Captain Pike's Ship Log II

Today, I received in the mail a case of Autocrat coffee syrup. It came UPS, and I was just delighted to see it arrive. I took out one bottle and put it in the refrigerator, and then stored the rest in it's box down in the basement. This stuff is the state drink of Rhode Island. They make it right in Lincoln, Rhode Island. My friend who's a consulting engineer called me up once from their factory to tell me how delightful it smelled there. He knows I enjoy a good cup of coffee. It's like chocolate syrup except using the coffee bean instead of the chocolate bean. Put a little in some milk, mmm, good; add a little to hot coffee -- Turbo coffee.

When I was in college I knew this guy, I'll call him Granite Quarry. Mr. Quarry was a very interesting character. For one, he was a drug dealer. I don't know how I met him, probably at a party through a mutual acquaintance. Anyway, Granite lived in a trailer just off campus with his girlfriend. I'm not sure he was even a student. He looked like a college kid, but I don't remember ever seeing him on campus.

Sometimes I'd go to Granite's place to buy drugs. It was quite a ritual: he'd take you into the bedroom and bring out this medium-sized tackle box. Even in the summer sun, the bedroom was always dark and cool. Unlocking the tackle box with a little key that fit the tiny padlock was always a very exciting event for me. It was as if I were a member of a secret and special club. He'd open out the tackle box, exposing its internal articulating trays and weigh out what you wanted, right there in front of you. And then he'd take your money and you'd be on your way.

I always wished to have a tackle box like Granite's. He always had a good supply of just about everything. There'd be various colored pills, stinky dried vegetable matter, Ziploc baggies of powder, dried mushrooms and chunks of shiny white shale. There were things I didn't recognize along with other paraphernalia such as pipe screens and the like. I don't remember ever seeing Granite high on drugs. But, it seemed he usually had whatever you wanted. The trouble with trying to be like him was that any time I ever got a significant amount of anything, I always made such a pig of myself that I never even needed a container. My motto seemed to be: "anything worth doing is worth doing to excess!" I must have fancied myself like John Wayne, just spitting the cork across the room after having hauled it out of the whiskey bottle. The truth is, when it comes to drugs and booze I'm obsessively compulsive. It took a great deal of misery to finally look that in the face.

Now days, I don't use any mind altering substances. It turns out that what I was after was some kind of connection between me and The Spirit of the Universe. Once in awhile, back in the day, the right kind of buzz-on seemed almost just that. These days, I've learned that you never really "get there". Instead, I'm starting to believe that the true joy in life comes from trying to follow the will of my creator. But that doesn't mean that I can't have a case of coffee syrup in my basement. Maybe I'll show up at a party bringing a bottle of "the good stuff". You can even mix it with water.