Trigger Alert; Happy Jack was whacking smack

Happy Jack was a dude I worked with out Vancouver Island way back in the dark days of the '70s. Interesting guy. Had great welding skills and a heroin habit. Told me he had a welding gig in Angola, building a bridge, but backed out when he learned he'd be issued a machine-gun along with his welding gear. Probably a good call. Trigger Alert; Happy Jack was shacked up with a fourteen year old runaway teen from California. The title is a line from a poem I penned in his honour back in the day. Happy Jack was crowding 30 at the time. Him trying to get his 14 yo girlfriend on the company benefit plan was a source of endless bemusement for the rest of us. It was the seventies. Things were different then. Trigger Alert; girls were girls back then and boys were keen to fuck them. While I never got around to boinking Happy Jack's girlfriend, we had some great times in somebody's Econoline van parked on a pier at the waterfront at the Victoria Harbour, not too far from the Empress Hotel. We'd head out there at lunch break to burn a couple of fatties and down a few pints. "Crazy little thing called love" would be blasting on the stereo in the van. The stereo was worth more than the Econoline. Those were the days...