RARA-AVIS: Jones Men

From: Mark Sullivan ( DJ-Anonyme@webtv.net)
Date: 26 May 2001


I finished Jones Men last night. It's a very effective book about the heroin trade in Detroit, circa 1974. Author Vern E. Smith was (maybe still is, at least was as of a couple of years ago) a Newsweek reporter who had then recently done a big story on the biz, so he knew what he was talking about.

There were two bits of slang that were new to me, though. The first was
"P" for heroin, or "heh-rawn" as his characters say it. Does the P stand for pure? At some points it does seem to refer to the quality of the drug, but at others it just seems to mean the drug, alone.

The second phrase was "selling wolf-tickets." I was easily able to understand through context that it meant "fronting," or as James Brown put it "Talkin' loud, but saying nothing." But where does it come from? What exactly is a "wolf-ticket"? Anyone know?

Mark

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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 26 May 2001 EDT