John Peterson - The Johnny Chronicles

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Table of Contents

The Johnny Chronicles

Excerpts from the life and times of a neer-do-well

This account is entirely true and reasonably accurate except for the parts where the Statute of Limitations may not have run or may not apply owing to the nature of the crime, or where offense may be taken by relatives, friends, authorities, acquaintances, former lovers, etc. in which case it is entirely fabricated, totally false, and a complete figment of Johnnys imagination.

John Peterson, A.K.A. Johnny
Honolulu
2021

ISBN: 978-1-6678226-7-9

Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming - Wow! What a Ride!

Hunter S. Thompson

Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

The Ocean

Its bumpy and its sour and Im never going in there again. Thats all Johnny had to say about that upon exiting the Pacific Ocean for the first time in the summer of 49. He was three years old with a snoot full of water and a suit full of sand. Aside from the time a few days earlier when he had dropped a sledgehammer on his toe, and the time before that when hed stuck a nail in an electric socket, this was his earliest memory.

It was a shaky start to a love affair. But love is a funny thing, and for reasons unknown and unknowable, the Ocean was to become a big frickin deal. It would consume his thoughts and most of his spare time. It would shape his identity. The inhabitable portion of the earths surface came to be defined by its distance from the sea. It would thrill him beyond anything there ever was or ever would be except perhaps sex (which he would later find out was really great but didnt last very long) and cocaine (way too expensive). And it would afford him with many and sundry opportunities to expire prematurely (Evel Knievel would be proud).

Standing there on the shore, glaring back at the sea, Johnny was completely oblivious to the fact that his fate had already been sealed.

Chapter 2

The Quarry

It belonged to them, it being the abandoned granite quarry a quarter mile from his back door, them being Johnny and those no good dirty rotten Aarons boys, Mike and Ronnie, the only other kids for miles in their collective rural neighborhood/universe.

This was some quarry. Cut into the side of a granite mountain at the turn of the century by Italian immigrant stonemasons, it spanned many football fields in length and width. At the end furthest from the mountainside, it was only a few steps down into the belly of the beast, which was littered with hundreds of huge slabs of granite (like 2001 A Space Odyssey except bigger). At the other end, cut into the side of the mountain, the sheer granite walls rose majestically several hundred feet straight up. This end was dangerous, for a fall from here was likely to ruin your day. If Johnnys parents had known of the existence of this quarry, much less its finer attributes, they would have packed up the family and moved to Death Valley. Mike and Ronnies folks were glad it was there because it gave them a place to send em when they misbehaved, which was often.

The boys reasoned those slabs had been methodically cut away from the sheer wall and were somehow slung and lowered gently to the quarry floor, then carted out the low side and away to Los Angeles on the train tracks that ran nearby. Also, apparently, many of em got away and dropped hundreds of feet to the ground where they joined the other slabs that preceded them. Or maybe all of them were allowed to fall freely the mechanics of working with twenty-ton slabs of granite were unknown and unfathomable to a nine-year-old, a ten-year-old, and a twelve-year-old. In any event, by the time the quarry was abandoned, there was a hell of a pile of slabs down there.

This was the kind of pile that drove kids crazy. For one thing, the scale of it was remarkable - it made you feel like an ant. Years of accidental or intentional slab bombs had created a labyrinth of caves and tunnels underneath and through the precariously perched granite. You could hide in there for a really long time or until dinner depending on how serious a spelunker you were.

And Johnny, Ronnie, and Mike (the boys) had it all to themselves, until one fine autumn day somebody had the grandkids over, and those grandkids took a little walk and.. discovered the quarry.

This would not have been so bad if they had gone undetected. However, they had the misfortune of timing their discovery to coincide with the exact moment the true owners happened by. Shocked and appalled that someone else had intruded upon their personal private property, the boys huddled in the shadows and made their plans.

Fuck those guys, said Ronnie. Yeah, fuck em, concurred his younger brother Mike. Johnny, being the youngest, had nothing to say. Heres what we do, we climb up the other side of the mountain to the top of the far wall, and we bomb em with rocks. Ronnie was the kind of guy who enjoyed pulling the wings off butterflies, but at this moment, his plan, the only plan, sounded both plausible and reasonable.

And so, they climbed the mountain slowly and quietly, until they reached the top of the sheer wall. This was the first and last time they would ever do this. The mountain sloped downward at a steep angle, then dropped sharply away into the void. So, to peer over the edge, it was necessary to lay flat (while the blood rushed to your head), slide toward the edge while digging the toes of your tennis shoes into the exposed rock, inhale, and open your eyes. It was a long way down. Unfortunately, they had forgot to consider the part where they would need to back up. This made things quite a bit more interesting and became a standard component of nightmares for years to come.

And down there, climbing around and enjoying the boys private property, were these kids from out of town, these interloper trespasser bastards who were going to get theirs.

Ronnie and Mike picked up a couple stones about the size of grapefruits. The only one Johnny could find was a monster the size of a pumpkin (like the ones on steroids that get blue ribbons around Halloween) which he had delicately rolled down to the edge of the cliff.

On the count of three the rocks were launched (Ronnie and Mike throwing theirs well out into the air, Johnny rolling his off the edge which, it turned out, was actually hanging out beyond vertical, like the north face of the Matterhorn).

The boys began to scream profanities at the intruders. The speed of sound being seven times faster than the speed of a rock (or boulder) accelerating to terminal velocity, the interloper trespasser bastards were afforded the opportunity of looking up and watching for several seconds as two rocks and one very large boulder fell silently from hundreds of feet above.

As Johnny watched his pumpkin boulder drop away into the abyss, he noticed a kid down there peeking out from underneath one of the slabs, looking up, as it were, into the barrel as the hammer fell.

They say at the moment of death your life flashes before your eyes. Well, it happens that it works similarly from the opposite perspective; at least it did for Johnny. Oh shit, this guy is gonna die and Im gonna be the guy who killed him my parents are going to be very upset Ill spend years in juvie, and when I get out people are still going to be pissed and Ill live out my life alone and hated this guy is going to die and its my fault, oh shit, oh shit And the pumpkin/boulder continued to drop straight down, approaching 120 miles per hour as it honed in like a laser guided missile on this kids forehead.

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