Steve

Steve was a pretty cool guy. He arrived in town in the sixth or seventh grade, I seem to remember it being in the sixth. So he had an academic record that got him in the H section. His family had moved to Twin Falls with a big company from up north that was building a new factory and his dad was an executive. His mom was a hottie and pretty cool, real personable. Always drove a sports car - the one she had when we were old enough to drive was a Firebird, '71 or '72 I believe. It was later than a '69 because of the abrupt appearance change after that year. She also had a little Toyota station wagon that was pretty neat. The Japanese stuff was getting pretty good by then, and Toyota one of the best. So he was always driving one or the other of them until he got his own car, the Toyota if there were several of us.

Him being a new kid and from up north he had a few problems getting adjusted. Some of the kids gave him grief because of it, one guy was always trying to get us to fight, telling one or the other us the other one said something bad about him, the sort of things kids do. One day he and a couple of others got us into a scuffle, we rassled around on the ground a bit and said "what the hell are we doing" and got up and walked off together, ended up being close friends.

Steve was on the short side, a bit shorter than me and I ain't tall. Close to average I guess at five-seven full grown. He was better looking than me and that and being a little short girls liked him. He liked them too, big time. We all did obviously, except the usual one or two in a hundred. His older brother put together a little band and Andy played sax but they figured out pretty quick they didn't need a sax that bad if it was Andy. Jim, that was the older brother, did pretty well and was in one or two bands that actually got a recording contract and cut a record or two. Steve's interest in music was the latest rock releases, 8-tracks in those days. Turned me on to some pretty good bands that I still listen to today, Queen being one. Their second album was played in our cars regularly with accompanied by respiratory exposure to cannabis.

Once we were in high school Steve - being in the H section and a rich kid - was readily accepted. Two or three of the ones that fancied themselves elite didn't care for him but he didn't care. That would be the girl elites - the guys in that category, two or three of them, were going to be doctors like their fathers and didn't engage in the usual classroom politics. They didn't mind buying drugs from him though. He became a botique dealer, supplying the upper-class kids and being ignored by the local law.

The only drug I used was marijuana. I took what I was told was acid once but nothing happened, and some alleged mescaline had no effect either. But smoking a joint and listening to Queen or Hawkwind was fun. Back then the football field at the high school had parking for a row of cars at each end, just yards from the end zone. About ten cars could be parked there and I smoked my first joint there in Steve's car - he'd gotten one of his own by then - '71 Chevelle with a 454. The Heavy Chevy they called it, had a little decal on the side so you'd know. Most of the vehicles I drove that had a 454 was trucks and I think maybe it was pretty much built for that. Never liked them as much as the 455s in the Oldsmobiles and Buicks and Pontiacs. Especially when they put in the Trans-Am. Tell you a few stoies about that sometime. Anyway it was pretty ballsy parking at the end of the football field and smoking pot but there were those that could get away with it. When he left town some years later he sold it to a guy I knew, year younger than me. We hung out and he married a gal we had both dated casually, hung with both of them some until I went off to the Air Force. She was pretty wild and they got divorced a few years later.

He sold more than just pot, and I would have disapproved if I't thought much about it. Not heroin, the really bad drug then, but pills of various kinds. Whatever they wanted, he had a connection in Memphis. And as can happen when you do something you shouldn't for too long something bad happens and one day it did. One night actually.

Steve's dad was out of town a lot and his mom had a pretty busy social life so he had the house to himself a lot. Weekend parties that went on pretty much all weekend, sex and drugs and rock and roll. Plenty of all, good-looking girls too, not the elites from our classes but good families generally, no skanks anyway. That went on after graduation for the two or three years before I left for the Air Force. It was not long before that Steve had to bail.

Whatever possessed him to be in Woodside - now that I think about it he had a girlfriend who lived there - and he was stopped by the local police. Woodside cops came down hard on out-of-towners. In-of-towners too if they weren't paying off the sheriff. The political setup in that county was like you see in the movies about corrupt southern sheriffs. The 1973 movie 'White Lightning' could have been about Cook county. In fact the sheriff there did eventually go to prison when the feds finally got him. The state police had studiously ignored him for years. Anyway Steve had a nickel bag about half used. Off to jail he went.

No sweat, possession rap might get him a year or two back then but as long as he could get out of jail and get to the lawyer he'd be all right, and if it looked to be bad there was always Plan B. So he used his phone call to call his supplier in Memphis, guy named Mark. Needed a thousand dollars for bail. No problem Mark said, I'll be there in an hour. Hour goes by, another hour goes by, Steve calls Mark. Mark's girlfriend answers, says Mark is dead.

I said Steve was living dangerously, but I don't know whether he knew how dangerous. A biker gang ran a lot of the drug trade in Memphis then, and it turned out Mark was one of their dealers. But his sales to Steve weren't approved, the way she told it, and they whacked him. Strychnine in some powder, coke maybe, that he sampled.

Steve's supplier worked as a hairdresser at a high-dollar joint there. I was working at the bank then and the guy that married the rich guy's daughter (and later went bust in selling liquor, selling insurance, and operating a Radio Shack) was shooting the breeze with some of us one day and mentioned that his wife went to Memphis to get her hair done a lot and that last time she went the guy that usually did her hair wasn't there. Seems he got some drugs that had been adulterated with something toxic.

Steve called one of his high-society clients back home and several of them got together the ten bills and got him out. Within a few days he had executed Plan B, heading for Georgia where his parents had a house. He supposedly came back to Twin Falls once in a great while, very quietly, but generally stayed in Georgia. Shortly afterwards I went off to the Air Force and never did drugs again. I quit afew months before enlisting so I'd be clean and never had an interest in it again.

Some years back I googled his name to see if I could find what he was up to. I got a hit with his brother's name on a Triumph motorcycle blog. Seems Steve was riding his bike in the rain and when passing a car hit a puddle while changing lanes, went down and slid a good ways. Might have lived but his head hit a guardrail post and the helmet didn't save him. Forty-eight years old. Made it further than Andy and the guy that quit school and went to work for the railroad. And Kenny and some others.

Of my classmates and the guys I hung with in those days Steve was one of the best. Pretty happy-go-lucky, just being around him you might think he was a little closer to the average line than he was. He was pretty sharp, had grades above average even for the H section, running his own business and had people working for him when he died. And he was a real likeable guy, never really knew anyone that didn't like him. Except that one sheriff'sa deputy, but that's a whole 'nother story.