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| Outwater Plastics |
Just why we kidnapped Frank Quackenbush that day in 1975 I don't think
any of us know even all these years later.
Perhaps Jimmy suggested it. Or we have since talked ourselves into
believing Jimmy did.
At first – when we were all sitting in Louis’ living room at 86 Passaic
Street concocting the plan to dump him in the middle of the Tappan Zee Bridge
and leave him there – Frank thought we were kidding.
None of us were if he could make it back on his own and we bet against
each other as to whether he could or not
Had Frank thought we were serious he would never have gotten into the
van with us.
He didn’t figure it out until a few blocks later at which time he
started to complain, and a few blocks after that when we reached Clifton, he
begged us to stop, and finally, he simply started to moan.
We would have done it, too, had not the inevitable question arisen as
to who was going to pay for gas and tolls, at which point we turned and went
back to Passaic to get high.
This was a period of time I still envy when Garrick, Jimmy, and Lewis
had built an impromptu artist community in an apartment complex owned by Garrick’s
aunt. Louis, a photographer, and his girlfriend Jewell were still in school.
Louis and Garrick were supplementing their income by making jewelry in some
sweat shop in Hawthorne. Jimmy was both artist and musician. I figured they
needed a writer like me to make a full set. But Jimmy, me and Garrick in a very
small space did not mix well, and I eventually made my way uptown to what Jimmy
later called “the fancy apartment,” and when I went broke there, I moved back
to the rooming house in Montclair.
Jimmy had moved into Passaic after leaving Pine Street (late 1974 or
early 1975) at a time when red vans were all the rage in the Garley Gang.
Louis had one, which he used as a roadie for the band.
I drove a red van starting in June 1974 when I left the card company
for the cosmetic warehouse.
Jimmy actually got a job driving a red van for Outwater Plastics on River
Drive in Garfield in early 1975.
Sometimes, Jimmy and I would pass each other on the road. We kept
telling each other we should meet up on the road somewhere, but never did.
Jimmy got obsessed with finding the headquarters of 84 Lumber company whose
signs he kept seeing everywhere along the road. He never did find it. I found
one of its New Jersey facilities much later during a trip to Cape May and kept
meaning to tell him, and regretfully never did that either.
Garrick moved out of the apartment with Jimmy in the place Louis previously
lived in, briefly living in 84 Passaic Street before moving onto a larger
apartment at 82, while Jimmy moved into 84, and some Latino family took over 86.
When Jimmy lost his job with Outwater and could not pay his rent for a
year, Garrick’s aunt evicted him. He moved back to his father’s house in West
Paterson and lasted there until his father told him he had to get a job – after
which he came to Passaic again, and lived in Garrick’s attic. I moved into 84
Passaic Street on March 1, 1978
By that time, Jimmy and Garrick already planning moves of their own.
(Jimmy would later return briefly in 1984-85 but it wasn’t the same. I had lost
my job as driver and by that time, all three red vans were consigned to
history.
I don’t know why this means so much to me or why I felt such joy waving
to Jimmy when I saw him on the Parkway, he coming while I was going, and yet
both of us caught up in some strange magic – he would later call synchronicity –
one of those silly coincidences that make life interesting.
And to this day, I wonder if Frank would have made back from the Tappan
Zee Bridge had we had the money for gas to get him there.
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