“Up, down or sideways?” 70's-80's drug memories.

Had a chat with someone the other day about the 70's, they were not a friend and I do not remember meeting them at the time, but we moved in similar circles and appear to have known the same people at one time or another. During the conversation she mentioned a few clubs and pubs that we used to frequent and the phrase “Up, down or sideways?” came up and that got me thinking about the past. I must warn you though, I have a few memory problems so I may, in fact probably will, get some of my facts mixed up, essentially though what you are going to read here is true, maybe with a bit of artistic licence throw in.

I was brought up in Battersea, about 5 minutes walk from the park, as a matter of course I started my drinking in the pubs around Battersea park road, nice pubs and easy staggering distance, I wasn't really one of the 'bad 'uns' as my mum loved to call them, but I did know most of them. I was one of those youngsters that was badly bullied at school and a bit after, until I started to fight back, that old adage about bullies will back down if you stand up to them is utter rubbish! Most kicked the crap out of me until I learned how to fight... in a slightly different way.
My first experience with drugs came after I got a pasting by two blokes outside the Prince of Wales pub, a mate had helped me back to the my flat and on the way a bloke handed us a joint saying "You look like you need this more than me...", my first puff didn't seem to do anything, but it did take away the pain by the fourth or fifth, I have no idea what was in that joint and cant remember ever seeing that bloke again.
By now I had acquired my second motorbike, my first at 16 was a 1968 BSA Bantam, I had since moved up a notch and got a BSA 441SS (NPP 70H), on this I started riding around with some bikers I had met at the County Arms in Wandsworth and had started riding it up to the Chelsea bridge tea stall which was a common meeting place back then. I had been to Chelsea bridge a lot previously to watch the bikes, as I lived 10 minutes walk away.

Most of them smoked some form of cannabis, my mates and myself mainly stuck to types like cheap nasty soap bar (Cannabis mixed with.. well anything really.) or if it turned up and we had the money, Lebanese gold and a really nice type we called squidgy black, of course these memories may be a bit rose-tinted. We used to smoke either sitting outside pubs in the summer or if the weather was bad, back at a mates place, there were a few pubs you could get away with smoking inside, but most kicked you out if you were caught, nightclubs or music venues were better bets. Speed was another popular drug then, it was the party drug of the 70's from our point of view, it kept you awake all night no matter how much you drank and sex could last for ages, giving you a bit of a reputation with the ladies.
Around that time my friend Clive and I went to a party in the Mansions along Prince of Wales drive, I think we were invited by two very posh sisters, not really sure now, I was 17/18, had very long hair, deep blue eyes, blue velvet jacket and black satin loons (Very tight trousers), finished off with a pair of not very genuine cowboy boots. Well.. this was 1972/3.
We had not been there long just drinking vodka, when a joint was passed to us, cool we thought, of course by now we were now experts on the stuff!

I nearly puked my lungs up! Then my head felt like it was about 4 foot above my body, the room span around and I fell to floor freaking out. What the hell was in that? It frightened the life out of me, everyone was laughing and I could not controI my legs, I later found out that it was something called Banano (Cannabis mixed with cocaine? if I remember right) enough for four rolled into one joint apparently. The rest of the evening, once I calmed down, was a blur, I do remember laughing a hell of a lot and snogging some bird for hours, there is also a vague memory of someone threatening me with 'I'll cut your eyes out with a knife' I think it may have been his girlfriend I was having fun with.
The following Sunday I saw the person who's flat had been the base for the party, someone had told him my age, he could not apologise enough to me and he asked if I had got home ok, they had also told him it was my first time 'taking drugs' and he was mortified. He was quite a famous actor in some long running 70's drama (No more clues), but because I rarely watched television I had no idea who he was at the time, he bought me a pint in the Duke of Cambridge as a apology and it was then that I twigged he was gay! It was no problem once I made it clear I was not interested though. Pete (not his real name) and myself went to a few parties in the Battersea and Chelsea area in the early 70's, I think because I had long hair and blue eyes he liked to show me off to his showbiz friends, I never did ask if they thought I was his lover, I was a bit naïve then . It was certainly an eye opener, within weeks I had been introduced to a world very different from the one my bikers mates were in and the best thing is I don't ever remember having to pay for anything. Drugs were everywhere, coke was freely available and along with cannabis could be picked up anywhere we went, I met a lot of famous people at this time, but none really made an impact on me, although I was young and impressionable I thought most of the actors and big rock stars I met were twats. Worst of all were the managers, producers and hangers on, all riding on the coat tails of the famous and handing out drugs just to keep in with them. Some of the well known people I met were unpardonably rude to others, yet people treated them almost in a godlike way.
Now at this time heroin was rearing its ugly head in my world, a lot of the parties in the Chelsea seemed to have the same men at each one handing out 'free' samples and offering to show you how to take it, most started by smoking it off of tinfoil (chasing the dragon) I did not bother trying it after watching the state some of them got into taking it. To be honest I think I was too scared to try it.
There were always lots of very pretty and very stoned girls around, as a young man with normal urges it was a great time for me, although I did tend to wake up in strange flats miles from home on occasion. Once after getting completely mashed at a party in Kensington, I woke up in a very big house somewhere in Surrey with a gorgeous girl in her late 20's. I was still very high and crept out of the house to find a Rolls Royce, big American car of some kind, an Aston Martin DB3(?) and a couple of rare motorbikes parked outside. Must have walked for miles until I reached the A3 and then thumbed a lift, not a clue where I had been though, neither do I have any idea why I did not hang around or wake the girl up, Pete later thought that the girl was related to Keith Emerson, but I'm not so sure even though it was apparently one of his parties I met her at, I do not remember ever seeing her again.

I kept that part of my life separate from my other friends as I had started on the road to being a 'proper' biker and mostly we had drank alcohol, but now I started making inroads into what drugs were available in our circle, all of them as it turned out.
One of the pubs we frequented was the Fountain at the bottom end of Garrat lane in Wandsworth, I think it was Mondays we mainly went there, a rock and roll band called CSA played on a regular basis and were quite good, we scored a lot of dope there.
There were also back patch members in there, I had never really had any dealings with back patch club members until the Fountain, and to be honest I never really had a problem with them, one lived in Merton road and helped me a lot in finding bits for my BSA441SS, it was him that found a four valve CCM head for me. Can I remember his name? Nope, but that's probably not a bad thing.

Outside one particular pub in Tooting, there was always this skinny very long haired bloke hanging around, I think he was barred from entering the pub because I never ever saw him inside, someone would always take a drink out to him though, rain or shine he would be out there and he seemed to have loads of friends.
Of course, he was a dealer, and he would ask people “Up, down or sideways?” like a kind of catchphrase, when I started buying from him, I learned very quickly that whatever the first price he asked for, just turn and walk away, "15, go on you know its good stuff!" "Taking the piss mate, forget it..." before you had gone 3 steps the price had dropped to around half what he originally asked. I think it was just a silly game he enjoyed, everyone did it with him.
One day he wasn't there any more, I was later told he had overdosed on heroin, he was 32 and I never actually knew his name.

As I started to move in more exciting circles, I also started to learn which drugs were available and very quickly which to avoid, my favourite was speed, preferably in the form of small tablets called blues.
Weekends were this strange round of popping loads of blues on a Friday night, and then somewhere between 2am and 4am, depending on where we ended up, we would switch to moggies, (Mogadon or Qualudes in the US of A) so we could sleep, if we did not have Moggies, the next best thing were Tunial (I think we called them traffic lights) but they had a much harsher effect on me, if I had had any alcohol and took one I would go nuts before falling asleep wherever I was.
We also called moggies 'wobblers' as we played this game sometimes where we would drop a couple at home and then try to get to the pub before our legs gave out, they always seemed to work from the feet up especially if you had had a drink first, after about 15 minutes your knees felt like they were on the wrong way round. They were a barbiturate and we would have to pop some blues to make sure we didn't fall asleep, this led to some strange sights as the evenings wore on, I remember Gary outside the County Arms (by Wandsworth prison) he would be chatting away then his head would fall forward and he would start snoring, then after a few minutes his head would snap back up and he would carry on as if nothing had happened, he would repeat this for about an hour then collapse.
Mostly though we took speed, the downers, Moggies and Tunial, stopped us from riding, speed did not.

My first experience with acid happened outside the County, some hippies we knew had just driven back from Amsterdam (again) in an old Commer van, it had been sort of converted to a camper, well it had a mattress in the back and camping stove. We were all sitting on the grass outside the pub, when the van pulled up, two of the hippies, Mickey and Tarquin the poof (he wasn't a poof really, but come on, what would you call a hippie called Tarquin? We always though he was called Bob, until we all got pulled up by the police one day and he had to give his real name) Mickey was floating about 4 foot above the pavement, he seemed to glide over to us, he was laughing at the lamp post and talking to someone who wasn't there, Tarquin just stared at everyone, one after the other, then started asking if one of us was really a dragon in disguise, and they had driven to the pub!!!
We got them sat down and poured a few drinks down them, this seemed to help. Then Mickey started handing out some small bits of blotting paper with little faces printed on them, possibly fat Freddies cat? They were about an 1/8th of inch across and looked completely harmless, I stuck a couple in my wallet.
I had been given a lift up to the pub by Dave, for a big bad biker, Dave looked like a big cuddly teddy bear and was really quite a quiet bloke, we were chatting and he said why don't you drop a blotter and tell us what happens. I agreed and took out one of the blotters, putting it on my tongue I was now watching Tarquin, he was crawling around and muttering about living in the jungle and giant ants??? Er......
A took a big swig from my pint glass and sat back and waited for something to happen. Nothing.
This is a waste of time I thought, as I finished my pint about 20 minutes later, then stood up to go to the bar, I looked down and.. fucking hell, the ground was miles away, I grabbed Dave and started shouting at him to help me down, he just looked puzzled and a bit scared. He helped me sit down again on the grass, which was trying to pull me to one side, I was now getting really scared, I looked up at the parked cars outside the pub and one started winking at me, another looked at me disdainfully, as if it knew what foul illegal substance I had been taking.
Then a giant hand reached for me and a voice boomed inside my head "Are you alright Jake?" "Fuck no!! What's going on!!!!!!" Cars passing by on Trinity road seemed to take hours to go past, then they would accelerate until they were blurred streaks, the blurry streaks stayed there on the road, slowly fading away upwards into the starry sky. Oh, big mistake, I looked up into the night sky at the millions and millions of bright flashing stars, stars which had started flashing a secret message, but the drug was messing with my head and I could not understand the message, the stars started to flow into words, gradually they started to make sense.
Then a loud voice startled me and the stars went back to normal, Dave was calling to me, what was he saying? “Get out of the road??” Then a gorgeous angel appeared, it floated out of the pub, took me by the hand, walked me back to the grass outside the pub and sat me down, it talked gently to me and explained what was happening. The angel was actually a mates girlfriend, she had known a few people flip out on acid and found that talking calmly helped to bring them down again, she also poured loads of orange juice down my throat, vitamin C did seem to help.
Once I had calmed down the rest of the evening passed on cloud 9, I felt like I was wrapped in cotton wool and that at one point everyone was speaking in perfect German which I understood with no problem at all. The best bit was the ride home on the back of Dave's bike, this is one of the few things I remember very clearly about that trip, everything was the wrong colour, there was even a new colour, although I don’t quite remember what it was now.
Acid always had one strange effect on me, every time I took it I knew that there were green beavers hiding somewhere nearby, but I never managed to find them, this obsession with green beavers became quite a joke with my friends. Some people think of acid as a mind expanding drug, I never thought this, it was just fun, I never had any 'revelations' or suddenly understood the inner working of the universe like some people, it just made things different.

I didn't really bother going back to Pete and his group of friends after getting into the bike scene a lot more, I found the 'Chelsea' set rather boring and most were so far up their own arses it was just annoying being around them, especially after knocking about with the bikers I identified with now, you could not compare drug fuelled runs through the night with listening to some fancy actor telling you why his director was a gay little shit and that he could do a much better job. Yawn.

One of the bikers, who's name I'm definitely not going to use here, used to bring coke in direct from Columbia, I picked him and his girlfriend up from Heathrow once, you could not miss them in the crowd. Not realising his suitcase had around 2 kilos of coke in it, I only found this out after the second time I picked him up using his BMW (lets not mention I didn't have a car licence...) he would come to my house I'd drop them at the airport and collect them about a week later. £100 in my bin!! Easy money for the 70's. Last I heard of him he had been shot and wounded during a deal in Bogota around 1981. I never got into coke, the first time I tried it, it did not do anything to me, although every one of my friends insisted I never take it again, not sure what that was all about and I never did. Lots of people I knew were into coke though, I think it was more a psychological thing with coke, most was cut so finely I would have been surprised if any of the stuff floating around in the 80's was more than 5% actual cocaine.

Most of the 70's and 80's I spent working as a motorcycle courier, this was because I could work mainly when I wanted and if you put the hours in the money was really good, in 1975 when some of my mates were working as clerks or engineers for £40-50 a week, on a good week I could take home over £500, although in reality we never worked a full week, Hangovers and getting to bed at 5am put paid to that, usually though I would still clear £250 to £350 easily. Extra money could be made running gear for dealers, I had a nice sideline in delivering weed and coke to the money guys in the city of London, some times 10 -15 drops a night at up to £10 a drop, easy on a motorbike and hard to catch! You would not believe how many famous people were also on coke... or maybe you would. My best weeks were during the postal strike in the 80's, over 2 grand in the second week of the strike and maybe another £500 from the 'special' evening deliveries, but I do not think I got more than 3-4 hours sleep each night, I did a lot of speed those weeks.

I mentioned earlier my favourite drug of choice were blues (Speed), I was never a big bloke and looking like a bad ass biker meant living up to the perceived image, if you didn't, you quickly got made to look like a fool or worse, much much worse. Speed made me invincible, on speed I had no fear, was dangerously aggressive and could stay awake after ridiculous amounts of drugs and drink. After being awake on blues for 3 days some friends once took me up to the music machine in Camden, it was a punk night and the queue to get in had around 300 punks and us 5 bikers!! I was later told I terrorised the whole queue, pulling at spiky mohican hair and at one one point undoing this girls 40 odd zips on her clothes 'looking for the way in'. Once we did get in, after Benny the bouncer warning me sternly to 'behave' and took my knife off of me, I kicked off a massive fight by diving down the stairs into a group of around 12 punks coming up them, I remember nothing of the night at all, my mates told me about it all the next day, I also had a black eye and had lost two teeth.
I took speed for years up until one morning in 1981, when I got up out of bed and walked past a full length mirror, I nearly had a heart attack, I looked like a Belsen victim. I had to go weigh myself and found I was 6 stone 8, just over 44 kilos. I never touched it again.

Over the years my drug use just sort of faded away, I just did not bother with it any more, I suppose the fact that nearly 40 of my mates have died from drugs in the last 30 years may have something to do with it. Far more mates have died from drugs, or drug related incidents, than crashing motorbikes. Now that is a scary thought.

Bikes birds & blurry memories (an article written for Brit chopper magazine)

Back in the 70's we (blokes anyway) all saw ourselves as rebels and adventurers, riding the lonely highway looking cool and most of all looking good to the chicks. Off into the sunset after pulling some amazing bird, with your mates looking on jealously, is really what most of us were looking for when we were younger, and I don’t suppose that has changed much. The biker image of good looking blokes pulling stunning birds was mainly gleaned from books and movies, but for some of us it all worked out amazingly well.
Riding the biggest noisiest bad ass bikes (or so we thought) in the neighbourhood, looking hard in our leather jackets with filthy denim cutoff over the top, disgusting jeans, open faced lid and cool sunglasses. We looked like a stereotypical biker gang and I suppose that’s what we wanted to look like if we were honest, we thought we were the dog danglies, until it rained, more of which later.
Showing off for your mates and the girls was one of the more popular pastimes, but it could drop you in it, pulling wheelies outside a sixth form girls college, my chain snapped and the bike hit the deck, as I was trying to pick it up, a police car pulled up and the two cops helped me to the side of the road, I was explaining that I had fallen off because the chain snapped, when this chorus of girls piped up “Pull another wheelie mister!” The two coppers laughed their nuts off.
Later that year I tried showing off to a crowd of girls on their way back from a party, they had stopped to watch the bikers on Chelsea bridge, by wheel spinning my newly acquired CB550 Honda away from the tea stall, unfortunately during the week the council had laid down an antiskid road surface and as the rear wheel drifted on to it, the tyre bit and the bike flipped completely, landing on top of me. Mind you I did get off with the nurse from St Thomas’s hospital, so that was alright then.

We were always cruising the pubs and clubs in South London, hoping to find a good looking girl to take home, or maybe to her place, because yours had engine bits everywhere and oil stains on the sheets. I once took a girl home to my place and as we fell onto the bed she screamed, not because I was huge, but because her arse had found the Mk 1 Amal I had left in the bed, so that’s where it went.
Mostly though it was trying to find a girl with her own place, the number of times I had taken a girl home only to find she lived with her parents/flat mates/husband was, to say the least, frustrating, and daddy was always happy to see his best girl turn up at 2am on the back of a 8 foot long purple chopper, god knows how many times I nearly got caught copping a quick consolation feel on the doorstep. I was once chased down the Kings Road at 3am by some loony parent wearing a Chinese style dressing gown and waving a 9 iron, he was wearing the dressing gown, not me.

One girl I pulled in the Saxon Tavern who turned out to be barely 16 and had 3 enormous brothers who rode scooters, that went down really well as I was 28 and looked like your mothers worst nightmare for a boyfriend, she did look about 25 though and I pulled her from some bloke about the same age as me. I never did have much trouble with the girls, despite looking like a refuge from some bizarre mad max type film. I am reliably informed that I was quite good looking when I was young, long flowing hair, slim build and intense Steve McQueen blue eyes. (What ever happened to that good looking chap...) The fact that if I sat on your mums sofa she would put newspaper down first, I am not kidding that happened several times, or that daddy would take you to one side and threaten all sorts of dire vengeance etc, just made it all the more exciting and gave the nookie a bit of edge, most of the so called 'good' girls were very good in my opinion. I remember getting noshed in a doorway by a girl everyone knew as fairly quiet, near the Castle pub in Tooting, when her parents pulled up in the traffic, they looked over but did not recognise her or me in the darkened doorway, that got the adrenaline going.

My mates in the 70's used to love going drinking with me, I was one of those blokes who would check out the women and know which group to chat to, I could nearly always get everyone a bird by the end of the night, mostly by making them laugh, get a woman laughing and you are halfway there. And if we tried to pull birds that were with blokes, we sometimes got in a bit of a punch up as well, all fisticuffs then, very rarely was a weapon used and you would probably be buying each other a drink the following week.
Posh birds were best, mostly after a bit of rough, no commitment and some excitement for the evening, hanging around the Drugstore in Chelsea was a good place at chucking out time, as was the Markham Arms, a gay pub that strangely always had a fair contingent of girls in there, you used to get the posh bints in the Drugstore looking for anyone to buy them a drink (they never had any money) or score some drugs (funny how they had money for that), the amount of herbal tobacco I sold to them was amazing and no one ever complained.
A fast adrenaline filled ride was always a good precursor to a, well, a fast adrenaline filled ride, you want a wild and rampant woman, then literally scare the pants off of her, riding fast always seemed to get them going, the vibration of some bikes helped as well. I had a BSA 441 SS for a while and when I bought a CB750 four the woman I was with at the time was most put out, she preferred the throbbing of a big single, to the high revving vibes of the Honda. Yet another loved the high frequency vibes of a 380 Suzuki I despatched on, sometimes we had to pry her off the seat with a crowbar.
After the first time a girl out rode me on the road I spent weeks trying to pull her, I had been on an Export Bonnie and she was riding a Ducati 750SS. It had had a lot of money spent on tweaking and handled like a dream, I drove her mad trying to get her to go on a date, but I think she enjoyed the chase more than I did, when we did get together we were both a little disappointed, we ended up as friends for quite a few years though.

There is a downside to all this, and it was rain, when it rained and it does quite a bit in this country, you have no chance, unless a bird was really drunk or stoned you could not get them on the back of a bike for love nor money. Trying to pull a bird while dripping water all over the floor tended to put them off, for example arriving a bit late at the County Arms one night I found my date getting in a Capri with some bloke dressed like something off Starsky and Hutch, when I queried this she told me in no uncertain terms "No way was she getting on a bike in this fecking weather" as she was getting in the car I asked her rather loudly if she needed anymore of her penicillin tablets. Chummy got most upset.
Looking like a drowned Roland Rat does nothing for your image as a biker, yet that is how we spent a lot of our time, I was a London courier for about 15 years and spent a fortune on the best waterproofs, it did not make a lot of difference, "Alright love, put all this stuff on." "'ere, are you kinky or sumfink?" "No, its raining outside." "Stuff that, where’s a bloke with a car!"
You cant look cool or glamorous when cold water is trickling down the back of your neck, although there were one or two girls who quite liked the feel of wet leather, 'cough' but that is another story.
There used to be an unwritten law, if you were far from home and it was raining, try to pull just so you did not have to ride home in the rain. When I was a courier I used to try and pull the receptionists at the drop off point on long jobs, if it was a Friday, so I would not have to ride home until the morning. Bizarrely the best town for this was Manchester, never failed there, I always managed to get a bed for the night, worst was Doncaster, but to be honest I never found anyone I fancied there.

Very un-pc now but in the 70's I pulled a hell of a lot of women, most were absolute stunners, or was that the acid? I did also have some horrendous episodes, like leaping out of a first floor window with my trousers under my arm, straight into some rosebushes, from which I still have scars, and having to try and keep very quiet. Or waking up one morning and staring into the eyes of the hound from hell which looked like it wanted to tear me to bits, as my eyes left the dog, I saw hanging on the bedroom door the biggest pair of pants I have ever seen in my life. As I lay there wondering what part of hell I was in, a girls voice called out, "The dogs fine, just dont make any sudden moves, I'm just in the shower." I grabbed my clothes, crept out the door and just legged it.
Then there was the weird episode where I was drugged by a bird at a party in Mornington Crescent, she locked me in her bedroom and told my mates I had gone home or so they said, thanks for the rescue guys, she turned out to be a distant relative of Princess Di!!!
The Sunday night after a heavy weekend could be amusing for my mates, "Look out, here comes that bird you pulled the other night." "What bird?" "Hello Jake, buy me a drink then?" And I would have no idea who she was, so it was pretend to have a bad hangover and bluff my way along until I sussed out if they were bunny boilers or worth another go.
We were in a pub called the fountain one night when this stunning bird walked in, we were all completely gobsmacked, not the usual girl you found in Tooting at all, she looked around, then saw me, walked over planted a big kiss on my face, put my garage keys on the table said "You dropped these in my place, thanks for Saturday." All I could do was mumble incoherently.
She then strolled calmly out the door and all my mates started questioning me, unfortunately to this day I have no idea who she was, I still suspect it was a wind up.
Or another time after a particularly stonking weekend, I was standing at the upstairs bar in the Music Machine in Camden when in walked ******** ****** (famous 70’s 80’s female singer, I am not going to name her) as she walked past she looked daggers at me, then disappeared into the crowd, I was completely puzzled, a few days later I found her name and phone number in my little black book and after questioning them, was told by my mates that I had spent a whole night buying her drinks until I had no brass in pocket. I remembered nothing of it and felt that there was a missed opportunity.
I once wrote Debbie Harrys name and phone number (made up) on a piece of paper and left it in a mates wallet, we had been drinking in a club sitting next to her band Blondie the previous evening, he never had the bottle to ring it and boasted for ages that he had got her number, I never told him what I did because he was so chuffed about it.

The 70’s were a very hedonistic time, everyone was experimenting with life, drugs and values. There was a lot of perceived freedom and some very liberated women, I felt that although they had women’s lib, most women still wanted to be dominated and looked after, but they also wanted excitement and fun, the restrictions of previous few decades had been lifted and they wanted to get out and experience the world in their own way. This made it a lot of fun for people like me, good looking and not looking for any commitment. After the first time a girl out rode me on the road I spent weeks trying to pull her, I had been on an Export Bonnie and she was riding a Ducati 750SS. The Ducati had had a lot of money spent on tweaking and handled like a dream, I drove her mad trying to get her to go on a date, but I believe she enjoyed the chase more than I did, when we did get together I think we were both a little disappointed, we ended up as friends for quite a few years though.
Most of the 70’s is actually blurred for me, I do remember that we did a lot of drugs, drink, built CB750 Swedish style choppers, BSA café racers, Z900 streetfighter (we didn’t call them that then) with reversed Ace bars, a 400/500/550/750 four Honda with Vespa badges on the side panels (that one really screwed with the brains of the police as they checked it out), a bike built from left over bits in my mates attic and from 1972 until 1979 I clocked up well over quarter of a million miles, I suspect it was nearer the half million mark but cant be 100% sure, I was a courier for most of that time.
I look back on the 70’s with genuine affection and more than likely rose tinted glasses, the summers were hot, the winters snowy and it rained a hell of a lot. Those were good days.