We Were a Couple of Crazy Boys in Our Youth, and as We Got Older Nothing Really Changed...
In 1968, a new kid was introduced in one of my 7th-grade classes. Scott Allen arrived in Sharon, Massachusetts, via San Jose, California, and him and I became fast friends. He was tall, dark-skinned (California sun), athletic, and fearless. Most of my friends back then were always up for some trouble, but none more than Scott. He and I were two of a kind, and we knew it almost immediately.
We played basketball outdoors all winter, and one day, he and I played two-on-two against two of our friends. At one point, one of those guys chucked up a wild underhand shot that went over the backboard and up on the garage roof. Normally, the ball would roll down and get stuck behind the plywood backboard, and because there was a 4" gap under it, we'd use a broom handle to poke it out. But, on this day, there was too much snow, and they couldn't get to it, and neither could we. So, I got the ladder out of the garage and made them go up on the roof to get the ball. Once they were up on the roof, Scott and I pulled the ladder away. After some yelling and a vicious snowball fight, those two guys started running around the roof. My grandmother was home, and she came out onto the front stairs and started yelling at us to stop. We set up the ladder and let 'em down, but they were pissed, and they didn't want to play anymore, so they left. Both of them sucked at basketball anyway…
Seeing how much fun they had running around on the snow-covered roof, Scott and I decided we'd go up and have some fun of our own. We were running around, making a lot of noise, and my grandmother came back out and started yelling at us to get down. When we were down on the ground, she looked at the two of us, and wagging her index finger, she said, "You're a couple of crazy boys!" And from that moment on, we dropped our real names and started calling each other "Crazyboy".
We played Pop-Warner football together, and in 1969, he was the right-side tight end, and I was the right tackle. We often stunted, and we took out a lot of defensive ends and tackles that way.
It was about two weeks before the South Shore Championship game, while at our friend's Bar Mitzvah, that Crazyboy convinced me that it would be fun running around the function room and sipping alcoholic beverages from glasses adults put down and left unattended. I thought it was a crazy idea at first, but when Crazyboy said he bet he could drink more than me, turning it into a competition, it was game on! We both ran around the room looking for unattended cocktail glasses, and when we found 'em, we took big sips. Lipstick-covered glasses, it didn't matter, we drank from every glass we could get our hands on. I had never been drunk before, but after that night, I could no longer say that. We both got shitfaced. Problem was, I got bronchitis. One of those glasses had some bad germs on it. I ended up missing all the practices before the big game, and I almost didn't play. The night before, my father asked me if I felt good enough to play… I said I felt fine and I could play.
It was in the first quarter of the championship game that the coach had a talk with me and Crazyboy, and without saying it, he kind of indicated to us that it would be a good thing if we could take out their left defensive end. He was the fastest kid on the team and a real deep threat on offense…
I went low, Scott went high, and we drove this kid out of bounds and over the bench on his side of the field. The kid got up slowly and then collapsed back onto the ground, where his coaches ran to help him. He never got back in the game… Scott and I had a friendship that translated well on the gridiron.
After the championship game, we played one more in Farmingdale, Long Island, and then I moved to Connecticut.
When my family moved back to Sharon two years later, "Crazyboy" and I picked up right where we left off.
One night we got drunk and hitchhiked to the Dunkin' Donuts in Stoughton. I got a dozen donuts, and Crazyboy got himself a baker's dozen, 13… We sat out front and finished all the donuts. Crazyboy one-upped me. We were always trying to one-up each other, it was the nature of our friendship.
When he was on the track team, and I pissed him off, he threw a javelin at me, and if I hadn't moved at the last second, it would've impaled me. I looked at him and said, "What the fuck, Crazyboy!" He just laughed…
It was sophomore year, 1972, the night before football camp, the two Crazyboys wanted one more night of fun before hitting the sleds up at Camp Manitou in Oakland, Maine… We met up in the center of town, in front of Bendenelli's Variety, hoping to find someone with a car who was headed to a party. But when no one was around, we decided to hitchhike to The Pits, which was a party spot in the woods near the railroad bridge on South Main St.
It wasn't long after I put my thumb in the air that an MG pulled over. We were up for some fun, and Crazyboy got in the back, and I rode shotgun. The driver was a guy in his late thirties-early forties, and drunk as hell. He was drinking beer from a can and spilling it all over himself. He asked us where we were headed, and I said, "We're looking to buy some beer and find a party." He said he'd buy the beer if we took him to the party. I told him Sharon was a dry town, and if we wanted beer, we'd have to turn around and head to Caradonna's at Cobb's Corner, a package store we frequented that had a parking lot we regularly canvassed in order to find a buyer and get some booze.
After he turned the car around, he was all over the road. He said his name was Sonny, and he was in the Mafia. Despite the sports car, fancy clothes, and an expensive-looking wristwatch, we didn't believe a word he said. We figured he was just some middle-aged goofball who had watched The Godfather one too many times…
In The Godfather, Sonny died a horrible death…
When he almost went off the road and hit a tree, I said, "Sonny, pull the fuck over! Either I'm driving, or we're gettin' the fuck out." He surprised us when he pulled over and said, "Okay, Vinnie, you're driving!"
I was only 13 days older than Crazyboy, and we had gotten our Social Security cards in Norwood together, and we didn't have our driver's licenses yet. I had a motorcycle permit and a beat-up 4-speed Barracuda in my garage I took out when my parents weren't home, so I knew I could drive Sonny's standard shift MG. It was an incredible car…
I pulled up in front of Caradonna's and parked about five rows back in an attempt to remain incognito, and Sonny asked me and Crazyboy what kind of beer we wanted. Back then, all we drank was Bud, and Sonny got out of the car and headed into the packy…
Crazyboy and I looked at each other with wide eyes, realizing we had his car and the keys were still in the ignition… Sonny must've realized it too, and he immediately came back to the car, looked at us, and said, "If you take off with my car, I'll find you and kill you both!" It was a threat meant to intimidate us, but we still didn't buy into his fucking Mafia story…
Sonny came back with a cold case of Bud, and we all cracked one open. I drove to the pits, and the whole way Sonny was guzzling beer, spilling it, and dancing to the music he had turned up to a deafening level. He was in his own world. I eyed Crazyboy in the rearview mirror, and we both shook our heads…
When we got to the pits, no one was there, so we parked in this little cul-de-sac just below, got out, and started drinking. Sonny was drunk when he picked us up, and three beers later, he was becoming obnoxiously inebriated. Then, without provocation, he pushed me and said he wanted to fight me. Crazyboy looked at him and said, "You don't want to do that, Vin will kill you!"
Sonny didn't like hearing that, and that's when things got tense. He got up in my face and gave me a killer's stare, but I didn't back down. I knew me and Crazyboy were both in football shape, we'd been working out all summer, so we were just seconds away from beating the crap out of this guy, and he knew it. That's when he started walking back toward the MG. We thought he was gonna start it up and take off with the beer, but, instead, he opened the driver's side door, reached under the seat, and pulled out a revolver…
Crazyboy and I were scared shitless, and we wasted little time chucking our beers and running up the unlit paved road to where we started climbing up a pretty steep cliff. At that point, we heard gunshots, and we could see the bullets landing just inches away from us in the sand. Our adrenaline was pumping, and although we were sweaty and getting tired, we continued climbing the cliff until we got to the top, and that's when we heard his car start and saw the headlights go on just before Sonny drove away…
In the end, the two Crazyboys got exactly what they wanted, an exciting night out before heading to Maine to hit sleds and get chased around the practice field by angry whistles…
Crazyboy and I did crazy shit together in high school. One time we split a six-pack of Maximus Super on the way to school. If beer was equivalent to regular gasoline, then Maximus Super was high test (7-8.9% ABV). After guzzling all the beer on empty stomachs, we went to the gym where we knew the gym teacher/football coach regularly rolled out some basketballs in the morning and then went into his office to drink coffee and read the newspaper. We knew we had an unattended gym to fuck around in… First, we started stealing basketballs and playing keep away. Then, we began body-slamming kids onto mats. Finally, one of the kids said, "I smell alcohol! They're drunk!" When he ran to get the gym teacher, we ran out of the gym and back to my car, which was a quarter mile away in the student parking lot, and then we took off in a hurry. The next day nothing happened to us…
I normally drove when we went out; Crazyboy was happy to ride shotgun. Whenever I was pulling out into an intersection, I'd ask him, "Is it clear?" He'd say, "Nope. There's a big fuckin' truck…" I'd jam on the brakes and look myself, and there was nothing, Crazyboy was just fuckin' with me. Then, one time I asked him if it was clear, and he said, "Yup…" As I proceeded through the intersection, we were almost t-boned by a big fuckin' truck! I didn't think it was funny, but Crazyboy laughed hysterically. And, he would've been the one who got the worst of it.
Scott's father was even crazier than us, and we nicknamed him "Crazyman". As long as we didn't leave his house, he let us drink with him. He drank cheap beer; Narragansett and Black Label were his beverages of choice. We always ended up listening to Crazyman's favorite music on the turntable/stereo he built himself. He liked swing and jazz, and he played guitar and trumpet too. He was a complicated guy, but very interesting, and he was more than willing to share his jaw-dropping stories. I learned from one of the best…
The summer of our Junior year (1973), after the unplanned birth of a third child, a couple of divorces, and way too many beers, Crazyman decided to move back to California. They were making the drive cross country in an older Dodge Dart station wagon. The day before leaving, Scott, his younger brother Brett, and I got in the Dart and headed out to fill it with gas. Crazyboy was not a good driver, and when he looked over at me with a raised eyebrow and said, "You know what that little button on the floor is?" I said, "Yeah, it's overdrive…" I was hoping he wasn't gonna hit it… Then Crazyboy hit it, and the RPMs of that little slant six motor revved up, causing Crazyboy to tighten his grip on the steering wheel… There was one sharp turn right where a short bridge passed over a stream, and as luck would have it, another kid we knew was coming down the hill toward us. Both vehicles were slightly over the centerline, and our left front fenders hit each other, and his heavier vehicle spun us around, and we ended up in a ditch just a few feet beyond the bridge next to the stream… Once we knew Brett was okay, we started walking back to the house, which was completely empty, everything had been packed and was in a moving truck heading to California…
We got our story straight on the way back to the house, and I was wondering how Crazyman was gonna handle it… Crazyman was sitting on the wood floor in the empty living room, sucking on a cold one when we walked in. Crazyboy did an excellent job explaining what had happened, leaving out the part about the overdrive button, of course. Crazyman shocked me when he asked if everybody was okay and finished with, "As long as everybody's okay, the car can be fixed." My father would've killed me.
The Dart was towed to a body shop, and they moved up their departure time by a week. My mother offered to put the three of them up in our house, but only Scott stayed over.
Years later, in 1979, while Scott was in Massachusetts, he made a detour and stopped by to say hello. He asked me if I had heard anything by Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, telling me how much he liked his music. The only thing I had heard about Zappa was a verse in Deep Purple's Smoke on the Water, "Frank Zappa and the Mothers were at the best place around…" I trusted Crazyboy's taste in music, so I picked up Apostrophe' at the local record store, and I was immediately hooked.
Crazyboy received his degree in journalism from San Jose State, and I always figured he'd become a famous writer. He was an incredible writer with a rich vocabulary I could only dream of.
Years passed, and I lost track of Crazyboy. In 1983, Crazyman passed away. He was only 53. In September of '83, Scott wrote an incredible article titled "Blues for My Father" that was published in San Francisco Magazine. It was an incredibly honest story about his father's life. The publication's description in the index read, "The word jazz conjures up images of smoky rooms, sinuous women, desperate men. A son reflects on his father, a jazzman who spent his life searching for the perfect woman and the perfect chord." Crazyboy sent me a copy, and I read it with tears in my eyes, being all too familiar with Crazyman's story.
Close to thirty years later, I decided to search for Scott on the internet…
An extensive search led me to a writer named Scott Allen in Alaska, who I first believed was Crazyboy, but it wasn't. I did make a connection with Scott's namesake and a publication called The Ester Republic. Despite not being an Esteroid, someone born in Ester, the equivalent of a Townie, they published one of my poems in their weekly newspaper, which was normally restricted to local writers. They said they gave me temporary Esteroid status and that it was a one-time privilege.
A month later, after I'd abandoned my search, out of the blue, I got an email from Crazyboy, and we reconnected.
We spent several years emailing, texting, and talking on the phone, sometimes during football and basketball games. It'd start with one of us texting, "You wanna have a beer?" With the phone speaker on, the game on TV, and the beers flowing, it was a lot like watching the game with a friend, except we were 3,000 miles apart.
At the time, he was writing a fiction novel called "Salvation Beach," and he was sending me excerpts to read. I told him to keep 'em coming, it was like word porn, and I couldn't get enough. He convinced me, a non-fiction writer, to start writing fiction, which I did. My writing paled in comparison to his, but that didn't stop him from helping me out. I used to tell him that in order to write, I needed to be motivated to which he said, "Bullshit, Crazyboy! Just sit down and start writing, you don't need to be motivated!" He used to tell me to get the story down first and not to worry about editing until the first draft was completed. Then, when it was complete, he said to "edit the fuck out of it!"
When I'd call his house on a landline, his wife would yell to him, "Crazyboy! It's Crazyboy!" It was so cool having the same nickname, and one that was so deserving.
When the proprietary school I was teaching at closed and I was briefly unemployed in 2012, Crazyboy invited me to Dana Point to attend his older daughter's wedding. My wife was fine with it. I flew out of T.F. Green International and landed at John Wayne Airport. I can't deny how excited I was to be in California for the first time. All I wanted to do was have some fun…
Crazyboy picked me up in his Mercedes Benz, and it felt just like old times. I asked him if this car had an overdrive button, and after he said, "definitely not!" we laughed hysterically. It wasn't long before we cracked open one of many beers we'd drink during my extended stay in sunny California…
He looked great. His story "Salvation Beach" was chosen at a writer's workshop as the number one new novel out of 300, and the prize was having it published. He was working with the publisher's editor and had already started his second novel. Life was good!
George Wilhelm. Getty Images.California is very different than Massachusetts, but I can't say I didn't like it. His spacious home in Dana Point overlooked a valley, and behind it, the ocean. It was an incredible view. He warned me that in the valley, there were rattlesnakes, and occasionally, one would crawl onto his property. He told me the story of the time he spent three hours fighting a rattler that was in the shrubs in front of his house. I would've called someone, but not Crazyboy. He decided he could do the job himself. He explained that a snake can only strike when it's coiled up and that its striking distance is limited to the length of its body. I listened closely, imagining a rattlesnake coiled up in the shrubs and lunging at me with the intent of biting and injecting me with deadly venom. After three hours, Crazyboy killed it with a shovel. He hadn't changed very much.
He was in great shape for a 55-year-old. He surfed, and paddle boarded daily, and he had taken up MMA, and he was sparring with guys half his age and holding his own. He hurt his shoulder in a recent sparring session, and during the day, while I was there, he took time out to ice it down. He said there was a possibility that he may need surgery.
The wedding was great, and I had a blast with his family and friends. I spent nine days there, and at one point, we started arguing about Archie Manning. Crazyboy seemed to think he was better than Peyton and Eli. I had recently blogged about Archie having some of the worst career stats of any NFL quarterback, and Crazyboy said that was because he played for the Saints and his offensive line sucked, and he never had time to set his feet and throw the ball. It was just like old times, we were arguing and trying to one-up each other. He gave me shit because I sucked at both surfing and paddleboarding, and I tried to explain to him that construction takes no prisoners and that my body had paid a hefty price over the last 30 years. In addition to that, I was hit by a line drive, which destroyed the big toe on my right foot, and as a result, my balance suffered, and surfing and paddleboarding were not activities I could do very well.
When I tried to pay for the final dinner before leaving California, he snatched the bill off the table and paid it himself. By that point, it was more like a, "fuck you" than a "thank you"…
After I returned to Massachusetts, we stopped texting, emailing, and talking on the phone. I'd shoot him a text about a game, and he'd respond with the fewest amount of words possible. Weeks passed before he started to warm up to me, a little…
The day my wife was diagnosed with Ovarian Cancer, which I believed was a death sentence, I decided I'd call Crazyboy because, in times of need, who was better to talk to than him?
When he didn't pick up, I left a long message, at times finding it difficult to hold back the tears. I had to teach that night, and when I got home, I had one message on my phone. It was Brett, Crazyboy's younger brother. He said to call him on his number… I was confused, why was Brett answering Scott's phone and telling me to call him back on his number? I assumed Crazyboy had shoulder surgery…
I wanted to spend the rest of the night with my wife, so I decided I'd call Brett the following day. I waited till 11:30 am, figuring it was 8:30 in California. When Brett picked up, he immediately said he had listened to my message about my wife and was sorry to hear it. Then he went on, "I have some really bad news… Yesterday, Scott suffered a major coronary, a widow maker, and he died on the beach…"
Other than the inside back flap, which he was working on at the time, his book "Salvation Beach" was finished. I was in a state of shock. One of my best friends died, and my wife was diagnosed with Ovarian Cancer on the very same day…
Crazyboy's novel, Salvation Beach, is available on Amazon. (GREAT FUCKING READ!)
https://www.amazon.com/Salvation-Beach-Scott-L-Allen/dp/130449991X
I miss Crazyboy tremendously, and when he died, so did our nicknames…
When I'm writing a blog, I constantly think about him. He was so much more talented than me. But I think he'd be very happy knowing I finally got my chance to do some writing…
March 8th marked the 11th anniversary of his passing, and I thought I'd tell this story. Good friends are like family, and sometimes, they're even better…
This one's dedicated to you, Crazyboy. Until we meet again…
A smile relieves a heart that grievesRemember what I saidI'm not waiting on a ladyI'm just waiting on a friendI'm just waiting on a friendJust waiting on a friend