STICK UP - PT 1

tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-497347401174731701.post-25577468847873835412007-12-16T19:59:00.000-05:002008-01-21T17:58:55.985-05:00STICK UP - PT 1by Michael B. Jackson It was a couple of days before Christmas in 1969 and I had just turned 18 years old, that past November. By that time, I was well into my heroin habit and the never-ending quest for my next fix. I had left my parents home, in building #1 of the Arch Bishop Walsh Housing Projects, in North Newark, over a year before and had pretty much burned all my bridges in terms of being welcome back there. ABWH was made up of 12 buildings, Nine were 8 stories highs, with 8 apartments to each floor. There were three building 3-stories high with 4 apartments on each floor. For the past 3 months I had been living in an apartment in building #6, with a couple of get high partners, Willie and Juan. The woman who used to live in the apartment with her 4 kids had just up and left it with her nephew, Willie, because she said someone had put curse on the crib. She was into voodoo, big time. Three months ago, she just walked out and left everything in the apartment, including food, furniture and her clothes, all the kid’s stuff and moved back to Mississippi. Willie, Juan and me had been living in the apartment since she split. We figured it would be at least a few months before the housing authority came to put us out for not paying the rent. That is if they came at all. People rarely got evicted from the projects. Think about it, where would they go. People who were evicted from other places were put into the projects. You had to be seriously trifling to get put out of the projects. All evicting someone from the projects would mean is that the city would have to find a new place to relocate them probably across town into another housing project. We used the apartment as a shooting gallery for the dopefiends to shoot up and chill out to enjoy their high. Of course we charged everyone a fee to use the place. The dopefiends would either pay with a portion of their dope, or with cash. It cost $5.00 per person, to come in and ‘get off’. Most of the dopefiends would mainline intravenously. If they did not have their own works or set, which consisted of syringe, hypodermic needle, and cooker (a spoon or bottle cap to cook the drugs in), we also rented works for $2.00 or a small portion of drugs. You could hang out and nod for a couple of hours, as long as you behaved. We also sold a little cocaine and heroin. Very little. The problem was that the three of us would shoot up all of our merchandise, before we could sell it. Although it was early in my shooting up days, I was already strung-out on heroin. I was able to keep up with my addiction with relative ease in those days, but I had already developed my insatiable appetite for the drug. I would shoot it up as fast as I got it and as long as I had it. There we were, after splurging the night before. We were out of stash and needed to re-up. We were sitting around trying to figure out how we could get money to buy some dope and get high. It was to getting late in the day and we had not had anything all day. “Damn”, Willie said, his face was twisted with frustration, “I’m starting to get sick. Ain’t none of ya’ll got nothin' stashed to get high off’?” Willie was standing up looking out the living room window. The apartment was on the 8th floor. It faced the back of the building, over-looking the railroad tracks and the big playground. The playground was a big concrete covered area about the size of the average football field, between the rear of 3 building and the tracks. It was always filled with broken glass and looking down from above, it looked like a giant jigsaw puzzle with fuzzy edges, from the grass growing though all the cracks “No, man.” I replied, “Do you think I been sitting here all day with ya’ll if I had something. If I had something, I would have been done creeped to the bathroom and oiled up”. All of a sudden, Juan, who was sitting on the love-chair in the corner, burst out laughing and fell over on the floor. He kept pointing his finger at me and held his stomach as he laughed and struggled to catch his breath. That was Juan, everything was funny to him. Even things that were not funny at all would just bust him up. Juan, who was 16 going on 8 years old, thought everything I said was especially funny. I just cracked him up for no reason. When we were all growing up and in school – before we turned into dopefiends – Juan would always say, “Go on, Mike, tell a joke”. Juan would really get on my nerves with that shit. Mostly because put my on the spot in front of the women. I was a spontaneous Hiker, in those days. Hikes, were like the Dozen or Snaps, of today. In fact it was call The Dozens back in those days also. The difference being, as the dozens tend to deal with talking about your yo’ momma, (example, “yo momma is so stupid, she sold the car to get gas money”), hikes talked about everybody and everything in your life, (example, “we had a sofa like the one in your living room, then my father got a job”). I was a Hiker not a joke teller. I could not just tell a joke or say something funny, on command and the added pressure of trying not to look dumb in front of the females did not help me. Juan was about, 5’ 1” and he was very self-conscience about his height. To break Juan out of putting me out there with people waiting for me to make them laugh, I would say to him. “Is it true that midgets have little dicks?” Everybody would crack up on that one every time - except Juan. He soon stopped asking me to tell jokes. Willie, who did not think I was particularly funny, stood in the window looking at Juan. “Man get your dumb ass up off the floor. That shit wasn’t that funny, niggah”, Willie shouted at Juan in disgust and his face still twisted in aggravation. Willie, who was 19 years old, was one of the weirdest looking dudes that I have ever seen in my life. He looked just like a cross between a horse and a gorilla in the face. You could not tell him that, though. He thought he was fine. He always dressed nice, until he got strung out. When he twisted his face like that, he was almost grotesque. Standing there in front of that window with the setting sun casting the right light on his face, he was a ringer for King Kong climbing up the side of the Empire State Building. “We need to make some cash, ya’ll” or we gonna be some sick niggahs up in here shortly, Willie said. “Let’s stickup that store we talked about last week”. We had talked about several ways to get money in the last could of weeks. All of them illegal, of course. Every time we ran out of dope, we would plan to rob this small drug store nearby. We chose that store because we heard that it had a lot of money inside. Since the owners of the store were White people we just assumed that had to be true. As far as we were concerned all white people had plenty of money and would not miss the small amounts we were stealing from them. We also like the location and the easy escape route we had laid out. We could do it in less than five minutes. To that point we never had to carry it out because something or someone always came through to get us high. Things were real slow for us that day. We did not have any drugs and none of the dopefiends were coming to shoot up in the apartment. None of us had ever pulled an armed robbery before, but how hard could it be. We’ve seen it on TV and in movies all the time. You point the gun and say, “give it up!” They give up the cash and then you split. In real life things did not go so smoothly for us. Part 2 When got to the store it was about 5:30PM and just gotten dark out. There were two customers inside the store and both were at the cash register being waited on by the old woman, who was eyeing us from the jump. The old man, who was the pharmacist and owner of the store, was just walking out from a room in the back of the store towards the front, barely seemed to notice us. The drugstore was the small old-fashion mom and pop joint you see in the movies. There were no isles and circular, spinning magazine and greeting card racks took up the limited space in the middle of the floor. All the shelves made of wood were built into the walls and had big sliding glass doors up top and big pullout drawers on the lower part. The Pharmacists area, located at the front of the store as you came into the door, sat high on a raised platform so that the owner could see everything and everyone in the store at all times. There was also a counter and stools where they sold ice cream sodas and other snacks. When we walked in Juan sat at the counter near the cash register, which was sitting on the counter, while Willie and I browsed the magazine rack. Willie had a small .25 caliber automatic pistol that he got from someone I do not recall at this time. We waited until there were no customers in the store and made our move. As soon as the last customer walked out the door we went into action. Willie pulled out gun and stuck it into the old dudes face and shouted, “Give it up, muthafucka” I was standing behind the storeowner dude who, upon seeing the gun, just flipped out. The dude’s face turn pale and he immediately started doing a nervous jig dance with his feet. Turning around in circles, flailing his arms in the airs and moaning, “Oooh... Nooo...Oooh... Nooo... Oooh... Nooo...” By this time Juan had jumped over behind the counter and was fumbling around trying to open the cash register. The old woman who had picked up on what was going down was standing behind Juan, beating him on his back with her fists screaming at the top of her lungs about how she had told the old guy to sell this gotdamn store. Willie was standing in front of the old white guy shouting at him to open the cash register. I was still behind the old guy sandwiching him in so he couldn’t run out the back or get a gun or something. Before I knew it I was screaming at Willie to “shoot this motherfucker”. “Oh no, oh no, oh no, oh no, oh no, oh no...”, the old white guy moaned louder and began spinning around faster. He looked like a one of those little toy soldiers that run on batteries and when they run into something they bounce off in circles, spinning like a top. “I can’t get this motherfucka open, man”, Juan shouted in frustration, as he turned around and gave the old woman a little shove. “Damn, get out of my fuckin' ear with that screamin' bitch”. Finally, Juan took a can of shaving cream off the shelf and started banging on the cash register as if that was going to open it. The old woman kept hitting Juan on the back and talking out loud to no one in particular, “Now we are dead, Gabe. Now it is too late to sell the store. Now we are dead. Now maybe Gabe will listen. Now we are dead.” Me: “Open the cash register muthafucka”. Willie: “Give up the money before I bust a cap in yo’ ass” Me: “Fuck it, shoot this muthafucka Willie. Shoot him, man” Old Dude (still dancing and spinning): “Oh no. Oh no, oh no, oh no, oh no, oh no, oh no…” Old woman: “Gabe, will you listen now?” Juan: “Yo, somebody else come try and open this muthafucka”. He was almost exhausted from beating on that cash register with that can and having that old woman beating on him. The place was like a madhouse. There was total chaos and confusion and we had been in there for what seemed like forever. Suddenly, the front opened and a middle-aged man in a blue work uniform came walking into the store, unaware of what was going on. Everyone in the room, except the old woman who kept chastising Gabe, froze and there was a sudden silence in the room. When the guy finally looked up and realized what was going down he also froze in his tracks. He dropped the change that he was counting in his hand, raised his hand up into the air and turned to face the wall. All without saying a word. It was easy to see that this man did not want any part of this shit. For a moment we were all a little stunned and we were all just standing there looking at the new guy, waiting and wondering what to do next. It was as if somebody had called ‘time out’ and stopped the action. Even the old woman had quieted down. Finally, Willie turned back to the old white guy and just hauled off and hit the old guy upside the head with the .25 automatic pistol.. and "BANG". When the pistol made contact with the old guys head it accidentally went off. I was still standing behind the old guy and actually felt the bullet whiz past my face as it broke a case glass door behind me. The loud bang of the gun scared the shit out of everybody and started the panic and hysteria all over again. The old guy started spinning like a top again and shouting, “Oh no”. The lady started yelling at her husband, Gabe, again. The new dude dropped down on his knees and started praying. Juan was now hitting the cash register with a small fire extinguisher. I was probably the most scared out of everybody when I felt that bullet fly past me. Suddenly the reality, the finality, the seriousness of what we were doing became clear to me. “What the fuck am I doing here?”, I thought to myself. I just wanted to tell those people that I was sorry and beg for their forgiveness. But, it was too late for that sorry shit now. At that point, I reached in and grabbed the old dudes wallet out of his back pocket and ran for the door. I could see that Willie was right behind me. Juan was attempting to carry the unopened cash register, which appeared bigger than he was, with him out the door but, it was too heavy and he finally gave up and dropped it on the floor. We never got the register open but Juan did manage to grab a small cash box and a carton of Kool cigarettes on the way out. We ran out of the store across Broadway, down behind the barbwire company, across the railroad tracks behind the projects, climbed over the fence into the playground and up into the building #9. The escape went just as we had planned it. There was $43.00 in the old guys wallet and close to $600 in the cash box. We split the money 3 ways, changed our shirts and went over to building #10 to find Virgin to take us to the City to cop and get high. - TO BE CONTINUED - Copyrights 2008 (c) MBJ<div class="blogger-post-footer">This website and its content is copyright of Michael B. Jackson © 2005. All rights reserved. You may not, except with our express written permission, distribute or commercially exploit the content. Nor may you transmit it or store it in any other website or other form of electronic retrieval system Joint FX Press, PMB 104, Postnet; 621 Beverly-Rancocas Rd.; Willingboro, NJ 08046 press@jointfx.com</div>mbjnoreply@blogger.com