draft seven

 Of course I believe in everything Einstein is quoted as saying, and I don't really disagree with what Beagles is saying inasmuch as I don't understand what he is saying.  If Old Dog revs up the engine on the old widow maker he is speeding up.  Myself, standing at that bend in the road could break into a run and I would be speeding up.  But time itself never speeds up anymore than that spot in the road where Beagles is standing to observe ever speeds up.  Once again speed = distance/over time.  You cannot apply the term to time anymore than you can apply it to distance.

But maybe this is what Beagles is thinking.  Old Dog is wearing the gold watch they gave him for his many faithful years at Kinko's, and Beagles is wearing the one he got from the paper mill.  Everything seems perfectly normal to both as Old Dog roars down the road.  If they look at their watches they are going at just the right speed.  But if either one had a telescope and could look at the watch of the other it would appear to be moving slower than their own watch (because they are in motion relative to each other).  If Old Dog slows down, or if Beagles starts to run up the road, then they will notice that the other guy's watch is moving a little faster than it was relative to their own, though it will still be slower than their own.  If they both come to a complete stop then their watches will appear to the two of them to be moving at the same speed.

That's all I have this morning.  But I am appalled by how little I know about the speed of sound.   Maybe I will look that up over the weekend, but most likely not because I almost never look anything up over the weekend.

Here is that draft thing.  Old Dog is off the interweb and Beagles doesn't appear to be reading it, but I guess I will keep putting it up until the end.  You know like the cowpoke who thought the cuspidor was a water pitcher and drank it all down.  His buddy, Clem, asked him why, when he discovered it was not cold clear water, he kept drinking it, and he replied, "It was all one strand." 

 

 As I've said even though Marlene had moved me out to make room in her bed for Bob the three of us remained friends.  I'd often drop by the house on Benvenue (Have I told you that it was next door to the house where Patty Hearst got snatched?  It was), around suppertime.  Marlene had some kind of job, with the University I think.  I used to sell the Berkeley Barb on the weekends which some of the money I'd give for rent and the rest would last me more or less the rest of the week.  Bob had had a job when I first arrived, but he'd quit by now.  So he decided to become a drug dealer.

He'd been approached by a young guy on Telegraph Avenue, who wanted him to get him some dope.  Bob had a big supply of something currently popular in the area called Hog, no idea why it was called that, no idea what it was.  It fell into the category of all day drugs such as LSD, psylocibin, peyote, STP.  Sometimes it was called one, sometimes it was another. Sometimes it was organic, Man, sometimes it was lab-made, Man.  Sometimes it was 20 mikes (mgs), sometimes it was 20,000. Sometimes it was orange barrels, sometimes it was purple tabs, it came in all shapes and colors and the only clue as to what it was was what the seller told you it was, and he only knew what the guy who sold it to him told him it was. But it generally did last all day, so everybody was happy.

So Bob was going to sell this guy some Hog, and you know, use that profit to buy more, and maybe the guy would tell his friends, and maybe Bob could broaden his line and add some orange barrels and purple tabs, you know, make a go of this thing.

But it turned out the guy didn't want Hog.  He wanted pot.  This was a bit of a problem, Bob only had his personal stash.  If he sold that he'd have to go right out and buy some more, and he wouldn't be making all that much money.  But you know when you're new in a business you have to make sacrifices, do things that are inconvenient.

We were all three of us sitting around in Marlene's bedroom before Bob was to go out to make his sale.  He was a little nervous.  Suddenly he dashed out to the bathroom and shaved.  "Just want to look good in my mug shot," he joked.

Bob was a jokester.  That was why, after he had been gone too long, and then the phone rang and he said he was in jail, Marlene didn't believe him.  Wait, I had an idea.  A month ago, when I had been phoning from the jail I noticed someone had written something peculiar on the wall behind the phone, what was it.  Bob knew exactly what it was.  Marlene went to the bank to get the bail money again.

What happened was Bob was supposed to meet the guy at this corner.  He had the pot in a baggie in his jacket pocket, and he had his hand on the baggie.  If anything happened, and most surely it wouldn't, he could just ditch the baggie into some nearby bush.  No possession, no foul.  They couldn't do anything to him. 

But the guy wasn't there.  He loitered a little but the guy still wasn't there.  There was this car though cruising along, and it had these six big guys in it, none of them looked like hippies.  But he had his hand on the bag, his eye on the bush.

"Hey you!" one of the guys yelled jumping out of the car and pointing at Bob.  Bob's hands shot straight up into the air.  The baggie remained in his pocket.

The guy, the customer, turned out to be some high school kid.  The cops had busted him and decided to use him to fish for somebody higher on the food chain.  Not that Bob was that much higher on the food chain.  I don't know why they didn't use him to fish up.  Maybe they got bored.  His folks were kind of well off and I expect they got him a good lawyer, that's more likely why they didn't fish up.

In the end he paid a fine, did no time, and it was a factor, when examining his total record, in getting him out of the draft.