Summer of 1982

Topeka,KS-- When I was a kid, our landlady had a much older son, Todd. He lived on our floor and was about fifteen years older than the rest of 'us kids'. He looked alot like David Lee Roth, complete with long frizzy hair, leopard pants and that patented midwestern drunken stupidity. He smoked a lot of weed too, so much infact that one could scrape resin off the roof of his car. It was ok for him to sleep in till 3pm because he finished high school about eight years earlier and didn't have a real job. He would say that his 'job' was to party and keep his car in cherry condition, a 1979 AMC Gremlin. About this time Todd went into the local Kwik Shop to get a 'Kwik Gulp', a 32 oz soda with ice, for his 1/4 bottle of sloe gin he kept under his car's front seat. Anyway, on his way out the door he stumbled and hit his head on a Dig Dug machine. It didn't hurt him, just a bruise above his left eye. But about a week later he was complaining about hearing 'things'. It sounded like music, and it was much stronger at night. After two months of hearing strange music in his head, not sleeping for weeks and generally looking like a wreck, Todd narrowed it down to an AM radio station from Tampico, Mexico. For advice Todd went to see 'the Doc', a guy that lived in our apartment complex. The Doc wasn't a real doctor, he was a forklift driver at a mannequin factory, but he watched and had memorized every episode of "Trapper John MD". The Doc listened to Todd's problem and asked a few questions, while rubbing his chin. After a moment the Doc prescribed Todd to smoke some weed, and the mariachi music would end.

Then the summer ended and we didn't really see Todd again. About a week before Christmas vacation, I saw Todd's Gremlin covered with a blue plastic tarp. The front end was all smashed up and the windows looked as if they couldn't roll-up. Snow was swirling about inside. Somebody said that they saw him at the public library wearing a tinfoil hat, to 'keep the signals out'.