Tales of the Brooklyn Hobo

By Alex Procho

Tales from the Brooklyn Hobo is a haunting and engaging tale of the adventures of a Brooklyn man who sets out to explore the country and finds heartache, wonder, and a new sense of self in the Age of Aquarius. Tales from the Brooklyn Hobo chronicles Alex’s adventures as he hops a freight train in Nebraska, is harassed by the federales in Mexico, has a gun pulled on him by a tearful Oregonian cowboy, encounters God while tripping on LSD at Woodstock, and finds love in all the wrong places. Intermixed in the narrative of the past are journal entries (called Night Flights), which address the author’s struggle with Bipolar Disorder and drug addiction.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Yesterday Press
• Release date: May 18, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311729958

Book preview

To my long lost love of my life,

Do you, Drugs and Alcohol, remember when my addictive personality first kicked in? When I was 17 years old and in college? I took the barbiturate Seconals, yes, 100 of them in one week. My mother took me to the doctor to ease me off the pills. It was 1969 and he gave me a prescription for Quaaludes. I was immediately in heaven and addicted. One day came I took 22 of them. I was 28 and went to a detox. Unfortunately, in the two weeks there, I fell in love, made love, and was in total denial. I literally laughed at the idea of the disease – addiction. There were a lot of good times to be had and I ignored and denied the bad times.

I love you Addiction. I hate you, my addiction, my love, my disaster.

Do you remember the summer of love, 1969? Woodstock. I loved being a hippie. We had three days of music, half a million people, LSD, mescaline, pot, cocaine, Quaaludes and Sangria wine.

College 1969 – LSD and Quaaludes were my best friends. I never had enough women. I never could fill the void. I was an intellectual carrying a deep sadness for the world around me. And I used drugs to try and fill the void. I tried so hard to answer all the questions of life, in people, in traveling and myself. In 1970, I hitched all around the country, experiencing feelings of spirituality and love. My world entirely opened up - mountains, rivers and oceans. The Pacific Northwest and Colorado. Wow! Through the seventies, I traveled through all the states and ate peyote in Mexico.

In 1980, when I attended the University of Florida, I moved in with Jessica and we sold drugs. With a big circle of friends, I sank into the oblivion of madness. I was playing a game, using the friends and drugs to get by. I was seeing five women at the time. It wasn’t easy. I remember the drugs getting me into jail with street people who behaved worse than animals. Animals have class compared to these ignorant slobs. Imagine these inmates enjoying their time playing cards and watching T.V. Thirty people and two gangs in one room. They didn’t like me because I would not play their game and several times they came after me. Fortunately, I had two biker friends who protected me.

It always felt as if the drugs and alcohol just sat and waited for me, You knew I would come back to you.A part of me hated you and another part loved you. You tricked me, somewhat like a devil. One beer. One Quaalude. One hit of cocaine. One Lorcet, Percocet or Demerol. Just one LSD trip. Wine, Vodka, Whisky, Klonipin, Xanax, Prozac, Fioranal #3, Codeine, Heroin, Methadone, one woman, one trip across country, Black Beauties, Turinals, Seconals, Amyl Nitrate, Nitrous Oxide, weed, mescaline. Never enough. Are you through with me yet?

Well, I’ve had enough. I don’t need or want you anymore. You’re not fun like you used to be. We laughed and we cried one too many times. You are the symptom. I am the problem.

Remember that Christmas in 1982? My ex wife and her four-year-old daughter came to Greenwich Village in New York City to join my family for the holiday. At the time, I was addicted to a very powerful tranquilizer called Placydyll. Christmas morning I told everyone I had to buy just a few more gifts. They waited from 1 pm to 9 am for me to come back. After searching the drug-infested parks for my drug for four hours, I finally scored. I felt I couldn’t make it through Christmas without being high. As I stumbled through the door, not able to speak right, my sister screams Oh God! He’s stoned again. Everyone was waiting to open their gifts and I knew it. I cried from a deep sadness, the void within had just exploded. I didn’t plan on this happening. After all the yelling, I claimed I was going up to the roof, six stories high to find some peace and quiet and once there I cried nonstop. My mother thought I was going to jump off the roof. Everything eventually settled down but Christmas was doomed. That is a long lasting memory.

We are having friends over the halfway house today. I feel alone. But you, Drugs and Alcohol, are not invited. I want to live again.

Prologue by Karen Hamilton

He is 51 years old but he thinks he is still 18. The urge to roam is still a firm and nagging thing deep within him. If he could, he would hit the road once again, never minding that his body is not in accordance with his wandering imagination and pull for adventure. For the time being, he is mildly content to feed his wanderlust with stories. The children love them, especially the teenagers. He likes the teenagers best because he doesn’t have to edit out the good parts.

He received his name from his father, Alexander Procho. No middle name and everyone calls him Alex. He talks to anyone who will listen and just about everyone does listen. They can’t help themselves. He sometimes likes to tell the story of his name, but more often not.

He is one hundred percent Russian, his grandparents on both sides arriving from Minsk and Odessa in the late 1800’s. Both sets arrived at Ellis Island as children, around the same time but not meeting for some forty odd years later, when their children met. Somewhere on the vast wall of names under the statue of the great lady of freedom are their names - Dickens and Prochorchik.

Grandpa Prochorchik shortened the name to Procho sometime in the beginnings of the new century when his no good stepson got in an argument with another no good man and stabbed him dead in the street. The shame of having the Prochorchik name smeared all over New York City’s newspapers compelled him to obliterate the Prochorchik name. So now they were Procho’s and if it wasn't for the accent, no one would even know they were Russian. Not that it mattered; everyone in their neighborhood was Russian.

Grandpa Procho’s gave his third son a grand name, a Russian name but not too Russian, Alexander. He didn’t live long enough to witness the glorious name he gave his son be corrupted into Porky.Where Porky got his name is a matter of family legend. Some say because he loved pork, others say because he was such a ladies’ man, still others say because he was a very large man. Whatever. Everyone knew him as simply Porky. He played professional baseball and boxed with Rocky Graciano. He was only 5’10" but he looked 7 feet tall and no one dared mess with Porky.

When Porky met Lee Dickens, she was a raven-haired beauty and married. That didn’t stop him. Porky got what Porky wanted and he wanted Lee. On the day she gave birth to the triplets, she was still married to a man named Weiner. Weiner burst into the bar that Porky owned and announced to the drunken crowd that he was the proud papa of two daughters and a son, quite a feat in 1951. Porky clapped him on the back and bought everyone in the bar a round to celebrate the birth of the Weiner triplets (which Porky knew were really his).

It took three more years for Lee to leave her husband, all the while still hopelessly in love with the only man she ever wanted and the father of her children, Porky. It took many years more for Porky to finally put a ring on her finger and make an honest woman out of her. In the meantime, she lived in a tiny bungalow on Coney Island, raising three tiny infants all by herself. She was a beautiful woman and an actress. Lee had an endless supply of suitors and now and then she thought she might just give up on Porky and marry one of them. She never did. Porky was in her blood for good.

They married. They moved to Woodridge, N.Y. They both managed to become addicted to an array of pills that doctors had prescribed. They fought, they threw things, and then Lee checked into a hospital to get clean. Porky curled