A continuation...
At the time I would do 3 or 4 glassines in a sitting, relegating my use to 3 or 4 tomes a week and so I was able to make it last between trips up north. On one of my trips to New York I ran across one of my mates from back in the day. Catching up I discovered that his mother and siblings had moved to Florida and were living in Tampa. I gave him my contact info and told him to be sure to look me up if he ever made his way down south.
Lo and behold, not two months later I was on my forklift unloading a "pig," a 53-foot trailer full of freight. The dispatcher called me over the intercom and told me to come to the dispatcher's office for a phone call. My first thought was that somebody in my family had passed away. Grabbing the phone I was moderately relieved to discover it was my mate from New York, Fernando, or as he was usually called, "Boo Boo" (aren't all petty drug dealers named "Boo Boo"?).
To my suprise Fernando had moved south to Tampa and asked me to come pay him a visit. Living in Delray Beach this meant a 5 hour drive- or 6 hours and change busride- if I were to accept Boo Boo's invitation. My auntie and other relatives had begun worrying about my working 3 jobs, 7 days a week and so to kill the two proverbial birds with one stone I accepted Boo Boo's invitation and informed him I would take a Greyhound bus across the Floridian peninsula if he would have somebody pick me up at Tampa's central busstation.
Before too long I actually began looking forward to my mini-vacation and even allowed myself 5 days to see the sights in Tampa. Arriving on a Friday afternoon Boo Boo was there with his elder brother Ralphie who had driven him downtown to pick me up. The family was living in a section of town known as "Seminole Heights," just west of West Tampa, the neighbourhood immediately west of Downtown Tampa. With Ralphie, his obese wife Carmen and their 3 young children living in Boulveard Homes, a West Tampa housing project, Boo Boo, his slightly younger sister Francis [sic] age 18, and younger brother Mikey- age 15, lived with their mother and her live in boyfriend. The house, a pre-War bungalow on a tree-lined street was ideal because it contained a one room house in the backyard and that is where I parked myself for the next 5 days.
As Boo Boo sat on the bed telling me about Tampa I asked him about the city's drugs situation. At the time there was practically no heroin to speak but the city was flooded with crack cocaine. In New York, at the time, a half gramme vial of crack was selling for $10 and when he told me a single vial of what we both know to be "Red Top," a popular brand of crack in the South Bronx and East Harlem at the time would provide 4 to 5 of what users in Tamp referred to as "dubs," or "20 Cent pieces," a tiny rock of crack cocaine selling for $20 per. Right away I was seeing dollar signs, how much more so since I had a plentiful and relatively local source of very pure cocaine (though at that point I really had no idea what my cousin in Miami was hooked into).
After quickly greeting the family Boo Boo, Ralphie, Mikey and sister Francis piled into Ralphie's beat up Toyata and went to their cousin Leslie's home where she and her common law husband joined us and we went to the movies. Somehow or another I ended up sitting next to Francis and from that point on we began a romantic relationship that within a year would offer me my first non-Israeli child.
To be continued...
At the time I would do 3 or 4 glassines in a sitting, relegating my use to 3 or 4 tomes a week and so I was able to make it last between trips up north. On one of my trips to New York I ran across one of my mates from back in the day. Catching up I discovered that his mother and siblings had moved to Florida and were living in Tampa. I gave him my contact info and told him to be sure to look me up if he ever made his way down south.
Lo and behold, not two months later I was on my forklift unloading a "pig," a 53-foot trailer full of freight. The dispatcher called me over the intercom and told me to come to the dispatcher's office for a phone call. My first thought was that somebody in my family had passed away. Grabbing the phone I was moderately relieved to discover it was my mate from New York, Fernando, or as he was usually called, "Boo Boo" (aren't all petty drug dealers named "Boo Boo"?).
To my suprise Fernando had moved south to Tampa and asked me to come pay him a visit. Living in Delray Beach this meant a 5 hour drive- or 6 hours and change busride- if I were to accept Boo Boo's invitation. My auntie and other relatives had begun worrying about my working 3 jobs, 7 days a week and so to kill the two proverbial birds with one stone I accepted Boo Boo's invitation and informed him I would take a Greyhound bus across the Floridian peninsula if he would have somebody pick me up at Tampa's central busstation.
Before too long I actually began looking forward to my mini-vacation and even allowed myself 5 days to see the sights in Tampa. Arriving on a Friday afternoon Boo Boo was there with his elder brother Ralphie who had driven him downtown to pick me up. The family was living in a section of town known as "Seminole Heights," just west of West Tampa, the neighbourhood immediately west of Downtown Tampa. With Ralphie, his obese wife Carmen and their 3 young children living in Boulveard Homes, a West Tampa housing project, Boo Boo, his slightly younger sister Francis [sic] age 18, and younger brother Mikey- age 15, lived with their mother and her live in boyfriend. The house, a pre-War bungalow on a tree-lined street was ideal because it contained a one room house in the backyard and that is where I parked myself for the next 5 days.
As Boo Boo sat on the bed telling me about Tampa I asked him about the city's drugs situation. At the time there was practically no heroin to speak but the city was flooded with crack cocaine. In New York, at the time, a half gramme vial of crack was selling for $10 and when he told me a single vial of what we both know to be "Red Top," a popular brand of crack in the South Bronx and East Harlem at the time would provide 4 to 5 of what users in Tamp referred to as "dubs," or "20 Cent pieces," a tiny rock of crack cocaine selling for $20 per. Right away I was seeing dollar signs, how much more so since I had a plentiful and relatively local source of very pure cocaine (though at that point I really had no idea what my cousin in Miami was hooked into).
After quickly greeting the family Boo Boo, Ralphie, Mikey and sister Francis piled into Ralphie's beat up Toyata and went to their cousin Leslie's home where she and her common law husband joined us and we went to the movies. Somehow or another I ended up sitting next to Francis and from that point on we began a romantic relationship that within a year would offer me my first non-Israeli child.
To be continued...