“I meant no disrespect, sir. I was merely defending myself trying to point out what seems to me as very unlikely and undeserving for us to be questioned for this,” I struggled to speak fast, trying to choose the right words to diffuse this lunatic.
“Just as I thought, you’re just a pussy,” he said putting his belt back on.
He got in his cruiser and left us.
My friends were still speechless as we resumed walking. When they did start talking, they never shut up and by the time we got back to party central a legend was in the making.
Although my status amongst peers grew overnight, I was alarmed at what had happened so the next day I did what any fearful boy would do – I told my mom. She was appalled and called the police station but nothing ever became of it.
Mohican
The times we had along the banks of the Mohican River in high school and college days were for the ages.
The first time a bunch of us got permission from our parents to go on a one-week camping trip to Mohican State Park, it was Easter break. On our first night, we submerged our beer supply in the river and tied it off to a tree in case rangers stopped by. They did late that night and made us pour out what we had around the fire pit.
Close by, someone else had another “party favor” and tossed it into a tent. It hit someone in the head, waking them from their sound sleep. They in turn whipped the object back out, unbeknownst to the rest of us. One of the rangers stumbled on it, as he walked around with his flashlight, examining the area.
“Well what have we here?” the ranger asked out loud, motioning to his partner.
Our jaws dropped. They put the heat on us to give up the rest of the stash. Panic ensued and everything was turned over, except the week supply of beer under water. Fortunately, only a few of us were clued in on that and we weren’t cracking under pressure. The rangers took us to a pay phone and made us all call home to say we would be kicked out of the park and returning in the morning. And that’s what half the group did – the half that actually called home.
The group of us who stayed hunted for a new campsite outside of the state park boundaries. We found the perfect spot. For the rest of the week, we enjoyed our freedom and even the company of a stray dog we took in.
Tyler made a run to score supplies. When he pulled up to the campsite, Tommy ran out to greet him, jumping onto the hood of the truck. He miscalculated the speed of the truck and sailed over the hood and into the windshield, “spider webbing” the glass.
We deemed it safer to just tear out the whole windshield so we did.
“People will just think that the glass is super clean.”
On the drive home, Tommy occasionally stretched his legs out of the truck cabin onto the hood. It was a funny and bizarre sight.
A tradition took root as did the folklore surrounding our escapades from year-to-year. Our Mohican crew grew considerably. One year in particular, it was a rainy and muddy experience. Most tents washed away the first night but we survived. Due to our group size, the campground had us in a wide open field, shared by a much larger group adjacent to us. One afternoon, we decided to challenge them to a football game.
They smiled and asked, “Touch or tackle?”
We smiled back and said, “Tackle of course.”
They grimaced and said, “We better play touch.”
We walked away laughing under breath.
As we gathered our team – half our players already in the tank with the motto, “It’s gotta be Noon somewhere” – a small band of girls came from the other campsite to tell us we’re lucky it’s going to be a touch football game.
We sneered and asked, “Ya, why’s that?”
“Because they are the best football players from around the state and just wrapped up a football camp.”
It turned out that they were just taking precautions to reduce the chances of getting injured.
We walked to the field of play. Their players stretched, ours were only working out one arm doing bends with bottle to mouth. Their sideline had cheerleaders – honest to goodness cheerleaders doing cheers! Our women hauled coolers to our side of the field.
For a touch football game, it was arguably the most physically demanding football game I had ever played. They were killing us! By halftime, the expectations changed for both sides. We just wanted to score once. And they knew if that happened, it would be considered a loss by their standards.
Then, there it was. A 15-yard-pass by our opponent over the middle and Justin leapt into the air making a one-handed interception while holding a beer in his other hand. He landed running, never spilling a drop! The miracle of the gridiron continued. He made moves his body should not have been able to do. Then, he streaked downfield – untouched – an entire team hot on his heels. Justin had no blockers. We were all on the ground laughing at the impossibility unraveling before our eyes. He scored and our sideline became soaked in a beer shower.
The pandemonium wouldn’t cease so the other team walked away. You could hear their discontent. Some argued to the point that they nearly fist-fought each other.
In our last year of this ongoing tradition and annual reunion of sorts, the planning for the size of our party started nearly a year in advance. The early planning allowed us to reserve multiple sites grouped together back down by the river, given cover by trees. It was raucous to say the least. We would put sparklers in the hands of someone sleeping outside and take pictures and make mischief into the wee hours of morning.
Then, when only a handful of us – trying to pull an all-nighter – were gathered, conversationally, around the fire, Tommy shattered the quiet of the night, “You gotta come now and check this out!”
What could it be? We were in the middle of nowhere and it was so late and dark.
Coming out of the tree line, we saw a rather large, orange glow coming from atop a hill on the far side of the open field.
“What the …”
Then, an eerie silence fell around us. We stood speechless at a sight we never could have imagined: A towering wooden cross, burning, with white hooded people around it. They were wrapped in full Ku Klux Klan garb – some of the design work was hauntingly elaborate.
“H-H-H-H-o-l-y shhh..!”
I just remember feeling a sense of fear. Seeing such hate first-hand really hit me.
When the police came – finally – some of us cheered. I think others wanted to but didn’t want to call attention over to them. The law’s presence allowed us the courage to walk straight up to the haters for a closer look.
That night was a buzz kill because the officers only arrested a couple of people and had the cross extinguished and taken down. The rest of the Klan got to stay, albeit in street clothes!
We wondered about our cheers, their looks and thus pulling an all-nighter became a breeze.
Golden Boy
As a little kid, my hair used to get platinum blond in summer. Mom called me her golden boy. In my teens, my hair was still light but it took the summer sun to bleach it blond.
Near the tail end of my senior year of high school, I got a bright idea. I’d speed up nature and bring the summer blond in early with a little help. Understand I was a tee shirt and jeans kind of guy that basically didn’t put much thought into style, except for maybe wearing a rolled bandana around my head covered mostly by my hair. Oh, and the parachute pants phase. But, I had an idea and when I got an idea, I rolled with it for better or worse.
I was in a total women’s aisle at the grocery store looking at hair products. Self-conscious, I picked one quickly and drove home. Mom applied the product and we both neglected to read where it said to avoid direct sunlight.
“Go sit out on the patio in case that stuff drips,” Mom advised.
The instructions said something about letting it set for 15 minutes so I figured longer would be even better. I chilled outside on the back patio, shirtless and barefoot, wearing Bermuda shorts and Wayfarer sunglasses – hair full of suds.
I h
ad an image in mind, nothing drastic, just a subtle shade lighter to get that beach-bum look going for me. Okay, maybe I was hoping for two shades lighter. Prom was just around the corner.
When the timer went off, I sat a while longer just to make sure it took. Then, I went to the bathroom to wash it all out and marvel at my perfection. Our downstairs bathroom was dark, especially as my eyes adjusted from outside, despite having had sunglasses on. I rubbed a towel around my head. My hair was semi-long so I knew the waves in it would be cool with some highlights.
I looked straight into the mirror and my jaw dropped!
My hair glowed! It was fluorescent blond. If such a thing didn’t exist, I just invented it.
“M-O-O-O-OMMM!”
I walked out to the kitchen and she turned around and had a combined reaction of horror and humor twisted together in her eye-popping, ear-piercing, “Oh-my-goodness. What happened!” as she tried to contain her laughter.
Every five minutes, I’d look in different mirrors in the house only to see the same stark sight. Then, I’d stare at it for four minutes, take a minute to find another mirror and stare again. No words could make me feel better. I knew I was doomed. If ever there was a moment I wanted to die or at least drop out of school, this was it.
“I can’t go to school like this!” I shouted.
“Don’t be silly, it’ll be just fine,” Mom said, lying through her teeth.
We came up with a solution. Short spiked hair was kind of stylish at the time so I ran up to the neighborhood barber shop. I hadn’t been there in years.
The crowd and conversation were the same other than the comments, “What the hell did you do?” …“I’ll need sunglasses to cut this,” …“This new generation, I tell ya…”
I came home a hair better albeit spiked and fluorescent.
Going to school the following Monday was one of the most difficult things I ever had to do. Oh, there were definitely double-takes and finger pointing. I was eye-catching to say the least when all I really wanted was to be invisible. Regardless, I decided to wear my new look loud and proud – trying to convince myself and others that this was the outcome I had intended.
A week later, humbled, I walked into school and down the main hallway. As I looked around, I began to see sunspots. I blinked and tried to clear my eyes but I still saw sun spots dancing amongst the heads of other students. As I passed a kid coming from the opposite direction, he said hi. He wore a proud smile along with his fluorescent, blond, spiked hair! I couldn’t believe my eyes. I stopped in my tracks, turned to watch him walking away, stunned as to what I just saw. What made it worse was his hair and complexion were much darker than mine, normally, and he was much taller so he REALLY stood out. It was obvious he and – as fate would have it – a couple of others, did this purposefully.
I scratched my fluorescent head, confused.
North Point
A teenager from the neighborhood died cliff jumping. Rumor was that he was night jumping with friends and never came up. So, the police cracked down on this pastime of ours. Still, it was hard to stop doing something we’d always done.
North Point was our favorite place to cliff jump. There was a little road snaking the edge of a cliff along the Lake Erie shoreline. The road had been closed at times to reinforce a retaining wall used to stop the street from caving in due to erosion. The retaining wall was made of a wavy metal allowing Eddie – it was always Eddie – to scale down to the lake, swim out to our landing area, which was further out on the point, and test the depth of the water. He determined if it was deep enough that we wouldn’t be crippled when we plunged forcefully to the lake floor. This took a while.
When he returned, he gave the thumbs up. Then, he said he needed to take a leak. There was a vacant overgrown lot across the way so he went behind some brush. When he finished, he was headed back when an older lady appeared on a nearby porch, yelling at him. Eddie looked back at her, pretended to be flustered and ran straight off the cliff waving his hands in the air, screaming. I looked at the older woman and could read shock in her body even at that distance. I don’t know if she even noticed the rest of us. When she sat down on her front step the way she did, I knew Eddie had scrambled her brain but good. She grasped the railing, pulled up and scampered inside.
We figured enough time had passed for Eddie to get up against the cliff so we could jump. We spread out and all went at once before the lady came back.
Something about that jump never got old. You always anticipated hitting the water before you actually got there. Sometimes you experienced the anticipation twice before hitting, but that was usually in the dark. Plus, in the dark, you were subject to whiplash because you had no bearings at all. I suspected that’s how that teenager died. He must have been knocked unconscious.
At the bottom, we all whooped it up giving Eddie a play-by-play of what just happened with the older lady, expressions and all. He ate it up.
Some scaled the retaining wall to see if the coast was clear to jump again. Others, myself included, decided to swim and float on rafts. When we first arrived, we had tossed our water toys over the edge of the cliff.
By the time the climbers reached the top, breathless from the ascent, two squad cars greeted them. I was in a raft with one of the girls. She wanted to flee the scene, but a policeman was calling to us through a megaphone. So, I paddled in and we climbed up, only to get cited for criminal trespassing.
It was close to my 18th birthday so I was tried as an adult. It was also close to my reporting date to begin basic training in the U. S. Army.
The prosecutor scared the shit out of me. He was definitely a man on a mission and that mission was to hang me out to dry. I was the first to be tried for this particular offense so my case would set a critical precedent.
“We have to send a strong message so nobody does this again!” declared the prosecutor.
Loaded for bear, he meant business and lambasted me. I just stood before the judge – silent.
Then, I got a turn to talk. I had no representation. I had a court date to show up, so that’s what I did, alone.
“I’m going into the Army in a couple of weeks. We were just swimming where we had our whole lives.”
With that, the judge dismissed the case and I was free to go.
The prosecutor lost his mind.
I didn’t know what to do from there so I did what came natural and approached the bench with a humbled manner and voice, “Thank you, sir.”
The judge just stared at me so I walked away thinking I should have said, your honor. The whole time, the prosecutor continued ranting and raving.
I bolted out the courthouse doors and entered adulthood.
CHAPTER 3:
BEING ALL I COULD BE IN THE UNITED STATES ARMY
Toe Jam
Stretched out on the lower bunk, I ran my fingers through my fresh crew cut to get that tingly sensation. I already missed home.
In-processing was complete. In the morning, I would be packed into a cattle car and hauled up to Tank Hill to begin basic-training. I felt alone. Next to me were half a dozen new recruits who came together from inner-city Hartford. They were rapping and laughing. My luck, I had the rowdiest bunch clustered on a bunk next to mine. I just wanted to get a good night’s sleep knowing it would be the last for two months.
“Shit! …shit-shit-shit,” shouted one of my rowdy neighbors.
He bounced around a few times on one foot, clutching the other with his hands before losing his balance and sprawling onto the lower bunk across from me. He had been dancing around showing off his rapping skills and stubbed his toe on the metal frame of the bunk.
“We should call you Toe Jam,” I said, casually rolling over.
The place went dead silent. I quickly took note of what I just said and couldn’t believe my own ears. The silence was deafening, the stares pierced straight through me and the pause was nine-months pregnant. I was on the verge of getting my ass kicked. Why didn’t I mind my own business
and keep my mouth shut?
“TOE JAM?” The silence was broken by the guy still holding his foot in pain.
Lying there on my side, acting as nonchalant as I could, I was ready to spring into action.
“I like it!” he said with a grin.
The tension in the room broke so fast you could almost hear the air gushing from a balloon.
And just like that, I was part of their circle.
He proudly introduced himself from that day forward as, “…but you can call me Toe Jam.”
And every time, I would see the person he just met, pause and process this peculiar nickname.
Here I Thought I Was Normal: Micro Memoirs of Mischief Page 11