I had looked at high school differently than most of my friends. I would never cut class unless it was my day off from work and there was fresh powder to ski on. During my junior year of high school the counselors and teachers started to become very cool. There had been a newspaper article, “Four Apprentice Chefs Honored,” of which I was one of them. I had four semesters of college credits under my belt with good grades, and I was already on Vo-Ed, a program where you left early everyday to pursue your career.

Mr. Homer was the vice principle of Bountiful High School. My first year he was a total dick, but after he found out about my apprenticeship he became very cool. He allowed me to have my first period as a study period in the library to get caught up with my logbook and homework. He couldn’t imagine why I hung out with all of the burnouts when I seemed to have so much going for me. He did not understand that they had been my friends for years, and that they were the bread and butter of my business.

I would usually get Monday and Tuesdays off work. I remember arranging with Kevin to skip school to go skiing in advance. I would place a hit of an Orange Microdot on my alarm clock and set it for 5:30 AM. At 5:30 I would be so tired when the alarm went off that I would just take the hit and go right back to sleep. Then, Bam! Right at 6:30 AM, I was wide awake and ready to have a killer day on the slopes. It was just about then that Kevin would pull up in the driveway, cranking AC/DC. In no time, we were out of there.

Tuesdays were the best days to ski on acid, especially snowy ones. You could just fly down the slopes with out having to worry about knocking some little kid into next week. One time Mike and I were just flying and he hit this little girl and knocked her right out of her skis. She was screaming bloody murder when Mike picked her up trying to quite her down. I was picking up her gear and bringing it down to her, when this great big guy skied up to Mike and slugged him in the face so hard that it knocked him over and busted his goggles in a million pieces. It was her dad, so I just got the hell out of there.

Our friend Greg had just inherited thirty thousand dollars, at seventeen. He first bought a brand new 280 ZX, then he traded it in for a new Triumph Spitfire. After about a month he traded that in for another 280 ZX, and after another month he traded it back in for another Spitfire. He did it one more time, and finally ended up with another 280 ZX. That Halloween at about midnight Mike and I turned a corner and saw Greg’s third brand new 280 ZX perfectly upside down on someone’s front lawn. He was dressed like a pimp and his girl friend was dressed like a whore. It was one of the most hilarious things Mike and I have ever seen. Greg was happy to see us.

“Dude, can you believe how strong this car is? That roof should be totally caved in right now!” he said first thing, holding a half empty fifth of Jack in his hand. We gave his girl friend a ride home, and I have no idea how, but Greg was able to get the car towed out of there without the cops ever showing up. He really is one of the luckiest guys I have ever met. After he got his Z fixed, he was just about broke. What a fool.

Greg’s older brother Missha was far smarter with his thirty grand. His girl friend had moved to Venezuela with her parents, and when Missha went down there to visit her he noticed that they didn’t have any motorcycles on the road bigger than a 400cc. He got the great idea to go home and down to Craig’s Yamaha and buy two Yamaha 850cc Midnight Specials. He left them in the crate and personally flew them down to Venezuela to have them assembled. He planned to sell them for twice as much as he had paid. When he arrived in Venezuela customs confiscated both bikes, and he spent Christmas Eve, Christmas, and the next day in a South American jail. He never stopped to think there was a reason for never seeing big bikes in Venezuela. After attorney’s fees and fines, and of course the price of both bikes, he was pretty much broke as well. You have to hand it to Missha for his entrepreneur spirit though.

Missha turned out to be a lifelong friend and one of my apprentices. He worked with me at different resorts for the next ten years. The middle brother Mark took his thirty grand and bought a Les Paul guitar and a Marshall amp. He gave the rest of his cash to his mom and they both went in 50-50 on a rental property in Hawaii. Twenty-five years later Mark has a few rental properties in Hawaii, and has never had to work a day in his life since he was eighteen. He still, at age forty-five, just smokes his weed, plays his guitar and gets checks in the mail.

By the end of winter, Mr. Homer had had just about a gut full of all the burnouts, despite the fact that our numbers were dwindling. In the beginning of the year, we had more than a dozen of us burning bowls before class in Smoky Hollow. Smokey Hollow was a cool little creak across the street from the school with lots of trees. It was actually called Mill Creek, but we dubbed it smoky hollow. The teachers would overhear us say, “Meet you at Smoky Hollow,” and we thought they had no idea what we were talking about. Now, there were only six of us. A couple of guys had gotten their girlfriends pregnant and had to quit school to get a job, and get married.

Mr. Homer walked up to me one day with a proposition. He told me he would give me a full English credit for next year, if I could get these guys to just go to a class everyday and read just one book cover to cover. He told me four of the six were going to get kicked out of English anyway, so it was their last chance. I jumped at the opportunity. He gave us our own room for second period. It was some kind of break room with a couch and a couple of beanbag chairs. The book I choose was The Hobbit. I told the guys they would love it, because all Hobbits did all day was smoke their pipes and eat seed cakes, just like us. Although, I still had two problems on my hands. My first was that a couple of these guys could hardly even read. I had no idea how they ever made to their junior year of high school when they were only able to spit out about a dozen words a minute. My second problem was that every time someone would read slow or mispronounce a word, all of the others would start laughing and make fun of him. Even I was guilty.

“I don’t need help reading any book,” Bob once snapped. I just spouted off right back at him.

“Hey Bob, remember last Saturday night when we got pulled over and the cop asked you what year you were born, and you said, ‘Ah, either ‘62 or ’63, I can’t ever remember.’ The cop thought you were trying to be a smart ass, and I had to convince him that you really didn’t know. So don’t tell me what an academic scholar you are.”

Everybody busted up laughing because they were all there that night. However, it made Bob feel bad, which made me feel bad. So, we came up with a rule that no matter how bad someone butchered the book while reading out loud, if anyone laughed or made fun of him, then the rest of us got to slug that person in the shoulder as hard as we could. After a couple of times of this, no one said another word. Eventually, they actually looked forward to our reading time. Homer would try to sneak up on us and open the door real fast to catch us fucking off, but we weren’t. We were actually reading the book. The guys liked the book so much that instead of just making generic bongs in ceramics class, they were making Gollum bongs or Smog the Dragon bongs. I had a good time in that hour, and we even finished the book by the time summer break came around. I think a couple of them even went on to read the Lord of the Rings.