(part 136) DOPE AND GUNS

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My mother had opened an American Indian store in Tucson on Grant Road, called the "Three Brothers Trading Post," a store front visible to passing cars, with a small house attached in back.

It didn't make a lot of money, but stayed open and paid the rent. She had a real love for American Indian culture and artifacts, along with the jewelry, pottery, blankets etc. These were the things she traded and sold in the store.

When I arrived, my younger brother, Quentin, was already working and living there. We all knew something about Indian Jewelry, because my mother's third husband, Francis Farr, whom she had since divorced, had dealt in it for years.

Still hobbling around on crutches, I learned to maneuver my way though the house and store where I occasionally helped out.
Basically lost, and deeply troubled by my own circumstances, I felt immediately out of place in that surrounding.

For me, it was like moving backwards in my life instead of forward. I was grateful for a place to come to, on the one hand, while being deeply troubled that I'd found it necessary to end up in Tucson at my mother's place.

Being as damaged a person as I was at the time, I felt no one really understood me. It wasn't discussed much, but rather treated as if it weren't really happening.

Part of the reason for this was that the other people in my family all had their own personal demons to contend with, so in essence, it was a house filled with damaged human beings. Unlike me, they didn't want to talk about it, whereas, I didn't want to stop talking about it.

I'm still like that today. If you've got a problem, then let's put it on the table and beat on it untill we find an answer. Most other people would rather keep it hidden and pretend everything is fine, which drives me crazy.

During that time in Tucson, I learned about heroin. Heroin is a dark drug. Not in color, but in the using of it. There was something different about it, I learned, and that difference sets it completely apart from other substances. It stands quite alone in the world of drugs as a mysterious and destructive entity.

I didn't much like it, in comparison to other drugs, but began the process of acquainting myself with it while in Arizona in 1973. There had been a time, in the not too distant past, where the idea of me using heroin was laughable. But as things changed and life became harder and more unpredictable, heroin ceased to be something I wouldn't try.

With the help of my younger brother, I soon learned the fine art of cooking up "smack" in a teaspoon, or tablespoon, to burn off the impurities. Once that was done a small piece of cotton was placed in the spoon soaking up the liquid, trapping further impurities in the cotton.

That accomplished, the drug itself could be drawn into a syringe or outfit, a homemade syringe, and injected. You could, skin pop it, inject it into the flesh, or mainline it, inject it into a vein. Mainlining was what we did. This practice is more hardcore in its effect.

I didn't like needles when I first started, but soon got addicted to shoving them into my body along with the drug itself. In fact, we would shoot up water if we ran out of the drug, just to be able to experience the ritual of doing it. I found this phenomenon rather bizarre, but still participated in it willingly.

Along with injecting drugs, Quentin and I had a fascination with guns, which we immersed ourselves in as well. There weren't too many things deadlier than me and my brother, high on heroin and booze, screwing around with loaded guns.

I remember clearly, a day when he and I went to a bar, called the "Grant Road Tavern." I ended up betting a guy I could beat him at pool, even on my crutches. I lost the game and once back home, Quentin and I got into an argument about it. He'd bet money on me and I'd lost.

After yelling at each other, he shoved me in the chest, and I crashed to the floor. Because of my casts I couldn't get up. Frustrated and angry, I grabbed a loaded AK-47 that was leaning against the wall, and fired off two rounds in his direction, leaving a couple of gaping holes in the wall.

He immediately vacated the room and I crawled up on my bed. Moments later he reappeared with a loaded 357 magnum revolver, which he shoved in my face.

I stared into the barrel of the gun and could see the tips of the bullets in the cylinder. I reached out with my head and grabbed the barrel between my teeth. This startled my brother and he pulled away from me saying, "You're fuckin nuts, Bob."

He then left the room again only to return with a 22 rifle, which he again pointed at me. I sat on the bed with my head against the wall and stared at him, as his first shot penetrated the wall a couples of inches above my head.

A second, third, fourth, and fifth shot rang out and I still did not move. Frustrated, he yelled at me, saying, "Don't you ever get scared, asshole?" "Not of dying," I answered, "I don't care if I die."

(part 135) CRUMBLING REALITY

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Once again I was just out there, loaded and angry. I did not have the capacity to deal rationally with the world around me. My emotions, out of nowhere, would explode in a frenzy of rage, leading me to do exactly the wrong thing at exactly the wrong time. I did not do this occasionally, but repeatedly for the next few years.

I truly was my own worst enemy, and unfortunately lived inside my own head, which was similar to driving a car with a broken windshield. I could see out, but everything coming in was distorted by the multiple cracks in the glass.

Seeking real help was never a priority in my twisted thinking. I would rationalize everything down to my troubles with the music business. My singular focus, right or wrong, was them, and not me, and the "me" was going to make vividly clear to "them", how deep my resentment ran.

Without a normal set of daily rules or routine, I was like a pinball bouncing off each moment without any particular direction. Day to day events set the tone in my life, not rational thought.

In many ways I was just completely lost, and lived like an animal fighting for small scraps, which I managed to wrestle away from the world. I clung to my own self-image like a selfish child protects his favorite toy.

To know me then, depended on which one of my various personalities you were encountering. On a good day, I was friendly and quick witted; on a bad day, I was even quicker, and could turn on you in an instant.

Some of these same traits still haunt me today, but in a more muted way. When you have been where I ended up, it is easy to see both the similarities as well as the differences, a reality not very well understood by people who think they know me.

Back in the 70's, the extreme nature of my deficits as a human being were so blatant, that only by personal experience with the, then "me," and the now "me," would you be able to accurately measure any hard-won progress.

I stood on crutches like a wobbly stack of blocks, now forced to relearn the art of balance. Alone and ashamed, and with no prospects of any kind, I fought to take a single step without crashing to the ground.

As I plodded forward, unnoticed by the world, I vowed to master my own limbs and take another step. One by one I accumulated each of those steps on my long path back.

Both my legs had withered over the five months in casts with no use at all. My muscles were like rubber, and collapsed repeatedly under my weight. My once proud gait had been lost to a now bumbling stumbling rhythmless stomp forward, aided by aluminum sticks.

My view of the world was a view of the ground ahead. While life moved on, I was now relegated, through my own actions, to learn to walk. As a mere shadow of my former self I fought to make sense of my continually crumbling reality.

With no money and no place to go, I once again turned to Carol Paulus for a hand out. Good bad or indifferent, she possessed the capacity, more than anyone else, to deal with me in my destructive madness, a reality I abused more than once.

Because of her own desire to be close to me, she tolerated, to her detriment, my endless insanity and poor behavior. As time passed, and with her help, I learned to walk on the crutches with more grace, but found myself still confined to a world of limitation.

During this period of deep frustration, and in the midst of an angry dispute with Carol, in Westwood, I demanded she take me to UCLA hospital where I stole a wheel chair. In another of a myriad of emotional outbursts, I set out through the streets of Westwood Village in the rolling death trap.

After making it up an incline, I suddenly began rolling, out of control, down a hill on the other side, crashing into the door of a yellow cab. The driver, scared half to death by the impact, stared out at me in a futile attempt to understand how I got there. He rolled down the window asking, "Are you OK man?" I smiled at him and said, "Can you take me to the airport?"

Without rhyme or reason and with no plan I headed for LAX and boarded, with great difficulty, a plane bound for Tucson, where my mother had moved during my time in the hospitals.

There, with the aid of my younger brother, Quentin, and a small monthly ATD (aid to the totally disabled) check, I would master the art of shooting heroin in a wheelchair and plan my next move.

(part 134) THE WHEELCHAIR

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After about three months in USC's orthopedic ward, I was getting stir crazy, to say the least. I convinced someone to sneak me in a pint of booze during a visit, which was a common practice among some of the patients.

While drinking, I got rowdy from my bed with one of the hospital janitor's. We were jabbing at each other verbally, and it led to an argument. This particular event ended, when I told the guy, "If I could walk, I'd kick your ass."

Following, what was deemed my threat against a member of the hospital staff, two uniformed security guards showed up and told me I was being thrown out of the hospital.

I looked at them like they were crazy and asked, "Well where is it you'd like me to go?" They told me that they didn't care, and began digging my clothes out of a small locker next to my bed. I was basically in shock when I realized they were deadly serious about removing me.

They helped get me dressed, which consisted of cutting off the left leg of my pants, because it wouldn't fit over one of my casts. I was then taken out of bed and put in a wheel chair by the guards, and wheeled into the corridor for the long ride down to County General's massive lobby.

Once there, they continued on to the giant entry doors, and then pushed me out into the open air onto a concrete terrace at the top of the stairs that led down to the parking lot. Without so much as a word, they fixed the wheel chair brake, turned and walked back into the hospital.

I sat there alone looking out at hundreds of parked cars wondering what the hell I was gonna do now? It all happened so fast I hadn't had any time to think about where I could go.

One minute I was in bed, and now I was out here. If I could have gotten up and walked away, I would have, but I couldn't. I was stuck in that Goddamn wheel chair and could only maneuver around in that limited space.

I do not recall with much clarity, how long I sat there, but knowing me, I probably got pretty angry as the time passed. I soon began raising hell on the front steps of the hospital.

I knew I'd done something wrong to get where I was, hell I always knew that, but what I didn't know was why there was such overkill when others dealt with my mistakes. I wasn't warned or counseled in any way, just dumped out into the world at the first opportunity to be rid of me.

* * *

As a kid growing up, it was always like that. I'd screw up at something, but the punishment would always be overly severe. In 1959 or 60, in Mesa, AZ, my mother had gotten married to my second step father, Francis Farr, a paraplegic Mormon, who I was forced to work for, loading hay trucks around Phoenix.

I was about to turn 16, and he said he'd buy me a car if I worked all summer for him, with no pay. I agreed. At the end of all that hard work, I prepared myself for the well earned payoff.

During a weekend with a couple of redneck friends of mine, I drank some beer, which my stepfather found out about. His version of fair was that he was no longer obligated to keep up his end of the bargain, because, as he said, I'd violated his moral code by drinking.

Without payment of any kind, I angrily told him it was unfair, saying, "You don't have to get me the car, but you do have to pay me something, because I already did the work and you benefitted from it." His response was, "You're not getting anything, as punishment for drinking the beer."

I guess you can figure out this didn't go over too well with me, in fact it led to a complete split from Francis Farr. Soon after, I ran away from home.

This episode was a key component in teaching me that my work, once done, did not deserve or require payment from those I worked for. This insidious lesson was repeated over and over in my experience with the music business, and remains true to this day.

* * *

I angrily wheeled back and forth on the concrete landing at the entrance of County General Hospital, until I got the attention of what appeared to be a doctor on his way inside. He listened, as I explained my circumstances to him, promising he would investigate the matter immediately, which he did.

His opinion was, that if what I'd told him was true, the hospital had over reacted by throwing me out without following up on an alternative location to place me in, because of my condition.

As a result of this, I was transported to Long Beach General's orthopedic unit and given a bed in a small individual glass enclosed cubical, where I stayed for over 2 months, until I was thrown out for throwing a fire extinguisher through a glass partition.

(part 133) THE WOLF: NOT THE PREY

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The hours turned into days, and weeks into months. There was nothing to do in the hospital but think about my troubles and take drugs. The routine was killer. No therapy, and no change to speak of, just a repetitious circle to nowhere.

I became the victim of my own warped perspective on what it all meant. One would have thought that someone busted up for the reasons I was, would have been a star candidate for psychiatric consideration.

Why was I still alive? I didn't know. When I'd started, back in 1963 and 64, it all made so much sense. I had a plan then--write songs, make records, become a star, and everything would be wonderful.

It was a far cry from that now, nothing made any sense. My feelings of failure and resentment were like quicksand, and no matter how I struggled, I could not free myself from sinking into the abyss of my own self pity.

I learned over time, that by redirecting my feelings of depression into anger, I could focus the destructive energy outward, as opposed to a self debilitating inward beating of myself.

Suicidal thoughts became aggressive thoughts. Aim it at them, I thought, instead of at me. Kind of like turning the gun on someone else rather than holding it to my own head. Although this was truly screwed up thinking, it did allow me to cope with my own demons.

I was suffering on many levels. Isolation, no security of any kind, feelings of failure, a damaged body and mind, and an overall sense of futility. This acute and chronic state of demoralization was lethal. I knew instinctively it had to be checked in some way, so anger became my ever present and increasingly important ally.

The main thrust of this particular form of personal psychology was my rock bottom belief that I had been used and then discarded by numerous persons in the music business, as well as the business itself.

My daily consumption of drugs and alcohol had only served to magnify these feelings and beliefs over time, and had finally led, unfortunately, to my destructive and bizarre behavior. Had I ever been clean and sober during these times, which I never was, possibly things would have been different, if only to have been less destructive.

Reality for me during those years was that drugs and alcohol were my only friends, and I was completely dependent on them for everything. It is clear to me now that my personality simply protected the practice of using, without ever acknowledging, that using was the main cause of most of my problems.

This kind of blindness had finally led me to more permanent forms of personal damage that would remain with me, to some degree, for the rest of my life.

* * *

As a kid, the first time I ever remember drinking was after parties my parents had the night before. My brother Bill and I would get up in the morning and go find unfinished drinks and sample them. We acquired a taste for this early on and always looked forward to those parties.

As the years went by, we learned how to get in to my stepfather's locked liquor cabinet, without a key, and we'd steal booze from various bottles refilling them with a little water.

I found too, that the buzz I got from drinking allowed me to shed my inhibitions when singing. This knowledge, once gained, served me for years, until it finally turned on me and began taking a toll.

But in earlier times, drinking beer on the weekends was just part of growing up in America. It was the social grease that many a young zit-faced teenager used to get past his own awkwardness and self doubt, particularly with girls.

Every guy I knew wanted to get laid, but the trouble was that those same guys always came face to face with their nerves. Once we learned about alcohol, we were all destined, to some degree, to rely on it for getting over the humps.

Growing up in Tucson, in the 50's, I learned that knowing how to fight, and being popular with girls, were the two most important things in life, and that where there was doubt, a little alcohol would fix it.

* * *

I stared at my feet, wondering why my problems with the music business always ended up with me getting hurt, or nearly killed, by my own actions. "Why didn't I take it out on them instead of me?" I thought. "These pricks deserve to be fucked with, I fucked me up enough."

My crazy thinking went a lot deeper than I knew at the time, and was singularly the basis for a critical change inside me. At the deepest levels, I decided in an instant, to cease being the prey, and from then on to be the wolf.

(part 132) BACK IN 57

I awoke from my morphine dreams to the sounds of the hospital. I looked down at my legs and casts thinking, "Man, I sure fucked myself up this time." The dull throbbing pain was still hammering away as I tried to figure out my life.

There was so much damage at this point, that I wondered if I wasn't just totally nuts. The past nine or ten years hadn't gone too good, I thought, as I tried moving my feet inside the casts.

No such luck. They were frozen there like two chunks of ice. I stared down at them for a long time, wondering how long I'd be like this. After a while I drifted away, back into the softness of the morphine.

* * *

When I was a kid, back in 1957, in Tucson, AZ, I stood in front of the bathroom mirror, combing my hair into various styles trying to get it just right, so I looked like a rock-n-roll star. With a cigarette dangling from my lips, I was suddenly startled by the sound of knocking on the door.

"What are you doing in there Bobby?" came my mother's voice, "You've been in there for 30 minutes. You better not be smoking in there," she warned. I knocked off the burning tip of the cigarette into the toilet and flushed it. "I'm not smoking," I lied, "I'm just going to the bathroom."

"Well hurry up, for God's sake. Let somebody else have a turn." I wildly waved a towel at the open window trying to make the smoke go out, saying, "OK, Ok, I'm coming." I reluctantly opened the door and exited the bathroom, hoping my mother wasn't going to run a smell test for smoke.

I headed for my bedroom and the record player, choosing a Presley tune called "Baby Let's Play House." As the music filled my room I was swept up in the driving rhythm and started moving like Elvis, I hoped, losing myself in my dreams.

* * *

After a day or so, my mother, one of my brothers, and Carol Paulus, came to the hospital. I wasn't all that glad to see them because of the circumstances, but it stayed pretty low key. I attempted to explain the various points of damage to my body as they stared at my legs and the casts.

"God it looks so bad," said my mother, "I didn't know it was this bad." "Yeah, I guess I really screwed myself up," I said, but I was lucky on two counts.

Number one, the roof had a little give to it, so I wasn't permanently crippled or killed, and two, I was operated on by a visiting orthopedic surgeon who happened to be at USC, and chose to take on my case for future publication in a medical journal. They seemed pleased with this information. We visited a little more, until I drifted off again.

* * *

Like I said, back in 57, I hoped I moved like Elvis, because my brother Bill and I were going to perform at Cal Rubin's Furniture City on Speedway Blvd. in Tucson that evening. We'd been doing that each week for a while now, ever since we'd won a talent search they'd sponsored.

We were The Macdonald Brothers then, and tried to look and act like The Everly Brothers. We had matching black Harmony guitars and shirts, and we knew some good songs, Be Bop A LuLa, by Gene Vincent, being one of my favorites.

Along with well known songs by everybody else, we'd stick in one of our own too, just to see how it went over. Back then, for a couple of hours a week, we were real rock-n-roll performers.


* * *

If it weren't for the morphine they were giving me in the hospital every few hours, I would have gone into withdrawl from all the other drugs and booze I'd been using. The constant dose of the pain killer, though, saved me from that particular ordeal.

The fact that I'd managed to survive two comas, and a bone crushing fall, in a matter of months, was somewhat of a miracle in and of itself, and would have caused most people to celebrate it as such. But inside my head was not like the inside of somebody else's head. This was my mind, and it was broken.

There was no deep realization that I'd been spared for something better, or that my guardian angel had saved my life three times in a row. In my mind, this was just some more of the same weird shit that always happened to me.

If anything, I viewed my circumstances as par for the course, and had no plans to change a thing. I vowed to myself in that hospital, that I'd keep going, and with a vengeance.

(PART 131) PAIN

I was taken to L.A. County Hospital by two girls from the building, and the big guy who had carried me out of my room. After they got me to emergency, and said their goodbyes, I was placed on a steel gurney and rolled into a crowded corridor, where I stayed for over five hours without any treatment whatsoever.

There I squirmed in pain, hour after hour, periodically breaking down in tears. At times, I could overhear the nurses talking to each other, saying, "He's just a drug addict trying to get pills, there's nothing wrong with him, he's just fakin' it."

I tried repeatedly to catch someone passing by who would help me, but without success. When I couldn't tolerate the pain any longer, I broke down and sobbed openly, begging for help. Finally an orthopedic surgeon was summoned after five hours.

As he began examining my feet and ankle, he became incensed over what he saw. He angrily demanded an explanation from the staff as to why no one had understood the seriousness of the problem. "Doesn't anyone here have eyes?" he demanded. "Did anyone even bother to examine this patient?"

The doctor ordered the same nurses, who had done nothing, to now prepare me for immediate surgery. "Get him ready now!" he yelled. This was a welcome relief to me in the state I was in by then.

As well as the swelling and discoloration of my feet and ankle, the doctor was extremely worried that infection had set in. Also of concern was possible blood vessel injury and nerve damage.

I had been there for hours and nothing had been done, but now I was the center of attention as the doctor continued yelling orders at the now remarkably attentive staff.

As the full scale rush to get me into surgery ramped up, I began feeling the effects of the various medications being fed into my body intravenously. I remember now the sense of relief I felt at the time, as I slowly drifted into unconsciousness on that gurney.

When I woke, hours later, the pain in both my feet and left ankle were singularly the worst pain I have ever felt in my life. As soon as I was able, I pleaded for something to ease the pain, but was told I had to wait until the effects of the anesthesia wore off.

Not too much later, an orthopedic surgeon came by to talk to me about the surgery and damage. He told me my ankle had been crushed, and all the bones in both feet were broken to some degree.

As a result of the massive impact on my body, I also had fractures to my lower vertebrae. He explained that the damage to my ankle was known as a paratrooper break, named for ankle fractures sustained by paratroopers during the second world war. Simply put, my ankle joint had disappeared.

He was still concerned about infection, such as sepsis, and gas gangrene being a problem, as well as nerve, ligament, and muscle damage. I had a cast that ran from the bottom of my left foot all the way up to my left hip, and a cast that ran from the bottom of my right foot all the way up to my right knee.

I would remain in those casts for six months or more, and in bed for nearly that long. As I listened to him going through the litany of destruction to my body, I stopped him saying, "Can't you get them to give me something for this pain, Doc, I can hardly stand it." He paused there and looked at me saying,"You know you've got other problems as well, my friend, that's how this happened in the first place."

"I wasn't trying to kill myself man, really, I thought I could make it," I said. "It was just a lot higher than it looked after being up so high before." "I didn't mean to imply that you were trying to kill yourself," he answered, "but I think the fact that you were up there at all is a pretty clear sign that something is wrong."

"Yeah," I replied. "just about everything in my life is wrong at this point. Just about every single thing I can think of." "What exactly does that mean?" he asked. "Well, I been in the music business for a lot of years, ya know and...," "Yes I heard you were a musician," he said.

"Yeah, well I never got paid for the stuff I did and it makes me crazy, and then I get loaded and...," He gently interrupted me saying, "I think I get the picture, Bobby. You get worked up over what's happened to you and it gets out of control at some point, like yesterday." "Yeah! Exactly! Just like yesterday, it got outta control. It just got completely outta control....."

"Well look," he said. "I'll make sure the nurse gives you something for the pain as soon as we can safely do that. You try to think up some better ways of showing the world you're dissatisfied with it, will you?"

"Yeah, OK Doc, I'll think up safer ways to be pissed off." "There you go," he said smiling, and turned and walked off through the ward. Later, a nurse came by with a shot of morphine, and I soon drifted off to another place....