There's a couple of additional shorts to the Granada story in italics at the end of that story.
James Kenneth Loughlin
For those who haven't already heard, Jimmy wrote the final chapter of the JIMMAY! Saga last Friday night. He was killed in a car accident while driving his firebird. By the look of things he took a turn too hard, swerved out of control into the oncoming traffic lane and collided with a pickup truck. Police and Fire/Rescue are sure that he was killed instantly. I plan on continuing the Saga from time to time as people tell me stories I haven't remembered or didn't hear yet. I was tempted to do some editing to put Jimmy in a better light but for now I plan on leaving what's posted as it is. Some people may not understand and after reading some of these stories may even believe that I didn't like Jimmy. To a certain extent that may have been true at times but you had to know Jimmy to understand. His family and friends would agree with me on this; Jimmy was a loud, obnoxious, arrogant pain in the ass who wouldn't listen to anyone he didn't care to. I couldn't possibly even begin to count the number of times all of us wanted to just smack him upside his head and just make him listen, now more than ever. He didn't see the world the way most of us did and I suspect that he really wanted to stay either 17 or maybe 21 forever. I've said some especially harsh things myself over the years and to be honest he really earned every word. A few times over the years I and others too, would get so aggravated that we had to kick him out of our lives for a while but we always knew that sooner or later he would be back. Despite all his faults he was a good friend and he was always more than willing to help someone out in any way he could when he was needed to. He may have been able to annoy people to the ends of the earth but he had a heart of gold.
In the past few months he had really started to turn his live around. He finally had a decent job, he had gotten himself a decent car and he was actually making realistic plans for the future. He had been without a car for several months so every day he would walk to the train station and catch a train into the city for his job. He was working for an electrical contracting company based in Queens and was planning on becoming a licensed electrician as soon as he could.
As I sit here now at nearly 2:00 a.m. I can't help but think back to all the times over the years that we would give him rides. It had gotten to the point that George and I were calling it 'Jimmy's Taxi Service'. Several months ago though we closed that down and were no longer willing to pick him up and drive him where ever he wanted. I look back now and I can't help but wonder if this would all be different if we hadn't stopped? Or did shutting down 'Jimmy's Taxi Service' have something to do with him finally getting his act together? I keep flipping between thinking that maybe we should have stopped years ago and he would have started getting things together a long time ago, my other thought is would it really have been that bad if we had continued? Either way would it have changed anything?
I was sometimes asked why I still kept Jimmy as a friend and I usually couldn't come up with a sensible answer. Somewhere starting with Stage Crew back in High School and over the years Jimmy became Family. Thanks to those days in High School I now have many brothers and sisters that in some ways are closer than my own family. Stage Crew, The Mutant Horde, The Group and whatever other names that second family of ours went by is now greatly diminished by the loss of one of own. As Brad put it 'In the tapestry of life Jimmy's thread stood out from all the rest'. Our lives may have been more aggravating at times because of Jimmy but they were a lot more fun and memorable too. Without him our world got quite a bit dimmer.
And finally to Jimmy where ever you are I have these things to say to you: You and those Damn Firebirds. I think I'm 6th or 7th on line for this (and there's a lot of people behind me) but now more than ever I want to smack you upside your head and just beat a little sense into you. You were always high on the list for going out the way you did, you knew it and you wouldn't change because to you that change would have been worse. I and everyone else is really going to miss you. I did not think I'd lose one of my brothers this early in life.
God speed Jimmy
Jimmy in the Afterlife Cartoons
Way back in the days of High School, somewhere during our senior year of '85-'86 many of us were on Stage Crew. Now a little background on Stage Crew, as a group we were all over the entire Auditorium. The only place we never managed to get to was under the Stage itself, in fact I don't think there was any actual space under the stage. The most interesting place for many of us were the 'coves'. This was the space between the drop ceiling of the auditorium and the actual roof. It was about 6 feet or so high, with the structural support beams taking up about 3 feet of that height. the ceiling hung from that adding the additional 3 feet. Now the support beams themselves were the travel route through the coves. They were made of a series of V shaped bars held together by two pieces of right angle steel at the top and two more at the bottom kind of looking like this VVVVVVVVVVVVV now picture each V being three feet in height and each series running parallel to each other about three feet away from each other (It's actually called an 'open web truss'). A person could put their foot in the base of the V and sort of walk from V to V to pretty much go anywhere in the coves without touching the fragile drop ceiling. If you were on stage and had some climbing ability it was easy to climb up on the 'light cage' then climb up the roll ons stored up there which would bring you to a large electric conduit box that you could cross over to the I beam that crossed over the top of the front of the stage. Now this was a massive steel I beam on it's side that was over two feet wide.
To give you an idea of just how large it was we once had a bunch of people standing on that I beam during a winter concert shaking Styrofoam chips over the band to make it snow. Anyway near the beginning of the I beam there was a hole punched through the wall that gave access to the coves. At the back of the auditorium there was a projection booth and two storage rooms upstairs along with another storage room and ticket booth room down stairs in the center section between two sets of doors. In the outer corners of the back of the auditorium were two fan rooms that had all the machinery that pumped air into the auditorium. The fan rooms also doubled up as store rooms for a lot of stage stuff. Now one of the upstairs storage rooms had no ceiling and went directly into the coves. This meant that when the projection booth and upstairs storage rooms were locked someone could climb into the coves from the stage and hop from V to V and climb down into the storage room and then into the projection booth which could then be opened from the inside. The fan rooms also had no ceiling and if you stood on the floor of the fan room you could look up past the duct work about 25 to 30 feet into the coves.
For some reason George (yes the tank driver) needed something stored in the fan room, to this day I don't know what it was. Being one of the stage crew managers he delegated the job of crawling through the coves and climbing down into the fan room so it could be opened from the inside to Jimmy (He was not known as JIMMAY! back then). Jimmy thinking this through went back stage into our work shop and procured an extension cord. He then promptly made the climb up the light cage, up the roll ons, across the electric conduit box onto the I beam, into the coves and across the length of the auditorium to the fan room. Jimmy then lowered the extension cord down into the fan room across one of the support beams intending to rappel down it. This was done in complete darkness since the light switch for the fan room was inside next to the door much, much closer to the floor. Jimmy didn't realize that he had only put the cord over the support beam. He grabbed the extension cord and swung out into space to hang from the cord 20 some odd feet in the air. Reaching down to start heading down hand over hand he made a critical error, he only grabbed one of the two sections of cord. As soon as he released his other hand his rappelling rig suddenly became a pulley system and he plummeted the remaining distance to the floor bouncing off a few pipes and possibly one of the light fixtures on his way down to crash land among the equipment stored there. George was patiently waiting on the other side of the door when he heard Jimmy's yell and the subsequent crash. Being the calm person he is and having known Jimmy for many years before that time he called through the door "Jimmy open the door". Jimmy promptly got up and opened the door earning the name Geronimo from that day forth. This was one of the many instances that led many of us to believe that he was also nearly indestructible (Nigh Invulnerable). Jimmy was absolutely unharmed from his free fall descent and the only thing he noticed was that he limped a little the next day and only for that day.
Jimmy did get a bit upset with me when I pointed out that the air intake for the fans was put together in large sections of ducting with the tabs out that went from the roof to the floor. This made a crude sort of ladder that I had used many times myself to gain access to the fan rooms. I had thought that everyone knew that the 'duct ladder' was there since that was what myself, Tom K. and Rich always used. Between that and my love for this story I think Jimmy blames me more than some of the others for the 'Geronimo!' name sticking to him so well for many years. Although I'm not sure I think George is the one who originally pinned it to him.
T.A.G. otherwise known as The Assassination Game. This was when a bunch of us ran through the hallways shooting at each other with toy guns. For a few months this was one of our favorite games in high school. I'm pretty sure that the first game was started off by a guy named Al. There were roughly 80 students who played that particular game if memory serves me correctly. This was by no means limited to Stage Crew. There were plenty of Band, Chorus and maybe even a girl or two from Kickline. It was a pretty simple game, every player had a card with another players name on it. The object of the game was to shoot whoever it was who's name was on the card you received. Now one of the rules was that an assassination witnessed by a teacher didn't count. When you eliminated your target you took that persons card and now had to eliminate their target. Eventually there were only two players each with the others name. Whoever managed to eliminate the other was the winner. George was one of the masters of this game and eventually wound up being the person who ran the games.
So just how does this relate to the JIMMAY! saga? Well Jimmy is one of the reasons why we had to stop playing T.A.G. We were well into our fourth game when Jimmy decided to charge after his target Steve Rummel, unfortunately this happened to go through the main administration wing of the school while class was changing. They managed to get about 2/3's of the way through the hall before they were stopped by one of the administrators. Jimmy quickly hid his gun in his jacket. When the administrator demanded to know what the hell was going on Steve pleaded ignorance and was let go. Jimmy being the one seen with the gun was held onto. Upon being asked what the hell was he doing with the toy gun.
Jimmy innocently asked 'What gun?'
I'm sure that this caused the poor administrators blood pressure to dramatically increase. 'The gun in your jacket!' was the next response.
Jimmy pulled the gun from his jacket with the surprised look of 'wow how did that get there' and responded 'Oh you mean this?'
'Yes that!' the administrator demanded 'What is that for'
Jimmy looked at him said 'This' and promptly shot the wall right next to the poor mans head.
The poor man dragged Jimmy off to a higher administrator sputtering all the way. Apparently Jimmy had shot the mans blood pressure up high enough that he had lost the ability to speak. Jimmy left that office sometime later without his gun. Some time shortly after that George got one of those silly in-school suspensions for running the game. To this day I don't know how he managed to keep a straight face when the Principal or Dean of students told him 'I know everything that goes on in this school' yet somehow he missed the first 3 games each lasting well over a week and each game starting out with anywhere from 40 to 80 students.
I may have some of the details mixed up a bit here and there, it was a long time ago and I didn't witness any of this incident. For some reason I'm pretty sure that the first administrator knew Jimmy very well and his reaction after nearly being shot in the head by a toy bullet may very have been something along the lines of 'Jimmy only you would do something like that'
I get a little flack from time to time over this incident... mostly because I unburied him hahaha. Anyway if you check the pictures section you'll see a nice sized sand castle that I built with the help of my girlfriend Dawn on Daytona Beach last April. I've always wanted to build a really large sand castle for nearly as long as I can remember. Most of the time I only get as far as digging a rather large hole in the sand. I think it was the summer of 1986. Me and a whole bunch of friends spent the day at Smith's Point beach and once again I had dug a rather large hole in the sand with the idea of building a nice sized sand castle. Almost everyone had gone off to the concession stand when I decided that I didn't have the energy to finish and was now stuck with this big hole in the sand. I sat there for a bit wondering what to do next when I got a bright idea. I could almost see the little light bulb go on over my head in cartoon fashion. I turned to my friend Jack Kelloff and said
'Jack, how much do you want to bet that I can get Jimmy into this hole and bury him up to his neck in the sand?'
Jack looked at me and goes 'No way, Jimmy's stupid but he's not that stupid.'
I just smiled. Shortly after that everyone returned from the concession stand and I said to Jimmy 'Hey Jimmy! I bet that if I bury you up to your neck in this hole, you can't dig yourself out.'
'Yes I can.' He replied extremely sure of himself.
Now you have to understand that Jimmy is a pretty strong individual and I basically told him that I didn't believe that he was strong enough to get out of the sand. So Jimmy got in the hole and squatted down on his hands. The hole was just about perfect for him to sit/squat in and still have his head above the ground line. I'm pretty sure that I got some help burying him from Jack, Rich and Chris so soon only his head was visible. It took him a few seconds to realize that he was completely immobilized. I don't know what it's called but I think it's similar to claustrophobia (which Jimmy doesn't have) but it turns out that when Jimmy is completely immobilized he starts to really freak out, basically he panics. When his face turned completely red and you could tell that he was really freaked, I really started to worry. I yelled out for help and the four of us quickly dug him out. Like I said Jimmy is pretty strong. I was really worried that he was going to tear the tendons off on his legs. Luckily we were able to get him out before he hurt himself and we all got a good chuckle out of it a few minutes later, even Jimmy who was honestly surprised that it couldn't be done. Our friend Brad says that there is a way of cupping your hands while your being buried that would give you enough space that with a little luck you would be able to dig your way out but no one was willing to try. Although the lot of us believed that if any one could have pulled off getting out of that it would have been Brad.
This is going to be a tough one to write up. It isn’t really a single story it’s more of a collection of them. I’m pretty sure that sometime before the Honda Jimmy had a mid to late ‘70’s Ford 2 door Granada. It was one of those high mileage beat up station cars with a 6 cylinder engine and an ugly brown paint job. If you ask him to this day Jimmy will claim that he hated that car. He abused that car as much as the little Honda but unlike the Honda this car took the abuse for months at a time. Many people considered me to be completely insane due to the fact that I would willingly get into this death trap. The car itself wasn’t a death trap it was really the driver. Looking back now I’m not sure if I was insane, had a death wish or was really convinced on my immortality delusions.
Now I’ve often told people this. Generally when a circle of friends in high school get their licenses a bunch of them will drive like idiotic lunatics for a week or two before generally calming down a bit and driving more normally. In most circles of friends there’s often one or two lunatics who drive that way for months to years before calming down. In my old circle of friends it wasn’t one or two lunatics, nearly half of us could be considered insane drivers. To this day I’m completely amazed that we never killed anyone. Of all of us Jimmy easily held the title as most insane. There were varying degrees of insanity versus real skill that appeared insane. I would have to say that as far as skill goes the best driver among us was Jason, followed by George, Brad and possibly Joe. Joe was extremely mellow and didn’t really belong to the lunatic driving group but he did do some wacky things like getting his 9 passenger diesel station wagon fully in the air to become one of the early members of the Port Ave. Airborne Division. As for the really insane besides Jimmy there was myself, Tom K., Tom E, Shawn K., Lance, Rich and of course Nancy. There were also a few, that like Joe weren’t really insane but occasionally did some wacky things that would make you wonder like Chris, Dori and Erica.
Now the combination of Jimmy and his Granada was downright scary at times. In those days I was driving (when it would work) a 1972 fastback Mustang with a nice sized V-8, four speed stick shift and no exhaust. I firmly believe that that old Mustang was even faster than it had any right to be due to the fact that it was missing quite a lot of itself with the missing floors, trunk and various other pieces of it’s body parts and support structure. I most assuredly had a lead foot with that beast and when it ran at all it was one of the fastest cars of my circle of friends in those days. Back in those days we pretty much raced everywhere we went. Often times I would try to lose Jimmy using the raw power of the V-8 under the hood and any time I didn’t have a few miles of straight running road there was no way I ever managed to lose him. I generally tried to avoid driving over peoples lawns and basically tried to stay on the road. Therein lies the tactical advantage that Jimmy held over all the other lunatics. If there was a remotely drivable path that would save Jimmy a few seconds he would take it. I think he started developing this particular skill on the stretch of grass just south of the 7-11 on Lakeland Avenue near Sunrise Highway. If you drive past there these days you can see the barrier that was erected I am sure due to Jimmy. It was in that area that Jimmy extended what we called ‘slideways’ driving to include driving on grass. Most people hopefully have no idea just how irritating it was for someone like me to drive like a lunatic with my ‘fast’ car only to look in the rear view mirror and see Jimmy in his grandma-mobile Granada right behind you.
One of my more vivid memories of being a passenger in the Granada was one time when Jimmy was chasing Jason in his little 4 cylinder Datsun. I’m pretty sure that we were coming from the Patchogue multiplex heading northwest on Vets Highway. Jason turned left to head south on Lakeland. Jimmy of course followed. Jason drove about a 1/2 of a mile or so in the right lane and then stopped. Jimmy roared past him on the left and realizing that Jason had stopped he also stopped. The two cars sat there in the middle of the road for a few seconds before Jason made a quick 180 degree turn and raced off North towards Ronkonkoma. Jimmy seeing his quarry escape dropped the Granada into reverse, floored it, drifted over to the left lane on the other side of the road so he would at least be going with the flow of traffic (luckily absent at the time) and attempted to catch up with Jason while driving backwards up Lakeland. It didn’t take long before Jimmy couldn’t get the Granada to go any faster in reverse. He had reached the limit of its single gear and had the motor screaming as we did somewhere between 30 and 40 miles an hour while going backwards. Jimmy realized that Jason was quickly pulling away so he decided that he had to turn the car around before Jason got away. He then pulled something I had only seen in movies and on T.V., without taking his foot off the gas pedal he spun the steering wheel. The entire world seemed to tilt sideways as the car spun around on two wheels nearly tipping over. Jimmy had somehow managed to completely turn the Granada around without completely flipping over.
This was one of the few times that I’ve known Jimmy that he was completely stunned and speechless. Myself on the other hand for some strange reason wasn’t at all affected. As he sat there in shock I promptly started screaming at him “PUT IT IN DRIVE, HE’S GETTING AWAY!” I don’t know what that says about me but I’m sure some shrink would find the whole thing interesting. Jimmy responded to my yelling at him by attempting to put the car in drive. I never before and never since ever saw anyone actually miss ‘drive’ on an automatic three times. When he finally got it in drive and headed after Jason he didn’t have far to go since Jason had been so stunned himself at witnessing Jimmy drive on two wheels that he had pulled over to the side of the road and waited for us.
There was one of the few times I managed to use the power of my Mustang get away from Jimmy and his Granada for a short time that especially stands out. I had picked up my sister Kim at the High School from either Stage crew or Kick Line practice and was chased after by Jimmy who had Charlie with him at the time. I jumped out onto Vets Highway and floored it heading Northwest to drive through the section of highway that passed through Connetquot River State Park. This is a long and dark stretch of road that gave my Mustangs greater horsepower a very big advantage over Jimmy’s insanity drive. Now that old Mustang was always on the verge of falling apart and at 70 miles an hour the entire car was vibrating to the point that it looked like the dash board would fall off on your lap (which actually happened a couple of times). After 90 or so the vibration died out and it was actually very smooth driving at 120 or better. I’m not sure how much faster than that it went since that’s where the speedometer stopped. I pulled out of the woods and coasted over the bridge that leads towards what is now Islandia. I then hung a right turn onto Old Nichols road to head towards Ronkonkoma. It was there that I discovered a bit of a problem. When I tried to down shift into second gear and continue driving I found that second gear no longer seemed to be there. The car coasted to a stop on the side of the road as I desperately tried to find any gear at all. The engine was running fine I just couldn’t get the transmission to engage. The clutch seemed fine but the H pattern on the shifter was gone. I sat there for a few minutes making big circles with the shifter.
It wasn’t long before Jimmy came to a screeching halt next to me. Jimmy and Charlie looked over laughed and tore off. I wasn’t concerned at being abandoned by my friends at the time I was really trying to convince myself in my head that the tranny was still there. I figured that if the tranny had fallen out somehow not only would I noticed some sort of massive bump but it would have taken the shifter along with it. After a few minutes I managed to get it into first gear. My previously tight H shifting pattern had become an ultra wide H pattern. First gear was now up against the dash and second was down almost into the drivers seat. I practically had to throw it to get into third, which was just about in the glove compartment and fourth was down against the passenger seat. I managed to limp home like that where I discovered that the bolts holding the shifter onto the tranny had vibrated out and the only thing holding it on the tranny was the shifting linkages. As I was crawling around under the car at home Jimmy arrived to see what had happened. He had dropped Charlie off and went back to where I had first broken down and not finding me there drove off to find me at home. Everyone found the whole incident very amusing with the possible exception of my sister who I don’t believe ever got into my Mustang ever again.
There was another time I was a passenger in Jimmy’s Granada and a bunch of us were somewhere in Bohemia and decided to race off to the Smith haven mall. Jimmy took one of the short cuts from Vets Highway to Ocean Ave. through a small industrial park. He had misjudged a turn as we slid around it and slammed the passenger rear tire into the curb. As we drove off there was nasty vibration and sound coming from that tire and once again I demonstrated my lack of sense in regards to Jimmy’s driving in the Granada. As we headed north I climbed half out of the passenger side window to look at the tire (O.K. maybe I did have a death wish back then). It was now at an odd angle but it was still attached so we drove off to the mall vibration and all. Upon arriving at the mall we finally stopped, got out of the car and examined the damage. Somehow the axle had bent giving that wheel a rather odd appearance. With a ‘Nothing we can do now’ attitude we joined the others to go window shopping in the mall. I got a ride home from someone else and found out later that Jimmy’s father was completely amazed that Jimmy had managed to bend a wheel axle. Wheel axles are generally really stiff and when subjected to that kind of abuse they tend to break instead of bend. It’s incidents like this that caused Jimmy’s dad to oftentimes look quite puzzled at us as a group and his son even more so.
There’s at least one more short story of Jimmy’s Granada where he scared the crap out of some guy he didn’t know in the mall parking lot as he almost drove into the guy. Apparently this unknown guy had the right of way and didn’t want to yield to Jimmy until Jimmy leaned out his window and screamed out “NO BRAKES!” Unfortunately I don’t know all the details of that story. In fact there is a possibility that it wasn’t even his Granada.
George's brother Chris told me of a time when a group of guys pulled into a gas station in four different cars at the same time. Jimmy and his Granada were one of the four. Jimmy cut the turn from the entrance to the gas pumps a bit too tight and wound up hitting the big concrete filled steel U shaped guard. Any normal person would have backed up a bit and pulled up normally, not Jimmy. Jimmy instead hit the gas and ploughed the entire side of his car along the guard with the sound of grinding metal and sparks flying everywhere. The gas station attendant jumped out and stared opened mouthed and wide eyed as Jimmy got out as if nothing was wrong and proceeded to purchase some gas.
Chris also told me that Jimmy had gotten so frustrated one time with the Granada that he actually drove a wooden stake through the carburetor in a comical attempt to kill the car once and for all.
George remembered riding in the back seat of the Granada one time with Carrie Nuccio. The two of them were so shaken by Jimmy's driving that they actually spent the entire trip hiding in the back seat. Neither one of them had any desire to actually see what was going on. I wouldn't be at all surprised if the two of them never got in the Granada ever again.
Nancy reminded me of this one after reading the latest stories. There was a time near the beginning of our driving career where most of us didn't have much in the way of common sense. This is an era rich in stories involving myself and many of my friends. There is the classic one where I paid the original asking price of a '72 Mustang that was ready to literally fall apart, after Brad chewed the seller down several hundred dollars. The time Lance drove into a tree near Lakeland Ave. and was more concerned about getting the cheater knob off the steering wheel than anything else. He was trapped in the car and was barely able to get one hand on the back of the knob, he had to be cut out of the car and may be the only person to survive hitting that tree. The time Brad drove a nine passenger station wagon up a telephone pole wire. I don't even know how many car flight stories we have but a lot of us are members of the 'Port Ave. Airborne division'.
Anyway during this time Brad had bought a dead 1980 Honda from a guy and spent a bit of money and a lot of time repairing it with the intention of selling it for a profit. By the time he was pretty much done he had a decent running car that was easily worth $800 or more. At this time Jimmy had killed whatever car he had been driving. I'm not sure if was when he blew his motor to win a race or the mysterious disappearing oil that killed another car. Jimmy had heard that Brad had a car he was selling and begged Brad into selling it to him for $500. Since Jimmy was broke he paid Brad $200 and was going to pay off the other $300.
Nancy is pretty sure that Jimmy managed to kill off this car in about 48 hours, I though it had taken him a bit longer than that but back then I didn't see him for weeks at a time so 48 hours is possible. I did see him the very day he got the car and the few minutes that I saw him convinced me that the poor little car would not last for very long. Jimmy has a few mental gaps when it comes to driving, the primary one being that many cars do not come with big V-8 engines. If you ask him he will of course easily talk about nearly any motor in existence be it 4, 6 or 8 and sound like he really knows what he's talking about and for many things he really does. Unfortunately when it comes to actually driving almost everything is treated as if it was a performance car on a track. Another gap he tends to fall into is driving as if the gas pedal is an on/off switch. Now at the time he got the Honda Jimmy really didn't know how to drive a stick shift. I think I was working on my old white Mustang when he pulled up. He was in a hyperactive good mood because he was mobile again and I think he just wanted to stop by to show me the Honda. At this time I have no idea what he said then but he didn't stay very long and hopped back in the Honda and drove off. The one thing that Jimmy really didn't know about driving stick back then is that you have to take your foot off the gas when you shift gears. As he started to go I heard the poor Honda as he brought it up over 6,000 rpm by the sound of the little motors tortured scream and 'side stepped' or 'popped' the clutch. As he raced off I heard the motor scream again as he shifted into second gear, never once letting the gas pedal come off of the floor. Before that time I would never had thought that not only was it possible to break the tires loose on a front wheel drive Honda but that you could also manage to break the tires loose again when shifting into second, 'chirping' the tires. So Jimmy roared off in a cloud of smoke with his little Honda.
There were two more incidents I heard about before the poor car finally died. I'm not sure which took place first and both of these incidents may have temporarily disabled the car to some degree with Jimmy managing to get the car working again. The first one that I remember is Jimmy was returning to L.I. from somewhere upstate. I think he was on the Taconic Parkway doing close to or just over 120 miles an hour. The car was in fifth gear and must have been over 5000 rpm. I'm not sure if those cars can even go that fast but if it wasn't Jimmy certainly had the car in it's last gear and the gas pedal pressed firmly to the floor. Suddenly the whole car bucked, the tires screamed and the engine jumped up to over 8000 rpm. For some unknown reason the car shifted from fifth to third at over 100 miles an hour. From that moment on the car would never go into fifth gear, it was as if it just turned into a 4-speed. Jimmy and his passengers managed to get home without any further incident.
Now I don't know if that was how Jimmy finally killed the Honda or not. I had thought that the disappearing fifth gear happened after that and I know he drove the car around for a bit as a 4-speed. Jimmy racing the Cougar and Nova could easily happened after the Honda was converted into a 4-speed. Just for comparison Nancy's Cougar had a mid sized V-8 (5.8 liter in today's world) and may or may not have been converted to a 4-speed at the time of this incident either way it was a pretty quick car. Jason's '72 SS Nova (real SS too) on the other hand was an extremely quick car possibly the fastest car any of my old friends ever owned (Jimmy would disagree). He had a many thousand dollar tricked out chevy 350/383 that was at one time known as the fastest car in Troy NY. It had almost every color available for a '72 Nova with it's different colored doors, fenders and hood. As to why Jimmy was trying to race these two cars, well that's Jimmy.
I was talking to Brad a year or two ago and some of this story came up then. Brad is pretty sure that Jimmy never paid off the remaining $300, possibly because he had killed the car before he had a chance to and decided it was no longer worth $500. Leaving Brad $200 for a car that he could have easily gotten $800 for.
I was talking to George a little earlier and he remembers Jimmy's Honda very well. He's also pretty sure that it was around a little longer than 48 hours but not much longer than a week, maybe two. Back in those days we liked to catch movies at the Brookhaven multiplex and we often raced there and back. George and a bunch of others were in either Joe's Van or station wagon heading home from seeing a movie. There were a lot of cops out so he remembers that they weren't going all that fast, somewhere between 55 and 65 maybe. As they were driving along the L.I.E. they heard a screaming WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA as Jimmy passed them in the Honda going all of maybe 10 miles an hour faster than they were. Apparently Jimmy hadn't quite gotten the hang of shifting. By the high pitched scream Jimmy had managed to get the car into second gear, since it was capable of going faster than Joe's car he no longer needed to shift and didn't bother. George said that everyone in Joe's car was having trouble breathing as they all laughed their asses off as Jimmy passed them. I have to wonder if this has anything to do with why there are so many of those little four cylinder cars out there these days that sound like tortured lawn mowers with those silly mufflers.
As Nancy put the second incident "he tried to keep up with us in the Blue 71 cougar racing around with Jason in his Nova!! Do you know what a honda civic sounds like when revved to 9,000 rpm and power shifted? Similar to what it would sound like if it were dropped from 50,000 feet with no parachute. WHEEEEEEEIIIIIIIIIIZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ.....BOOM! Click,click,click(as he putters to the side of the road)."
Let’s see now, It must have been some time in 1992. Tom Eads and I were renting a house in East Islip and as an added bonus we acquired a sort of extra room mate in Jimmy. He didn’t really live there and I think that our friend Ryan was there a lot more but he certainly seemed to be a part of the furniture some times.
It was a really cool house for a couple of young single guys. We had two bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs. The first floor had the standard kitchen, dining area, living room, bathroom and a sort of pantry/mudroom in the back. There was a nice sized deck off the dining area and a nice porch out front. Of course we had parties on a regular basis and there were mass quantities of alcohol. We generally had BYOB parties and there were a few times that the returns helped offset some of the costs of living there. The house came with a couple of outside speakers on the front porch, which we hooked up to the stereo system. At the time Tom Eads was working as a coffee truck driver and supplied all of our ice through the commissary. This came in handy because Ryan had a F-250 pickup truck that they loaded up with ice for our first party. We had so much ice that we had filled the downstairs bathrooms bathtub to the point were the top of the ice pile was over three feet past the tub rim up against the wall. This caused the bathroom to be about 10 or 15 degrees cooler than the rest of the house.
I’m not exactly sure what he did to finally push me over the edge that I actually started to do stupid little shit to annoy him. Although I’m pretty sure it was from when I needed money to get to Florida to see my Grandfather on his deathbed in order to say goodbye. At the time Jimmy owed me a nice sized sum of money, exactly how much I have no idea. I think it was around the 300 to 350 dollar mark. I scraped up as much as I could and it was going to be really tight, Jimmy had just gotten paid so I figured that this would be a perfect time to get some of my money back but Jimmy claimed that he didn’t have any he could spare and after being harassed for a while he grudgingly gave up $20. I abducted Tom Eads and we drove off to Florida where I managed to say goodbye to my Grandfather before he died and we stayed until after the wake and funeral. I’m not sure when Erica got involved, she may have been there to loan me some money or she may have heard about it afterwards but to the day he died she viewed Jimmy as a selfish so and so. Erica was greatly upset when I told her and is one of the many frustrated people who wishes they could have just beat some sense into him.
Either way when I got back and things started to settle down Jimmy would still stop by so I started on a campaign to irritate him. We started out by nick naming him the plague since he just wouldn’t go away. I then took a magic marker and wrote ‘Plague’ on the door of his car and ‘Victim’ on the passenger door. We would also issue drivers advisory warnings on Tommy’s CB whenever we driving in the same area, giving out descriptions of his car. We usually got the car wrong and Jimmy would call out on his CB the corrections. I had gotten really irritated one day when I came home from work to find him already there that I opened up my trunk took out my tools and removed the rear bumper from his car. At the time we used to park in a lot behind the house and the parked cars couldn’t be seen from the house because of a large garage/apartment that was in the way. Now it’s not like it was a decent car although Jimmy would tell otherwise. It was his latest ‘This is going to be Jimmy’s hotrod’ vehicle most of which usually died for one reason or another long before they had any chance of becoming what he claimed they would. I think it was a mid 70’s Grand Am that I thought was kind of freaky looking but Jimmy made it sound as if it was going to be the fastest car on Long Island one day (much like all his other hot rods).
Anyway I took the bumper, went through the hole in the fence and tossed it on top of a pile of scrap wood between the garage and the fence. I went inside and acted as if nothing had been done. After a while Jimmy went home. Jimmy’s route home was to drive north up Carleton Avenue cutting through Central Islip then taking Long Island Avenue into Ronkonkoma where he lived. Central Islip is one of those not so nice areas that the police set up a small police station just for the area by the tracks (which is now gone). It’s just the kind of place that lots of police would be driving around on the look out for anything suspicious looking. About an hour and a half after Jimmy left he came back totally pissed off over his missing bumper. He never really noticed it was gone, his dad was doing something outside after he had gotten home and let him know. Tommy, Ryan and I couldn’t stop laughing especially when we saw the look on his face when I told him he had walked past it twice. When he started to really bitch about it I told him to consider it an interest payment, which shut him up and he left. The funniest part about the whole thing was Jimmy was driving around at the time for his third or fourth year without a license. He had lost that around 1989 or so and didn’t get it back until 1999 or 2000. George suspects that we are partly to blame for the 10 years of no license since we provided what we now call and what now no longer exists for George and I ‘Jimmy’s taxi service’. Jimmy wasn’t around much after that since shortly afterwards Tommy moved down to Florida where he eventually married my Aunt Nancy who he met at my Grandfathers funeral (which makes him my Uncle Tommy hahaha). I left shortly after that and moved back with my Grandmother in West Islip.
O.k. I know that this one isn’t as funny as some of the others, I just knew I should have started writing down all this stuff years ago.
How Jimmy got kicked out of George's garage
JIMMAY! finally succeeded in getting us kicked out of George's garage as far as working on cars goes anyway. Once again he just promised and promised and promised and then went back on his word. So the "One weekend NASCAR style engine switch" went on for two weeks. And the final outcome: George now had two junk cars of Jimmy's at his house. Jimmy's answer: "Oh you can call and have them both towed off" leaving the responsibility of cleaning up after Jimmy on George's shoulders, with no paperwork for either car. As George puts it "Most guys fight with their wives over money, I fight with mine over Jimmy". There's a whole bunch of other stuff most of which revolves around Jimmy's lack of any sort of respect or common courtesy towards George, his wife Dawn or his house and property. Jimmy I'm sure sees things differently seeing how he has done a good chunk of automotive work on George's corvette but it's interesting that (I don't think he even knows it though) Jimmy has been forbidden to ever work on any of George's cars ever again. I think Dawn went over all the receipts and somehow all the money Jimmy supposedly saved them was more expensive than having the work done by a professional mechanic.
I
don't know, maybe she figured in all of her garden plants that Jimmy has killed
by having tranny and oil spill into her flower beds or maybe she also tried to
count the many times he left the compressor running for days on end. Now
mind you it's not like I'm completely innocent myself. I've left a
mess there at times and my old mustang stayed there far too long before I
finally got rid of it. Come to think about it my old S-10 pickup is still
there hahaha. Although I have never managed to piss Dawn off to the point
where George and her had to fight over me and Jimmy seemed to do it nearly every
time he showed up. Also unlike Jimmy I try to contribute towards the
household. I try always provide my own iced tea (if you've ever seen me
drink the stuff you'd know that it's quite a lot.) and I try to bring over chips
an stuff from time to time. Jimmy rarely brings over anything for anyone
other than himself and he almost always leaves the empty big gulp cups lying
around. It's sad in a way but Jimmy just exceeded the boundaries by a good
bit and ruined a good thing and more than likely has hurt himself far more than
he realizes, because he wants to stay carefree and 17 forever he has put a
few long term friendships at risk.
Not going to worry about it though, I decided a few years ago to give up the whole 'hot-rod' mentality until I have my own home and my own two car garage. Then maybe I'll be looking for a 1971 mustang fastback again lol!
Another part of this story follows, this is second hand but I'm pretty sure that it is very accurate. Friday night (3-23-01) Jimmy arrives at George's with the death-trap camaro that will be donating it's (at the time) running engine to the 'good car' firebird. Now the Firebird has been at George's for about a week and Jimmy has already removed it's engine (which was quite dead). The theory is that Jimmy will pull the engine from the camaro and install it in the Firebird over the weekend and have it running by Monday, since he needs it to get to work. Somehow Jimmy managed to get George to help him out.
That evening was quite amusing from the right perspective from what I heard. They tried and failed to install the engine without removing the tranny, this should have worked Jimmy has done it before but for some reason it didn't. While Jimmy was under the car and George was lowering the jack supporting the tranny, George had to apply a lot of force to get the tranny to release. This was due to the fact that Jimmy had managed to coat the entire jack handle with a layer of oil and grime. The jack promptly lowered all the way to the floor causing the tranny to pin Jimmy under the car, trapped underneath by the weight of the tranny. Jimmy began to yell "getitoffme!getitoffme!" George while trying not to roll around on the floor laughing his ass off managed to switch the jack from 'lower' to 'raise' and started to ease the tranny off of Jimmy. This operation was made much more difficult than normal due to the fact that there was only a few inches of room to pump the jack handle.
I don't know if this one happened before or after George squashed Jimmy with the tranny but while actually swinging the motor into the Firebird George was standing on the engine trying to lever it into the engine compartment and Jimmy was operating the engine hoist, the Firebird decided to leave George's garage. Nobody knows why it did this, it had to roll over the wheel chocks that were behind the rear wheels that are meant to prevent something like this from happening. Nobody was hurt but George got to experience 'car surfing' of sorts as the car rolled almost half way out the garage taking the engine hoist with it. Jimmy was left standing there as the whole car, half-installed-engine, George and engine hoist combination rolled off while wearing his typical 'deer-caught-in-the-headlights' expression. They had managed to get a good portion of the work done and it was about 11:30 at night when Jimmy decided to inform George that George had to take him home. This was not a "Can you please take me home?" more of a "Take me home because I didn't think to make other arrangements". By the time they managed to finish up to the point where they could leave the car, it was 1:30 a.m.. It was really Jimmy trying to get as much done as possible because he absolutely needed the car to be running by Monday. This left George with getting home around 2:00 a.m. and somehow all of this activity woke up George's infant son (whose bedroom is closest to the garage). George's son then kept him awake until 4:00 a.m.
George was supposed to work his weekend job that Saturday and that starts at 7:15 in the morning. George wound up missing the day at work and therefore was screwed out of $60. After all of this 9:00 rolls around and George is awaken by Jimmy who called to inform George that he needed a ride and he wanted George to pick him up. George went back to sleep after muttering something about not feeling well and that he would try to get there when he could, maybe around 12 and crawled back into bed. George figured that since it was such an emergency that Jimmy would find another way to get there. I talked to George around 11 or 12 that afternoon and from the sound of it George was still pretty wiped out and he was pretty irritated over losing a days pay to this whole fiasco. George was surprised that Jimmy hadn't called me to give him a ride. Well around 3:00 in the afternoon Jimmy finally arrived after getting his girlfriend to drive him over. He spent a few hours working on the car before leaving so he could spend the evening with his girlfriend.
Sunday morning rolled around and went on to became Sunday afternoon with no sign of Jimmy. George became even more irritated and began to track him down. He found him by calling his girlfriends cell phone, she informed George that they had been at a car show all day. George proceeded to rant about "If his car was such a F**ing emergency that he had to keep me (George that is lol) up until 2:00 in the F**ing morning helping him and then wake me up at 9:00 in the morning after I was up until 4:00 then why isn't he F**ing here working on the God damned thing?" She promptly gave the phone to Jimmy who seemed surprised that George was upset and informed George that he was now able to use his sisters car and that it wasn't an emergency anymore. He figured that he would just show up Monday after work and finish it up.
Well three days later the 'good car' was still not running and Jimmy had given up on the whole job. The previously running engine was now shot. It could be made to run at the expense of large amounts of ether but it had developed some very bad noises. Jim (George's neighbor) upon hearing this didn't think the car would make it to the end of the block. Jimmy informed George Wednesday evening that George could just have them both towed since they were now both useless pieces of junk (he kind of forgot that he had promised that he would absolutely have the camaro out of there by the previous Monday evening). Thursday rolled around, both cars were still there.
Jimmy stopped by went straight into the garage and then stormed into George's house and while Dawn was on the phone he demanded to know where his darts were (Thursday is dart night). It never occurred to him that he was being rude in several ways and that Dawn never goes into her own garage because of the mess Jimmy usually leaves there, so she wouldn't know anything about where they were in there anyway. Jimmy stormed off in a huff and called a few times but Dawn refused to pick up the phone (caller I.D.) because she was not going to talk to him. George wound up bringing the darts to Jimmy (they're on the same dart team) at the bar. Jimmy then came up some b.s. that he had been calling all night so that he could get George's address so that he could have the cars towed off to the scrap yard. When Dawn heard this she got even more pissed off. They have been living there for over seven years and Jimmy (who George has known for over 20 years) doesn't know the address?!? "What kind of idiot is he that he can't open up a damn telephone book and look it up?" is what she wanted to know.
Now I
found it very interesting that Jimmy had been there several nights and days in
the previous week or so and had never once asked for the address and by Saturday
3-31-01 he hadn't called back to ask for it either. Maybe George gave it
to him Thursday night at the bar. I don't know, I do know that Jimmy
hasn't called since he got his darts back and that both cars are still at
George's, like I said it was then Saturday (almost Sunday) if he only needed the
address they should have been gone sometime Friday, right? I do know that
Dawn was extremely upset over the whole thing and that as far as she is
concerned Jimmy is not welcome at her home. George has stated that Jimmy
may be a very old friend but he is not getting divorced over Jimmy. If it
comes down to a choice between his wife Dawn or his friend Jimmy well then it
will be good bye Jimmy. Jimmy has heard this before and has laughed it
off. I don't think he should be laughing now. He either has no idea
how much stress he has induced on his friends life or he doesn't care.
I've been there for a few of the arguments and it doesn't look good for Jimmy.
As for the whole transporting the 'good car' to Georges part of the story, this is what I can remember. This is one of the few parts of the whole story that George enjoyed. Jimmy had George help him in getting the 'good' car to George's. Now mind you they had to use the 'bad' car as the tow vehicle. The 'bad' car was a really beat to hell camaro with rotted floors, weird electrical problems, torn up interior and to top all that off it was stuck in second gear. This car couldn't be put in either reverse or more importantly park. Even with all this though the engine at least ran. The 'good' car was an firebird that pretty much everything was o.k. except that the motor was blown and the battery was either dead or missing. This meant that they would be towing it with no power brakes or steering and no lights.
Now there's one more thing to keep in mind over this whole towing the cars section. I don't know how it had been arranged I think George set this up with our friend Warren somehow. They had managed to set up having the car towed or flat bedded to George's. George may have been at Jimmy's when the tow truck driver arrived but before they could get the keys and the necessary info from Jimmy he disappeared into the house because his girlfriend called. I think the tow truck driver needed Jimmy's license since he was the owner of the car. Anyway George and the tow truck driver were sitting outside for 10 or 15 minutes and no sign of Jimmy. George started going in and out of the house trying to get Jimmy off the phone but he had either locked himself in the bathroom or in his bedroom. George went back outside to talk to the tow truck driver who had been patiently waiting to see if he could wait some more. Unfortunately he said he had to go and make another pick up and after a few more minutes he left. By the time Jimmy got out he was surprised that the guy had left but didn't mind after all he had a tow strap, the 'bad' car and George.
By this time it was dark and even though the 'good' car had no lights George went along figuring it would help to just get the whole thing over with. Although he was half convinced that someone was going to rear-end him due to the lack of lights. They had managed to get the car almost to George's when stopping for a light George wasn't able to stop the car soon enough and it came to a stop on top of the tow strap. When the light turned green Jimmy tried to go forward but was stopped by the other car sitting on the tow strap. Getting out of the car to find out what was wrong, Jimmy spotted the problem and told George to ease off of the brakes. Jimmy then pushed the 'good' car and George back a bit to get them off of the strap. As he stopped to catch his breath he didn't notice that the 'bad' car had started to drive off on it's own. It was always stuck in second gear and the only that can stop it from moving whenever the engine is running is to step on the brakes. I don't think that the parking brake worked on that thing either.
As the combination 'bad' car, 'good' car and George rolled off towards the intersection, Jimmy stood there with his mouth open looking like an idiot, wearing his 'deer-caught-in-the-headlights' expression. To this day I'm sure the only thing that saved Jimmy from a lengthy conversation with the police on why his cars drove off without him causing a horrible accident is because even though the light had changed everyone who was waiting for it was too busy laughing their asses off at the entire spectacle. It really is a very busy intersection. As for George he was close enough to home that if anything had happened he would have just jogged home and let Jimmy handle things for a change.
My Friend Nancy sent these in
I just read the Honda stories - haha!
Note of truth: There are 3 things in life that are certainties:
Death, Taxes and the fact that Jimmay will never change! OR shut up!
Is that 4 things?
What do you get when you cross Jimmay with Brad Pitt? A good looking guy who never shuts up.
What do you get when you cross Gandhi with Jimmay? A once quiet holy man who now talks, A LOT.
What do you get when you cross Jeff Gordon with Jimmay? An even faster idiot who still can't drive!
What do you get when you cross Bob Villa with Jimmay? A handyman who isn't handy and whose also an idiot!
Ladies, What do you get when you cross an elephant with Jimmay? I'm not sure but at there's something to show for putting up with dating an idiot! hehehe!
What do you get when you cross a donkey with Jimmay? An even bigger Ass!
What do you get when you cross Stephen Hawking with Jimmay? A really smart idiot!
What do you get when you cross Don King with Jimmay? Whatever it is, just shoot it! Quick!
A
little over 2 years ago I had setup four computers in George’s basement on a
small Local Area Network (LAN). They
weren’t very powerful machines but they were all pretty close to each other in
performance the fastest I believe was K6-2/300 and the slowest was an old
Pentium 166. Prior to that we used
to go over George’s during the weekend and play the Axis & Allies board
game. Jimmy almost always wanted to
play Germany and popular opinion wouldn’t let George and I play together on
the same team. It was kind of like
our version of a ‘Poker night’. The
board game was getting a bit repetitive though so I wanted us to try some
computer games. Our first game that
we really got into was ‘Command & Conquer’.
It seemed like a logical way to go from Axis & Allies.
George took to it like a duck to water and several times throughout the
night you would hear Jimmy scream out in apparent agony as George’s forces
would roll into his base and pretty much destroy everything.
This wasn’t much of a problem when we first started playing but
George’s son Nicholas arrived shortly after and his bedroom was directly above
the area where we staged the computers. Jimmy’s
cries of anguish would often times wake the new born Nicholas and subsequently
end our evening of LAN gaming. This
was the reason why the War Room was started.
The reasoning was that we could build a room in the basement and do some
sound proofing and Jimmy’s frustration wouldn’t intrude on the people
upstairs.
Jimmy
took his next tax return check and proceeded to spend a large portion of it on
his new ‘Super Computer’. This
new super computer put him in the performance lead for a few months before I
upgraded Georges and his daughter Karissa’s machines to be roughly equal to
Jimmy’s. Jimmy fixated on one
minor advantage that his pc had over theirs, proving he still had the best
machine. He also enjoyed teasing me
about the fact that my pc was the slowest of the four and I had pretty much
built all four of them. With all
the construction going on in our normal area we shifted the equipment and set
everything up near George’s oil burner. By
that time we had started playing Quake 3 Arena, which George adapted to even
faster than he did to C&C. We
had also gone up to 5 pc’s sometimes as my girlfriend Dawn got into the LAN
gaming also.
There
were two basic things that induced Jimmy into not playing anymore before he
royally upset everyone with the Garage story.
The first was I believe due to mostly George’s skill at Quake 3.
That first became really apparent when George, Karissa, Jimmy and myself
were playing. The three of us decided to gang up on George we all staged
ourselves up on a ledge with rocket launchers and waited for him to come into
that room. Unfortunately George had
other plans. There’s something in
Quake called ‘Quad Damage’ which increases the amount of damage you do to
your opponents when you have it and also something called ‘Haste’ that
doubles your speed. George waited
in the room where the Quad Damage appears, which also happens to be next to the
room the Haste appears. Shortly
after the Haste appeared the Quad Damage showed up.
George picked up the Quad Damage ran out and scooped up the Haste.
So now he was twice as fast and did four times the damage.
He promptly found our hiding spot and before the three of us knew what was
going on, George destroyed all of our game characters which caused yet another
cry of anguish from Jimmy. I’m
not exactly sure of when but sometime after that I happened to see Jimmy out of
the corner of my eye during a game as George picked up the Quad Damage, the game
let’s everyone know that someone grabbed it by calling out ‘QUAD DAMAGE’
in a very deep voice. Jimmy visibly
twitched almost as if he was in physical pain.
Sure enough George raced around and destroyed everyone else.
Some
time shortly after that we were once again playing Quake 3.
This time on a ‘Bounce Pad’ type of board that involved a lot of
jumping long distances through the air in a relatively open area.
It’s a type of board that really tests your marksmanship.
Jimmy’s character was running along when he spotted George’s flying
through the air. Much to Jimmy’s
stunned surprise George turned and fired off a rocket at Jimmy.
It actually wound up missing him but Jimmy yelled out in shock and goes
to George ‘You shoot when you’re in mid air?!’. George calmly replied (probably laughing his ass off in his
head) ‘Of course, don’t you?’ If
that wasn’t bad enough a few games later Jimmy and George were both flying
through the air in different directions when George scored a direct hit on Jimmy
with the rail gun, instantly destroying him.
Jimmy gave up for the night, packed up his computer and went home.
I don’t think he ever came back to play again.
He claimed that he didn’t want to carry his 22 inch, monster monitor
around (which is pretty reasonable) and he couldn’t go from that to using one
of the War Rooms spare 14 inch monitors (also pretty reasonable).
The second reason I think that caused Jimmy to stop playing against us all was about a year ago I had once again upgraded George’s, Karissa’s, my own and my girlfriend Dawn’s pc’s so that each one of them was roughly twice as powerful as Jimmy’s ‘Super Computer’. Jimmy had also purchased his computer parts on the wrong side of a particular hardware divide so to speak and it wouldn’t be an easy upgrade for his machine to come up to the level ours were at. In addition to that his computer seemed to have a lot of trouble playing Quake 3. I’m pretty sure that it was the fault of his video card, which would have cost him even more money to fix. At the time Jimmy was neck deep in job, car and girlfriend trouble so upgrading his computer was pretty low on his list of priorities. It was able to play his favorite game and go online so he was happy with it. He did talk to me a few times about upgrading though so it was something he definitely wanted to do.
