Reckless and Wild. An Akron Story
May 15, 1982 12:51 a.m.
I’m 15 and riding my bike home from a sensational evening spent drinking Little Kings, Smoking Brown Aqueduct Weed, and finger banging Barbie Deek all night. It’s a warm and quiet night with virtually no traffic anywhere in sight until I arrive at the intersection of Castle and Garman. In the distance I can see a car moving pretty fast towards me and I can hear the muffled sounds of music blaring from the car stereo. As I wait at the intersection for the car to pass I notice that it’s not slowing down as it approaches the 4 way stop. In fact it doesn’t stop. As I’m sitting there at the corner a Big Gray 1968 Cadillac blows through the stop sign , turns hard to the left , slides into the middle of the intersection, I hear some screams and a guy throws a empty beer bottle at me and the driver floors the gas pedal and continues down Castle at a high rate of speed. All I could think about was ” I’ve got to party with those guys!” This was the first time that I had seen or heard of VanderArk. As I found out later It was VanderArk Driving with Steve Brubaker , who threw the beer bottle at me, Chris Medvedeff and Bill Wise. All of whom were on 2 hits each of Blotter Acid and on their way back from the Kinks concert at the Coliseum.
Vanderark and I became friends shortly thereafter due to our common interests in the three D’s. Drinking, Drugs and Destruction. We both were big Fans of National Lampoon, especially the stories of O.C. and Stiggs. They were our heroes and we tried to emulate everything they did. From launching Piss Balloons at people ( which by the way did not work very well) to trying to get William Holden styled drunk from the booze we would steal from our parents liquor cabinets, to just good old fashioned fun like roof riding or heaving old T.V.’s out of the back of speeding cars. We were living the dream!