Butter the Wise

I was there the day that Butter the Wise got his new wheels. It was fucked up, really. This middle class suburban guy on the inside, Jamaican ex-pat on the outside bought himself a Toyota Celica and had it fleshed out with a massive stereo cassette system and the first neon I ever saw I on a car, I shit you not. I was allowed to drive my mom's k-car if she didn't need it for groceries or something and I wasn't allowed to take it out at night at all. The fact that Butter had his own Celica was definitely fucked up.
It was me who first called him Butter the Wise. I didn't know him from Adam when someone told me they called him Butter because he was a fat boy. Big and fat. He played football on the defensive line kind of fat. I was standing in the pit one day and he walked up and asked me if I played guitar. I told him I did and he said he was looking for a band for a party he was having. He was going to charge ten bucks to get in and use the cash to buy booze and food and considering that it was likely that there would be a hundred plus people there he was going to make some money on the side to pay for a band. So I said....
"They should call you Butter the Wise, man.", and the whole place went quiet. Apparently nobody called him Butter to his face, but he knew about it and he was wise, so I didn't get punched in the head and he became Butter the Wise to everybody.
Butter's mom was what you might call robust. She was pretty tough on Butter and his brother but you could tell she was pretty happy with them, too. That summer he threw a party every weekend she went down to Toronto to visit her sister and I have never seen anything close to the debauchery that went on in that house. My band set up and played almost every time but we had to learn a bunch of Springsteen tunes because Butter liked Springsteen.
Saturday afternoon we had to help Butter pick up the beer. He never picked up a fucking case, as far as I remember. He would say, "My car. You guys load the beer." I wanted to point out the obvious but I got lucky once and wasn't sure I would again. But we discovered, despite his questionable logic that Butter had an ear for sound and he became our sound man after that.
The summer after grade thirteen I bought a van which we ripped apart to become the band bus. We managed to get a booking agency in Toronto to take us on and by August we were on the road with Butter following behind, in his Celica, to do sound.
He told me once that he never felt out of place when he drove that car. The universe was his and he went were he wanted. It was a cool car.
I want you all to raise a glass to Butter the Wise. He was man, he was a good man, he was a good soundman, and I hope they let him drive that Celica where ever he his now.