You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy!
Being able to pin point the moments in life that change everything.
There are some seminal ticks of the clock that we all share. High School Graduation, your first car, “your first time!” if you know what I mean.
But there are a lot of other moments, flashes in the fabric time, that make you look back and say: I wonder what would have happened if…..
I had one of those moments recently when an old buddy called.
“Hello.“
“The voice on the other end was familiar and full of concealed laughter.
“Ah yes, Mr. Cordan this is Joe Salvo of the ACME Vacuum Cleaner Company. Could we interest you in our new SUPER SUCKER 2000?”
“Schultz!” I scream into the receiver. “You Pirate bastard, what’s up?”
“Man you thought I was a vacuum cleaner salesman!,” he screamed, his voice filled with sandpaper and a six pack of Coors Light.
The laughter washed over me like old times. We talked for 1/2 an hour. One story after another rolling out like hobos at a train station. Schultz’s voice was a crackle of crazy as we both screamed, trying to out-story tell one another.
For Schultz life is about stories. And to tell a story well is to achieve success.
The memories were thick like mud as we reminisced about basketball games in the ghetto at 2 am against gang members. We recalled impromptu Mexico trips without a dollar in our pockets that lasted 3 days and yielded a 100 stories that nobody could ever believe. We laughed out loud about tackle football games in the street where banging your opponent off a car was the goal.
The stories are so crazy, most people don’t believe them, unless they were with us. If they were with us, they know they are true because you have the scars, physical and emotional to prove it.
I hung up the phone with Schultzy and smiled. Reminiscing with him is more than nostalgic, it borders on religious. It reminds me of good times gone by and adventures that only young men can have.
It was right then that I realized Schultz was the reason I am probably doing what I do today, the reason I continued with the education I received and the reason I probably chose the career path that now forms the bedrock of my life.
I’ll tell you about this filiment in time in a moment, but first to understand the importance of the moment you have to understand the history of the man.
Schultz is still the craziest person I have ever met in my life. If you ever met Schultz, he’d be the craziest person you ever met in your life as well. Those who know Schultzy know what I am talking about.
Schultz grew up in a middle class Orange County neighborhood and went to one of the most influential and affluent universities in America, yet he has the demeanor of a dock worker who owes a loan shark money. He is intelligent, but relies more on street smarts and bravado. Schultz is like a Mexican soap opera, outrageous, obvious and visceral. Schultz’s brain is more confusing than the directions for a toilet stopper made in China.
He was volatile and trouble came to him like a cockroach comes to crumbs.
I haven’t seen him in a decade. Some of that is geographical, much of that is by design. He’s too dangerous a man to reconnect with physically. I decided long ago, that it is only safe to talk to Schultzy on the phone. Honestly, I love the guy, but I’m afraid of him too. He’s crazy. He lives on another dimension of belief and existence. Regular rules of society don’t seem to exist when you are with Schultz. Laws others obey are mere suggestions to him. Morals that others live by barely register on his radar. He is both Thelma and Louise.
Because trouble is drawn to this man like paperclips to a magnet, I cannot re-connect with him. If I were a block away from his California cabin, I would call him from a pay phone down the street and lie to him, telling him that I was a thousand miles away. Why? Because this guy is Nitro and I am Glycerin. Even though we are both college educated and almost eligible for social security, it would only take a few beers and a couple of “I can top that” kind of stories and I’m sure we end the night in the back of a police cruiser.
It is for this reason that the only safe relationship with Michael “White Boy” Schultz is a relationship that involves phone calls and geographical separation.
Why not FACEBOOK Schultz? Why Not Email Schultz? Why not SKYPE with Schultz? These are technological concepts foreign to Schultz like flying the Space Shuttle would be foreign to all of us. Because Schultz is old school, bordering on prehistoric, he has never, and I mean this quite literally, never gone on line. He doesn’t own a computer. Do you even know someone who doesn’t own a computer?
This is why I can’t casually reconnect with Schultz. I can’t periodically drop him an email: “How ya doing?” Being friends with Schultz, is like a game of Texas Hold Em, it means going “all in”
It also means that I can write these words now, for anyone on the planet to read, and I am confident that Schultz will never read them, because he doesn’t know that andycordan.com is a thing. Asian dock workers can read this sentence. Himalayan Sherpas can read this story from a tent at base camp. Prisoners can read this in cell block Six between shower rapes.
But Schultz, living in the pristine beauty of Lake Arrowhead, California will never read a word of this. The internet doesn’t go to where Michael Schultz exists. He brags that he has never gone on line. He snarls when he proudly professes that the internet is for losers. Really? Losers? Can a Billion Chinese be wrong? The same ether and computer code that flows around the rest of us like cosmic dust does not affect Schultz.
Schultz quite simply is old school. He is a shark that swims forward through a sea of uncertainty, with only one goal, one mission, a singular purpose: to challenge life, to confront the system, to question the common place. Schultz is like a 1968 college protest march that refuses to grow up or change his ideology.
Schultz got his nick name “White Boy” because he was the only white boxer in an all black gym in South Central L.A. Schultz didn’t invent the moniker, the other fighters gave it to him.
Schultz loved being the underdog. He used it to his advantage, he created scenarios in his demented mind that he had to overcome. Being the only white boxer in gym full of street tough black men was just the incentive that Michael White Boy Schultz lived for. In his mind, they hated him because he represented white America. In Schultzes demented mind, he was the face of the oppressor, the slave master, or just the white guy who drove that cool 1973 Maverick, 3-speed-column shift auto in the parking lot.
Though none of this was completely true, Schultz made it his living and dying credo. It made him a single minded unstoppable force. Because he was White Boy Schultz he trained harder and absorbed more body blows than anybody needed to.
After graduation, yes he did graduate; Schultz didn’t settle into corporate America. He regressed as only Schultz can. Odd Jobs, a stint at the Delco Battery Factory. He returned to his grandma’s house on 98th and Normandie.
For those of you not familiar with the rat race that is L.A., this is deep in the heart of WATTS. You remember the riots? Hang a left at the Reginald Denny ass whoopin and that is where Schultz’s grandma lived.
Schultz’s grandma was from Guatemala. She was a religious woman who hung images of Christ all around her 2 bedroom, 1200 square foot home. The spiritual woman known as Abuela purchased the residence some 50 years before WATTS was WATTS. Back in the day, this neighborhood was a mixed bag of humanity. White faces waved to brown faces who said hello to black faces.
Then came white flight and Schultz’s grandma was an island unto herself. When Schultz’s grandma passed, the home remained empty. The family wanted to sell, but Schultz said he wanted to live there. Of course he did!
Schultz viewed living in South Central as a challenge, a competitive life battle that he must conqueror. When Schultzy moved into the hood, he was most assuredly the only white face for 20 square blocks. The residents knew it and Schultz liked it that way. Old women would walk down the street and smile at him, wondering how crazy is this young man. Neighborhood children would flock to him because Schultz was wild eyed and fun like new playground equipment. The gang bangers who slowly drove their low riders by Abuela’s house stuck their fingers like handguns out the window to let him know in no uncertain terms that he was out of place. This was the challenge that Schultzy most enjoyed.
I remember spending a summer at the 98th and Normandie house.
When night descended on this seemingly innocuous street, everything changed. It was like a curtain going up for the 2nd act of a play. The mood was nefarious, the lights dark and ominous.
It was then that Schultzy would say; “You done reading the sports section.“ “Yeah, Why?“
Schultz wouldn’t answer. He would simply grab the L.A. times, section by section and begin scotch taping pages onto the front windows of the living room. We couldn’t see out, and they couldn’t see in.
“Harder to shoot us this way,” he use to say.
The back door was not only bolted shut, it was nailed shut so that nobody could open it. Not us, not the thugs who might scale the rear wall and rush in, nobody.
Nighttime on Normandie was unsettling. The sounds of the ubiquitous L.A.P.D. helicopter buzzing over head mixed with dogs barking and the occasional gun shot in the distance.
Schultz slept with a handgun in his room, and he told me to keep a loaded gun under my pillow as well. Let’s just say I slept cocked locked and ready to rock.
Schultz didn’t park in the driveway like everyone else. Every night, he drove his beat up old Maverick on the front lawn, wedging the front end of the car into Abuela’s home. He would only stop when he heard the sound of metal crunching into stucco. Have you ever known someone to do that?
“Nobody will be able to pop this open“ He’d sneer referring to the bangers who would often pry open his hood and steal his battery when he left the car in the driveway.
When you lived with Schultz, every day was war; real or imagined. Every day was dangerous, a chance that you could be killed. His attitude was get them before they get you. If we were the airport, our national threat level would be constantly set to RED.
I met Schultzy at USC. A good friend of mine from high school was rooming with some guys off campus. When they advertised for a 4th roommate, Schultz just showed up.
He never once used the door. He climbed up to the 2nd floor balcony which was located behind the AAA building off Figueroa. He came and went through the window, like a cat burglar. I am not lying. Schultzy lived at Kerkhoff hall for an entire semester and I never remember him using the front door. He had a reason, but it never made sense. Something about being the wind, or staying out of sight or some B.S. This was USC for God’s sakes. The University of Spoiled Children. Schultzy acted as if this was escape from Alcatraz.
Now you know who Schultz is, tomorrow, in SCHULTZ II: My first encounter with him and why it made such a difference in my life.