45 When the wagons leave the city Part 2

I really didn't make it clear. This was a mob related crime. I also didn't make it clear that the other man in the car was responsible. So of the two couples that lived in the house, one was victim... the other was the perpetrator.

Really similar

We knew they were missing and when I got the news I wasn't home. I got a phone call at my sister's house. My family had no idea I knew the people involved and they never did. My friend was a wreck, I just wanted to go see him. I didn't get home till the next day. Young. Still innocent in understanding how dreadful people could be to one another. That families' pain. Large Irish family. The siblings were scarred. I'll say for life. I wasn't welcome at the house then. Mostly because they were busy with priests and police. And a bunch of Irish people. This is something I can't prove, but there was talk of connections to guys that came to the US for funding the IRA. Irish guys visited for months at a time and stayed in the basement. I don't know for sure, but IRA did come to the US for financing. I heard it from a couple of the kids but they weren't sure either. The dad was from there. The only reason I mention this is to show it was a pretty intense scene over there. My mom knew the family through church. Thought the mom was nice, a long suffering mom with lots of kids and a craphead husband. She told me the Irish were a long suffering people.

We got together finally after a couple of weeks. I can hardly remember that. I was blocking out so much of the pain. The detectives were questioning my friend a lot because he was the only one who knew where they were living and visited. Well, I did too but he kept me out of it. Wow. I don't think I could have handled that. Don't think my family could either. Besides everything else that really drove him into dark places. Made him feel like they thought he was responsible. Eventually they got the real story. Actually a very detailed account because there was a witness. He was pressured into telling the story. I don't know if he got some type of protection. I heard every detail. Read every detail but have lost a lot of that memory. Because I needed to. In a way, I really helped my friend by taking his mind off of it a bit.

Not an actual photo. Much worse was in the newspaper.

It was then that I learned how brutal and wrong the media could be. My god. Whatever sensational bit they could throw in there. Sometimes wrong. (And they were better then than they are now.) Anything for a headline or to shock people. They printed every gruesome detail they could. Not just that they printed morgue photos. These were shots to the head. Can you understand what that did to the family? That's all I'm going to say about this.

After a few months of this, we couldn't take it anymore. Let's just get the hell out of here. What a hellhole. A pit of misery. Dark, dirty and cruel. How could we go on?

My entire life I hated where I was born. As little as could be when we'd take drives in the country, I'd ask my mom "Why do we live here?' I want to live with the cows. I'd get the answer about being near all the good stuff. I'd say it was bad.

So back then, California was the land of milk and honey. Sunshine, bright and clean. Free hippies livin' their lives. That was the plan. Let's skedaddle.

 

44 When the wagons leave the city Part 1

A couple posts back I talked about the mob a little bit. Early 70's New York, they were everywhere. Even in Catholic School there was a kid that people said "His dad's in the mob." Just didn't make that much of an impact on my mind. I didn't like it, but it was reality. I wasn't thinking about it. He sat next to me for a while & I let him glance at my paper during tests. I was like that. I believed in sharing and bucking the rules. He was smart enough to change it up anyway. 

Yeah. I mentioned that I used to go to the Action House/Rockpile in Island Park. And sometimes that pot or hash would dry up.  I went there with this fella on occasion that had connections. A couple of times he brought me to a house, but he'd always say "Don't tell anyone. No one knows they live there."

 

He was related to one of the people that was living there. I wasn't naive, but I was naive enough for this. That psychedelic hippie outlook... I wasn't going to judge these people. I didn't know what was going on. Their hair was freaky to me.... pompadour... teased up and sprayed. It was usually the other way around. I think they got a kick out of me, even though I hardly spoke in their presence.

Did it never cross my mind why they always had a supply when no one else on Long Island did? Yeah, I just didn't get the scope of it all. So it was early in 1972. I was at the Rockpile and this guy and I went over to this house and picked up a small amount of pot. But we smoked a bunch of it there and then they offered to drive us home.

Representing a blonde hippie girl getting into the car

Dumb as I was, I was really stoned. We pulled into a convenience store parking lot. They needed cigarettes. I didn't smoke, but that wasn't a big deal. It's not like people made a big deal about your age when buying a cigarette. I don't remember if there were even any laws. I remember going to the candy store to buy them for my Mom when I was little. They wanted me to go into the store to buy them. I was so stoned. I could hardly sit up. I kept saying no & they kept asking nicely, saying please and everything.

Everyone was in the car. The two couples that lived there & us. Three in the front. Three in the back. You could fit a lot of people in 70's cars. Why me? I just kept saying no. So finally one of the ladies got out and got the cigarettes. The fella told me the next day that I should have gotten the cigarettes. That our "hosts" were wanted. Publicly wanted. I didn't want to know details. I said "You should have told me." "I couldn't in the car."

Seems like it was a couple of months, maybe six weeks, one of the couples goes missing. About a week later they were found in New Jersey. It was a terrible crime. My little innocent soul was broken. My friends soul was broken. We didn't get what was going on. We were just lost children.