Shanty Town Scum

This was written in response to a gang of teenagers at the arcade in the Shakey’s Pizza Parlor where Hack works as a janitor taunting him for being a loser. In the novel, the hero drives low-lifes out of town. In real life, the kids put bottle rockets in the toilets Hack was paid to clean.

Reefer Fiends

The urban legend of the stoned babysitter who puts an infant in a microwave oven comes from this 1975 novel, which Hack swears was not only true but that he was the baby in question. But since Hack was born in 1940 and the first microwave oven wasn’t invented until 1946, we suspect that he was stoned on reefer when he “remembered” it.