Intro to the Hazlehurst Memoirs
Nov. 5, 2024 – Election Day! Like many of us in our sadly divided electorate, I’m dismayed. If my preferred candidate doesn’t win the presidency, I think the nation will go to hell in a handbasket.
But concerned as I am by the fate of our country, I’m also troubled by the ravages of time. I was born in Colorado Springs on Nov. 5, 1940, so I’ll be 84 when either Harris or Trump ascend to the Oval Office. Will I be around for the 2028 contest? Possibly, but who knows?
A backward glance: It’s been a great ride, full of adventure, unexpected (and often undeserved) good fortune, good times, good friends, multiple careers, three wives, old age, irrelevance and decent chardonnay. Most of all, it’s been fun, fun, fun … and far from taking the T-Bird away, my wife Karen gave me one for my 80th birthday (2004 merlot-red with a sweetly rumbling Borla exhaust system).
After sharing some of my more outlandish stories with my editor Heila Ershadi, she suggested that I write a complete and reasonably truthful narrative of my life and times, spreading it out over a few issues of the Bulletin. So here goes!
A few days after arriving in Grenada, I had no idea what to do with my life. Should I sell the Paisano, go back to the States, get a job and join the reality-based community? Or should I just stay in Grenada, reunite with Jeanne and our little son, work as a yacht delivery skipper and stay in Grenada? I loved Grenada, was ready to settle down, and then fate intervened.
Walking down Grand Anse beach one sunny afternoon, I saw a familiar face – it was my friend from childhood, Tim Collins with his new spouse Kathleen, fit and slim in a tiny bikini. His investment banking firm, Collins Securities, employed 100 people, with offices in New York, Denver, and San Francisco. I was entranced and envious.
“Come back to the States and work for me,” Tim said. “You’re a smart guy and you’ll learn fast. And yeah, I’ll pay you well – you’ll love New York!”
It seemed like a great idea. Jeanne and I had formally broken up, I had sold the old Paisano and was ready for a new life. Once in New York, I found a new girlfriend, Ellen; we moved into a fabulous apartment and I loved my job. But then came the crash of 1969, the closure of the Denver and California offices and the evisceration of the business.
There were three of us, then: Tim, his longtime assistant/secretary Charlene and me. My job was to make deals and fend off regulators such as the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission), the NASD (National Association of Securities Dealers) and the NYSE (New York Stock Exchange). The recession had wreaked havoc on the firm’s capital, so we hovered on the edge of bankruptcy.
Strange, exciting days – for example, one morning the elevator to our top-floor suite opened and representatives of all three entities emerged, demanding details of specific transactions. I stalled, falsely claiming that the documents were in storage and that I’d have them tomorrow. They came back the next day, after I’d sanitized them – Tim tended to play fast and loose with the rules – and our attorneys were there as well, helping me fend them off.
New York in the early 70s was dirty, dangerous, decrepit and utterly wonderful. – John Hazlehurst
New York in the early 70s was dirty, dangerous, decrepit and utterly wonderful. Ellen and I had a vast top floor apartment in a turn of the century building at 17 E. 97th St. It had five bedrooms, a 20×30-foot living room and it was rent controlled – $275 monthly. It was perfect for us and our Great Dane, and great for parties. Neither of us made much money, but so what?
But all good things come to an end. Ellen and I were drifting apart when I met a lawyer who was intrigued by my past as a yacht captain.
“This is a strange one,” he said, “but maybe you’d be interested. I’m representing the estate of Danny Seymour, who was murdered in the Caribbean on his sailboat by a couple of random crewmen. They stopped in Martinique [a French island in the Caribbean], were arrested and jailed. The authorities in Martinique seized the boat and we need to sell it.”
I made a deal to buy the boat for $10,000, payable when I wrenched it away from the French authorities. I took off for Grenada a few days later with a vital piece of luggage, a bolt cutter that could cut hardened steel, recruited a couple of friends, and hitched a ride on a sailboat that dropped us off in Martinique. We presented our papers and boarded Danny’s boat, the Imamou.
She was a 37-foot ketch that needed work. The engine was dead, the bottom fouled with underwater growth, and the bilge overflowing. Danny had paid $70,000 for her a year earlier – poor guy, he’d paid twice as much as the boat was worth. Our problem: the French wanted us to pay $15,000 for accumulated “dockage fees.”
I took off for Grenada a few days later with a vital piece of luggage; a bolt cutter that could cut hardened steel. – John Hazlehurst
We scrubbed off the growth, checked the spars, sails and rigging – she was seaworthy, but how could we escape? We stayed awake on the next Sunday night, guessing that the harbor patrolmen would be absent or asleep, cut the chain to the mooring at 2 a.m., ghosted out of the harbor in a light breeze from the mountains, picked up the Southeast Trades, and headed to the windward coast of St. Lucia, then St. Vincent and the Grenadines and finally home to Grenada.
Back in the Carenage! I knew we were safe, thanks to my many friends – Minister of Tourism Paul Slinger, my attorney Maurice Bishop and most of all the Prime Minister, Eric Matthew Gairy. (Grenada is a small place – living there, I had happened to meet Paul, and through him was introduced to Gairy.)
The P.M. came to visit a couple of days later, greatly amused.
“The French are after you,” he said, “but I told them to mind their own business and leave you alone. We’re a nation, not a colony!”
What a long, strange trip it had been … and, as I soon found out, the true strangeness hadn’t even started.
Next week: My drug kingpin era.
John Hazlehurst has been deeply involved in the community, including serving on the Colorado Springs City Council and in the founding of the Historic Preservation Alliance. He has previously written for the Colorado Springs Independent and the Colorado Springs Business Journal.
All installments of The Hazlehurst Memoirs may be found at PikesPeakBulletin.org.
