MARIJUANA BUST NUMBER ONE-page three
As I was saying, I walked to the place were they take the tag for your bag, it looked good so far. The man took it and I was glad to be walking to my car. I still didn't feel safe till I was down the road in my car and away from the Airport. I went to a bar and had a couple of beers before I went home, I needed to settle down. The street I lived on was a rough place to live, it was full of thieves, liars and the like, mostly black. There were some nice people living there, but they were old, and the people hanging on the street had to be watched. There would be between three to twenty guys hanging out at all time drinking, smoking pot and talking shit. I almost shot the neighbor across the street the day I move in. I was looking to get a house out a ways but not to far out that customers could come to. The place I started selling pot was Prospect Park and I always like that name. But it was tight, I always had people coming and going carrying brown bags. At that time the herb was regular Mexican like I said earlier, and I could buy it for $150.00 a pound or $112.50 a pound if I bought twenty or more. I sold it for $165.00 a pound either way I got it, $15.00 an ounce and I also sold nickels and dime pieces. Four nickels in an ounce and two dimes in a ounce. That way the pound sold for $225.00 to $300.00 figuring 15 ounces because I would lose an ounce cleaning up the pot to make it the way I would like to buy one myself. Back at that time I always had free herb on a large plate and had beer for the people like they were my friends which a lot were. As I said I was looking for another place to live and work and I found this one street, it was old with a valley behind it, the house was beat and I got it for ten thousand five hundred, five hundred down, a lease purchases. The realtor selling owned it and was real glad I came along. I didn't move in till about a week latter. I was out partying and I told one of my friends about the house I just bought and we drove out there in his van. As we pulled in the small parking lot at the front of the house, I saw about seven black guys standing in the street in front of the house. It was about ten PM. I walked over to them and asked them, do you guys live around here and one answered roughly yea, and I said, me to man right there pointing to the house, will get to know each other latter man. My friend Joe liked the house, he also was a boilermaker which in itself is a hard trade. I met him working in the Chester ship yard seven years earlier, I considered him my friend. So when we got back in his van, he backed all the way across the street into the car parked there. He looked at me and started to leave the scene. I told him you got to leave something, I am going to live here, get out and talk to them. When Joe got back in the van he said, I gave them my phone number, and we went back to the bar. About two days later I went to my my new to me house. As soon as I got out of the car there was a big man in the street. His name was Ralph Hamman a cook for the old Log Cabin of Media Pa. Ralph was weighing around 340 lbs. He looked like a double door refrigerator to me and he was mad. His voice was real deep, loud and threatening, it seems my buddy gave the wrong information being like a wise guy and now I got this monster to deal with. The car that Joe backed into was Ralph's nephew and they both lived across the street. I told Ralph in the best humble way I could, I was sorry that happen and the easiest way to fix the problem I told him is I will pay you the money and get it back from Joe. Big Ralph said ok but then the big man said if I want you I am going to come and get you, I guess trying to scare me. I became a Corporal in the USMC right after I turned nineteen in Japan and I don't get scared from nobody and I don't like being threatened even though I know how to threaten others. At that I pulled a thirty-eight calibrator Beretta semiautomatic pistol out of my back pocket and pointed it in his face as I backed to the front door of the house. I was yelling at him a lot of bad names to nasty for me to put in print, come and get me now and see if I don't shoot your head off. I was extremely mad at the way the first day was going. I figered if he came at me I would empty the gun into his legs and run out the back door, that way it was self defense and in my house. He was so big, I knew he was not going to come down easy, you need a 45 calibrator or a 357 or 44 magnum pistol for a man that size but those guns are so heavy and big I don't like carring them, they pull your pants down. Ralph Just looked at me like he never was threaten with life and death before. Then he made a complete turn around and went back into his house, man was I mad and upset. Three months later big Ralph told me he was sorry how he treated me that day, but I always watched him after that. There was another problem a month later, one of my neighbors came over talking to me and had a light skin black guy with him. My neighbors name was Russell and he was also black. Anyway we were drinking and smoking joint and talking about life in general and a guy I knew had gave me a herb plant about two feet high, he couldn't keep it were he lived any longer and it was down stairs and them guys seen it and liked it. After they left I went out for a few hours, it was already around eleven pm. I went to a bar in Media, the town I just moved to, and it was really nice, whites and blacks in the bars and getting along fine. I had worked for Sun Ship Yard in Chester, Pa., for eight and a half years as a welder. There were about nine hundred welders when I started working there and about seventy percent was black. I met former gang leaders leaders from Philly that took advantage of the free welding schools to become some of the best welders in the World and I looked up to quite a few of them. I also had some violent fights in that place over the years. Anyway a few nights latter after Russell and his friend was there I was out late and got home at 2:30 AM. When I came to the front door it was broke open and my dogs were out which surprised me. I reached for the gun and slowly stepped inside. I made no noise and after a little time I heard someone down stairs. I had put the little lock on the door knob to get down stairs and I could see someone had drilled all around the knob before they figured how to open the door. I open the door and there was the light skin black guy looking up the steps at me. He said Cheyenne I have been looking for you. I answered him back, hay man you broke my front door in and let my dogs out and drilled all these holes in my door, you better have a good story. He came up the steps into the kitchen and I made a mistake, I said am calling the cops, I put the gun in my back pocket, he didn't see it and started dialing with my left hand, he was on the other side. I told him just stay there but he didn't, he moved toward me. As I have been saying I have been trained in fighting from youth and had about forty street fights and the more you fight the better you get if you are talented. I hit him in the face with my right hand so hard it hurt my hand and he hit the floor hard like a big stake of potatoes. I didn't even lose the connection on the phone with my left hand. The cops came quickly and I went over what happen. The one cop said we will find out what he was after, and then I realized my mistake. About four am the cop calls me and says the guy was after narcotics, I took a deep breath and said what are narcotics? Pills and stuff like that was what he was looking for and he said he was there earlier and seen stuff. I told the cop the only pills that are here are protein pills and that I lift weights and work Union Boilermaking. The guy was after money and is trying to off the blame to me, after a while we stoped talking. I didn't go to court so the guy got off. About a month later I was looking out my front door window and sure enough the same guy with another man was walking up the street slowly pass my house. I open the front door and went into the street, the guy was watching me as I walked up to him and I hit him again in the face with a right, it wasn't a good hit, kind of glancing on the side of his head and he went backward not falling down. The other black guy was heavier his name I found out later was Rob and he had a girl friend down the street, he pulled out a large knife. I was still mad and was yelling at the guy I hit saying you tried to jam me with the cops now every time I see you in the street I am going to mess you up. I turned and yelled at the guy with the knife pulled and said you better put that away or I am really going to hurt you big time. At that he closed the knife back up and put it in his pocket and helped the other guy, I turned and went back in the house. There were some people in the street watching and it taught them a lesson also. The next day there was about twenty guys hanging out front on the street, they were drinking and talking bull, and a police car came by, now this is a narrow small road and with a couple of cars parked on the side of it and with twenty guys standing there its tight. As the cop car came slowly by, this one guy throws a quart bottle of beer at the car, it hit the back right window, the quart bottle broke sending beer over the car and the cop stopped and jumps out. The people were just looking at him and really what could he do, nothing, he didn't see who threw it. He got back in his car and left, it was funny to me. I could go on and tell all kinds of things that happen on that street before I was accepted as who I am and after that, but I want to get back to the herb story and what happen in Philly.
Guns N' Roses - Nightrain (Ritz, 1988.02.02)
Guns n Roses Welcome to the Jungle
