Steve Ludzik:

BURNING DOWN THE HOUSE

As told to: Dave Bidini

Larms and I lived together in a duplex in Moncton. It was the size of a shoe box. You had to chisel ice off the electrical sockets in the morning so you could have a cup of tea. One week, you’d sleep in the bed, the next you’d have to suffer on the Y-fold couch. I remember the time my girlfriend – who became my wife – came down to see me, and I decided to make french fries. Pretty soon, the oil in the pan wasn’t the only thing that started to get hot, so my attention became a little, um, diverted. When I went back to the pan, I lifted the lid and some water that had condensed from the heat dropped into the oil and caused an unbelievable explosion of fire. Because we had a cardboard ceiling, the kitchen burnt to a crisp. I turned to my girlfriend and said, “Let’s get out of here; the place can burn down for all I care.” Later on, Larms came in around 2:30 in the morning. I could tell that he was inebriated because he had two cigarettes going at the same time: one in his hand, one in his mouth. I asked him: “Can you take bad news standing up or sitting down?” I brought him into the kitchen and it was like charcoal. Even worse for Larms was the fact that the next day I was called up to Chicago. We had a sander and a planer lying around and the poor bastard had to re-do the whole kitchen himself.