Me and Bree

The Geriatric Ranter 1 99+ Me and Bree Dieter Neumann Mar 06, 2025 After that reference to “firing up a fattie” in my last newsletter (that’s what it’s called at Substack) I was triggered to go down memory lane and wax nostalgic about one of my favorite kids from my 25 years of molding the minds of high-school students. Bree. Bree, (not her real name) showed up in my metal shop class around grade 10. Long story short, she became a major drug dealer in this neck of the woods. As a teacher, I always encouraged my students to find something they love, get good at it, and then going to work will never feel like work! Bree took me up on that! As I was mapping that essay in my head, an interview with Bob Ezrin came on the CBC. Holy shit! Bob Ezrin! The dude who produced a whole whack of iconic rock albums, from Alice Cooper to Pink Floyd! Turns out Bob is coming home to Canada, on account of… well, you know. What blows my mind is I swear Bob was in one of my psycho-therapy groups when I was getting de-addicted at the world-famous Homewood clinic in Guelph. I’m a former client, so I don’t think I’m bound by the code of confidentiality that obtains when you work there. Which I did, a few years before I became a “client”! How fucked up is that? You couldn’t make that up in a million years! Anyway, although Bob got rich and famous in America, he liked to come back to Canada for a periodic detoxification at one of the top addiction treatment joints in the world. Now, thanks to Mafia Don, he’s apparently back for good! Welcome home, Bob! But I digress. Just before Christmas that first year in my shop, Bree and one of her sidekicks hung back after class, and gifted me a baggie of weed! How they intuited such a gift would be welcomed I do not know. Bree went on to take metal shop in grades 11 and 12, and we evolved a casual rapport such that if things were dry in my regular supply lines I’d buy a little weed from her. Needless to say, buying weed from your students is frowned upon by the powers that be. I called her up not long after she’d graduated. Hey Neumann, you gotta try some of this. We set out in my ‘82 Ford pick-up. I’m a pinner kind of guy, but Bree rolled fatties. We parked out by the harbour, closed the sunroof, rolled up the windows, and smoked her fattie. I didn’t even know the kids call that a “hot-box.” I got the munchies big time. We park in the KFC parking lot. Bree goes on her way and I get a barrel of chicken. I’m sitting there gorging on those secret herbs and spices for the next hour. There’s seagulls mobbing the parking lot for the chicken bones I’m tossing out the window. I’ve beat back the munchies and I’m ready to move on. And thanks to that hot-box thing, I’m completely fucked up. I go to turn the key and the entire key module flies out the steering column and lands somewhere under the seat. That was an old truck, and had a hillbilly restoration somewhere down Desboro way before I bought it. The badge on the driver side fender proclaimed it an F 100. The other side said F 150. As I was rummaging under the seat for the missing ignition parts, it occurred to me that, given my current condition, I should perhaps minimize the potential risk of an unhappy news story. I wobbled into the KFC and advised them I’d pick up the truck in the morning, and took a cab home. Bree went on to make some news headlines of her own. Got busted with ten pounds of weed and $25,000 cash. As she was out on bail awaiting trial, she got busted again with fifty pounds of weed and $50,000 cash. Of course she did; she had to recoup her losses from the first bust! She got some free room and board for that adventure. I ran into her in Big Bay a couple years ago. She’s living the quiet life now. So am I.