The Carpet Rake And Other Tales From A Coke Dealer

This weekend my mom and I were at a garage sale. I could not convince her to drive all the way out to see Octomom's house, but we did do some early morning hunting. It was so hot here this weekend that even my mother, who can usually go for hours without a break called it quits after three houses. Anyway, at the first house we went to, there was a carpet rake for sale. I have not seen one of those in many years. For those of you who have no idea what a carpet rake is, let me explain. Back in the day, houses had two common denominators. Wood paneling and shag carpeting. If you had the shag, you had a carpet rake which is basically a plastic version of a real rake.

When I saw the rake for sale, it triggered in me a story the late great Johnny Grant told me about how the coke industry used to work in LA. Back in the late 70's and early 80's, coke took off in LA much like the rest of the world. At the time, the dealers for celebrities were divided within industries. It was really strange. You had dealers who sold to people on television, others for movies and others for the music industry.

This item involves the television dealer. He operated out of some apartments near Sunset and Vine which are gone now, but at the time was coke central. Because of his location, our dealer could service the entire television community. Although many television shows are not filmed in LA anymore, back then most were filmed in LA and they had fairly regular hours.

Actors and actresses would stop by the dealer's house on the way to work and generally on their way home after work. The truly addicted would often get away at lunch and rush over to the dealer's apartment. When they did so, the actor or actress often did not have time to change out of their wardrobe before coming to the dealer.

#1 This Emmy nominee/winner actor would often show up wearing surgical scrubs from his show.
#2 This Golden Globe nominee/winner actress would show up often at lunch. One of the dealer's best customers. Often she would forget to remove the name tag she wore on her show with her character's name.

Although the television users generally stuck with one person, the movie actors and actresses would sometimes stop by although the dealer would charge them almost double because that is what they were paying the guy who usually sold to them. #3 Anyway, one time, this still A list Academy Award nominee/winner actor who has also done lots of television called the dealer at 3am and begged the dealer to come to his house and bring some more coke. The actor was having as huge party and someone had spilled a huge bag of coke onto white shag carpeting. Apparently a bunch of drunk and high people had all tried to use a carpet take to gather up the coke, but were so f**ked up they did not realize it was just sliding right through the rake. One person was do desperate for the coke that they vacuumed it up but this was at a time when they still had vacuum bags so they cut open the bag and the coke was all mixed up with lint and other stuff. Did not stop the people from trying to snort it though. Eventually the dealer came out and charged enough from that one sale where he managed to buy a car just from that one night.

Eventually the dealer got chased out of the business by people tougher than he was and he worked on some shows as a consultant for people who had been his customers. He died about 15 years ago.