John D. and Bad Bob were quite a pair to draw to. No matter how you played them they only came up one way, and that was trouble. I had known John D. since the 10th grade. His partner Bad Bob, I had known only for two years before he got put away. If you saw them together you’d of figured it was John D. who was always in trouble since he looked like a biker from hell with his height and weight and his wild carrot red long hair and bread. He always wore Levi’s and engineer boots, and liked to get really down. Bob on the other hand looked like a normal guy with short brown hair, clean shaven and he dressed like any other straight guy, but Bob was bad, he was crazy bad.
If you did something to upset him, he would politely ask you to step outside in a pleasant enough voice. If he did and you were smart, you would always apologize sincerely and ask him to excuse your momentary indiscretion which Bob, being a gentleman, always accepted and thing could go on as normal. If you were too stupid or too drunk, and thought you could take this average looking dude then like as not you would end up in the hospital getting some bones set or stitches sewn in. Because when Bob fought he did not fight fair and he did not show mercy. I once saw Bob ask a Mescalero outside who was twice Bob’s size and weight. As the biker stepped off of the porch, Bob hit him from behind with a metal garbage can, which stunned the biker. Then Bob broke a potted plant over the guy’s head dazing him. Next he finished the biker off with a shovel to the face, which knocked him out, but Bob was not finished yet. Bob kicked the unconscience body viciously in the ribs, back and groin. After a few minutes John D. stepped in and politely asked Bob if he thought that was enough. Bob gave the body one last hard shot to the ribs then said, “Yeah, he guessed so.” and went back to the party.
Bob wasn’t always vicious, he could be quite funny too. Like he didn’t believe in swimming suits which was okay at someone’s back yard pool, but on a crowded beach in the middle of summer it was quite a different story. He would just drop his drawers and plunge into the surf, the girls would giggle, the guys would say, “Can you believe that shit.” and the older folks would just stare in disbelief while we’d cheer him on.
He was loyal to his friends too. Once when I was drunk and dancing by myself at an outdoor concert, some straight dude says to me, “Why don’t ya get yerself a partner?”
To which I replied, “Well come on, honey let’s do it.”
He got hot saying, “You’d had better not be talking to me!”
But Bob, with a quart beer bottle in his hand, tapped the guy on the shoulder, smiled and said, “If I were you, I would sit down before I got hurt. Bad!” The dude took one look at Bob and his bottle then left the dance.
But what Bob was most famous for was punching out cops who had the gall to pull him over for chicken shit things. The first time it happened, him and John D. were on a beer run for a party I was at.
Hour’s later John came in the house with no beer and no Bob but with this story. “We hadn’t even made it to the liquor store when this cop gives us the light and siren. Bob cussed the cop but pulled over (Bob drove an orange VW Beetle) The cop comes up to Bob’s window and asks Bob for his license, but Bob wants to know why he got stopped in the first place. The cop says that one of Bob’s taillights is out. Bob gets pissed and says, “You mean you pulled me over for that?”
"Then he punches the cop square in the face. Bob gets out of the car and starts doing a number on the cop.”
We ask what he was doing? “Shit man, I just sat there. Bob was going to jail and there was no reason why I should join him. Anyway, the cop recovers and starts duking it out with Bob, but when Bob knocks him down, the cop gets out his piece and yells, “Stop right there motherfucker, or I will kill your ass!”
"Well, even Bob’s not crazy enough to go against a loaded revolver so he surrenders. Bob gets cuffed and put in the back of the cruiser and the cop calls for back up. Then he comes over to me and tells me to get out of the car real slow because I am under arrest too. We all go down to the station where after I give my statement, they cut me loose, but Bob they are going to keep for awhile.”
We ask, “But did ya get the beer?”
John D. smiles and says, “Fuckin’ A I did. Bob told them to let me take his car so I picked it up on the way back.” He goes out to the VW for the brew. Bob got off on some technicality and was out on the street a week later. He was still a little stiff from the beatings the cops gave him while he was inside but other than that he was his old self.
A year later Bob got into it again, this time with two cops over some diddly shit traffic violation while driving his orange VW, and that time he was no so lucky. Not only did the cops nightstick him real good ala Rodney King, but Bob got five years in Soledad and was never seen again.
However, his and John Ds most famous incident didn’t involve any violence, well, not to a person anyway, and just goes to show that excessive drinking, doping and high speed driving do not mix.
When John D. got out of the army he had saved up a fair bit of coin and with it bought himself a brand new Fire Engine Red 389 cubic inch 4 on-the-floor Posi-traction Pontiac GTO, one of the hottest muscle car that Detroit ever put out. John D. loved that car like he would never love anything else in his life and he was always careful with it. If he started drinking heavily which was most of the time, he would park it and no amount of cajoling or begging could get him to drive it, so it didn’t get driven too much. Of course, when John did drive it, he gave it hell. He got numerous tickets for speeding and reckless driving. He lost his insurance, then his license but drove it anyway. When he got caught which was often, he would do a little time in county lock up and pay a fine. He told us that a traffic court judge threatened to impound the GTO but he never got the chance.
One day I saw John D. and he was driving an old Dodge Dart so I say, “Hey John D., where’s the Goat?”
He looked at me sadly saying, “Gone.”
I asked him if the judge finally took it away from him.
He just shook his head and told me what happened to his beloved GTO. “Me and Bad Bob spent the last weekend partyin’ up in Solana Beach with some friends of Bob’s, drinkin’ and takin’ speed mostly, but then somebody showed up with some reds and we ate a couple of them. We were feeling pretty good too, not too fucked up, so when it came time to make a beer run, I volunteer. Me and Bob got in the Goat and took off for the liquor store. After we scored the brew, we had some bread left over so we got ourselves a little bottle of tequila and sat in the car drinking it. Then as we headed back to the party we started in on the beer."
"My memory kinda goes in and out after that but I do remember Bob telling me to either ring it out so we can have some fun, or to pull over and let him show me how it’s done. Next thing I know is there’s a bunch of flashlights in my face and I figure I’m busted. But then I hear the citizens asking me if I’m all right. Am I hurt? Do I need a doctor? I look around and feel myself. I seem to be okay except that everything looks to be at the wrong angle. I look over at Bob and he seems to be asleep on the dashboard. The windshield is all spiderwebbed so I know that I must have been in some kind of accident."
"The cops help me out of the Goat, and when I stand up and look at it, I can see that it’s stickin’ straight up with it’s front end buried in the sand and it’s rear tires resting against a 30 foot cliff face. They keep askin’ me if I’m okay, but I get mad and say, “Fuck that Shit! Look at my car. What the hell happened!”
"The cops say they was hopin’ I could tell them. They get Bob awake and out of the car, and he seems okay too, just disoriented from being woke up. The cops ask us who’s the owner. I am. Who was drivin’? Me and Bob look at each other and shrug. The cops tell us that it looks like we just drove off the cliff without stopping cuz there’s no skid marks at the top. They say that the GTO is totaled and ask for my license and registration which I no longer have, so they tell me that I am under arrest for drunk drivin’ and drivin’ without a license, and that I am goin’ to jail.”
I ask what happened to Bad Bob and the Goat.
John D. tells me, “They threw Bob in the drunk tank for the night then cut him loose. The Goat they hauled away to the junk yard who gave me 50 bucks for it.”
And what about the arrest?
“The judge said it looked like I wouldn’t be doin’ no drivin’ for awhile so he just gave me a thousand dollar fine and a years probation. Then told me that I would never get another drivers license in California ever again, but I talked to the DMV and they said that I could get it back in five years if I don’t get any tickets in that time.”
John D. never did recover from losing that car. He started drinking heavily and died an old man with a heart attack ten years later at the age of 35.
I once asked him why he was killing himself and he told me, “Shit Tai, what else to I got to do. It don’t matter much anyway. I’m just a fuck-up and hey, we all gotta go someday.”
Yeah John D., we all gotta go someday, but it ain’t gotta be so soon and over nothing. Life is to be enjoyed and I’m sorry that you couldn’t have enjoyed it more, but I’m still here John and I’ll enjoy it for ya.