Tommy Joe

He was convinced that a gunboat El Dorado with cow horns didn’t shout Texas car dealer.
October 1976

Dennis lit a More menthol cigarette and shook his self-winding watch. “Do you feel like we do?” played on the radio. I hated the song. I hated Peter Frampton, and I especially hated his popularity and his runaway hit concert album.
“Turn it up! I love this song.” He took a drag and bobbed his head. He was always more animated when his dad wasn’t around. His dad had been a dentist in Romania but they wouldn’t let him practice when he came to the United States so he spent all his life savings on a liquor store. He must have done all right; he drove a Benz that looked like a car a dentist would drive.
I didn’t want to clash with the boss’s son; he was an ok guy, he just didn’t know anything about music. He thought Peter Frampton was a guitar god and that a band like Thin Lizzy was a fine example of British rock. The upshot was that Dennis was going to bob his head for all 14 minutes of that inane song. Drinking all night until you awake forgetting every particular, and proudly shout …. “Come on! Let’s do it again!” He punched the air with his cigarette and turned in a small circle. “Do you, YOU! Feel like we do!” I knew I wouldn’t work there much longer.
There were so many other albums that were so much better. Dylan, Joni Mitchell and even Steely Dan had all done great albums. Why wasn’t everyone in town talking incessantly about them? Something had gone wrong. Rock was losing its iconoclastic bite. In fact “Do you feel like we do?” was a celebration of acting common and indulgent and foolish not to mention encouraging everyone else to get drunk and forget about everything. I was very angry about it at the time.
“Doncha love that song? ‘Whose wine, what wine?’ Damn! That’s some drinkin’ right there! You gotta love it.”
“Yeah. Can’t get enough of it.”
“No kidding. I got the tape in the car. I haven’t played anything else for a month. Love it.” He squashed his cigarette, then immediately lit another.
“Wow. Pretty cool.” At least Dylan and Joni Mitchell did albums that looked back at the previous 10 years and asked, “What just happened here?” Not Frampton though. He jumped out of hard rock and into soft rock and was riding that wave until the next big thing. Or maybe he just lucked out and this would be the end of him. I could only hope. How many songs could you do with that stupid voice box anyway?
“Yeah, it’s on sale at Moby Disc if you want to get it. “
“Thanks for the tip.”
“No problem. Hey, didja see I got my car painted?”
“Oh yeah man, looks pretty sharp.”
“Yeah, all’s I have to do is roll down Ventura and those West Valley girls will be FIGHTIN each other to get in.”
“Yup. I bet they will.” It was a clean-looking red ’74 Firebird.
“Next week you’ll be working with Bobby. He’s an old coot but he’s ok. He’ll tell you the story of the night we got robbed.”
“Got robbed?”
“Yeah, well they tried, but they didn’t get anything out of the till.”
“What, does he carry a weapon?”
“No, you wouldn’t want ol’ Bobby carrying a gun. He just wouldn’t open the box.”
“What?”
“Yeah, he just kept saying ‘I ain’t openin’ it so just get the fuck outta here.”
“So what happened?” I was beginning to feel like being broke wasn’t all that bad.
“Well, the guy in the getaway car got nervous. He comes running into the store, grabs the sawed off shotgun out of his partner’s hands and tells Bobby, ‘Gimmie the fuckin’ money, I ain’t got time for this shit!’ and Bobby tells that guy to go to hell.”
“Is Bobby all right, I mean, in the head?”
“Yeah, sure, he’s just stubborn that’s all. Very loyal to Dad.”
“So what happened?”
“The getaway driver fires the shotgun.”
“The old guy survived a shotgun blast?”
“He managed to jump out of the way.” He dropped his cigarette, looked down at it and squashed it with his shoe.
“So they got the money?”
“No they ran off.”
“Bobby didn’t have a heart attack?”
“Are you kidding? He got up and chased after ‘em yelling,’Motherfuckers! You ruined $200 worth of booze!’ The guy’s aim was off and he blew out the bottles on the back shelf.”
“Ok, I get it. This is his version of the story, right?”
“No, his partner heard the whole thing.”
“ Partner? Where was he?”
“Hiding in the walk-in.” He lit a new cigarette. We were quiet for a minute and then the door chime sounded. A customer stood just inside the entry.
“Hello! I’m Tommy Joe! You’ll wanna be my best friend ‘cause brother I’m ready to spend!” He was a short, thin, balding man in his 40’s with boots and a bolo tie. He had a leg brace and a cane. As he moved toward the counter to speak to us it was apparent that one leg was not mobile; he would turn his hip to walk, dragging the leg with him.
“Yes, boys, I can’t walk for shit, but take a look out there, tell me what you see? I see a brand new El Dorado lookin’ back at me!”
I went out the door and there it was-- white with white leather interior, capped off with Texas style horns at the front of the hood. Despite its spectacle of an ornament, the car, a convertible, looked good in the morning sun. The engine, at rest, clicked contentedly.
When I came back, Dennis was stacking a case each of Budweiser, Miller, Coors on the counter, while Tommy Joe was tossing chips and pork rinds to go with his selection of Oreos, M&M’s, and beef jerky onto the opposite side of the counter.
“Yessiree, Bob!” he was shouting, “that’s my Caddy and one more thing I got the pink slip, Daddy!”
“Nice car, beautiful.” Dennis remarked.
“Boy, you ain’t even seen it. Go on out there; I think I got what I need here.” He didn’t want to but he went out.
“It’s a very nice car, sir.” I said, curious about him.
“I told you my name; it’s no use sirring me. I ain’t had to sir nobody since the Army. Been to Seoul, Korea, been fightin in the war. Army bunk, Army chow, Army clothes, Army car, hah!” He stopped and looked at me to see if I was going to finish the lyric.
“Too much monkey business?”
“Goddamn right it was too much monkey business! I was glad to get out of there.”
“But the words to the song…”
“Been to Yokohama, I know. Shit, I ain’t that old! It was Korea what messed me up.”
“Oh, is that how…”
“Oh hell, no. You think I got this brace and twisted spine over there? No, boy, that comes from getting slammed by a big rig and finding out that a fuckin Ford Falcon don’t protect you at all.”
“Oh. You mean…”
“Yeah. Falcon versus Peterbuilt, and you can guess how that turned out. But it wasn’t my fault, and I suffered mental anguish and shit. And the only good part of two years in court is I don’t have to work for the rest of my days, which is good ‘cause I sure as hell can’t work like this.”
“Yeah.”
“But I tell you what: those kids been in Viet Nam, they got it worse off than me.”
“Yeah?”
“They got the real mental anguish. Me, if my body hurts, I just pop a few of these and it goes away.” He patted the top case of Bud.
“That works?”
“Hell yeah, it works, and it don’t matter what kind, neither, cause it’s nothing but a different brand, it’s all the same inside and they all can make the hurt go away, least for a while. But those kids, they’re carrying all kinds of shit in their head, shit they can’t get out.”
“But didn’t you see some bad stuff?”
“In Korea? Aw, hell, I spent most of my time scrubbing pots and pans. Hard to do when you’re hung over, but it ain’t so bad. Nah, I’m lucky, bent frame and all.”
“Nice car, best car on the parking lot. Better than my Firebird; way better than that grey Ford Torino!” Little punk Dennis kissed the customer’s ass and gave me shit about my car at the same time.
“And sure as hell better than that shit brown Mercedes. I mean hell I ain’t got no competition, shit! This is Circus Liquor, in North Hollywood, all right? Nobody out here but junkies and faggits. Send me over the hill there to goddamn Beverly Hills, and my Caddy will outshine them all.” He was convinced that a gunboat El Dorado with cow horns didn’t shout Texas car dealer.
Dennis rang him up and he paid with a crisp hundred dollar bill. He tipped Dennis with the change which he quickly pocketed, making sure not to look at me. We loaded up his trunk and he wheeled around to thank us.
“Thanks, boys. Life is short. You don’t know how things are going to turn out. Could be one way, could be another. Usually though it’s both. So when there’s money have a few beers and a good time. When there’s no money, well you’re shit out of luck.” He clambered into the car, started it up and tooted the horn. For the moment, I didn’t care whether Dennis liked Peter Frampton better than Dylan. It was all just a different brand of beer.
By the end of the shift though, Dennis and Frampton were both getting on my nerves again.