I first met Bobby in seventh grade. Our junior high combined students from three different grade schools, so was a place where new friends were made, and old gangs and cliques were shuffled and rearranged. Many of my lifelong friendships began within the walls of Colin Kelly Junior High.
Bobby was a knucklehead, just like most of us. We were feral—growing up pretty much unsupervised, unmoored, and unguided—with no clear direction for our futures.
Bobby gained prominence in our gang a few years later, when he was the first of us who got a driver's license. And he had a car - an old beat-up station wagon.
Pot was cheap then – though low-grade, compared to the concentrated hybrid product available today. A four-finger 'lid' (about an ounce) could be had for around ten bucks. That came out to about a dollar apiece when ten of us went in on it. We piled in to that old station wagon like a big family going to a drive-in movie, and drove out somewhere away from traffic—more importantly, away from cops—and started rolling up joints. On a good day, we might smoke up the whole lid before we were done. Given the potency of pot in those days, this wouldn't necessarily preclude doing homework that evening – though I don't think any of us actually tested that proposition.
For those who were never part of that scene, I should clarify, there is a clear difference between smoking pot and, for example, drinking beer - a difference that is not subtle. The mood, the level, and content of conversation were nothing alike. While a beer bust gets loud, rambunctious, sometimes even violent, a pot party is quiet, and—for want of a better term—introspective. I use that term loosely, because it suggests a depth of thought that doesn't really apply. The rare bit of controversy might involve Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, or whether Carlos Castenada's main character, Don Juan, truly could turn himself into a wolf, or if that was just a figment of his peyote-induced imagination. These conversations might get a little heated, but that usually broke when we lost track of what we were arguing about – around the time the joint came back to us.
After high school, many of us knuckleheads continued mostly coasting along, smoking a lot of dope, drinking beer (more genially, of course, than the above-referenced beer-busts), and generally extending our adolescence into our early twenties. But, while most of us didn't take that much further, Bobby discovered the wonders of cocaine, the magnetic north of so-called 'safe' highs of the era - which we were incorrectly informed was non-addictive. Because none of us had much money, Bobby began to deal cocaine, to finance his own usage. Soon enough he had started making some money, and a crop of new friends of the type one makes when they have coke and money. He wanted less and less to do with us, or anybody else who wasn't part of his his supply chain – supplier or customer. We were not offended though; with Bobby out of sight, and the joint coming back around, he was generally out of mind as well.
Then one day, we heard that he had been busted for selling a large quantity of coke to an undercover cop. We thought he was going to go to prison for a long time, but thanks to a confession, a jailhouse conversion, and the tearful, sympathetic narrative he shared with the judge about the recent deaths of both of his parents, the judge was merciful, and Bobby was sentenced only to time already served.
Bobby was as good as the words he shared with the judge. He put drugs behind him, and moved to Coos Bay, on the Oregon coast, to begin his new, clean life. When I next saw him, he had been reborn; clean, and sober for a year, and fully within the fold of the nascent 'religious right' evangelical movement. We all understood, and empathized with the religious part of his conversion; seriously, his light sentence was nothing short of a miracle. I struggled with the political part – but there was no way to discuss any of that with him. He had totally conflated the religious and the political in his mind. He regularly—religiously, one might say—watched the 700 Club, and fully embraced Pat Robertson's entire agenda; from combining fundraising with long-distance faith healing, to equating unions, feminism, and liberalism with satanism, and an international Communist conspiracy to destroy our way of life.
It was all a bit much to take, but Bobby was a long-time friend, and I did my best to maintain whatever connection I could with my resurrected, reborn childhood friend.
Less easy to take was Bobby's intolerance toward those most like he was prior to his 'rebirth'.
Insert parts about self-esteem, the need to be 'better' based on a sense of inferiority. Also, maybe his hostility toward young people who were much like he was when he was young.
In a way, he seemed to feel that being 'reborn' gave him license to start with a clean slate, and never have to make sense of his earlier life with the one he believed he was living since.
Years later, when we all turned fifty, a cohort of us began getting together each summer for a long weekend of camping in the Oregon Cascades. We would drink to excess, smoke more pot than most of us have since high school, cuss, yell, tell dirty jokes (which we could only get away with because wives and other females are not allowed in camp). Most of us have long since settled into more or less sedate family lives, and for some, the excesses in camp are the only time of the year they let go, and howl at the Moon.
Camping is a mostly non-drama event. Unfortunately though, the concept of non-drama was lost on Bobby by the time we started this tradition. His years of abstentious denial caused him to be uncomfortable around people drinking to excess, and the thin skin he had had since childhood led him to easily take offense. One day in camp, one of the guys said something stupid and insulting about George W. Bush - which was all it took to cause Bobby to storm out of camp in an angry huff, calling all of us drunks, druggies, and 'commies'.
That was over ten years ago, and Bobby hasn't been back to camp since. Makes sense, since that really isn't his element anymore. I know many people who are in recovery from substance abuse; some can be around it, and some can't; Those I know who stop drinking and drugging without ever admitting that they had a problem tend to be in the latter group - and Bobby is as intolerant of drinking or social use of cannabis, as he is of variance from his ultra-conservative politics, or any religion other than fundamentalist evangelical Ameri-Christianity. It's just better that he stays away.
I should have borne that in mind after Bobby had a near-death experience a few years ago. His heart suddenly just stopped, and he survived only because his wife, a retired nurse, was in the next room, and heard the change in the sound of his breathing. She kept him alive until an ambulance arrived. In the hospital he had a pacemaker / internal defibrillator installed, which allowed him to return to a somewhat normal life.
The prior year, two of the people we camped with had passed away. When I told the 'brothers' (as we call ourselves) about Bobby's near-death experience, I asked if we might extend an invitation to him to rejoin us that summer. It seemed that the coincidence of these losses and near loss might afford us all a chance to start anew, with a fresh appreciation of what is really important to us, and what we can just let go. Ultimately though, the realization that camp was a long way from medical attention, and that his medical appliances were new, led us to postpone the invitation.
The next year COVID made the point moot, since we cancelled our camping trip anyway. The following year, I broached the subject again. The brothers were skeptical; concerned about how his presence in camp would change the tone of the whole weekend. But they are a decent bunch, and told me I could go ahead and invite him.
The punishment for this openness came almost immediately. With an utterly tone-deaf lack of awareness of what it took to get the brothers to allow him back in camp, Bobby started making rules about the changes we would have to make if we wanted him to bless us with his presence. We'd have to limit our drinking, because he didn't want to be around a 'bunch of drunks', and wouldn't tolerate any politics, because we were all 'commies'.
I replied to him that, given his feelings, he might enjoy his weekend better at home, or in the company of others who share his values and lifestyle. His response to this suggestion was angry and defensive - as though we had kicked him out, rather than simply responding politely to his ridiculous expectation that we would change the whole event to attract him back. He fired off a series of multi-page angry, lecturing emails to us, sharing his life story, his conversion to Christianity, and his recent deaths and resurrections. He actually said he had 'died' twice in his cardiac incident, and was only saved by his wife, whom he now called 'Saint Marilyn'. This would be a sweet way of referring to his wife, except that he somehow seemed to truly believe that he had died, and was now imbued with even better insight into the faults of others, and of his own superiority. He told us that he was trying to save us from an eternity in Hell.
Then, in a bizarre about-face, Bobby relented, and said he would drive to camp, make a batch of his 'world-famous' ribs, and golf a round with any of the brothers who wanted to ditch camp and go with him. I don't know how interested anybody would have been normally, but in the aftermath of his insulting tirade, he didn't find any takers.
The Hooty Brothers are a mostly closed group, with very few changes since we began camping together eighteen years ago. But when any of the original members suggests inviting somebody, that suggestion is at least considered. Now though, in the aftermath of that year, I think it would be unwise for me to ever suggesting another, even if they have died and risen from the dead – not once, but twice. Could be we just aren't worthy of such company.
