My life as I remember it

Weed By Martin Franks Born in East Moline, Illinois. The fifth of the Quad Cities, which also includes Moline and Rock Island, Illinois, and Davenport and Bettendorf, Iowa. Whenever I asked people about the number discrepancy, they always gave me that look like, “Don’t be an asshole .” When I told them it should be called the Quint Cities they’d get really mad and sometimes chase me off . I wondered about a lot of stuff back then, and I still wonder about a lot of stuff now. The world has always fascinated me. Like the expression, “You catch more flies with honey,” which is not true. You catch way more files with human shit. I know, because me and Burt Fontaine did an experiment the summer before we started middle school. That was also the summer of 1977, the summer we discovered weed. We didn’t so much discover weed that summer as we were offered it by Todd Dunkel. Todd was four years older than us, but was still in our fifth grade class. He started kindergarten a year...

Radio RadioShack By Martin Franks      When I was asked to leave East Iowa Community College the fall semester 1983, I was lost. It was a dark time. My chances of getting an associate degree were, “in the shittter,” so to speak. There wasn’t a community college in all of Iowa, let alone the Quad Cities, that would admit me after the incident at EICC. My life ruined at seventeen years-old! An associate degree was a giant rung up the ladder to obtaining my dreams: a late-seventies American muscle car (or at the very least a gold Nissan 280ZX), a steady supply of decent weed, and a cool girlfriend. Without an associate degree I was on a one way trip to Losersville.      I’ve never told anyone why I left EICC because it’s a little embarrassing. When anyone asked, I would just say the college wasn’t right for me or the professors who taught me weren't cool. Which isn’t the truth because Mr. Kowalowsky was totally cool. He turned me on to jazz, whi...