Small Town Famous

     The thing I missed the most about coming home from college was the fact that I loved college. I missed the lectures, the seminars, concerts, plays, even the sports. Concord was something of cultural backwater. If you didn't like high school sports, you were shit out of luck on weekends. When I first got back, there was only one bar and one Pizza Parlor to hang out at with friends. 

      The Hashichins Club was my idea. It was based on a literary salon in 19th Century France where writers like Baudelaire, Hugo and Dumas met to smoke cannabis and discuss literature. I knew a few, smart guys, Troy for one, who had gone off to college to get educated and came back for whatever reason. When I was chasing after caches of used books in order to start my store, some of these guys would call me and tell me that wanted to go with me. We started sharing books and attending lectures out of town. Eventually, we decided to meet once a month in my office to smoke some weed and discuss whatever book we had assigned for the month.  The first book was Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut. There were originally seven of us total. We decided we needed to keep the group small because if you got too many people you would end up arguing more than sharing views. Troy was the first one to join up, then Brooks Miller a local attorney followed. Dealie never read books, so when I told him about the club, he didn't even ask to join. I could tell he was a little miffed though after it started up.

        We were slated to have our monthly meeting that night. We were supposed to discuss Thomas Pynchon's Gravity Rainbow, a book that some of us were struggling to understand. I had it in mind to table the discussion in favor of the guys listening in on a conference call with Dealie who was going to call that night to fill me in on what he had discovered in San Diego. These guys were friends of his and they were among the smartest people in town. I figured more heads were better than one. The Sheriff hadn't charged Dealie with anything yet, so the guys didn't have to worry about getting in trouble for helping a fugitive.