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Tattoo Tales from Mike Malone |
Around 1977, tattooer Mike Brown and I were working
together at China Sea Tattoo in Honolulu. We also shared
a big old 5 bedroom house in a part of Honolulu the old
timers called Chinese Hollywood. The house was on Coyne
Street and was part of a compound of houses owned by the
Yee family.
One of the nice things about the house was that it was
surrounded by a big yard. There was a cottage behind our
place rented by an old gal called Elsie, who kept to herself,
happily drinking away her old age. The third house on the lot
was where the ancient Mrs. Yee lived, and lived and lived.
She had raised a huge family in the big house that Mike and
I rented once her family was grown and gone from home. The
family had built old “Popo” (as they called her) a smaller, two
bedroom place on the compound.
Popo lived alone, with family members looking in on her every
few days. Their visits were short, just long enough to make
sure the old girl was eating and taking her medications, and
had not fallen or anything. She was a nice old woman, and
Mike and I also kept an eye on her. If she didn’t appear to take
a little sun daily, we would call one of her middle-aged sons to
come by and look in on her. The big yard went unattended until
I became interested in gardening. I learned to grow all sorts of
things, and spent most mornings working in the yard.
Honolulu is heaven for a gardener. Things grow fast all year
round so you get results that keep you interested. Being
children of the 60’s, we also discovered that you could grow
primo pot as easy as pie. Mike and got right into it, and
before long were growing all of our own weed, in among the
tomato plants. We discovered that it was better to grow our
wonder weed in pots, rather than putting it directly into the
ground. Potted plants could be kept small and would produce
a respectable amount of killer buds, where a ground plant
would want to grow to enormous size before it would bud.
10 and 12 foot plants were just not practical in town. Luckily,
the only backyard that bordered our yard belonged to a guy
called Glen, a Japanese bartender who was also a backyard
pot smith. So it was a sweet little garden we had there on
Coyne.
Many a morning I’d be up at 6:00 working in my garden, Glen
would wander out and we would talk over the back fence,
puffing away on an early morning joint. It was a happy time for
me (small wonder, given all the dope we were smoking!).
One night Mike Brown and I had been out late, and on our way
home we passed a big Payless Drug store on King Street, just
a few blocks from our house. One of us spotted a huge mound
of 50lb bags of Black Magic potting soil, stacked outside the
Payless nursery department just sitting there in the open,
unattended in the middle of the night. We were so excited;
we rolled around the block again, to make sure. Yep! Then
and there we made our plan to liberate some of that beautiful
dirt.
The very next night, I woke Mike Brown at about 4am and we
quickly dressed for our mission. Since we were just going
out for a few minutes, I threw on a pair of cut-off jeans I wore
to work in the garden. I looked around for a dark t-shirt, and
found a navy blue job that had seen better days when I was
40 lbs. lighter. So the fit was rather quick. A pair of rubber
slaps on my feet, and I was dressed for stealth.
Mike and I jumped in my bright yellow and black Toyota
pickup, perfect car for the job. Screaming yellow and black (In
fact I was in a yellow and black period just then…I had read
somewhere that black and yellow was the most eye-catching
color combo, so everything was yellow and black for a year
or two). We cruised Payless to make sure it was cool. It was
like a graveyard, so on our second pass, we pulled right up to
the mountain of potting soil, bailed out of the stealth mobile
and began to load the pickup in one hot hurry. We had about
fifteen 50lb. bags when we figured we had enough. We could
have taken more, but why be pigs? Just took what we needed
and a few bags for our pal Glen.
We jumped in the pickup and I made a left turn into an alley
next to Payless. Just as I made the left, I looked down King
Street and about 3 long blocks down the road in the Chunky
Drive-In parking lot, I saw a blue light go on. My heart sank.
It was the heat for sure, and I knew he had seen the whole
thing. In that part of Honolulu, there a lot of little alleys and
one way streets. Three blocks above us was the freeway, and
the McCully Street Bridge that would put us over the freeway
and in a great part of town to get lost in. If I could just make
that bridge! I did some fancy slipping and sliding, down the
wrong way on one-way streets and through alleys until I got to
the foot of the bridge. Yeah!
I had a green light and I made my run on the McCully Street
Bridge. I could taste the freedom, and I knew he had not
gotten close enough to me to get my plate number. About half
way across the bridge that cop kicked that big Olds in the ass
and was a foot off my bumper like a bolt of lightning. He’d had
me fat from the time he flipped that dome light on.
We pulled over as soon as we got across the bridge, because
that’s what he told us to do by way of a loudspeaker hidden in
his grill. He came out of the Olds fast with his gun drawn: “Get
the fuck out of that truck with your hands in the air!”
In about another minute or two the place was swarming with
cops who were bored at 4:30 am and welcomed a little action.
We were handcuffed and put in the big Olds.
We sat there a long time while the cops shot the shit and
fucked around. Pretty soon some of the young cops on the
scene started to figure out that we were the tattoo guys from
Chinatown. We were minor celebrities, in deep poop over
stealing...dirt? They started coming over to the car giving us
smokes and laughing at our dumb luck. The cops were so cool
that they even ignored the bag of weed in my glove box. One
young cop (whom I had tattooed just a few weeks before) had
a great idea, and got the sergeant who had made the bust
to charge us with half the load each. It made the crime a
misdemeanor charge on each of us. If he had charged us both
with the price of the whole load, it would have been a grand
theft beef (a much more serious matter). Still, off we went to
jail to be charged, and either make bail or be taken before a
judge at 8:00 am.
They locked us in a tank or large cage at the police station. In
the cage were all the guys who had been arrested that night.
There was a very odd assortment of guys in there, who had
done all manners of crime. There were about ten of us. One
guy was trying to sleep but a little geek wound up tight on
crystal meth was keeping him awake. The sleepy guy put up
with the geek for about ten minutes, and then got up from his
cement bench, walked across the cell, thumped the crap out
of the geek and went back to the bench. He lay down and in
just a few minutes was cutting big z’s.
The guy that made me really nervous was an extra-large local
dude who was painted gold from just under his nose all over
his mouth and down his chin. It was a truly interesting look!
But Brown hipped me, saying, “He’s a painter. What? He huffs
gold paint! It gets you high.”
These painters would get a piece of terry cloth, spray it full
of gold paint (gold seemed to be the preferred color), roll the
cloth up so it looked just like a burrito, put the rag in their teeth
and breathe through this burrito of death.
I’m told that there are many people who prefer paint huffing to
the more “uptown” drugs.
By the time we got booked in and ready to make our phone
call, it was past 5am. At 8am they were going to chain us all
together, put us in a van and take us to see the judge at City
Hall. I really didn’t want to go before a judge looking like I
did, so I called Lance McClain who also worked at China Sea. I
knew Lance would have the money to bail me and Brown out,
and he only lived a couple of miles away.
Lance is a funny guy...a slow, deliberate kind of fellow. So I
stressed the urgency of getting to the cop shop really soon,
so I could get home, clean up and get to court by 8:30.
Lance had lived in Honolulu for a couple of years when this
happened, but still needed careful directions to find us.
Lance didn’t pick up on new stuff real quick, but I figured he
had 3 hours to come down and bail us out.
After I finished my phone call, the young cops drilled me
about putting tattoos on girls (Yes, boys, they get tattoos
“down there”). When they took me back to the tank, I
noticed right away that the geek was sitting on the floor
looking much worse than when I left. He was nursing a
whole new bunch of cuts and bumps and his left eye was
starting to close.
“What happened to the speed freak?” I asked Brown.
“He started giving Goldie the business this time, and got
another ass whoopin’.” I guess two in one day had been his
limit, because now he had grown really quiet.
6:00 am came and still no Lance. Both Brown and I were
getting a little nervous. When 7:00 am came and went, we
both took an oath to kick the snot out of Lance when we
saw him. Now we were really starting to sweat! At 8:00 am
the chance to make bail would be gone. Well, 8:00 came,
but no sign of Lance. We were both super pissed off.
The cops came to the tank and started hooking us to a
chain with handcuffs on it. I hit the jackpot: I was cuffed to
Brown on one side and to Goldie on the other. While they
were marching us out to the van, who should we pass but
Lance on his way in. We both could not believe our eyes!
His hair was wet; he was fresh out of the shower. He tried to
talk to us, but we were both too dumbfounded to speak. He
stood there and watched as we were loaded into the paddy
wagon and our chain was locked through iron loops in the
floor. As we rode away to court, all I could think of was being
hit by someone like Lance in traffic and burning along with
the other fish on the chain.
We were locked in another cage when we reached the
courthouse. It was a bigger cage, with 10 or 15 more guys
who had been arrested in other parts of the island. At 9:00
they came and got the lot of us. We were taken to the
courtroom sans handcuffs, and we all got to sit in a row off
to one side of the room. We were a scroungy looking lot and
I fit in perfectly, thanks to Quicksilver McClain’s tardy rescue
attempt.
There I sat in cutoffs, tattooed legs on display; fighting with a
t-shirt that kept slipping up over my belly (a look I’ve always
thought was just a tad to the left of deeply retarded). My
ensemble was still covered with stains from our haul. The
bags of dirt were a little wet from rain, so during the loading,
Brown and I got a lot of very expensive mud on us. We were
a sight to behold and when it came
our turn to face the fat Chinese judge sitting behind his huge
desk, he looked at us in silent contempt for what seemed
like a lifetime.
In my mind, I renewed my vow to gut Lance McClain like a
fish, the first chance I got. I looked around the courtroom and
was not surprised to see McClain was not present (probably
still trying to find his way to the courthouse, I thought).
The judge started to read through the papers that I assumed
contained our shameful tale. He suddenly stopped, looked at
us over the top of his glasses and asked, “You were stealing
dirt? Yes,” we admitted. He just shook his head and went
back to reading. He talked a little to some of his minions
in the room, and finally told us we were charged with a
misdemeanor. He wanted to know how we would plead. We
both copped a guilty plea and hoped for the best.
“Well, since you boys are both working, and you, Mr. Malone,
are a businessman, we are going to give you a D.A.G., or
Deferred Acceptance plea of Guilty. I want you to see a court
counselor and report back to me” (on a date that was about
a month later).
He released us without bail, and we signed some papers
and walked out of the courtroom. Free! Free! It was only the
second time I was ever in jail, and I knew I hated it. We went
to find Lance.
To be continued...
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