Lucille Ball and the war on drugs

Hey, if TV sitcoms can take a hiatus, so can I. I'm back, tan, rested and relaxed for a new fall season in one of life's longest-running sitcoms, even longer than "My Three Fucking Sons," the "Life With Rainy Show."

Speaking of comebacks, September 20 marks the 20th anniversay of the debut of Lucille Ball's last sitcom, "Life With Lucy." Fresh from her triumph in "Stone Pillow," where Ball portrayed a cranky, elderly bag lady trying to survive on the streets, people were so happy to see their beloved Lucy back on the boob-tube, that Ball signed on for a series comeback.

I remember the fall of 1986 being particularly gloomy for me and my friend David. We moved into an apartment in Rogers Park the weekend President Reagan officially declared America's war on drugs on national television, with his lovely First Lady by his side. The electricity in our apartment had been shut off after the previous tenant moved, and somehow we had managed to break into the empty apartment across the hall and run an extension cord through the kitchen into David's bedroom, where we alternated between plugginng in a lamp or the television. It was pretty pathetic, the two of us sitting in David's bedroom watching the president speak on television using stolen electricity. We were just the sort of degenarates that the president was warning all the good Americans about.

I recall the president making particular note of "reports of marijuana shortages on the streets," as he warned freaks everywhere of a big police crackdown. The president wasn't kidding either. We were in the middle of one of the worst dry spells for weed in the history of Chicago, if not America itself. Nobody had weed, and we were trying not to climb the walls as we unpacked dishes and dreaded returning to our shitty, office-temp jobs on Monday morning, after spending an exhausting weeked moving our garbage-picked furniture, milk crates and 300-pound boxes of albums into our new pad in the middle of gangbanger land.

Outside, it was as if the entire country heaved a collective sigh, as the president outlined his plans for stiffer penalities for selling and possessing illegal drugs, and urine testing for federal jobs. Everyone was complaining about the weed shortage, so David and I resorted to drinking a lot of beer and watching "The PTL Club" on UHF television. After five, non-stop nights of wathing Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, along their teenage, gospel-singing sensation daughter, Tammy Sue, I was feeling especially attuned to God. We both became obsessed with watching Jim and Tammy Faye, and as long as we had our quart bottles of malt liquor, we no longer cared that we didn't have electricity in our apartment or the war on drugs.

One Friday evening as I was parking my Maverick, which I eventually donated to the City of Chicago, on Jarvis Street, I noticed a baggie containing a leafy, green substance lying in the street next to my car. I couldn't really tell what it was because it was dark outside, so I picked the baggie up and brought it to show David. "I think I found a bag of weed in the street," I told him, hardly able to contain my good fortune.

It turned out to be a full quarter-ounce of pot. At first, we were afraid to smoke it. What if it was laced with poison, set out by the DEA to kill some harmless freaks or had some type of wire-tapping device hidden inside it What if it was laced with LSD? We decided to try smoking some then, so I rolled us a joint and soon we had forgetten all about just saying no, and turned on Jim and Tammy Faye.

"Praise the Lord."

"It's a fucking miracle."

"I love you, God, I love you, Jesus. I love you, Jim and Tammy Faye."

The next night, still marveling at my wondrous find and our Lord's infinite mysteries, David and I watched the premiere of "Life with Lucy." The first episode went beyond gory-hit-and-run-accident where there is a lump and a blanket lying in the middle of some intersection. It was as if we were watching the aging Ball taking a dump in her Depends as she went through her tired shtick dating back to "I Love Lucy," playing "Glow Worm" on the saxophone and getting on Gale Gordon's nerves.

Unfortunately, "Life With Lucy" bombed after eight episodes, only three of which actually aired. Ball had ruined her health during filming of "Stone Pillow," which was shot in the middle of summer on location in New York City. Ball lost 23 pounds and had to be hospitalized for dehydration from wearing heavy winter coats and other bag lady winter accessories. She died a few years later, and no one can ever say that Lucille Ball didn't go out like a pro.

As for David and I, life infinitely improved when ComEd finally got around to turning the electric power back on in our apartment. We had light and television again, and our miracle bag of weed.