The Milkshake Man: August 2006

There are a lot of the guys here who’s names I never get to know. If they’re around long enough, I can usually pick up at least their street name. And if they actually live here, then I probably know their legal name as well. But they rotate a lot, and every summer there seems to be a new group that joins the club. I need to have some way of referencing these unknowns in my journal, so a long time ago I adopted the convention of naming them JD-1, JD-2, JD-3, etc.

It is really fun when I finally figure out the name of one of these John Does. I have to scan through my journal and try to find anytime their name appears and change it. I’ve also found that the JD terminology is not the best because I sometimes get them confused. Sometimes there is a memorable event that allows me to give them a unique nickname. This is preferable because, whenever I see this name in my report, I immediately can recall who it is that I am referring to.

There’s one guy here that I first encountered four years ago. I still refer to him as “Kroger” because of the time I ran into him at the Southgate Kroger store and we had an interesting exchange of words. There’s another guy that I used to refer to as “Shovel”, until I figured out his real name. Then there’s the guy who I affectionately refer to as the “Milkshake Man”, and here’s the story of how that came to be. I’ll refer to him now as Howard.

I don’t recall having seen Howard here before the summer of 2006. I never had any words with him because he was usually pretty low key. I never once saw him standing in my yard or tossing trash down. Yeah, he stood on the corner a lot, and I’m fairly certain he was selling drugs, but like I’ve said before I don’t have the time or energy to go after every dealer, so I just focus on the most obnoxious.

But this August afternoon was a bit different. Howard first made his presence known to me when he parked along the side of my house and started blasting his car stereo. This is actually unusual here because most of the dealers are on foot. For the next half hour or so, I watched as Howard sold drugs from the corner. He was occasionally joined by others but he stayed the entire time. When I saw him throw his food wrapper in my grass, I got really pissed.

I debated for a minute whether I should call the police, but decided to take care of it myself. When I walked outside, I was unsure of what I would say or do. I wasn’t even sure who all was out there at the time because I had a few blind spots. Mainly, I just wanted to make my presence known, and see what kind of reaction I got. So I walked out front and down the side of the house where Howard was now standing alone.

As I walked past him he said “What’s up?” with a pleasant tone. I didn’t respond and kept walking. When I got to my back porch, I saw a nearly full milkshake cup that was setting on the edge of my back porch. I stared at it for a moment thinking that I might turn around and ask Howard if it was his. At this point though, something clicked inside my head. As I thought about all the times I had asked the drug dealers not to set themselves or their stuff on my property, and all the times they said okay, and all the times they continued to do it again, I got even more pissed.

I am pretty certain that if I had said anything to Howard or he had said anything to me at that moment it probably would have turned into a physical confrontation because of the anger building up inside me. I needed a release, so I palmed the cup and sent it flying out into the street. I wasn’t really aiming, and the cup missed the front bumper of Howard’s car by only about a foot. I turned to walk back to the front of the house and as I passed Howard I said “What’s up?”

I stood in my front yard for a minute and watched as Howard walked over to look at his car. He appeared to be checking to see if any of the milkshake had gotten on it. I was seriously expecting him to come at me, the only question was whether he would have a weapon. Instead, he hopped in the car and tore up the pavement driving away.

I sat out front for the next half hour or so because I was expecting Howard to come back with a friend or two. I contemplated calling the police, but I really didn’t see the point in doing so. I had no information other than to tell them that “some guy” was probably pissed at me because I tossed his milkshake. And if he did happen to return to the area, he would have seen any police on the scene and turned before he got to my house. I haven’t seen Howard here since that happened. But whenever I see a milkshake cup (especially a Zesto’s shake), it immediately conjures up an image of him in my mind.