Sound the alarm! It’s the Attack of the Black Tar Heroin! City Council heard scary warnings last week from the police and a UNC Charlotte professor, who told the lawmakers that black tar heroin use in Mecklenburg County is at near-epidemic levels. This wasn’t just the usual drug scare tactics, delivered in time to request more money from Council. Police took a different tack, gravely cautioning that this time, it was white kids from “good families” who are buying heroin from Mexican drug cartels.
I read the user description again: educated, mostly white, from low-crime areas. I froze. And then it hit me: That could be my neighborhood! Well, I said to myself, I’m not letting that kind of stuff happen here; it’s time to go on a Neighborhood Heroin Patrol. I got out my old pocketknife for protection, roused my basset hound, Marianne, and headed down the street toward the elementary school, the dog’s nose close to the ground. A few houses down, Mabel and Ruth — they’ve been together 20 years — were thinning out a flowerbed. As I approached, Mabel reached into her jeans and pulled out a dog biscuit for the basset.
“Thanks as always, Mabel,” I said, “Say, y’all haven’t seen any heroin dealers around here, have you?”
Mabel shot a glance toward Ruth, then answered, “No, but if you’re hard up, I’ve got some Oxycontin left from when I had my surgery …”
“No, I don’t want to buy any,” I said. “Police say heroin could be in a neighborhood like this one, so I’m looking for dealers to turn in.”
Ruth glanced at Mabel, who shrugged. “Nope, no heroin dealers here that we’ve seen,” said Mabel. “Good luck, though!” I thought I heard giggling as Marianne and I walked away, resuming our vigilante stroll.
A few blocks later, we turned right and soon came to Jack’s Lawnmower Repair, basically a big shed behind Jack’s house. I walked into the shop.
“Hi there, Mr. Grooms — Toro on the fritz again?” asked Jack, who was wearing greasy coveralls and held a socket wrench in his hand.
“No, the mower’s doing great.” Jack’s face dropped. “I’m just wondering,” I continued, “if you’ve noticed any heroin dealers hanging out lately?”
“Are you all right?”
“I’m fine, I’m just trying to find out if there are any heroin pushers in our neighborhood, like it said on the news.”
For some reason, Jack seemed a little testy: “What the hell kind of heroin dealer would hang out at a lawn mower repair shop?” I had to admit he had a point.
“Look,” said Jack, “I’ve got to finish this riding mower today. Go ask Herb Blanton, he might know something. He’s got two teenagers.”
Jack and Herb have feuded for five years over a lost hammer, so I figured Jack just wanted to get rid of me. But as I approached Herb’s, I heard a voice coming from the far side of the house, yelling, “I need more black tar!”
Wow! This was it! And on my first day! I approached the corner of the house carefully, ready to nab the dope fiends. I zoomed around the corner, and ran right onto a new coat of black tar that Herb and his son had just put down on his driveway.
“Hey, watch out!” yelled the son. “Goddam it, it took us an hour to get that smoothed out!” hollered Herb. They started toward me; I tried to jump back, but I could hardly move, as my Reeboks were stuck in the tar. I half-fell back onto Herb’s lawn, where I slipped off my ruined shoes, whistled for Marianne, who was busy sniffing a telephone pole, and headed home. I didn’t bother explaining to Herb about the heroin.
We were almost home when Jenny, a young woman from down the street, came around the corner, pushing her two-year-old daughter in a stroller. I bent to speak to the baby, but she was asleep. “Yeah,” said Jenny, “lately, she’s tired a lot, and just wants to sleep all the time.”
As I got to my doorstep, I stopped. And it hit me. Tired a lot. Sleepy all the time. Jenny’s giving her baby black tar heroin! Wow, they weren’t kidding about it showing up in unexpected places! I vowed to look into it … as soon as I got some new Reeboks.
Portions of this week’s column appeared in a previously published Boomer With Attitude.
This article appears in Jul 5-11, 2011.
