SATO!

It was hot the night everything changed, I was asleep with Father.  I was dreaming we were on the mainland and Mother was there and she looked radiant amidst the cherry blossoms we had come to see.  Dream Mother looked like Mother before she was sick.  Beautiful, with warm, loving eyes.  She put her hand on my cheek.  I tried to speak but no sound came out.  Then it was dark except for the moonlight coming through from the window in the big room.  Father's hand was on my mouth and his finger on his lips.  When he saw that I understood, he arose silently and motioned for me to get under the bed.  The bed frame was only six inches above the tatami, but I was small for five and easily slid underneath.  I was scared, but never doubted that Father would keep me safe. 

"What is going on?"  I wondered.  Before Father left the bedroom, he kneeled down and looked under the bed.  I knew he had read my thoughts.  My eyes had adjusted to the dim light and our faces were close enough for me to see the tiny flecks of black and grey stubble on his cheeks and head trying to catch up with his goatee.  He made no sound as he mouthed the name which had come to mean fear and inevitability in my home.  Sato!  And then father was gone.  I watched his feet as he walked catlike into the big room.  He slid the the bedroom door closed behind him.

There was silence.  Then there was chaos.  Two men grunting.  A vase breaking.  A voice not my Father's or Sato's pleading for mercy.  A sound like a bunch of celery breaking followed by a man screaming in pain, very loud.  The front door crashing open.  The screaming getting fainter. 

 Father came back.  His robe was torn.  His face was scratched and bleeding.  He held a gun in his hand which he did not have when he had left me.  He asked me if I was okay.  Before I could answer, we heard Sato shouting at his man outside.  "Is this a joke?!" Sato railed.  The man whimpered as Sato lit into him.  "A gaijin schoolteacher and his half-breed five-year-old  boy?!  Do I need to ask which one humiliated you?!" 

The whimpering man began to apologize to Sato.  I heard something like a firecracker and the man suddenly stopped whimpering.  He made no more sounds at all after that.  Sato spoke more quietly to his other men and neither I, nor Father, heard him.  But Father knew what he said.  I remember knowing that Father knew things he could not see or hear.  I could not comprehend adult deduction and did not think this was an ability shared by all adults.  I assumed it to be some type of special ability that Father, and maybe several other people in the world, shared.  

Despite this, I began to feel afraid, truly afraid, for the first time in my life.  "What if Father's magic fails this one time?   I could actually be harmed or killed," (unthinkable, before this moment).  That is what I was thinking  when I heard the footsteps of Sato and his men angrily approaching our house.

Father held my shoulders and looked deep into my eyes and told me, calmly and quietly, "Do exactly what I say."  My fear evaporated like ether.  Moments later, I barely remembered ever doubting him.  That is the truth.

When Sato smashed his fist on our front door, Father and I were already standing on the other side;  Father in his silk robe with Dragon on the back, and I, standing next to him, with pajama bottoms only.  No shirt.  It was hot.  Sato began shouting to Father, through the door.  "Michael-san!  Open the door."  Then, quieter, his face close to the wood, "Michael-san, let us in and I will be quick.  You will feel no pain.  I will care for the little one as if he were my own son.  He will grow to be a wealthy man and give honor to your worthless name."

Father swung the door open, catching Sato completely off-guard.  Sato had been leaning on the door and  almost fell into our house.  He caught himself and was shocked to see my father, unarmed and unafraid standing before him.  He was even more confounded to see me there, in the open, as fearless and unafraid as Father.

Father knelt down next to me and put his hand on my back.  I felt a surge of confidence.  At that time, I truly believed that Father was giving me some of his power, an action I was sure was forbidden by the alliance of gifted ones to which he belonged.  But this was truly a case of life and death, so they would have to make an exception, no?

Father and I exchanged a brief smile which we both maintained as we turned to look at the momentarily confused Sato and his men, all of whom carried guns of various types.  "Sato,"  My father began, "An honor.  You know my son, Daniel."

What happened next happened in no more than a second.  But time slowed to a crawl for me.  Father slid his hand down my back and pulled the pistol out of the waistband of my pajamas.  He stood up and pointed the gun at Sato's face.  I covered my ears, as Father had earlier instructed.  However, I ignored his other instructions.  To run away.  To not look.  I looked right at Sato's face and watched his eyes go round as a cow's with shock and fright for a millisecond, before his expression changed to that of a tiger about to spring.

Then Sato disappeared.  One moment, he was standing on my doorstep.  The next minute he was just...gone.

The boom was deafening.  My ears rang even though I had covered them.  I knew little of guns, "But, could a pistol be so loud?"  I wondered.  My whole body felt light it had gotten a gentle, yet firm push by some unseen hand.  "More of Father's magic, "  I remember thinking.  Had there been fire?  There was a cloud of grey smoke where Sato had been, yet Father's gun (which he still held out as if Sato were still there) did not have any smoke coming from its barrel.  With his outstretched hand on the pistol grip, Father drew the gun closer and stared at it with disbelief.  He held the barrel in his other hand.  He said one word, "Cold."

Father, bewildered,  looked up at Sato's men, standing outside the doorway.  There were two.  Neither man pointed a weapon at Father.  A third man appeared from the left.  He wore a shotgun strapped to his shoulder, pointing down.  Smoke wafted out of the barrel like exhaust from a tailpipe on a not-to-cold day.  The man who killed Sato, one of Sato's own lieutenants,   entered our house and approached Father.  The man looked down at the pistol which Father still held in his hands.  "May I please have it?" the man said.  "It was my brother's."  Father did not hesitate, offering a slight bow of his head as he handed the pistol to the man who killed Sato.  The man pulled his own handgun from a holster on his hip.  He tossed it into the air a few inches and caught so that the handgrip faced away from him.  He offered it to my father.  "Please accept this gun," The man said as he bowed a bit deeper than my father had.  "and forgive my brother's trespasses.  He was a good horse being ridden by a ruthless driver and suffered greatly for it."  Though Father knew the customs of our country, sometimes he would look to me for guidance, even I was so young.  Father glanced at me and I gave him a barely perceptible, emphatic nod.  Father took the gun and thanked the man and told the man that he and I would honor the memory of his brother, forever.  He went on to tell the man who killed Sato that he would retell the story of this day to me, often, and instruct me to do the same with my children and so-on generation after generation.  The man and his brother would be remembered as heroes to all who bore my Father's name.

The man stoically held back tears as he gave a very low bow and said something that only Father could hear and which Father never shared with me.  Then the man left.  Father closed the door behind the Man Who Killed Sato.  I remember that I started to walk to the window.  I wanted to watch them take away Sato's body, which I still had not seen.  Father placed a hand on my shoulder and I stopped in my tracks. I looked up at his kind, green eyes and he shook his head.  Sometimes, he gave me advice, too.

The next morning, everything had changed.  All of the villagers, and I mean every single one, not only treated father as an equal, but as an elder statesmen, though he was not yet forty-years-old.  Not a single old woman spoke ill of my dead mother like they did every day of my life, up until then.  No children laughed when Father erred when speaking Japanese.  They would take him aside and politely correct him, before bowing and walking away, respectfully.  It was like Father turned Japanese that day.  So did I.  Though at a distance, any Japanese stranger would assume I was pure Japanese, as I possess none of my father's Western traits, except for the color of our eyes, I had always been called "Mongrel, " by children as well as adults. 

 Let me be clear about this mistreatment.  This harassment was not a regular occurrence, it was constant.  I cannot remember a single day that neither Father nor I was insulted, verbally.  At Mother's funeral, a priest muttered something under his breath, which Father heard and did share with me, though I will not share it with you. 

But all of that was before The Night The Man Killed Sato on Michael-san's Doorstep.  Every Friday, from that day forward, one of Sato's men would come to Father's school, the school Father and Mother had built, themselves for children with various differences who were once shunned by villagers, often their own parents.  The man would "demand" the school's weekly "tax", the very "tax" which Father had repeatedly refused to pay Sato and his men which led to the events of The Night Everything Changed.  Only this time, Father paid.  

He made a big show of giving Sato's man the envelope, bowing low.  Sato's man would take the envelope and wag a threatening finger at Father who appeared frightened, then relieved, as the man exited with the envelope.  The children in the classroom mirrored Father's emotions, until the man left.  Then they all smiled as if they had been watching a play - which they were.  The envelopes were empty, of course.

And the children would plead for the story and Father would "refuse" several times before relenting.  We must have heard that story hundreds of times.  I never grew tired of it.  Neither does my five-year-old girl who requests it far more often than once-a-week.

Father is nearly 80, but in good health.  He lives in Santa Monica and does Tai Chi at Dorothy Green Park, nearly every day.  I know he is grateful that the universe spared him the burden of killing Sato himself.  I have asked him many times if he would have fired a bullet into Sato's head, had fate not intervened.  His answer is always the same.  Silence. 

LAWRENCE 1989

LAWRENCE
April of 1989.  I was living in Lawrence, Massachusetts, an old mill town on the banks of the Merrimac River.  In 1989, Lawrence was a poor, working-class city on the decline.  The city's claim to fame that year was having the distinction of being the car theft capital of the United States.  An average of ten cars per day were stolen from its seven square miles that year (that figure has since been reduced to less than one per day at the time of this writing.  Kudos, Lawrence!).

Like many of my friends, I had grown up on the other side of the tracks in well-healed Andover  (I am not using hyperbole, here.  There actually were railroad tracks separating the two municipalities.).   But could not afford to live in the town we grew up in.  Ours was to be the first generation of Americans with less buying power than their parents since those who weathered the great depression (not this one;  the first one, with all those sad-faced old men wearing floppy hats).  I lived in one of the most notorious drug-riddled neighborhoods in what was already an infamous city.  This worked out well for me because in 1989, I was pretty drug-riddled myself.

I lived with Helen, my girlfriend and most recent hostage.  I met her in Albany, Georgia and moved her up to Mass to live with me.  That story is a whole 'nuther Oprah which I won't get into at this time.  All you need to know is that we lived with her two dogs, a cool-as-shit Cockapoo Terrier named "Pepper" and an always bossy, sometimes vicious  little, white, alpha female Pekingese named Princess Bojangles something or other.  We called her "Bobo" or just "Bo".  One time, Helen was taking both dogs for a walk and Pepper and Bo started rough-housing, a term I rarely get to use, when  one of Bo's eyes popped out.  I shit you not.  Helen freaked the fuck out as one does when these things happen.  She wrapped Bo in her jacket and ran home with Pepper trailing behind, gleefully wagging both tail and tongue as she got to experience the almost unheard of treat of a run right in the middle of what started off as a scent-filled, but otherwise unremarkable walk.  When Helen got home, she called the vet who told her (I am NOT making this up!) "This is not uncommon with the breed and is no cause for alarm."  It should be pointed out at this time that throughout the ordeal Bo did not seem to be in any pain and seemed like a perfectly normal, smash-faced, tear-stained Pekingese...except for the FUCKING EYEBALL hanging out of its socket by whatever gore errant eyeballs hang by.

The vet told Helen to stay calm and  to bring Bo in, both of which Helen did.  The vet cleaned Bo's eye with saline and popped it back in her squished, little face.  Bo didn't even flinch.  She just sat there panting adorably with her little curled tongue like Peeks do when you fall in love with them at the store and decide you are going to buy them, before you find out that not only can they be vicious, but they also are apparently prone to losing the occasional eye.  The next couple of times Bo's eye fell out, Helen put it back in herself.  I am certain I am the first person to have ever typed that sentence.  Anyway, not long after that, Bo started listing to her left when she walked.  She was an older dog and the Vet said she had a problem with her equilibrium associated with dogs her age.  He assured Helen and I that this was not uncommon with the breed and I decided to love Bo in her waning years and, going forward,  not go out with any more girls with Pekingeses.  One positive side effect of her equilibrium condition was that Bo had what can only be described as a second puppyhood.  She went from being a real cunt of a dog to a little love muffin.  Go figure.

I bartended and Helen cocktailed at a local Italian restaurant called the Cedar Crest, a holdover from Lawrence's slightly more upscale past.  This was family style dining, what my parents call, "Soup to nuts".  You got soup, salad, an entree and dessert for a reasonable price and you got so much food, there was always a "doggy bag" to take home.  The Cedar Crest's doggy bags pictured an actual doggy which passed for clever in Lawrence in 1989.

We drank.  A lot.  I had built up a fully stocked liquor cabinet at home, which I told myself was for company.  Never mind that in four years, Helen and I never had a single house guest.  The place was a small one bedroom and a mess.  We never vacuumed that apartment.  Not once.  And remember, we had two dogs.  I'm not bragging.  I'm just saying....

We "pahtied" as we say in Mass.  We drank, did coke and 'shrooms.  We smoked what seemed like good weed at the time.  One day I decided to grow my own weed.  I bought a device I saw advertised in High Times called a Phototron, and converted a walk-in closet into a grow-room.  The Phototron looked like an escape pod from a spaceship.  I bought seeds from Holland and grew some sick Afghan that no one in Lawrence, Mass had ever seen.  Then one day the Phototron broke.  No warning.  It just shit the bed.  My plants died and I was on to the next adventure.

The neighborhood was shady on a good day and dangerous on bad days.  I used to buy coke from a Dominican guy through the chain-link fence that separated my backyard from the alley.  This alley divided my street and Bradford Street.  Bradford Street was only two blocks long and was to the cocaine-buying public for miles around what Lawrence itself was to the world of auto theft.  The Lawrence Police, many of whom frequented the Cedar Crest and new me by name,  did the occasional sweep, but generally tended to look the other way so long as there was no violence.  Rich kids who still lived in Andover would come to Bradford Street to pay top-dollar for our shitty, stepped-on product (Lawrence, while noted for the quantity of drugs sold, did not have the same reputation for quality, at least as far as cocaine was concerned.)

I had a bit of an issue with cocaine in the eighties.  Not like Charlie Sheen or anything.  But I definately had a problem.   While the quantities I consumed were quite small by even partying (paaaahtying) standards, the effect was Mr. Hydian.  Ask my friends.  It only happened one hundred percent of the time I used cocaine.  Anyway, I got ripped off once - which is like saying, "I got a shitty prize in a Crackerjack box, once." or "This girl I was dating turned out to have daddy issues once." or "I had a bad meal at Sbarro's once."  OK.  I might have overshot the mark with that one, but you get the general idea.  "I got ripped off."  Not that unusual in the drug trade.  "I got ripped off on Bradford Street in Lawrence by a shady, Dominican, street dealer."  That would be slightly more unusual.  "I got ripped off on Bradford Street in Lawrence by a shady, Dominican, street dealer who knew me well and who I would have had a hard time picking out of a line-up if it wasn't for the COON SKIN CAP he was sporting on his little tweaker head."...that is a bit odd.  No, that was not a typo.  I got ripped off by a scrawny, sucked-up, Dominican with a coon-skin cap.  He looked like he was straight out of the Kentucky hills if the Kentucky hills had Dominicans.  I need to point out hear that the VAST majority of Dominicans are hard-working, delightful, life-loving people who like many of the same things I do:  Baseball, sex, beer, Santana, overtime pay and for some, the ability to produce the most realistic exotic bird-calls I have ever heard.  But this guy who ripped me off...I don't know what world he came from.  Why would anyone steal from a dude my size who lived in the neighborhood? I had just finished four years in the Marine Corps, and though I did not see combat, I was in the most amazing shape of my life.  I looked pretty fucking intimidating.  How did he expect me to react?  Like some rich kid from the 'burbs (which i had been, years before)?  Did he think I wouldn't know it was fake?  (he sold me a gram of salt, but I'll get to that fiasco a bit later)  Did he think I would not recognize a guy who looked like he was the sole Latino performer in Dachau's production of "Davey Crocket"?  I walk home.  I had climbed the fence this time.  Sometimes, I walked around the block rather than navigate the barbed wire at the top of the fence, but I did not want to attract attention.  Oh.  I almost forgot.  Did I mention that I was in my underwear?  It was hella-hot that Summer.  Like ninety degrees with real high humidity and this was at night.  So, like I was saying, I didn't want to attract attention AFTER buying cocaine from an emaciated Dominican in a coon-skin cap at three in the morning while I was in my underwear, so I hit the fence and avoided the street.

I got to my apartment, my heart pounding.  Cocaine always began to take effect on me before I ingested it, so the change had already begun.  I looked and felt quite mad and wild-eyed when I did a key bump which I KNEW was suspect but snorted it anyway.  The only difference between this cocaine rip-off and countless other cocaine rip-offs was that I did not feel the need to do a second bump "just to be sure".  I knew exactly what it was.  For the experimenter out there, I will say this once:  Do not snort salt.  I put on pants, grabbed a steak knife from the butcher-block knife set in the kitchen, noticing and annoyed that Helen had left my favorite Henkel chef's knife in the fucking sink.  Again.  I made a mental note to harangue her for this next we spoke which I hoped was not tonight  (Helen usually slept through my late-night adventures, thank the lord).  Where was I?  Right.  I take the street this time, purposefully semi-circumnavigating the block.  Coon-skin cap guy is on the corner and has just handed two guys in a '76 Chevy Malibu Classic a bag of shitty coke if they were lucky,  Morton's iodized if they were not.  He has his back to me.  I keep the knife in my pocket.  It never comes out.  I think I forgot it was there.  I was enraged and I am not one of those guys who goes there, into rage, I mean.  I know guys like that.  The kind of guy that beats someone unconscious and keeps beating them, then comes out of a rage blackout in jail.  I was in control.  I grabbed the guy just above his right elbow, digging my fingers and thumb into what little meat he had on his arm.  I had had this technique used on my by Military Police, one time.  It works well, so my friend was only going where I led him.  For those of you who haven't been arrested or kicked out of a club, this escorting technique is standard and very effective.  No fancy, kung fu shit.  Just showing an undesirable the door or cell or whatever.  I calmed down at this point a little.  I was still pissed, but I had my guy and I had a plan.  I knew how this was going to turn out as I launched into my halfway decent high school Spanish.  "Donde esta tu jefe?".  I only had to say it twice.  He pointed to one of the three-deckers and put up no resistance as I walked him in and up the stairs.  I hurried him a bit so he stumbled once or twice and begged in English for me to "Calm down, man!  It's OK!"

We got to the apartment.  I pounded on the door with my left hand and held Coon-Skin tight with my right.  A moment later, the door opened slightly, the chain still attached, and a man appeared.  He seemed to be a very reasonable, sober-looking, slightly concerned, somewhat scared Dominican guy with his own steak knife in his hand.  No Uzi.  No Glock.  Not even a switchblade.  Like I said, the cops left this block alone so long as there was no violence.  I never heard a helicopter overhead like I do here in Venice every other weekend.  I never heard gunfire like I've heard more than a few times hear in LA.  I don't know if it was the neighborhood, the people, the moment in time, but I have never seen a place so riddled drugs have virtually no gunplay.  As I stood there in the hallway, outside that door, still kept almost closed by the flimsiest of chains (no Pitbull with a spiked collar, salivating at the thought of tearing into me), I realized I was looking at a family man running a small business whose biggest problem was street level dealers who were users themselves.  He opened the door and asked me to let his man inside, which I did.  He asked me to wait in the hall, which I also did.  He closed the door and disappeared into the apartment.  I heard yelling inside.  I was very calm at this point, as if I was returning an item at Home Depot and the refund was already being processed.  A minute later, the same man appeared.  He came into the hallway.  He apologized for his employee and assured me he would be dealt with.  He told me his name was Reinaldo.  "I know you."  He says in English.  "You live in the grey house.  I see you at the fence."  His tone was unmistakable.  He was not making some veiled threat.  This was clearly a genuine, neighborly gesture.  I realized that Reinaldo was often the man handing me a bag through the fence during daylight hours while his wife worked and his kids were in school.  He handed me an eight ball of uncut...far less cut, anyway.  Regardless, it looked beautiful and sparkly.  It was one, scintillating chunk of future misery.  The only improvement was that my nose felt way better after it was gone than with the usual shit I got.  He told me to buy only from him from now on.  At the fence, please.  Not his home.  We shook hands as friends.  I looked after him as he entered the apartment and felt like a jerk when I saw his worried wife through the open doorway, the moment before it closed.  I remember thinking it felt like I had just gone to court and gotten a favorable ruling.

After that, I usually bought from Reinaldo at the fence during the day.  He gave me free bags from time to time and we always talked about family before we parted.  A few months later, when I started scalping tickets and making some real cash, Helen and I would buy new stuff.  Sofa, dinette set.  I always gave Reinaldo the old stuff.  He was always grateful.  He knew someone who could use it.  But always through the fence.  I never met Reinaldo face to face again without being separated by galvanized squares.  But, Mr. Hyde has no clock, so I did not only buy cocaine during the day.  For me, "The Pull" would, more often than not, have its hooks in me at night or in the wee hours, so I bought off the street sometimes.  I never got ripped off on Bradford Street again.  One late night that same Summer, I was sneaking into my car in the driveway, trying not to wake Helen.  I was scouring the glove compartment for change.  I was nine dollars short of a half gram.  I kept the dome light off so as to avoid detection.  I was half in and half out of the passenger side door when I heard Reinaldo yell, "Hey!"  I stood up.  When he saw it was me, he smiled and said, "I think I see someone breaking in your car."  Ten cars a day stolen in Lawrence, and none of them were mine.  No one ever fucked with my shit after I met Reinaldo.  Remind me to tell you about "coon-skin cap part II".  The sequel is shorter, but wicked awesome.


THE WHO, THE GRATEFUL DEAD AND MY FIRST CAREER
Up until this time, I was a n'er do well, which sounds so much better that, "A chronic fuck-up".  I had my moments.  I served four years in the Marine Corps which seems like something a guy with his shit together would do, but that move was cosmetic, at best.   I joined on a dare at a time in my life when my heart was broken and I had been working for the past year for my Uncle Bob.  He was a tough taskmaster in those days so Marine Corps Boot Camp was a lateral move as far as stress was concerned.   I got in plenty of trouble during those four years.  I did drugs, tested positive on a piss test, got busted back to Private and often did the bare minimum required of me.  But it was peace time and I was a computer operator so no one got hurt.  I managed to leave with an honorable discharge.  It still looks good on a resume, but I was a slacker and a fuck up for much of my time in the service.  The military has their own term for this.  Shitbird.  I never even considered this to be an insult.

I was stationed in Okinawa during my last year with the Marines.  I had six months left on my contract and had turned things around enough that my superiors actually wanted me to consider re-enlisting.  The Company Commander, himself,  called me into his office (for you civilians, having a full-bird Colonel call you in his office would be like having a Cardinal, or even a Bishop wanting to have a chat with you) and asked me, "What are your plans after leaving my Marine Corps, Lance Corporal?"  The Marines had taught me to be honest so I told him the truth.  "Sir,"  I said, "I plan on growing a beard, growing my hair down to the middle of my back and smoking a joint as big as my leg."  After a pause, this Colonel, with forty years of service under his belt said, "I meant...for a job."  I was dismissed and the subject of re-enlistment never came up, again.  Six months later, I was discharged and on my way to the aforementioned city of Lawrence.

Helen and I didn't make much money at the restaurant.  But rent was cheap and just about our only expense.  We went out with our co-workers and drank till closing at a bar like the ninety-nine.  Bartenders hook other bartenders up, so our tabs were minimal and often exceeded by the tip.  DUIs were fairly rare in those days.  Jury pools were peppered, liberally,  with people who partied like us and so was the police department, at least where I lived.  I don't know about you.  I'm talking about hard-working people who like to get crazy on the weekends.  It was 1989.  Studio 54 had just closed a few years earlier and though the truth about cocaine was out, many people still had their own romantic version of the disco scene fresh in their minds, like teenagers in the late 1970s hanging on to the last remnants of a recently deceased counter-culture.  It was 1989 and The Grateful Dead and The Who had both launched world tours, selling out stadiums - some say just selling out.

I liked music, but, at that time, had attended few shows compared to my friends.  My first concert was a dozen years earlieer.  Yes was playing "in the round" at the Boston Garden.  My best friend, Brent Ballard worked at a record store and got us tickets.  His father, a corporate lawyer who loved classical music and would conduct the orchestra from his living room, was going with us.  Mr. Ballard was a huge Rick Wakeman fan and Brent loved Yes.  I was not that excited.  I couldn't understand why the two of them were listening to Yes songs in the car - an Oldsmobile 98 Regency which Brent and I called"The Oldsmobubble".  Why would you listen to music on tape you are going to hear live in an hour?  I still only half get that.  The concert was great.  I remember only a couple of the songs they played - "Roundabout" was one, obviously.  I just remember the vibe of the whole scene, as it unfolded.  This started way before the show.  It was like the first time I went into a strip club.  I can't describe any of the dancers, but I felt like my head was going to explode because I was in a bar and there were beautiful, naked women all around who seemed to thing I was just the greatest guy they'd ever met.  At the Yes concert, I remember beach balls and frisbees being bounced and sailed respectively.  I remember seeing pot for the first time in real life and instantly knowing what it was and being shocked that it was in public.  At one point, early on, a joint was being passed down our row.  Brent was to my left and his Dad was to his left.  The joint was going to reach Mr. Ballard first.  Holy fuck!  What the hell was he going to do?!  When the joint got to Mr. B (which we never called him), he casually reached around Brent and Me and politely handed it to the person on my right like it was a soda.  My eyes bugged out of my skull like a Pekingese as I turned to Brent whose father was now facing forward toward the stage.  Brent was as surprised as I was as I mouthed large and whispered what Brent could only think:  "Your father TOUCHED pot!"  We were fifteen.  We never spoke of it again.