Fool Dog and The Legend of the Sun, by Mark Anthony Given

 

            A GREAT MANY YEARS AGO when the Crows were a very numerous people and the favorites of the Sun, the Sun came among them and took a Crow woman as a wife. They had a splendid lodge where the woman lived respected by the tribe and occasionally the Sun came down and dwelt with her for a time. The Sun favored the Crows because of his love for his wife and blessed them with abundance of food, corn, and buffalo and success over their enemies.

          BUT THERE WAS A FOOL-DOG among the Crows, a man who was supposed to be possessed with an evil spirit and not responsible for his conduct. He roamed about the village, doing hurt to whom he would and no one took him to task because he was a fool-dog and couldn't help it. Once when the Sun was absent from his lodge the fool-dog visited it and in spite of the tears and entreaties of the wife of the Sun,  ravished her. She bore her shame in silence, but prepared  herself for death. When the Sun came she confessed to  him what the fool-dog had done and put herself to death before his eyes.
          THEN THE SUN WAS ANGRY with the Crows for the wrong that had been done him and the loss of his beloved wife and determined to destroy them. He caused their corn to fail,
prevented the buffalo from coming to their country and gave their enemies power over them. Then were the Crows forced to become wanderers on the earth, seeking a new home where they might have food and rest. A long time they wandered, suffered grievously from famine and in danger of total destruction, when the White Wolf who was the servant of the Sun took pity upon them' and resolved to save them. Coming among them he told them to make a pile of rice stalk and other fuel. They were then to make little pellets of meat and corn meal and throw them one by one up on the pile until the pile burst into flames when ten buffalo would arise from the midst of the flame, all of which the Crows must destroy; should one escape, he would go to the Sun and tell him what the Crows were doing, then there would be no hope for them.
          THE CROWS WERE IN DISTRESS at this, for though they could find enough meat for the sacrifice, they did not believe there was so much as a kernel of corn among them all, but at last it was ascertained that an old woman had preserved a small quantity for seed which she gladly contributed since it was to save them from starvation. Ten pellets were made, the pile of rice stalks and other fuel was gathered and while the assembled warriors stood ready with drawn bows to kill the expected buffalo, the pellets were thrown one by one up on the pile. The first produced no result, the second, the third and so on to ninth followed but no sign of flames appeared and the Crows began to despond when the tenth was tossed into the pile a bright flame burst forth, and ten well flavored buffalo galloped out of the midst of the pile. The Crows let fly a shower of arrows and the ten buffalo fell dead in their midst.
          THEN THERE WAS A FEAST and joy pervaded the camp. At the suggestion of White Wolf, the charm was repeated, the next flame producing twenty buffalo, the next thirty and so on, ten more each time till the number reached ninety, all of which the Crows destroyed, and had food in abundance. In these days the Crows did not possess either fire arms, or horses and it became difficult for them on foot and with only bows and arrows to kill the multitude of buffalo that now appeared, so that their very abundance was a source of disquiet, lest one should escape and letting the Sun kindle afresh his anger against the Crows. When the number of buffalo reached one hundred; this misfortune happened, they killed only ninety, and the one that escaped fled direct to the Sun and told him the whole story.
          THAT WAS WHEN THE SUN WAS indeed angry, but rather with the
White Wolf because he had not been a faithful servant, than with the Crows, who had showed themselves a brave people in adversity. He told White Wolf to go with the Crows and tell them that he should no more endeavor to destroy them and then condemned him to be forever a vagabond and outcast among the animals of the earth. This the Wolf has been to this day; and the Sun has never since taken a wife from among the Crows.
_____________________________________
From the Bradley Manuscript at the Montana Historical Society, Helena Montana.

Big Knot on Head v. Montana Territory, by Mark Anthony Given

THE SKY TO THE EAST promised another blazing hot Montana day as the darkness dissolved and orange splotches gave way to oozing azure light.  Just a slight breeze but the old Indian held fast to the wooden fence post trying to see anything, but the throbbing over his right eye from last night’s encounter with his wife’s mean right hook obscured even that.

       “Get back in here!”  Deer Run, his wife hollered.

Kills on Top just finished pissing and put up a brave trot back into the small two room primitive homestead built in the side of a Butte in the otherwise open plains of eastern Montana. 

      “Two Moon’s,”  Kill’s on Top said.

Two Moons?  Deer Run questioned.  Where the hell you see two Moon it’s black as ink out there?

“l know.  I couldn’t think of anything else and all the good names are taken.” He sheepishly replied.

“No they are not.  We‘re naming this scrawny kid “Big Knot on Head,’ for that whopper you got shinning there.”

           BIG KNOT ON HEAD didn’t have the opportunity to tell the grizzled old judge who looked like he was in a hurry to be somewhere other than here, up behind the giant Oak engraved desk, all that.   The Clerk of Court, a stern old woman with a bun who refused any eye contact in the administering of justice read the Bill of Information with restrained glee.

      “The Indian, the Defendant, Big Knot on Head”, she paused and looked around as if she was going spit out the remnants of his name on the floor but thought better of it and continued, “the State’s Attorney for the Montana Territory alleges did steal a single Bay Gelding full grown horse, belonging to one Buck Given’s of Grizzly Gulch, Montana.  The horse was stolen from downtown Helena, tied up in front of the Parrot Confectionary on Last Chance Gulch., Lewis and Clark County, Montana, this 21^st day of January, 1887.  The year of Our Lord.

       “How does he plead?  How do you plead Big Knot on Head?”  The old judge was riffling thru reams of files and loose papers looking for his pen knife he had just sit down so he could clean his pipe.

       THE INTERPRETER WAS a middle aged man who was also a bartender known by most of the court room.  A brusque hairy man with nervous eyes he wore a pouch around his neck to carry tobacco and worn buckskins covered by a mens dress coat he kept hung up in the back of the courtroom for these occasions when his services were needed. 

       BIG KNOT ON HEAD was small and wiry with long hair with just a piece of old canvas draped over him he stood ram rod straight like he either had to go to the bathroom real bad or he was trying to be invisible.  He had been in the old jail for nearly a week and besides being constantly hungry he was in dire need of straight shot or two rot gut whiskey.  The worst stuff you got because he wanted to get this over with… to be continued. 1/25/2012 10:12:24 AM

Cowgirl Up by Mark Anthony Given, Further Misadventures of an Irish Rabbi in the back country of Modern day Montana.

Cowgirl Up by Mark Anthony Given,  Further Misadventures of an Irish Rabbi in the back country of Modern day Montana.

          So I placed this ad on Craigslist:

TYPIST GIRLFRIEND:

Need Hot young girlfriend who can type: aspiring
screenwriter with too high standards;  https://post.craigslist.org/manage/2732694810

           HALF A DOZEN Spammers right off the bat and out of the blue a jewel stumbles out.  Says she fits all the credentials’ by sworn oath (I been fooled before by 200 lb plus women with girl next door profile picture and spin a yarn as far as the front door opens and Bam, Back to Reality!  “Oh, I thought you wouldn’t mind a few extra pounds,” or “I gained a few pounds since that picture was taken.”  I have heard it all.  I made this one recite the federal perjury statute)(28 USC 1746), and reveal her mother’s maiden name so I had no choice but to pull out Old Stumbling Block #2:  Works like a charm;  Jeigermeister and T-Bone Steak at this roadside steakhouse halfway to the North Entrance of the Yellowstone National Park halfway between Livingston and Gardiner, Montana sit’s a real roadhouse/steakhouse/cowboy Beat’em Bar called the Old Saloon  and Livery Stable Steakhouse out in the middle of nowhere.  Place where even if they do call the law (which nobody wants to do by the way), you still have nearly a half hour to keep fighting or get some yonder. 

          Contestant #338 was 28 (way outside my known limitations but she invoked the rare  “Hot Ass,”  under 30 rule and I figured I’d weed her out like culling sheep…… You got to give ‘em a running head start for kick their hind legs out from under them, it’s always more memorable finale splash that way.  She ain’t gonna remember anything of this tomorrow anyway. 

         Black hair (Not a good sign), built like a brick shit house at about a “Buck 10,” (110 lbs.), drop dead gorgeous or she wouldn’t have made it to the table.  Sitting inside the true horse stables were placed one lone dining table and the just half stalls with candle light and lanterns and saddles on the wall.  Couple little hot young go getter waitress’s buzzing around.  Place gets packed for about an hour and then settles down every evening.  I used to live a half a mile away and walked to work.  Someone told me they needed a cook and I showed up Monday morning at 10 am to get the job with resume and line of bullshit in hand and walked right into the middle of a burglary investigation.  I noticed all the cop cars there but I was steamed up to get the job and barged in there and handed the manager Bonnie my papers. She pointed to the fresh gouges in the floor where someone had dragged the safe to the front door and then the back door.  They all gave me the once over but when they seen I was applying for a job they ignored me.  She gave me the job later that day or the next.  Knocking out a hundred or so steaks a night was a piece of cake if I could keep the waitresses off the poker machines.

             WHEN WE WALKED IN THE OLD SALOON AND LIVERY STABLE in Emigrant or Pray, Montana about 10 pm on a Friday night it was in full swing as I knew it would be.   It had been nearly ten years since I worked there but I just knew someone would recognize me but it didn’t matter.  They weren’t watching me anyway when from behind me appeared every young man’s (an apparently old man) dream and every mother’s nightmare.  Expensive denims slinging ass from front to back and side to side  I swore I seen every head in their turn when she shifted her right ass cheek to miss the left side of that regulation pool table on the way to the Phillies Room.  When she came back out and knocked back two Jeigermeister’s  I had waiting for her I felt the air in the room change from “who’s getting their ass beat tonight to who’s getting lucky….and smiles all around… I pulled my my old penitentiary bad boy routine on them by just staring at the floor like it contained the secrets of the universe and mumbling shit like I was fix’n to start bar room brawl by myself…

          SHE WAS FLIRT’N AROUND like a school girl at her first night at camp, playing pool and dancing with complete strangers.  I posted up in the far corner where I could put my back to the wall and watch the front door and the back door out of habit.  Other than my overtly dangerous demeanor, when people seen I just one of the guys that ain’t got time for nobody or nothing;  Miss me with the the dumb shit, small talk, weather, fish’n nothing;  I seen a 100 nights in this sad country bar.  My heads rocking, I’m having a good time, just don’t fuck with me.  I get mad real easy and I’m stone sober.  We were half way into Steaks and fries when the Jeigermiester must have kicked in because,

          THEN SHIT HEADED SOUTH.  Right out of the blue thus crazy broad slams her damn drink on the bar and announces, “When I drink, everybody drinks!”  Fifteen minutes later drunk fuck’s were swig’n right out of the $20 pitchers of beer and the bartender is looking concerned.  Right in the middle of our $22 dollar succulent t-Bone Steaks and fries this party animal jumps up and holler’s “When I eat, everybody eats!”   Oh, Lord, I seen the dishwasher jump up and grab a waitress smock and ticket book and I knew we was in for a long night. animal slams her shot glass on our table and holler’s to the whole bar, “When I eat, everybody eats!” waitress was getting worked, I seen her ticket book peeled half in half with orders she hadn’t even turned in.  Fuck me; I couldn’t get far enough back in that corner by the door.  My only saving grace was this giant Moose head hanging over the potbelly stove in the middle of the little dining area adjacent to the bar blocking my view of half the participants.  I was instinctually counting the steps to the front door when this crazy bitch slams her shot glass down on the end of the bar and the damn jukebox skipped or stopped or something, because the next thing I knew it was deathly quiet in there and the whole room’s head shifted from her to me by the door after she hollered, “When I pay, everybody pay’s!!” 

WHAT THE HELL, she done wrung up four hundred dollars worth of food and drink and I wasn’t about to pay for all this.  Apparently neither was she because when she seen them all looking at me she made a run for it, the length of the whole bar and out the door and the screen door slammed and I thought it might be my turn to exit stage left.  I bolted for the front door too and was glad I had sense enough to park way out back before I realized there was only one way out of there unless I wanted to do a little midnight off- roading. (I’ll finish this tomorrow;  were just getting warmed up.  By the time I get this craigslist special back to Helena she had tried to use her head to take out mail boxes in her own neighborhood and then insisted we piss in her neighbors pool for some long ago misdeed)..12/31/2011 4:59:53 PM

Montana in the Spring 09

My Attorney is a Streetwalker, By Mark Anthony Given

When I was the head of the inmate law library at FCI Seagoville, Texas back in the early 90's I used to pull this case off the shelf's every few weeks and read aloud from the transcripts and we rolled in laughter at this:

US v. Flint, 756 F.1358-62 (9th Cir. 1985):
The dialogue in which appellant and the Magistrate engaged was as follows:
THE MAGISTRATE: Mr. Flynt, if you tell me that you do not understand that you have the right to have an attorney represent you, I am going to be obliged, in order to protect your rights, to appoint an attorney to represent you.
THE DEFENDANT: Don't do me any favors, your honor. I mean, you are the madam, and over here (indicating) is another whore and this guy who says he is my attorney is a streetwalker.
THE MAGISTRATE: Mr. Flynt, I expect you to behave yourself here.
THE DEFENDANT: Then you might as well put my ass in jail. Now, I am trying to be nice to you, god damn it. Now, are you going to let me read my arraignment and plea or are you going to put me in jail again? What the fuck is going on here?
* * *
THE MAGISTRATE: All right. I am going to appoint Mr. Isaacman to represent you as your attorney for these proceedings. You may choose to call--
THE DEFENDANT: Then take my ass to jail, cocksucker, because I--
THE MAGISTRATE: All right.
THE DEFENDANT: --refuse to go through this bullshit.
THE MAGISTRATE: All right, would you proceed with the arraignment?
THE DEFENDANT: You dumb, ignorant mother fucker. Now, I am telling you; you are not going to get away with this.
THE MAGISTRATE: Proceed with the arraignment.
THE DEFENDANT: There are [sic] no fucking way you are going to get away with it. You are denying me my counsel of my choice. You are just as dumb as that god damn Burger up there on the Supreme Court, and I am ready to stay in jail until hell freezes over or until I have the attorney of my choice.
You god damn, no good, 14 karat piece of shit, you. Just cause you got on that robe, you don't have any god damn right to abuse the Constitution that you are supposed to be upholding.
(He is just getting warmed up!!)
Appellant's remarks were a part of the following colloquy:
Q: Mr. Flynt, is there any other reason you could give us that you already haven't as to why you said the things you did to Magistrate McMahon on December 12 at the hearing?
A: Yes, there is, Mr. Kahn.
Q: What is it?
A: I went to the United States Supreme Court and I called every one of them no-good, lousy, dumb, mother-fuckers, what assholes they were. And that I would be back as soon as I was allowed out of prison to tell them mother-fuckers they had violated my goddamn mother-fucking civil rights as long as they intend to, and if I am not kept in prison--
MR. KAHN: Your Honor--
[THE DEFENDANT]:--until hell freezes over, I will kill--
MR. KAHN: Your Honor, can we please--
THE DEFENDANT:--every mother-fucking one of them. Blow those mother-fucking judges--
MR. KAHN: Could we have a short recess, please, your Honor--
THE DEFENDANT:--and I don't want--
THE COURT: No, Mr. Kahn, he knows what he is doing.
THE DEFENDANT: No--I don't--
MR. KAHN: Your Honor--
THE DEFENDANT:--and I am crazier than hell. I want a competency hearing.

The exchange between appellant and the court was as follows:
FLYNT: I move that you call the U.S. marshal to the stand that was present when I took the drugs, when I was flung on the floor by an inmate, and when I was kicked when I was smacked. I want the U.S. marshal called, I also want the guard called that tipped me off that this asshole was sending me to Springfield.
THE MARSHALL: Open up the door.
THE COURT: No, that is all right. He's got the responsibility.
That is going to cost you 30 days, Mr. Flynt.
THE DEFENDANT: Hey, you know what punishment--is. Well, you don't give a fuck.
THE COURT: Mr. Flynt, you just keep that up.
THE DEFENDANT: Fuck you. Give me life without parole you foul mother-fucker.
THE COURT: That is another 30.
THE DEFENDANT: I want you--give me more. You chicken-shit son-of-a-bitch.
THE COURT: That is another 30 days.
THE DEFENDANT: Give me more.
3
Appellant's final outburst occurred as follows:
THE COURT: For the contempt of December 12th, 1983, the defendant shall be committed to the custody of the Attorney General or his representative for a period of six months, and for each of the contempts upon which he was cited here in court today, 30 days. Each of those sentences are to run consecutively to each other and not concurrently.
THE DEFENDANT: Give me more, mother-fucker. Is that all you can give me, you chicken-shit cocksucker? Lay 18 months on me, you dumb mother-fucker.
THE COURT: Now--
THE DEFENDANT: Fuck you in your ass.
THE COURT: That is enough.
THE DEFENDANT: You suck--
THE COURT: That will be another six months which will be also consecutive.
THE DEFENDANT: I want you to give me more. Give me more.

For the sake of completeness, we note that there is a serious question whether the punishment, as it was imposed in this case, actually served the district court's purpose. As portions of the colloquy between appellant and the district court strongly suggest, it is just as likely that it served appellant's purpose instead. In any event, it would not be in the best interests of the judicial system or the public to prolong this travesty any further. The time has come to draw the curtain on a seamy and tawdry episode. We do so now by vacating appellant's sentences.
REVERSED AND VACATED.

 

Split Deposit Chapter Four, Best Friends, By Mark Anthony Given

Best Friends, By Mark Anthony Given

     "Heah, can I have that Travaian book when you are done with it?"  That's how I met Bruce Hernandez in the St. Mary Parish Prison in Franklin, Louisiana in the early 80's.  I was setting out a 30 day sentence for possession of stolen property having been reduced from Grand Theft Auto.   Bruce was my best friend and the father of my girlfriend's two kids.  Huh?  When he got out of Hunt Correctional facility after serving 40 plus months for walking prescriptions I moved over to the beach in Biloxi to let them have another go at it.  I told both of them it wouldn't work but heah, give it a try.  Three months later he was living in my place on the beach and I was back in Gentilly in New Orleans.  A year after we got back together she had a baby Jasmine Hernandez who is 25 now.  Strange dynamic but works for people who want to see their spouse happy with or without them.  Bruce and Brenda showed me how to write prescriptions and either walk them into the pharmacist or split the proceeds with someone to do it.  Nearly every woman or family has prescriptions lying around they didn't get.  I'd white out all the hand writing, touch it up with a black pen, re-photocopy it until I would cut it out just the right size, run a Red Magic Marker across the top to make it look like it was tore off a pad and you are in busy.  Go into the pharmacist after doctor hours; I’d just leave it and tell them I'd be back for it but not say when.  I'd wait a few hours and stand out front the store on my tippy toes and call the pharmacy.  I'd watch everything they do;   do they look in the Bin for it?  What's the doctor's name they ask to verify.  I ask how much and when they close and see if she covers the phone or signals for the pharmacist, just anything unusual, especially after I hang up if she makes a Bee line for the pharmacist... Normally, I'd walk right in seeing everything was fine.  Thirty-Six Four Milligram of Dilaudid cost about .90 cents of the counter and sold for $40-50 all day long.  Crush'em up and dump it in the back of a fit, no backroom operation straight from the pharmacy... Fifty Percodan cost $24 and sold for $5 each and you can soak'em and shoot them.

       I swiped that tricked out pickup truck alongside a business on Highway 90 East of Morgan City, Louisiana on a Sunday morning about ten o'clock with a hangover from Hell.  By 9 am down there it's like the tropics your soaking wet from preparation.  A very famous band from south Louisiana, Zebra, had played the night before on the out skirts of town in a gravel parking lot roadhouse.  The best Led Zeppelin cover band ever, the place was packed and I woke up in a hotel room with a girl and other people I didn't know.  I just got up and left because I couldn't sleep anymore and everyone else was sleeping so I headed back to Houma, Louisiana the next town over where I was a Roughneck on Odeco Charlie, a famous oil rig in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico.  I started stealing cars when I was 12 or thirteen in New York.  I was born in Florida and the New York winters were kicking my ass.  In the winter people leave their vehicles running when they run in a store.  The first car I hopped in was my dream car; I absolutely was powerless not to steal this car!  A 1972 Emerald Green Buick Rivera with a rolling speedometer... Crushed velour interior right off the show room floor it seemed.  It was about 8:30 at night, two and a half foot of snow in Rochester, New York right on Parcells Avenue.  I was supposed to be walking 5-6 blocks to my brother Bill and his wife Charlene’s house and was only a half a block from their house where this Emerald Chariot awaited idling in the snow I couldn't see what it was until I got up on top of it and stopped right in my tracks!  Damn it Man!  I don't think I even hesitated I jumped in that son bitch where it was warm and toasty and the radio playing Beach Boy's Good Vibrations!  I eased that warm cosy bitch into a couple of runs in the road and made the first right and did almost a complete circle and parked it where I could see it from my attic bedroom at my brother's place.  I needed a ride to school in the morning and all this snow was tiresome...

       The first time I seen Bruce handwrite a doctor’s prescription for 36 K-4’s and the an expensive antibiotic with it, was right in the front seat of the Baron Red Hot Car in the front of the pharmacy out in Laplace or across the lake I forget it was like watching someone printing money.  He walked in and walked right back out with a little white bag with nearly $3,000 in Dilaudid in less four minutes.  Bruce had shot himself in the head with a shotgun despot over Brenda and alcohol and now wore a Black Eye patch like Captain Kid.  You could see scar tissue all around it.   How do you miss with a shot gun?  I never thought to ask him because I was always led to believe he was shot in a hunting blind when the rifle slipped from a standing position.  Years later in a jail cell in some heart to heart I got the truth. 

       WHEN MY THIRTY DAYS WERE UP I hitch hiked to Florida were I promptly swiped a brand new Baron Red Chrysler LeBaron with a fake rag top and white leather interior from a car dealership along the interstate in Orlando, Florida about 11pm at night.  The place was closed and fenced in the front.  This thing was sitting right by the garage doors and the door was partially open.  I just rolled across a little patch of grass into a Pizza Hut parking lot and headed to find a license plate for this thing that had 31 miles on it…. Damn!

      I probably swiped 15-20 cars when I was a kid. And

it ain't brag'n. When you bust out of foster care and am on the

streets at 12 years old there’s a whole different set of rules.
Swiping a sandwich out of a grocery store is the only meal will you have that day... sleeping in laundry mats, people’s couches, basement laundry's... I didn't like being a kid, nobody will hire you, and you don't know anything, lecherous bastards looking at you like desert.  Being a kid sucks. 
 The next morning I snuck out during breakfast to start
my new Emerald Chariot so it would warm up before school.  This wasn't exactly the suburbs so I had to keep an eye on it before someone else swiped it!
 After doing a couple donuts in the Senior Parking area
of my high school me and my buddy’s mud bogged the thing all thru residential lawns in the snow, knocking over mail boxes and running people off the road.  At lunch time we took it a few blocks over by the French's Mustard plant and played Ping Pong with it until it didn't want to run anymore.  I have no idea why.
 Bruce Hernandez spent probably around thirty years on

the Caffin Avenue methadone Clinic right down the street from Fat Domino’s house.  Well, used to be house.  The house nor Bruce has been seen since August 29, 2005 when hurricane Katrina nearly leveled the Ninth Ward.  Because he was on the Methadone clinic and still doing dope he couldn't get any takeout so he couldn’t go far...
      WHEN I PICKED HIM AND BRENDA UP in that brand new Baron Red rag top outside their house at 3906 Franklin Avenue in the Gentilly section of New Orleans four blocks from a interstate, she sat next to me and him in the back.  Bruce smoked like a broken stove so i had to keep stopping to let him out because he wasn't smoking in my brand new stolen car!  No he wasn't.  I didn't let them put their damn feet on the dash either.  A few days later we were sitting in it and e notices scuff marks on the ceiling.  What the fuck?  Who done that?  He was starting to act like me.  I acted real concerned and used a paper napkin to try and remove it.  I didn't have the heart to tell him it was his wife's footprints where I had tried to knock the bottom out of her pussy the night before right there in the front seat while he was knocked in the back!

    We must let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for us. -Joseph Campbell

The Mechanic, By Mark Anthony Given

EVERY  PRO BLACKJACK PLAYER PLAYS at least two hands at once, it just doubles everything and it isn’t any harder. Ideally I want to be at the $25 blackjack table playing at least two hands (I could play the whole table), for 20 minutes at 4 o’clock in the morning and be in and out with a grand or so in less time than that. I’ll never forget the look on the faces of several Pit Bosses huddled together covering their mouths so I couldn’t read their lips. When this thing is working on all fours it should be win one, lose one, 25$ bet lost, bet $50 win:  I got my $25 back and made $25. After less than 10 minutes I’m up $700 and still making the same bet! They are pulling their hair out because they never seen this. Every five minutes I get interrupted to be offered a “Players Card” or “dinner for you and a guest”, on and on they want me in their system to monitor what the hell I’m doing. I got the same story for them every time; I’m on my way to the airport, I’ll see you next time….”4/18/2011 10:43:34 AM They never seen a grown man in a $1,000 dress suit mix all his different colored/denomination chips together in a pile, and keep playing with them like a kindergarten child. I do that so they can’t keep a running count of how bad I’m spanking their ass, seaming at will. If I am the only one at the table they can look at the dealer’s bank and get a exact count. Every two or three minutes you will see me pocket a few big denomination chips. Drinking bottled water or hot chocolate and no smoking I could blend in to woodwork if I wasn’t walking out of there with their money. Nine hands and right at the eight minute mark the dealer gets a tap on the shoulder and they switch dealers to right the rhythm in the casinos favor. It doesn’t work against guys like me. At the Seventeen minute mark they switch the dealer again and it’s some old hippy hangover from the Seventies with hippy beads and tie die shit. Every time she scoops up the cards for no apparent reason she will reach over and tap the table to signal a new hand. Her mojo doesn’t work either, even after 6 straight loses I bet 7, 8, 7 and recouped every dime not counting the double down on the second 7 bet.

THAT’S WHEN THEY BRING OUT THE MECHANIC, usually a real lucky Irishman like myself, but you can usually tell the Mechanic because he has thirty or forty grand of jewels trying to blind me with his bling. I can beat him but twenty five minutes is my limit because my concentration starts to fail, I’m up almost a grand. “Color me up.” That’s my mantra….the dealer takes his time because the last thing they want is for me to leave but I know you haven’t won a dime until you make it to the parking lot. I never even stop at the Tellers cage to cash in the chips, there’s no hurry there always open I mosey out of there just in time to see a Supervisor step off the elevator 50 feet away with a couple of minions heading straight at me. They look at me like a lab specimen as I walk by and act like I never even notice them. Straight thru the front door past valet parking and head straight out into the fresh air with a slight smile on my face as I walk like I know where I am going, but I’m just trying to shake the adrenalin rush off like a small line of coke without the jitters…

The Real Drug Store Cowboy, By Mark Anthony Given

Tony’s Discount Drugs

Tony’s Discount Drugs

I’M RIDING THROUGH Ocean Springs, Mississippi it’s 4 am and 64 degrees and the sun will be up soon.  Tony’s Discount Drugs in a strip mall next to an abandoned grocery store looks like a good place to break thru the cinder block wall in the utility closet and tiptoe over to the pharmacist goody drawer.  I remember my buddy from New York living next to me on the beach in Biloxi, the next town over telling me this pharmacy was fat because it was so big and everything on the shelf was stretched out to take up space, they must be doing a booming pill business.   Was they ever!  I cased it a time or two and wound up parking in a McDonalds down the road and doubling back over behind it where I easily scaled up the back of the buildings pipes and stuff. 

       I scanned the whole place and seen a cinder block, sitting on top of a piece of plywood, sitting on top of a 18” duct vent with the fan missing and two bare wires showing.    Huh, I remove the stuff and I’m looking down at a big rack of candy bars, on the floor of the barely lighted store.  I just happened to have my handy 20 foot of soft rope and the Superman pillow case off my girlfriends’ kid’s bed stuffed down the front of my pants for just this occasion.  I tied the rope off and down I went,  sliding straight down a huge round stainless steel air conditioning vent till I got to the bottom, maneuvered around the rack and just set there about 30-40 seconds waiting to get attacked by dogs with their voice box gone, I didn’t know what to expect.  The fact that it only took a ten second slide down the shoot and here I was in wonderland had me a little surprised but I still had work to do.  The first thing I seen was a huge aluminum ladder laying down nearby so it set it up under the hole in the ceiling I had just came out of, grabbed a candy bar and moseyed on to the back….

       It get back into the pharmacy and it was a little better lighted so I was ducking down pulling open all the drawers until I found one locked,  Bingo, right where the pharmacist stands all day a big 12” deep by 33x18 all fire resistant aluminum.  Didn’t happen to have a pry bar or a cheater pipe, so I just started pulling on that sum bitch and before I took to all my strength the levee broke and Payyoh!  pills were flying everywhere.  Holy Shit!  The fucking mother lode:  12 bottles of 4 mg. Dilaudid, 10 bottles of 100 mg. of Demerol, Tuinal, Seconal, Percodan, Percoset, you fuck’n name it.  Four Hunfred Qualuudes!  There was so much Schedule II stuff there I couldn’t tie the top of my Superman suitcase.  Damn, I better pick up a little Tussionex Suspension cough syrup off the back shelf for this itchy throat.  Grabbed two quart bottles and stopped by the cash register.  Nothing in the draws, I look all over all over the place, nothing.  I give the back door a quick scan and seen the alarms and slide bolts.  I wanted to just run right out of there the hell with the alarms, but I didn’t.   

I JOG UP TO THE FRONT of the stores seeing Highway 90 across the massive parking lot and another McDonalds across the street.  I get up to the front register; it too is pulled open with the drawers empty.  I bend down just as a black and white City of Ocean Springs Police Department on routine patrol shining his light into the stores.  Fuck me, I look over to my left and there’s that rope hanging right there next to the giant ladder, but they kept going and I seen them pull into traffic a few minutes later.  I wanted to get on that rope and the hell out of there but seeing that cop go by told me I had another hour, slow down.  I walk normally to the back in case someone does see me looking for the Mangers Office and there it is, right behind the Pharmacists window.  I walked right into a completely dark room and turn on the light and sitting right by the door laying down on a file cabinet are two fat bank bags from a local bank.   Grabbed the bags, hit the lights and headed for my rope.  I tied the bag onto the bottom of the rope, flung the bank bags up onto the roof and crawled hand over fist up about 10-12 feet to the daylight and fresh air.  I have burglarized hundreds of buildings and homes and this one was not only rewarding, my first pharmacy burglary, but hell of hard and exciting at the same time…

       I was too hyped up to drive back to New Orleans so I had rented a room next to the interstate about 15 miles away.  I dumped the entire contents into one of the large beds, grabbed the K-4’s (Dilaudids), broke the seal on a little tiny saccharin bottle with exactly 100 pills in it,  worth exactly  $5,000 if I sell them one by one, and stated crushing hem up in a hotel book of matches.  Busted open a party pack of U-100’s syringes, dumped the now crushed up pill into the syringe, scoop up a little warm water from the sink and cold shake for a minute.  You have to be standing up to get the full bang in the knees of this stuff.  Elvis is reported to have said, “Son, I have done’em all and Dilaudid is the best!”  I think he is right (I think they did something to them and you can’t shoot them anymore).  To me it is a warm, fuzzy sensation from head to toe concentrating right in the center of your sexuality, and then easing down and into the best pussy you ever had, warm and sensuous and inviting and whispering all the right….

       I laid right on top of all them pills on the big double bed, the air conditioning blasting I could hear the faint sounds of Jake Brakes on the interstate as the big trucks exited to fast…. I sliced one of the bank bags open and it was full of checks and paper work.  The second bag even bigger contained $3,45o cash and a deposit slip.  I tried to remove as much of the identifying marks from the bottles, collected everything and walked it to the dumpster.  I wanted to get going after a quick shower but my instincts told me to sit tight.  I wanted to pull out of here in about 45 minutes into rush hour traffic and blend in on the interstate over to Biloxi to my apartment on the beach and then to New Orleans where a handful of trusted people awaited good news.  I had been over here once before to rob it but had a premonition about dusk to dawn drug store burglaries.  I always chose them hours because people eyes are changing and they are more forgiving of what they think they saw and…

     It wasn’t even 6:30 in the morning and I was soaking wet with perspiration, it’s like living in a jungle down there.  I knew I had to bury most of this stuff and then only tell a person or two and then I had to keep moving, every few hours everywhere I went I would blow up to nonstop traffic and it was on to the next spot, way the fuck on the other side of town, way  out in Slidell, the 16^th floor of the Marriott in Downtown New Orleans they just kept coming;  when you got fresh pharmaceuticals’ dope fiends will find you.

I GOT RUN OFF FROM one of my girlfriends’ houses when people started showing up at 3:30 in the morning with $40 and Ten Dollar Food Stamps.  As soon as the traffic gets back to back it’s time to go…   I am freaking terrified of getting killed for this much drugs.  Even the people directly around me can’t see all this.  After all the Methadone, Desoxyn (the best legal speed),  5 and 15 mg., I realized probably $25,000 cash.  I sold everything but the Dilaudid and the cough syrup and had a Habit From Hell when I got caught red-handed right inside Tony’s Discount Drugs by them patrolling city cops after a tripped an alarm under the pharmacist counter. 

       Turning off Historic Highway 49 from Memphis to the foot of the Gulf of Mexico you immediately cross a set of railroad tracks and under a big oval sign over a guard shack that say’s MISSISSIPPI STATE PRISON AT PARCHMAN.  I was in a van full of felons from various detention centers throughout the Great State of Mississippi and we never even slowed for the guard standing outside the shack looking at us with a look of “You poor bastards!”  That’s exactly what it felt like to except I actually felt quite lucky.  In another time or another place three years for getting caught red handed during a drug store robbery?  As soon as we got to Building 10 right inside the gate to the right was the Reception Center right out of the Thirties.  They were building a brand new huge new Receiving and Delivery and temporary housing somewhere on its 50,000 acres of sugarcane prooperty; Flat delta as far away as you could see.  If you took off running they’d let you go and then go out there and get you after you wore yourself out real good.  Elvis Presley’s father may have been the very same bunk I was assigned, because he too did three years there in the 30’s for kiting checks.  Wherever they have stupid people they have check kiters because right next to tearing the tag of your mattress or sniffing bicycle seats at the elementary school, it remains the lamest crime on the books. 

       I immediately sent out typed resumes to all the top departments and got a job in the hospital pharmacy.  My Judgment and Commitment Order said Burglary 3^rd.  When they asked me what I burglarized I told it was a shoe store.  I was sent straight to a Trustee camp and right behind my desk was three large boxes slap full of prescription pills that had been returned to the pharmacy from any inmate who left or for whatever reason.  I could just dip my hand down in any of the boxes like a cookie jar and come out with anything and sell it.  Most of them dummies wanted Thorazine, Stelazine, stuff that will knock off three weeks of your sentence with a cup water.  You will sleep day and night and be zoned like a zombie for weeks… I fucked them out of many a day in the county jail knocked out on that shit.  I’d trade my food for it and just sleep 20 hours a day, get up and exercise, take a shower, eat some fruit and back to the drawing board….

       Right at the Mississippi –Louisiana state line is a big rest area at the Stennis Air Space Engineering exit.  Finding a quite, secluded parking spot way in the back I grab a back pack and a small Boy Scout shovel and trot off into the woods.  As soon as I get at the perimeter I stand there and take a piss for a good long time to see who is zooming who… anyway, it is a good place to stash stuff for a few weeks…