It was an autumn day in Anne Arundel County, Maryland when I was 12 years old that I first met Wolfman Jack. And it was one of the scariest days of my life. I was playing outside with some kids from the neighborhood when an old white pickup truck came into my drive way.
A large man with a beard streaked with majestic gray heaved himself out of the pickup, and an old black man came out of the passenger side. I walked up to the man and asked him his business. "Your pa hired me to clean your gutters," he said. "ok" i replied, sheepishly. The man was very loud and very large, so I did not want to disturb him.
"This is gramps", he said, pointing to the old black man. "he may look skinny and old, but he is tough as nails. He carried sofas for me the other day." I was horrified that this man made this old man do hard labor. "I am Bob Smith*", the man said, and put out his hand. (*Bob Smith was Wolfman Jack's real name, btw). By this time my younger brother, and Chris from across the street were in the driveway with us. Bob Smith started howling like a crazy person. My little brother was scared and he went inside.
Neither my mother nor my stepfather were home. Bob Smith sat around outside for a little while I called my mom to let her know the gutter guy was at our house. Apparently she did not know who he was and my stepfather had just hired him without talking to her.
Outside, Bob Smith was accusing my friend of having an asian girlfriend named Ming Ling. My friend denied this, but there was no appeasing the increasingly maniacal Bob Smith. Bob Smith then accused me of sitting in trees and howling at the moon. He was basically yelling all of this and ranting about bizarre subjects and scaring the crap out of us kids. He would start singing songs we didn't know, interspersed with catcalls and howling.
Then he invited himself in.
He went inside and fixed himself an iced tea. He didn't ask, but no one was gonna argue with him. I asked him if Gramps was ok outside and he said "Gramps will sit in the truck. He is a tough old bugger."
My grandmother, who was born in the Soviet Union and didn't speak good English and suffered from hearing loss and senility, was living with us at the time. She came into the room and Bob Smith started in on HER. "I know you been howling Granny, I know you been crying at the moon.Hoo-wooooooooo." My grandmother walked back into a different room without saying much. Bob Smith followed her in there, and after he saw her knitting stuff, demanded a sweater be knit for him. "I will come back and get it soon," he said.
Bob Smith then terrorized us for at least 30 more minutes, all the while we were sitting uncomfortably in the living room.
My mother got home and talked to him for a while and he gave an estimate on the gutters. "Both me and Gramps have fallen off people's roofs before," he said.
Eventually this crazy man left. We told my mother how scary he was, but he gave a good price on the gutters, so she hired him and he came back, without gramps, over the weekend and did them. My brother and I wisely stayed at a neighbors house while he was there.
It was years later, when I saw American graffitti that I knew who the mysterious Bob Smith was. He was the one and only Wolfman Jack, the legendary DJ. When I found out Wolfman Jack was really named Bob Smith, I knew that I got to parlay with one of the greats before he died.
Why he was cleaning gutters, I will never know.
The End. (This is a true story. A man named Bob Smith, who I believe was THE bob Smith, cleaned my gutters)
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