UNDER SURVEILLANCE

For some reason this reminds me of the family vacation we took to South Padre when I was 17. Two families really, my dads best friend Bruce and his family went with us.
Anyway, here we are on South Padre and I needed to get away from the families in order to score some pot from somewhere. This would amount to approaching some stranger a mile north of the Mexico border and asking where I could get some shit. I guess in 1974 it wasn’t as risky as it would be these days.
So I make some excuse to use the car to drive to a store and buy a book to read. Because what 17 year old freak wouldn’t want to do some summer reading at South Padre right? Bear with me here.
I cruised around and finally found a dude that looked like I might score from him and as luck would have it, I did!
Now I had to find a book.
They had a book rack in an old Skillerns drug store. I spent a long time looking at books and finally found one titled “The New American Revolution; How A French Marxist Society Is Coming To America”. It would go well with my Dick Gregory collection at home, provided that I could figure out what a fucking French Marxist was.
When I got back to the hotel with my stash and that book, Bruce wanted to see what book I’d bought.
I pulled it out of the bag and handed it to him. I thought he was going to shit a brick.
Later, on the beach rolling a joint I turned to glance back at the hotel and I could see Bruce on the balcony with a pair of binoculars, eyeballin’ the shit out of me, a newly born French Marxist.