My wife recently attended the National Art Education Association Conference in NY City.  Like me, she is retired.  Unlike me, she enjoys staying involved in her profession.  There are a number of pharmacy related conferences here and there that if I wished I could attend as a retired pharmacist.  Doesn’t interest me in the least.  My wife really has fun during her sojourns though.  She finds the speakers entertaining and topics educational.  She visits art museums and so forth, and usually has a small group of fellow teachers to commiserate with while touring and dining.  I heard from a reliable source that during this recent  trip my wife and her friends liked to frequent a particular restaurant for its “attentive service,”  provided by some steroid sculptured guy by the name of  Adrian. If I find out he was passing out anything other than free tiramisu I will be making a special trip to NY myself.

When she got home my wife showed me the pictures she took on her i-phone and we had various discussions about her trip- her shitty airline experiences, the NY cuisine she sampled, the art museums, and- Peter Yarrow.  No shit.  He was headlining in her hotel ballroom I guess.  You remember Peter Yarrow.  Peter, Paul and Mary.  Geezuz I wonder how old that guy is?  I know Mary is dead.  Not sure about Paul.  Anyway Peter sang all the hits- ‘Blowin’ in the Wind,’ ‘If I had a Hammer,’ ‘Puff the Magic Dragon.’ etc.

Peter, Paul and Mary (In this photo, L  to R, Peter, Mary and Paul, although it could be Paul, Mary and Peter.  I’m forever getting those two guys mixed up)

I always wondered what happened to little Jackie Paper.  He kind of shit on his dragon friend Puff, just discarded his friendship like a self-centered, rebellious teen sometime does.  I’m not sure I believe it, but I’ll take Peter’s word that Puff is still alive.   However as with Paul, I began to wonder if Jackie Paper was still living.  My wife kind of had her head up her ass and didn’t think to ask Peter, but in her defense, once she heard the story of Puff and Jackie again she got terribly upset and left the premises in tears.

I could never find out how to get ahold of Peter Yarrow myself, but I have some pretty good sources I use to do personal research, a couple of which have that new microwave surveillance technology.   ‘Somebody’ and ‘Heard Around’ are two of my favorites, as well as Rightbart.   Well you won’t believe it but I found out that little prick Jackie just up and  ran away from home and really got into trouble.  Broke his parent’s hearts.  It’s not like he bolted from an abusive environment or anything.  His parents, Doris and Harvey Paper, managed a very successful real estate business and gave the spoiled brat anything he wanted.  Christ how many kids have a fucking pet dragon?

Doris, Jackie, and Harvey in Happier Times

The story is Jackie hated his parents even as a young boy. No one really knows why. He started hatching a plot to kill them, and desperately tried to enlist the services of Puff. His thought was since Puff was a dragon he must have fire breathing capability so he could easily torch his parents house and either burn them alive or at least help destroy evidence after the heinous deed was done. When Puff informed Jackie that the fire breathing gene was absent in his species, he became enraged and, at the age of 16, that’s when he left home.

Jackie wandered the streets for a couple of years before joining the Klan and a motorcycle gang and then spent five years in jail for armed robbery.  When he got out, he embarked on a really bad acid trip that initiated a series of psychotic episodes involving childhood flashbacks.  Evidently at some point the bad chemicals surging through his brain triggered hallucinogenic instructions to go finish what was yet undone, so he traveled back to his childhood home, murdered his aged parents, and set their house on fire.  He is presently in prison serving a life sentence for first degree murder and arson.

1984 Photo of Jackie Paper

Though Peter Yarrow still features the song ‘Puff the Magic Dragon’ in most of his concerts, I found out during my research that if you ever press him about anything related to Jackie Paper’s personal life he will immediately walk away without comment.  I thought you’d like to know.