Pepperoni, Jalapeños & LSD: The World is My Ashtray

by P.H. Mountain

"Reading Mountain's personal accounts about run-ins with the law, marathon sexual escapades, and other terrible decisions made under the influence of LSD or copious amounts of alcohol seems to stir up a certain nostalgia for that time long ago when life seemed wide open. A hilarious and thoughtful work..."
- Reedsy Discovery

At eighteen, Paul Mountain pissed on his academic scholarship to the University of Minnesota and fled to Boulder, Colorado without money, family or prospects. In a cramped one-bedroom apartment with two other dudes, Paul's life was youth unbridled, impulsive, and without remorse. Perfect, in other words.

Within a year, Paul finds himself in a tiny cabin with his new girlfriend in a Rocky Mountain ghost town, convinced he can write his way out of poverty before buying his first legal drink. He was wrong. He was wrong about a great many things.

In his whirlwind comic memoir, Paul escorts the reader on his rabid quest for anything to avoid the looming bondage of adult responsibility and shares his coming of age set against the backdrop of the final decade before the tech revolution. Pepperoni, Jalapenos & LSD is a story filled with women, drugs, old motorcycles, speed junkies, crime, sex, mountaintops, poverty, more sex, long blasts down empty ski slopes and laugh out loud happiness. More than anything, it's a story of embracing recklessness, for as Paul notes, "The day will soon come when the cigarettes finally take hold, the doctor shouts, 'Cancer!', and God's gavel falls, sentencing me to death and who the fuck knows what else. Probably hell, but I'm hoping for a clerical error, the great celestial typo."

Paperback

Published July 25, 2022

About the author

P.H. Mountain was partially educated at the University of Minnesota before earning his undergraduate degree from the Boulder Public Library and his master's from The Sundown Saloon. At 29, he founded a software company that continues to thrive. He has lived in three different vehicles, fifteen different states, and five different countries, but he generally considers Colorado home. In a moment of clarity, Paul married his wife Stella in 2001. To this day, he still considers her the luckiest woman alive.

Reviews

[Thomas Kelley · Rating 3 out of 5]

I would rate this book at 3 1/2 stars out 5.

When the author and his friend leave Minnesota to scope out some place out west new to move to and get away from the cold Minnesota winters they ended up in Boulder Colorado home of University of Colorado. With the addition of friend at the last minute all three make the move with the author at the tender age of 19 and the first time living on his own. This covering 1989 and 1990 you follow the author as he adjusts to living on his own finding an apartment, a job, making friends and maybe finding a girlfriend and in the meantime partying a lot. The book is structured well but the story is at the sophomoric level, and I guess that is to be expected as the author telling his story when he was 19 and at times it reads like one 19-year-old bragging to another. Overall, a decent read

[Jess Mayhall · Rating 3 out of 5]

What an emotional rollercoaster of a read! Grapples with the feelings many of us have as we approach or begin ‘adulthood’; the wandering, the wondering, the lessons, the mistakes, the rebellions…all leading to a greater understanding of ourselves and our limits. At takes humorous and hilarious, and at others worrying and heartbreaking - a great read

[Hannah Chapman · Rating 5 out of 5]

This wasn’t what I anticipated but was a great read regardless.
A memoir of a life once lived.
Hilariously funny at times and interesting.