The Story of the Avocados

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About our name Les Avocado: 

 

American Writer Born October 31st 1951 to parents Mercury A. and Frieda J. Parents were members of the underground organization N.O.M.O. (Nation of Militant Organists). His parents have been on the run since 1965 and their where abouts remain unknown to this day. His grandfather married a Peruvian woman named Ascencion after visiting Easter Island in 1921. He brought both a wife and a small journal back to the states. A book that Avocado wouldn’t find until after his father’s death in 1972.

In its pages lay a great secret. Zanzibar Avocado was a travelling merchant who believed in the power of cotton. After working with nomad dye houses in Peru he discovered the coloring processes that would develop into his theory of wearables. A belief that would lay dormant in the pages of an undiscovered manuscript until Les found it in the bottom of an old trunk. His grandfather believed that what would become t-shirts was the gift of expression and personal adventure.

Avocado has written three novels and published one book of short stories. The author traveled the United States extensively during his childhood and makes mention of encountering two literary figures briefly during his adolescence. At thirteen while sleeping in the back of his parents 1959 Chevy Airporter Biscayne, he awoke to see the Magic Bus stop for gas and watched his father talk to Ken Kesey heatedly. At 18, while visiting his dying mother in the hospital in St Petersburg Florida he claims to have shared a cigarette with a dying Jack Kerouac. Avocado spent his youth hand copying his own personal library as his family traveled from town to town. By the time he was 21 he’d accumulated 51 hand copies of various novels. Avocado was drafted into the Army and spent over two years in Vietnam. He lost his left arm at the elbow during an attack by the Viet Cong. After surviving the attack and helping to drive the enemy back, Les was sent to an Army hospital that gave him a prosthetic arm for an African American. Les would joke later that he shouldn’t have told the nurse he was Black Irish. He kept the limb and the joke right up until his disappearance from the public eye in 1984.

I met a pharmacist in 1998, whose literary knowledge astounded me. I was pretty well read, or so I thought for my age. I had read Avocado’s collection of short stories but had never been able to track down any of his books because of the low production runs. They had met with critical success but never financial and now the copies sat gathering dust in various collector’s libraries. I had come across the collect stories purely by chance at a garage sale and had been searching out the rest of the books ever since. While working in the pharmacy I brought up Avocado to the Pharmacist who was surprised that I had even heard of him. I told him that I was looking for the other books and several years later I found all three of the other novels, all first editions in the apartment. In 2002 He told me he was leaving to go see Easter Island and I could stay in his apartment for the summer while he was gone for free as long as I kept the place clean. He never came back.

After living here for several years now I discovered who I’d been talking to all that time and finally had a chance to read two of the three novels. The last one I’m waiting to read before I die. Strangely, typewritten letters arrive once a month from a Captain Zanzibar.

So now, The Lifestyle Pharmacy was established to bring Les’ books back into publication and to give a permanent home to those four works. Know that with every item sold we put a portion of the proceeds towards getting the books back onto the shelves of readers everywhere and help Les not slip back into the abyss.