Legacy

Mellow Mushroom Pizza Bakers already has a Ricky. He has served drinks for several years. Ricky’s a big, Italian bouncer, a bartender loved by all. So, when a strange customer by the same name became a regular, the employees at the pizzeria nicknamed him “Crazy Ricky.”

I guess the nickname makes sense: He only stays at the bar for about 10 minutes at a time. All he drinks is Coca-Cola. He sticks his hands in his armpits sometimes.

Mood pending, he usually wears some configuration of a solid red shirt, LSU jersey, camouflage shorts or white carpenter overalls. He complements it with and a bucket hat a la Gilligan’s Island. He has a gray beard with a few brown hairs still remaining and big amber glasses. His teeth aren’t in order, but he doesn’t really smile anyway.

He isn’t always great with names at the pizzeria, calling Kelly “Lauren,” Katie “Christie,” and so on in that fashion. But Mellow’s bartenders are cordial to him — that is, they exchange pleasantries and serve him only the finest Coke products.

I watched the routine unfold for a year behind the veil of a kitchen window, where I worked making pizzas. He does the same thing at Bogie’s, a bar just down the street from Mellow, only the crowd there isn’t so accommodating.

“They threatened to blow me away,” Ricky said of the students who frequent Bogie’s. “They say, ‘Why you come in here? You don’t drink, you just stay for a little while, and you try to take our girls home.’ They think I’m a letch and a weirdo. I wouldn’t do that.”

Bogie’s bartender Alden Settoon hasn’t had a problem with Ricky and isn’t too worried about him becoming one.

“The guy’s pretty harmless,” Settoon said. “He comes here every Thursday on Ladies’ Night. He said that’s why he dropped out [of LSU]: The girls were too distracting.”

In a college town, Crazy Ricky stands out like … well … a carpenter in camo shorts. He’s a local legend in this five-mile radius. He just doesn’t realize it.

“That guy’s cool, man,” said F.J. Eastman, Pitch and Putt Pro Shop assistant director. “[You’ve] got to love those camo shorts.”

I eventually caught up with Ricky one night after a short shift at Mellow, and soon thereafter we became friends. He introduced himself:

“Ricky Pellerin, Vietnam veteran,” he said as he shook my fingers more than my hand.

We talked for a bit before Ricky, 53, said he was a good golfer.

“I got 19 hole-in-ones at LSU’s golf course in the last seven years. That’s the record,” Ricky boasted.

He would later show me the scorecards he saved, signed and verified. But former Mellow manager, Kyle Wilkinson tapped the brakes on that story.

“Ricky doesn’t actually play big golf. He just does the LSU Pitch & Putt,” he said.

Pitch & Putt is a par-3 course that allows golfers to practice their short game. It’s good for older folks like Ricky, who’ve lost the strength to drive the ball long distances. Still, I wanted to learn more about Ricky. I got my chance when he invited me to play golf with him. But first, I was to meet him at his apartment.

An Unexpected Welcome

His unit is tucked in the corner of the Camelot Apartment Complex on Jim Taylor Drive, the final stop on a dead-end sidewalk. He was expecting me, so I knocked softly.

“Just a minute!” he yelled.

It took about 20 seconds for him to get the door unlocked. I assumed he’d just been sleeping. He was wearing his trademark overalls with no shirt underneath. Only one strap was fastened, and his underwear was pulled above his belly button.

The place looked like he’d just moved in, but he said he’d been there six months. There were boxes everywhere and a mattress on the floor with a nightstand next to it. The apartment didn’t have lamps, just sunlight peering through the blinds. It smelled horrible, like a rancid cigarette. It burned your nostrils until you finally got used to it.

If he sleeps, I asked him, what’s the first thing he does upon waking?

“Smoke a reefer,” he responded. “[But] the stuff today isn’t as good as we used to get.”

I asked him where they used to get it.

“Oh, this guy, Barry Seal’s brother. So it was from Colombia,” he responded.

Seal was an alleged CIA informant with a renowned stake in the drug game and ties to Columbian drug lord Pablo Escobar. Of course there’s no way to verify whether Ricky got his drugs in a trickledown, but it’s interesting to note that Seal was born and murdered in Baton Rouge, where Ricky has spent most of his life.

Doesn’t seem like too much of a stretch now.

Ricky had a lot of stacks on the floor. One stack was of old records from the ’70s, another was a pile of books. One stack in particular caught my eye: a pile of Manila papers about 2 feet high.

“Are these drawings?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he responded. “I used to draw with markers a lot back when I had an imagination.”

The papers were filled with almost every Division I college football helmet in the country, along with their mascot and logo. They weren’t remarkable, but they weren’t bad at all — somewhere right in the middle.

Florida: a vibrant orange Gator helmet. A Michigan State Spartan, labeled with the appropriate font. Cats littered the album: Kentucky Wildcats, Northwestern Wildcats, Pittsburgh Panthers, Auburn Tigers, Clemson Tigers, LSU Tigers and more LSU Tigers.

“I was gonna do Vanderbilt, but I wasn’t really in the mood,” he said.

I’m not sure what that meant, but coincidentally LSU played Vanderbilt that week in football. Ricky had no idea the two were set to meet in Tiger Stadium.

“I don’t even know what a commodore is,” he said.

Next he flipped to an actual grid of helmets he had drawn. Probably 40 filled the page — this thing was detailed. At the bottom, a caption:

“I proved to myself I could do it, as this one clearly shows. — Ricky”

On Course

We finally met at the golf course. Ricky pulled up in his tattered, 2000 Honda Accord. It was like Ricky: a gift from his mother; lots of mileage but loyal; a little beat up and off white; stuck in Baton Rouge but still able to get from A to B. Ricky popped the trunk to get his clubs, and the leaky taillight dripped onto his golf bag. Ricky just stood there.

“Uh … Rick, you’re getting some water on your nice leather bag,” I told him.

“I know. There’s nothin’ I can do about it. That’s the way it’s been,” he responded as he let the water pour out.

Ricky has a way of unintentionally using poetic phrases. For example: Ricky has two pairs of Chuck Taylor’s. One pair are navy, the other are white.

“I only wear the Blues when it rains,” he says.

You’d swear he was lying if you saw what was left of the “white” pair.

The Cat’s Meow

We moved on to other drawings. He drew the Sunkist raisin girl. I could see it once he explained what it was. Next were a series of German shepherds — it was his old dog.

As he was flipping through sketches, a woman’s face appeared, clearly a portrait. I noticed her long hair, and that’s all I saw before Ricky quickly shut the book, not saying anything. It had to be his ex-wife.

“I used to be married for a few days,” he told me at once. “I didn’t even know her real name ’till we went to the courthouse for the paperwork. Her name was Johnny.”

They were together for four days before she found someone else, he said.

“I met her at a party. Her friends told her I was rich so she married me a few months later,” he added. “When she found out I didn’t have any money, I woke up, and she was gone. I haven’t had a date since … The girls I’ve been interested in all have boyfriends.”

He may not have a girlfriend, but Ricky still has his cats.

“I got Ms. Kitty about four years ago,” he said. “My other cat was yelling at me, telling me to come see something. So, I came to the front door, and there was Ms. Kitty. I asked her, ‘Do you want to come inside?’ She came inside. Been here ever since.”

I asked where his other cat went.

“He’s over there,” Ricky said as he pointed.

Dixie was lying on the ground with a gaping hole in the side of his face.

“He has mouth cancer, and I’m gonna have to put him to sleep any day now,” Ricky told me. “I can’t do it in person … It’d be too hard. I’ve been cryin’ my eyes out every day.”

A Short Stint

I asked him more about his time in Vietnam while we walked to the first hole, expecting a veteran to have some chilling tales from the jungle.

“I didn’t even make it to boot camp,” he said. “I got to San Diego, and I started to hear voices in my head telling me to do things I didn’t want to. My drill instructor wiped a booger on me one day, and I hit him in the mouth.

“He and a few other guys took me into a private room and beat me up. I got diagnosed with schizophrenia. They gave me an honorable discharge, and I went to the mental hospital in Gulfport, [Miss.,] for a year.”

He showed me his honorable discharge certificate when we were at his apartment. It looked like a diploma, signed and everything. I’m not sure if its regal appearance is more in the name of honor or just to make the recipient feel good about himself. Nevertheless, I believed him anyway — you don’t just make up a booger-wiping story.

Lunch Time

Ricky was ready for lunch, and we went to Mellow, where he nonchalantly dropped a rather shocking anecdote between inhalations of the chicken wings.

“I was raped when I was 18 or 19 [years old],” he said while picking meat off a bone.

I had to nod my head in agreement without letting my mouth drop.

“Some black guy put a Mickey in my drink and made me have sex with him,” Ricky continued.

Ricky had barbeque sauce all over his mouth and fingers, so it was hard to take him seriously. He was so candid you’d almost think he’d had consensual sex. I doubt it was the case because he told me he disowned his only sister for “being a lesbian.”

“They got the guy and he died in prison of AIDS later on,” he added nonchalantly.

Not knowing what to say, I responded, “Well … that’s … good.”

An Odd Pair

The third hole was a little different.

“I was best friends with a serial killer.” That’s how Ricky started the hole.

“Wh … what?” I stuttered.

“Yeah, Sean Gillis used to work at Circle K by my house,” Ricky responded “We got to be friends when I went by there late at night. We used to go smoke a joint behind the dumpster.”

Gillis was arrested in 2004 and confessed to killing eight women. Some of the victims were strangled and their bodies mutilated. He pleaded guilty in court to two of the killings and is serving life in prison.

Ricky said he befriended the man some 15 years ago. They used to hang out at his apartment, smoking and drinking.

“He’d always come by wearing driving gloves,” Ricky said. “He used to sneak up behind me and say he could easily kill me with his shoestring if he wanted, but I never really thought anything by it.”

Ricky teed off. The ball sailed over the hole and into the rough.

“Shit!” he yelled. “Sometimes I get all charged up and hit it too hard.”

Same here, Ricky.

The misfire resulted in a bogey for him, so he fell behind par by a stroke.

“Oh well, everyone makes a bogey sometimes,” he said.

I guess that’s the truth, too.

Living With It All

Back at his apartment, Ricky continued about his cat, Dixie.

“He’s like a hero,” he told me. “Killed two rats. Doesn’t that sound like a hero to you? A 6-incher and a 9-incher.”

I guess that is pretty impressive. Better than I’ve ever done.

Before living here, Ricky lived at the Gaslite apartments on Burbank Drive for almost 20 years. The manager there had to evict Ricky, not for delinquent payments, but because his unit was decrepit.

“The neighbors complained about fleas from my cats, and the roaches started to take over,” Ricky said. “They made a no-cat policy after that, and I had to leave. I think Dixie may have gotten a roach in his food, that’s why his mouth got that way.”

Loosing A Friend

Ricky made par on the fourth hole.

“It was hard to hang out with Sean [Gillis] ’cause he always made me throw up. I threw up at least 3,000 times while I knew him,” he said.

“What the hell does that mean?” I wondered aloud.

“The wine,” Ricky told me. “He always drank wine, and we just drank and drank ’till we threw up.”

He began to talk more about Gillis.

“He always wore black pants and picked up prostitutes,” Ricky said. “One day he had some red on the black pants, and I asked him what it was. He said it was wine … but he kind of smelled funny. Then he started lying … about where he was late at night, and we stopped hanging out.”

I had a hard time believing this whole “Gillis” story, but Ricky told me a detective questioned him, and the next day they smoke-bombed Gillis’ house and took him away.

I still didn’t really believe it — until he pulled out the detective’s business card.

I made a call to the man listed, who would neither confirm nor deny anything except that the two were indeed friends. I guess it was at least a little true.

Freezing Cold

The fifth, sixth and seventh holes stayed the course: Par. Par. Par. But Ricky was still a stroke behind par overall. Time was running out.

Ricky grew up in the University Acres neighborhood with his brother Chip and two sisters. He attended Lee High School, where all he can remember doing is “cruisin’ around at sunset listening to Top 40” with his friends.

Chip made to PGA status in the golfing world, but Ricky had a résumé of his own.

“I used to be captain of the golf team in high school,” he said. “We played Baker in a tournament and I got ’em disqualified. They wanted to fight us, but they were cheating; dropping balls and practicing putting between holes. You can’t cheat in golf.”

Ricky had a way of finding out people’s fates well after the fact:

“The guy I got in trouble ended up freezing to death in Colorado,” he said.

“How’d you find that out,” I asked.

“Some Baker buddies told me,” he replied.

By this point, I had little reason to disbelieve him. He had no vested interest.

Family Matters

Ricky made par on the eighth hole. He was still a step behind, like he’s been much of his life.

“I flunked out of LSU after a semester,” Ricky said. “I wanted to study psychology, but I couldn’t remember all that shit. I liked to party too much.”

Ricky slowly lost touch with his family after flunking out of school. He doesn’t talk to them much anymore.

“Nah, they won’t help me,” he said.

Ricky is unemployed and lives off a disability check every month, almost all of which goes toward a bi-weekly shot of Prolixin, a strong anti-psychotic used to manage schizophrenia. This leaves him in a constant game of catch-up.

Finishing Up In Style

We walked to the ninth hole, and I knew how it was going to turn out. Ricky would wind up one off par. Just a little off-center like everyone says.

His approach shot was actually pretty good. It landed about 8 feet from the hole. The green was sloped, though, making for a tough birdie putt.

“If I make this, I will have accomplished what I set out to do,” Ricky said.

Do I even have to tell you what happened? The putt curved perfectly. You could tell it was good the moment it left his club.

Ricky threw up both his arms in celebration and shouted, “ALRIGHT!”

He was grinning and laughing. He finished at an even par.

Then I realized:

These busy days, I too have trouble staying anywhere for 10 minutes. I usually stick to Coke or water. I’ve stuck my hands in my armpits a time or two.

I’m not always good with names or time management. I like staying up late. I like to party. I love animals. I’ve set out to achieve goals, too. Am I crazy?

Before we parted ways at the golf course, I asked Ricky if he ever got around to drawing Vanderbilt.

“Yeah, I got the paper for it,” he responded.

“But what about the school colors?” I asked.

“That’s the thing,” he said with despair. “I got the black … but I didn’t have the gold.”

That’s OK, Ricky; I don’t think many people do, either.

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