Read Online Straight Life by Art Pepper; Laurie Pepper - Free Book Online Page B

housedress with nothing on underneath, and we'd go make love by the hour. Sometimes my grandmother would come calling us and we'd stop and hold on to each other and not breathe and be giggling up there. I'd finally found someone who loved me.

3

    The Avenue
    1940-1944
    WHEN I WAS at San Pedro High, because I was a musician and played for the dances, I began to get popular. All the chicks dug me and would vie for me, smile at me, and flirt with me. The guys came around, too, and listened to me play, and they wanted me to hang out with them. And one day this guy Chris came to me, him and a couple of other guys, and they wanted me to join the club they belonged to. It was an honor.
In San Pedro at this time there were a lot of different gangs. Chris had a gang called the Cobras. I thought I might be happier if I was with other people more and I also wanted to join because I figured it would impress my dad: the Cobras had a reputation. I joined and got a jacket with a cobra on the back.
We used to go to the Torrance Civic Auditorium to the dances, and Chris, who was the biggest guy in our group, would find the biggest guy on the floor, who was a member of some other gang, wait until the guy was dancing, and then go up to him and tap him on the shoulder to cut in on his date. The guy would say, "Hey, there's no cutting in here! Get lost!" Chris would just hit him on the shoulder again, grab him, turn him around, and Sunday him, you know, punch him. And when he'd hit a guy, he was so good that no matter how big they were they'd go down. The guy would go down, and everybody would get all excited, and Chris would tell him, "We're the Cobras. We'll meet you at so-and-so."
There was a street where some city or county lines metWilmington, San Pedro, Torrance, I'm not sure. The street was right in the middle of these lines, and there was some idea that this was the safest place to fight, which was ridiculous because the police would bust you anywhere-they didn't care about lines. But this was where we'd go. It was a country type place and at night it was deserted. There was an old lot with a stand where they sold vegetables in the daytime.
I was never afraid of a one-on-one situation boxing or fistfighting, but when you get into gangs then you have to worry if someone's got a knife or a gun or a piece of steel. We'd drive to this lot, the cars would stop, and out would jump Chris and all the guys and the guys from the other gang, and they'd meet and start fighting. I would have to get out and fight. We'd fight until one side or the other won, or, if we were losing, we'd jump in our cars and split. And afterwards, we'd go to this drive-in and eat and talk about the fight. They'd laugh and everything. That was, like, great fun. We'd strut around the school the next day. And we drank. We drank Burgermeister ale and Gilbey's gin to get the nerve to go into these things. That was the trip and it wasn't me.
Finally, during one of these fights, some guys brought out a chain, and a couple of knives came out, and a couple of guys got cut real bad, and I started thinking, "Wow, I don't want this!" I thought, "If this is being part of society . . ." That was society for me. Now, if that was what I had to do to belong, I didn't want any part of it. So that was when I started getting with Johnny Martizia and Jimmy Henson, musicians I'd met playing at dances. They were in their early twenties, and they had other friends whose thing was playing music, and it was a good thing. I got along better with them. I withdrew from the guys in school, and the gang ranked me: they thought I thought I was better than them, that I was stuck-up, that I had a big head, and every now and then I'd get challenged by one of these guys and have to have a fistfight, but it was better than being part of that gang. I quit the Cobras and that's when I really got into the music thing.
    (Johnny Martizia) I was about eighteen. I was playing with a little dance band, high school