOLO JOE'S QUICKLY HIT ME!
Source : articlesbase.com
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