Datsun 240Z
As one enters the underworld, I realized, there begins a whole different way of looking at things, a new perspective, as complicated as the difference between checkers and chess. Human dealings and relationships grow infinitely more complex when there are no laws or police to step in and keep things civil.
One analogy would be this: In the normal world let’s say you want to go hunt a deer or a moose or bear. You prepare your gear, clean your rifle and visit the proper agencies to buy the licenses. The day for hunting season arrives. You drive out into the woods and with patience you aim and bag your prey. You take it in your pick-up to the butcher, freeze the venison in parcels, barbecue it in your backyard for friends and neighbors, enjoying and sharing it, with a beer in hand, boasting of your skills, till next season.
In this alter world, when you go hunting, there are no rules or seasons, no day or night, a cityscape always lit, and your prey, your competitors, also have guns, hiding behind walls instead of trees, aiming back at you.
Speaking of guns, a curious incident happened in our new apartment just a few days after we moved in which gained us the deep respect of all our neighbors, allowing us to live there for the four months we stayed, unmolested and unbothered by the violence that troubled that hill almost every week.
We were truly the only white people in a sea of black people, all around us. I wouldn’t label it a ghetto. There were no abandoned, boarded up structures like there were all around the warehouse I recently occupied. We lived at the very top of a hill in a new apartment and circling down the hill were modest houses, a mostly lower-middle class neighborhood but well kept up, with lawns and gardens. At the bottom of the hill there were stores and merchants and normal city life. It was only the high population of unemployed youths hanging around with nothing to do that caused problems, almost always after midnight. The whole time I stayed there I never saw a cop car within twenty blocks of where we lived.
The incident was this: We moved into the end unit of an apartment building of six units. The upstairs was a living room and kitchen, combined. The lower level was two bedrooms and a bathroom. The only window upstairs was a long, skinny one in the living room, six feet long and a foot tall, with sliders that opened about a foot at each end, no screens. This window was situated high on the living room wall above the couch, which you pretty much had to stand on to look out it. And outside was the parking lot where we parked our two cars, my Volare and Dave’s Datsun 240 ‘Z’. There was one other apartment building on the other side of this parking lot, a hundred feet away, filling the top of the hill.
We moved in on the 1st of November with our few belongings. The apartment came completely furnished. The next night Lindsey and I decide to go to a movie, Friday night, leaving Dave laying on the couch watching his portable T.V. set on the coffee table a few feet in front of him and with his ever faithful, loaded Uzi also on it, ready at hand.
Now this wasn’t your standard, store bought Uzi, with the forty-bullet clip. Those were single shot, each pull of the trigger sending out a single bullet. Dave modified his gun and often boasted about what a great job he’d done. By filing down a single pin, just right, he turned his weapon into a full machine gun capable of emptying the whole clip within seconds by holding the trigger and he always had two more clips standing by, in case of emergencies.
When Lindsey and I returned that night around eleven and stepped into the living room, Dave jumped up from the couch in an extremely excited state and said: “I returned fire. I returned fire”. We had no idea what he was talking about. Then he calmed down and told us the whole story.
As he was laying on the couch watching T.V., about an hour after we left, he began to hear strange ‘pings’ right outside the cement wall and gunshot sounds further away. He stood up on the couch, opened the window and peeked out. And sure enough some kids in the opposite apartment were taking pot-shots at our unit, the bullets hitting right below our window, obviously trying to intimidate us white newcomers, like a moving-in present. But it was well reciprocated. Dave grabbed his Uzi and instantly sprayed the whole facade of their building with forty bullets, changed the clip and did it again. Then there was silence. Peace had returned.
“Rumor volat” Rumors (or reputations) have wings.
The news of this ‘exchange’ must have spread quickly, for a few days later we noticed another odd event. Both Dave and I had our cars parked next to each other right outside our window. Dave had his Datsun 240 ‘Z’ which he drove each morning at a very high rate of speed to the Methadone clinic in downtown Oakland. His driver’s side window had busted out and he never bothered to get it fixed. He used a piece of cardboard to cover the gap when he knew it was going to rain. He also had an expensive cassette deck and sound system so he could blast music as he drove. It was worth several hundred dollars and easy to remove.
One morning the three of us came out of the apartment and noticed that the car parked next to Dave’s, which had wheels the day before, was now jacked up on wooden blocks and the tires stolen. Some enterprising youths had come in the night and snatched them. This sight gave Dave a flicker of concern. He rushed over to his car, wide open with the window missing, to check on his valuable tape deck. Sure enough it was still there. “They know not to mess with me”, he said, with the huge grin of pride on his face.
