When Stop the World opened in Paterson, kids gravitated to it from all
the surrounding towns. It was as if a piece of Greenwich Village or
Haight-Ashbury had fallen in the midst of New Jersey's most middle-class world,
settling into the ghetto where kids could come and see it for themselves.
It was literally honey that drew flies.
There were two places to buy dope in those days; Paterson was one of
them and New York was the other; neither place was safe.
Jimmy in his whole history rarely took a chance by buying dope from
people he didn't know.
During one trip to Paterson, however, back in 1968 may have been that
only time.
He kept telling me how he scored a nickel bag outside the “Stop the World”
head shop and then went up to the newly opened parking deck behind Grants and
Woolworths where he smoked it.
I don't think you could actually
buy any dope in “Stop the World” at least Frank never got anything there when
we went. But the fact you could buy rolling papers and pipes, drew dealers and
put together those dealers with kids from the suburbs.
Just who it is who did the bulk
buying that supplied LSD, marijuana and other drugs to Jimmy, Bob and the
others I still don't know
But there were a number of risk-takers in the fringes of the Garley
gang who made the trek to Paterson and back or went to New York City where
there were always opportunities to buy in bulk.
There was generally no shortage
of drugs in West Paterson and Little Falls. But there were dry spells, times
when the people could not find what they wanted, and Jimmy and others had to
scramble to find alternative sources.
Many of our more memorable Journeys through the hinterland involved
searching out people who knew people who had pot.
I always suspected that Jimmy
use the band as a cover to have access to pot and that it was half the reason,
he kept going back to the music scene even when he's vowed to give it up.
For a time after the band split into two segments. John Ritchie, the
guitarist, became Jimmy's principal source, someone accommodating enough to
allow Jimmy to pay for the pot with paintings.
Patty the girlfriend of the sound man at that time also became one of
his chief dealers and since she relied likely on the sound man to deal with the
criminal element on the street their breakup forced Jimmy to scramble to find
another regular source.
Most of the dealers Jimmy dealt with in the 1970s and 1980s lived on
the fringes of Paterson, people willing to deal with the more dangerous element
Jimmy and the other middle-class kids like him would not.
There were always several degrees of separation between them and the
forces that prowled the underworld and even at his most desperate Jimmy never
made that trip.
While some Garfield would come
over to buy drugs from 3rd street in Passaic while we live there, Jimmy never
went there and always sought out safer sources further in the suburbs.
A huge part of our relationship during the 1970s was motivated by the
search for pot. if Jimmy heard even a
whisper that someone had pot, he called up me or Frank to transport him to that
place.
There were occasions when Frank mentioned someone might have pot and
Jimmy forced Frank to go to that person. This was particularly true with a barmaid
from Kimberly’s bar who suddenly found Frank and Jimmy at her door at 3 a.m.
Even later when Timmy moved to Lake Hopatcong, he relied on sources
closer to Paterson and sometimes had me or Frank pick up a delivery and bring
it to him.
By the 1990s one or more of these dealers had moved closer to him and
he no longer needed us as transport.
And to my knowledge these same dealers supplied him all the way to the
end of his life. It was the kind of Nirvana that allowed him to rarely have to
leave his trailer or even interact with anybody except most remotely through
the internet or by phone.
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