Interview with a Junkie
(2006, Lafayette, LA)

How long have you been a junkie?
Too long. Maybe 30years. Plus.

How’d you get started in the shooting-up business?
I started off shooting Preludes in the ’70s. Speed and stuff like that. Moved on to opiate-based drugs. I was raised round Tempe, AZ. Joined the Army and moved around. Different places though the ’70s & ’80s. Moving.

What is your drug of choice to shoot?
Opiates. Morphine. O.C.’s. Heroin. Any kind of Schedule II narcotics.

How many different types of heroin are there?
Ah, there’s a lot of them. Brown. White. Mexican Tar. It depends on what part of the country you’re in. Out west, in California, it’s mostly Black Tar Heroin. On the east coast, you got the powdered heroins. Brown and white. There’s no heroin around here, except for New Orleans. That’s the only city you get heroin in Louisiana. Anybody from Lafayette that says they’re “on heroin” or whatever, is full of shit. It ain’t here, cuz if it was, I’d know.

Why is that?
You can get life in prison for possession of a quarter gram of heroin in Louisina.That’s not much at all, like maybe $20 worth. So that’s kept it out of all the smaller towns and even bigger cities, because of the penalties against it. You can get it in New Orleans, cuz it’s been around down there for so long, they’re used to it. That’s the only city that tolerates it. Everywhere else, you’d better watch out, cuz they will put your ass in jail for a long time. It scares people! They hear those words and it’s like a boogieman came to town. And they want to keep him out of their town.

What about this brown-speckles of heroin in the ecstasy pill thing that you hear pillheads talk about?
It’s bullshit. They tell you that to make you think that there’s something special in there so you’ll buy it. Then someone buys a bunch of them, gets fucked up, and tells all their friends, “Hey, see these brown specks? That’s heroin.” When in fact, it’s probably cut or chum from the lab the chemist made it in.

What about all these pain-management clinics that have been sprouting up?
Now you see there? That’s the loophole. That’s how the government is making money off it and getting it into these towns. And it don’t scare people as much, cuz it’s a pill and it’s made by pharmaceutical companies with their little stamp on it. But believe me, it’s just as bad. It’s all the same shit. Only now, the pharmaceutical companies are making the big bucks and not just the importing countries that make the shit in sheds and ship it over.

Big operation.
Oh, it’s huge! And it’ll never stop. They want the population drugged up and useless, so they don’t give a damn about whatever changes are instituted to their Constitutional rights. You don’t give a fuck if all you’re worried about is getting your next fix. Trust me, I know. It’s a full-time job. The party line is: keep them fucked up and they won’t give a fuck. Why do you think the ghettos are always full of drugs? They let that shit in there, man! It keeps all the poor people disorganized and distracted. That way, they ain’t a problem. And if they ever do become a problem; you just put them in prison.

Have you ever tried to detox or get clean?
I’ve done it many times, but I unemployable cuz of my back, so I always end up going back and getting a habit.

What are the withdrawal symptoms when you kick?
Shitting & puking out of both ends. Your skin crawls. You can’t sleep. Your whole body aches. Cold and hot spells. It’s awful. Not an enjoyable experience.

Interview with a Natural Water-Well Driller
(2005, Ridge, LA.)

How long have you been drilling natural water wells?
25 years.

How far into the ground do you have to usually dig to hit water?
Between 100 and 200 ft. As you go closer to the coast, you have to dig deeper.

It seems like it would be the opposite. As you get closer to the coast the water is nearer to the surface.
You have to drill deeper by the coast because of the salt water. You have to go below that salt water table. Also the earth’s plates fold down at the edge and slant down into the ocean, so you have to follow that down also. The layers are just pan out and fold out down there so you gotta go way down to hit fresh water.

What kind of tools do you use to drill these fresh water wells?
I’ve got a drilling rig. It’s like a small oil rig, but on a smaller portable scale.

What’s the diameter of the holes that thing digs?
I can go from 4.5 inch to .4 inch. About 4 and a half is the biggest I can do.

And what do people use these fresh water wells for?
Mostly farms and irrigation. It’s the same water table that most of the cities pump out of, but I haven’t landed any of those kind of jobs. Mostly individual farms.

I bet those city contracts pay pretty good.
Oh, yeah. Lot of money in that.

Do you even pull up anything odd when you’re drilling these holes?
I have found some interesting things down there. Do you remember the Noah’s Ark Flood?

Yes.
Well, I’ve found absolute evidence of that, which was I once ended up drilling through a cypress tree that was still standing up where it grew, in the ground. When I came through the roots, I took up topsoil and pieces of red pottery. And the root structure was at 110 ft below ground level, which would’ve made the old water—since I was drilling about 5 ft above sea level at the time—it makes the old water level, before the great flood, about 100 to 110 ft. lower than where it is now.

So that was land there? Topsoil? Is that what you mean?
Yeah, that was the land and it couldn’t have been the water level we have today. The tree was standing up.

Kind of confusing, but I got you.
I drilled a 600-footer in Pecan Island and I hit the same thing around 225 ft. A tree standing straight that was still where it was growing.

Weird. And the only that can cause that is a flood?
Yes, the only thing that can cause that is a flood or a second great flood. There was two of them. See, this is Delta soil. It holds a record, because of the river constantly covering up and covering up. And when you drill through it, you see a record of all the years and flooding and stuff. After 25yrs of waiting for that, you get a mental image of what it is down there. When you hit something like that, you don’t just…I don’t just scratch my head, I know what that is.

So you’re pretty familiar with this phenomena?
Yeh. I do more than just drill. I study it a little bit.

It’s a curiosity that you’re obviously into.
One time, from that 110 ft layer, I got three eggs. Out of the hole. They were like turtle eggs or something.

Weird.
You can tell they were real old. The shell was thick and it had grey shale on the inside.

What other kind of stuff gets pulled up from these holes?
From about, well it’s further to the north, but about 240 ft or 235 ft down, there’s a layer of diamonds down there. I got a Coke bottle full of them. But they’re uncut. They’re not worth anything. The cut is what makes a diamond worth a lot. Unless you can get a lot of them and you don’t get that many when you’re drilling. I’ve been saving those for a long time.

Do you ever find any Indian artifacts or something like that?
No, nothing like that. We hit wood, pine sometimes, mostly cypress.

How drinkable or edible is this water that’s down there?
Oh, it’s good.

Really? I can just drink it?
Yeh, that’s what you drink when you drink from the top. The city’s got water wells.

Don’t they purify it to a certain degree?
Mostly they toxify it.

That’s what I was going to ask next.
Yeh, it’ll kill you.

They put some bad shit in the water?
Yeh, pretty bad.

Why?
To keep nodules to keep from growing in the pipelines—these bristly things will grow, so they put stuff in there to retard that. And they put pipe-preservatives and chlorine and fluoride. I don’t think they really care about our teeth, ’cuz I don’t think that will really help.

So how healthy would you say this treated city water is?
Well, They say it’s not good for you, ’cuz it’s got all the chemicals in it.

If you had to describe your occupation in two words, what would they be?
Well-driller. Or water-well driller.

Do you know anything about Dousing Rods and all that?
Oh, yeh. I can do that.

Does that work?
Yeh, but you don’t need it around here. I can find a buried pipeline or anything with that.

How do they (Dousing Rods) work?
Off of the magnetic fields from the earth. The magnetics of the earth…

Does it change when you get over water?
No. You ever played with a magnet?

Yeh.
It’s just like a magnet. If you break a magnet in two, you get another north and south pole. So if you got a pipeline laying in the ground or anything that splits the magnetic field, you get a new north and a south pole. That’s what makes the dousing rods turn and work. I use bent coat hangers. If somebody wants me to find a pipeline, I don’t have to use a metal detector. I get me two coat hangers. When you walk them real slow over the pipeline, they cross.

Interesting. Who taught you that?
Everyone’s anxious to teach me new things when I go to someone’s house or farm to drill. One guy broke that out one day and said, “Here. Try it. Try it.” And it worked.

Interview with an Offshore Diver
(April 2006, Broussard, LA)

Have you ever got “the bends?”
No, I haven’t.

Ever seen dudes get it before?
Yeh, I’ve seen a few guys take a hit.

What’s it do to them?
Usually a pain in the shoulder. Or they’ll get an intestinal hit and they’ll have nitrogen #4 in their intestines or their stomach. And it creates a lot of pain for them.

How do they treat it?
They table fix and they keep you in a decompression chamber for about 2 or 3 hours.

How long have you been diving in the oilfield?
About 10 years.

And how much do you make?
$300 to $400 buck a day. But that can go up, depending on how deep you’re diving that day. It’s called “Depth Pay.”

So you get paid more for going deeper?
Yeh, the deeper we go, the more we make.

And why is that?
The decompression factor. We have to make decompression stops. It tires your body out, the deeper that you go. The pressure that the water creates on your body, creates different atmospheres. Every 33 ft is a new atmosphere. So if you go to 66 ft, that’s automatically three atmospheres times the one on top of us. So that’s 3x the push that your body is normally used to.

How long do you guys usually stay down?
It just depends on how deep we go. We have a “schedule go-by” that determines the amount of time you can stay underwater at that depth.

What’s the deepest you’ve been?
150 ft.

Is this in a regular scuba suit?
No, it’s special thing with diving helmet and a wet suit and all that.

And how long can you stay at 150 ft?
50 minutes.

And how long do you have to rest after that before you go again?
12 hours.

Wow. Half a day? That must be pretty strenuous diving.
Yeh, they only allow you one dive a day. That’s the limit.

So you must work in crew with another guy going in right after you?
Yes. Soon as you come out another guy comes in after you.

How many guys in a crew?
Usually about 6 to 8 divers.

Are there many women doing this kind of work?
There’s a few of them. Not very many. But there are a few female divers.

What initially got you interested in this occupation?
My uncle. It’s kind of like a family thing.

What would you say is the most dangerous part of the job?
I would say Heliox Diving…

What exactly is that?
That’s when you breathe a helium & oxygen mix so you can stay deeper, longer.

Wow. That’s kind of like being in space. You guys are like astronauts!
Yeh, pretty much.

Do you see some pretty big fish down there?
A lot of barracuda and red snapper and grouper.

How big is the average barracuda?
About 6 ft.

You ever see any Sea Monsters? Like a Bigfoot of the Sea??
No, not yet.

Interview with R&B Commercial Radio DJ
(April 2006, Lafayette, LA)

How long have you been a commercial DJ?
Close to 7 years.

What kind of station do you work at?
Hip-Hop and modern R&B. I work for two stations. One in Lake Charles and 107.9, here in Lafayette.

How’s the pay?
It depends on what type of radio you’re doing. If you’re doing commercials, clubs, promotions, all that. Strictly on-air DJ, like me, makes about 30-35K in a market this size, which is kind of small. Lafayette is not a big market. Places like Atlanta, New Orleans, and Dallas you can make close to $100,000 just doing what I normally do.
What don’t you like about your job?
Working in small markets, like here, you gotta really grind hard to make the right kind of money. It’s tough. People don’t respond to new stuff as well. They just wanna party and go with the flow and not spend too much money on advertising.

That’s similar to the music scene.
You play music?

Yeh.
I’m a rapper, also. So I work both ends. I moved here from Atlanta, where you work all the ends to come up, so I’ve got a different perspective on stuff. Lafayette’s kind of country. If you work too hard, they wanna pull you back down, but what they don’t understand is that you’ve got bust your ass off to get anywhere, especially in smaller cities. Nobody hands you nothing.

How’d you get your start doing this?
I was 14 and called into a radio station for some free stuff and they tripped out on my voice.

Wow. You’re only 21?? You look and sound a lot older. You got that Tone-Loc gravelly thing.
That’s what they say. I’ve sounded like this since I was 14. So they gave me a little job.

Did you start earning pay right away?
Nah, I did an internship for a while. Learned the ropes for few years, and then got a job.

What’s your plans for the future?
Hopefully, get out of this market and get into syndication. That’s where the money is.

What does “syndication” mean exactly in radio?
That’s like where everybody all over the country hears your show. You’re in one place, but you’re on in like 20 cities. Like Howard Stern.

Got you. Well, good luck with all that, man.
Thanks.

Interview with Boobie
(2005, Lafayette, LA, in “the Zipp”)

How you doing?
What’s the name, brah?

Dege.
What is it?

Dege, man. D-E-G-E.
The Dege!

That’s it.
What kind of cigarettes you smoke? I got this red, but I smoke Kool Mild. What you got?

I’m out. I smoke Marlboro Lights, but I’m out.
How you doing today, Player?

I’m good. What are you doing today?
I’m trying to deal with this bitch. I lived with her for two years, but then I went to jail, you heard me? Now I’m back. But things done been started getting freaky, so now I’m gonna dog her out, you see? I’m dog her fucking ass out.

Is she cheating on you?
It’s not like she like to fuck around, but she the sneaky type. Locked up with a motherfucking nigga like me…like, whoa, yeh. Sneaky type. She bad. 51. And I took this fall for simple battery…busting her ass…I get back out and she still want to holler at me. I was there last night and she kind of acted funny, so…now I’m gonna fuck her in her ass…not clean it, and make her suck it off my dick. Teach her something. Dog her out a little bit. Bitch is sneaky.

Why is it people want to be all sneaky like that?
I don’t know, brah. I mean, a bitch, once they go with a man for so long, they want fresh dick.

Just like a man wanting to get some strange.
But them bitches eat pussy, too! So you got to watch them on both fronts. I ain’t gonna let this woman treat me like that. This is how I’m gonna let her know—fuck her like she ain’t been fucked in a long while and treat her like the nasty bitch I know she is. That’s how you keep a woman, you heard me? Show them you love them. That’s the only thing this bitch understands, so I got to play it like that. Ain’t gonna get over on me.

It’s a shame we’re living in a world where there’s so much crooked shit, Boobie. Look at you; you’re all the way up in it.
Yeh, but what else have I got?