Hy Fritz

A true story

He was a friend of ours. His name was Hyman Fritz but we called him Hy .

He had an older brother Tony. There were five of us belonging to the very inner circle and Hy wasn’t one but he was just outside. The five were inseperable. There was Bob affectionately known as the pig , Tim Cousins , Tom Meikle, myself and Greg Nicholay.

The four of them live close together and I stayed with them a lot. This was a city just outside of Hartford and was a wealthy Jewish community.

The five all had girlfriends and some of them were the dictionary description of a JAP. Nancy was the worst. To describe her would be something like Hmm, A Popagalo wearing ,whining , pretentious pain in the a*s. This girl was so bad she could make the weather leave. We put up with her because she was a friend of Toms girl and mostly for Bob. I think about seventy percent of the time Bob couldn’t stand her but she put out and this was important to him.

They would fight every time she came around. It was embarrassing but they didn’t seem to care or think it was strange to fight like that at seventeen. They would fight in parking lots, drugstores, gas stations and restaurants. They were not predjudice towards anyplace.

At the time, Tom and I worked at the Shell station situated in a place called Four Corners. Three of these corners had gas stations. A Mobil and an Esso on the other two.

Tom and I gave ours the nickname, ORGS Fuel Dump. Hell we thought it was funny and the name stuck. Pig hung around there a lot because he never had any gas money and Tom and I had in house charges. His father was an executive in the city and bought Pig a beautiful 67 Malibu Supersport. It had a 396 motor with 4 barrel carb and four on the floor. It was a two door as all Supersports were , red in color with a black vinyl top and mag wheels. For some reason he would buy things for Pig but never give him money that could not be easily accounted for.

This would piss Pig off so much he would routinely travel to a clothing store across the street , dragging us along and just buy stuff for all of us. Of course it was all a charge account. We thought this was hilarious .

Any way I am way off course. The backside of the fuel dump was a parking lot for stores , a Rexall, Pier One a bank and others. It was also where the local drug deals happened.

I will not forget , a Friday afternoon and everyone gearing up for the night. We were working , Tom and I but had clear views of all business carried out in that lot. We saw the latest dealer , I’ll call him Michael, and Hy meet.

Our shift over we went and cleaned up. We found someone to buy some beer and a bottle of Boones Farm wine. Please , no judgement here, ok? We used to drink half a beer and fill it back up with Boones. God it was awful.

It was after midnight when the news started to spread. We heard news of Hy.

Apparently he bought something new from this dealer. It was LSD 25. A liquid acid. I don’t know when he took it but the rest of us were at a party when the news trickled in. Around ten that night Hy either went home or was home and started a bad trip. He beat up his mother and father and the cops were called. Hy was a gentle soul and would not do this otherwise.

By midnight he was dead. At seventeen.

There was a huge funeral at a large synagogue and kids from three towns showed up in support and sorrow. There were words and prayers. Many kids spoke kind words and cried. We buried Hyman Fritz later that day.