You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy. ™
College boys living in the ghetto.
Now that’s crazy!
We had just moved into the Scarff Street Palace. A 1500 square foot 2 bedroom ghetto apartment with more room than any of us had experienced in years.
There was a large central living area and the ceilings were 10 feet high. The apartment was decorated as you might imagine.
Posters on every wall, flags hanging from every open space. We had magazine pages strategically placed to cover holes that would be patched at a later date.
Schultz eats Geroux’s ear. Van is disgusted.
There was a ratty couch against the wall, and milk carton shelving under the window. We had high back chairs with no legs.Why did we have chairs with no legs? You’ll have to ask the two brain surgeons who decided to saw off the legs.
Paging Dr. Schultz. Paging Dr. Geroux!
There were neon beer lights, and beer mirrors that would eventually all be broken. We had a Burger King sign obtained somewhere in Palm Springs. If I recall correctly, the B and R on Burger were removed so it simply stated: URGE KING. Nice!
The kitchen was functional, not much bigger than a row boat. There was a fridge and a stove. By the end, we stored our trash in the oven and there was so much green fuzz in the fridge we rarely put anything in there for fear of contamination.
There was a small window in the kitchen. Somebody broke it and it remained broken for 2 years. When it rained, water splashed in. When it was cold, we could see our breath. When it was hot, we broiled. Scarff Street was a lot like Paris Island, uncomfortable and a good place to contract jock itch.
Gilmore at kitchen window. Yes that’s a bullet hole beneath him.
Every morning I looked out this kitchen window. Every morning I saw the Harpy’s gang graffiti on the wall on the cinder block wall across the alley. It was a reminder this was their domain. Then one day we spray painted over their spray paint. It was liberating and it sent a very direct message: Scarff Street Derelicts. This war of words reminded me this was less about living and more about surviving.
Geroux slept on a mattress on the floor in one bedroom. There was a milk crate where he put his wallet. There was little else. Geroux lived as if the police were coming one day and he wouldn’t have much time to pack.
Schultz had a small cot against the other wall. Compared to Schultz Geroux was a pack rat. Schultz lived out of a brown shopping bag that housed his warm beers and whatever clothes he had. The funny thing about Schultz’s cot, he didn’t use it much. Maybe it reminded him of the County Lock Up. Maybe he didn’t sleep in it because Schultzy hates being cold and that room had no heat. So in the winter, we would often wake up and find Schultz curled up on the floor like a dog in front of the heater.
Schultz had a potasium fetish and we’d often find him unconscious surrounded banana peels and discarded Coors Light cans. Though there was a roof over his head, Schultz lived like a homeless man. Schultz was always five minutes away from disappearing into the witness protection program. Schultz could sleep through anything. Barking dogs, police helicopters, Angry African Dudes banging on a metal security screen with a six shooter. Schultz didn’t wake for anything. This narcoleptic tendency served him well in the war that was Scarff Street.
He was a gangly 6 foot 2 and when he curled up in a ball under the heater, he looked like the mother alien in Predator. Schultz slept under this heater so frequently, that after a while, we just knew to step over him in the dark of night when we were using the facility.
Speaking of the restroom, Geroux tore the toilet seat in half with his bare hands. Geroux was a mechanism. a machine. He was a party terminator that moved only forward to achieve the target. This mind set made him perfect for the combat zone that was Scarff Street, but at times made him unmanageable. And like a Terminator, with a singular purpose, he was too strong for his own good.
That is why when Schultzy and Geroux were left to their own devices, it was like leaving Nitro and Gycerin alone with a blow torch.
This picture is an example of what could and often did happen when Schultz and Geroux were left alone.
“Hey Geroux”
“What Schultz”
“I bet I can cut your hair with this steak knife.”
“I bet you can’t'”
“bet I can.”
“Oh Yeah, prove it.”
That’s all it took for crazy to bubble up from the angry bowels of hell.
Imagine two guys with their hair cut into clumps, as if they laid a checker board grid down on their skulls. Tall clumps and short clumps and bloody scalp clumps. Schultz’s head looked like a pit bull humped a porcupine. Geroux’s head looked like a racoon run over by a lawn mower.
This was just another moment in the volatility that was Schultz and Geroux.
The next day standing in front of the mirror.
“Mine looks better.”
“Does not.”
“Does Too.”
“does not.”
And so it went, every single day.
So back to Geroux tearing the toilet seat in two. I’m not really sure why he did this, but I was reminded of that every day for two years. When you used the facility, you had to sit sideways, your knees wedged against the tub. If you sat too long, the jagged material would dig into the back side of your thigh. It was uncomfortable. Everything at Scarff Street was uncomfortable.
Toilet paper? Why even bother! Unless they were giving it away at the Mission, well, that was a luxury reserved for others. All I’ll say is it was not uncommon to let your fingers do the walking.
Gilmore and I slept in the rear bedroom. We once had a door, but Geroux decided to use as a tackling dummy. He ran through it, blowing it off the hinges and ripping the hinges out of the wall. I lived with no bedroom door for 2 years.
Privacy? That is a concept unknown at Scarff Street. Our bedroom door was never closed. I propped it against the door frame like a Native American lean to. I hung a sheet over it to fill in the gaps so you couldn’t look straight in. This was a definite set back when you brought a date home.
“Uh, you have a sheet for a bedroom door.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“Can you take me home now?”
And so it went.
This bedroom had large closets, with 8 foot tall closet doors. For some reason every single door was off the tracks. I’m talking like 8 doors. All broken! How does this happen?
I lived this way for two years. Like the bedroom door, we leaned all the doors at an angle. Occassionally a door would fall on one of us during the night. It was like closet door Russian roulette.
I read Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Somehow many parts of this book seemed applicable to the Scarff Street existence. Fear and Loathing on Scarff Street.
The apartment itself was a crazy force. The location was crazy and the way we decorated was even crazier.
3 items stand out in my mind.
1) Mad Max
2) the Sports Arena Turnstile
3) Mr.Ed
More on two and three later.
Mad Max you say? It started out routinely enough. I hung a glossy picture of Mad Max on the front door.
It was the mid 80’s and the road warrior movies were all the rage. This is before Mel Gibson was a drunk running his mouth about killing all the Jews.
We put the Mad Max photo on the front door like some people hang a crucifix over their bed. It was there to ward off eveil spirits and protect those who enter.
Mad Max and his sterling blue eyes glaring at all who entered. It was the perfect symbol for the Scarff Street derelicts.
Isn’t it Mad Max who said 2 men enter, one man leaves, in the Thunder Dome scene?
If the Marines slogan is: Semper Fi. Scarff Street Derelicts slogan might have been: In Max we trust.
But you know what’s really crazy?
A piece of magazine paper scotch taped to the door lasted when nothing else could.
Windows broke, Max Survived. Walls were pummeled, and Max lived on. Bottles were thrown and televisions smashed and vacuum cleaners destroyed, and Mad Max, endured.
It’s been 25 years since I scotch taped that magazine page to the front door. I have had 3 children and one wife. I’ve been to the Persian Gulf and traveled to the jungles of Panama. I have bought homes and gotten into bar room brawls. While just about everything else changes in my life, unbelievably,
MAX STILL LIVES!
Original Mad Max Magazine Photo from 1985
Like everything else that is 25 years old, Max is now worn and crusty. But Max is still alive, still protecting me with those stealy blue eyes, and that sawed off shot gun. Sure he’s wrinkled, but the fact that a piece of paper has lasted so long is pretty incredible. Max is now in a corner next to my frige. He’s hidden from my wife and my kids, but I know he’s there. In my mind, he still guards me in a post-apocalyptic armeggedon protecting the wasteland I once inhabited.
“Just walk away. Walk into the wasteland. Just walk away.”
While Max still lives, Gilmore’s turnstile does not.
Tomorrow more decorating craziness that gave the Scarff Street Palace that “how you say?” Je ne sais quoi: