Back Home Again ( Part 10 )
5598 Vine
Music is the Time Machine of your
Mind
“Hi Sandra”
(On my
tapes, I have Paul Anka singing “All of a Sudden My Heart Sings”)
June 6th
1997
Well I’m at
5598 Vine St and I lived here from 1958 to 1961, from age 12 to age 15.
When I first got here, the first person I met
was Bobby. He lived across the street from us, kiddy-corner here. Bob had
already got to be friends with a guy named Tommy. He lived down the street on
other side here. Bob he was into...his father was into guns, collecting and
liked guns and so on. So was Bob. They used to go hunting ever season. In the
summer time they used to go up to an island where they had 40 acres and go hunting. And Jeanne had a girlfriend
named Vail. She lived on Moreland Dr down the street from us at the other
place. And they moved with us. When we move over here on Vine, they moved
across the street. Jeanne and Vail were real good friends.
Hah, I’m looking at my house...there was my
bedroom, right there, right in the front on the right hand side. That was my
bedroom. Jeanne’s was the window on the left hand side and my parent’s room
were in the back. This is the biggest house we lived in. It had a nice rec room
down stairs. The people that live in it now changed the house a little bit,
quite a bit. There used to be Jalousie windows all away around on the garage,
which made the garage real bright. Like I said before, my Dad always liked
Jalousie windows so he put in Jalousie windows. Oh, there’s the Willow tree my
Mom and Dad planted. It was just a little thing. Now it’s just huge. In fact it
got so huge they had to cut some of it off on top I can see because it got so
big. (The tree no longer exist today)
There’s this other guy his name was John and when I first got here, I saw this guy on a Go-Cart. His Dad had bought him a go-cart. I’d see him buzzing up and down the street. I said, “Ah man, that’s cool.” So I wanted to get to know him so I could get to drive his go-cart. I finally got to drive his go-cart.
So now that we’ve moved, I have to walk to school a bit further now. But I’m still going to St Eugene’s. I moved further away from Sandra, my girlfriend. I don’t see her quite as much but I still go over to her house once in a while. Jeanne invited Sandra to come over one time and go in our swimming pool that we had. It was, you know just a little play pool. And so Sandra came over and down stairs in our basement were the laundry room and the rec room with knotty pine paneling separating the two rooms. Some of the boards had holes in them. And so when Sandy and Jeanne went into the laundry room to change into their bathing suits, I looked through one of the knotty pine holes. I had to see Sandra, what see looked like. I just saw her in her panties that was all. I didn’t see all of it but that was funny. That was cool.
Bob and I did a lot of things together. We
were into hunting. Since he was into hunting, I got into it I guess.
One weekend, my Mom and Dad wanted to get
away. Jeanne was sleeping over at someone’s house. They couldn’t get rid of me
so I went along with them up the coast of Lake Michigan into Wisconsin
somewhere. We were in the car when my Dad said, “How would you like a BB gun?”
of course I said, “Yeah!” Mom didn’t want me to have one but she caved in I
guess when my Dad said, “It will keep him busy.” We pulled into this motel and
resort right on the shores of Lake Michigan. There was nothing else around for
miles. I couldn’t wait to try out my BB gun. I grabbed it and spent the rest of
that day and the whole next day shooting at sticks and rocks and things along
the beach. When I got back, I found my parents sitting in the bar. Now I know
why my Dad wanted me to have the BB gun. He just wanted to get rid of me while
they played around in bed and in the bar. But now I had a BB gun.
I remember one time I was out in the field
next to the house and there was this guy, this kid after me for some reason. I
don’t know, he was just mean so I shoot him with the BB gun and I kept shooting
him and shooting him. He kept running after me and I ran into the house and he
told my Mom what I was doing. Boy, did my Mom get mad and she took that gun
away from me and smashed it into a million pieces. That was the end of my first
BB gun. I didn’t have one for a while. Finally I talked her into having another
BB gun. So Bob and I, we’d go out in the fields in the back here and hunt for
anything, mice, rats, birds, doesn’t make any difference. Just have a lot of
fun.
When they were building the Kennedy
expressway here, they started clearing out the.....There used to be all farms
along the way were the Kennedy expressway was. So there would be all these
abandon farm houses. That was so cool. There was Bob and Tom and John and
myself. We would go into the abandon farm houses and you know, just try and
demolish....first we would explore them, the farm houses. We had one we called
the Wiliby’s mansion. I don’t know why
we called it that because John used to live in the house. That was his farm
house. That’s where he used to live. We used to go in the mansion and explore.
We’d bring axes with us and stuff like that, demolish the windows, break down
walls and stuff. Just for the heck of it.
Bob and I one time, we went into Wiliby’s
mansion and went into the attic and we found all these newspapers dating back
to the Civil War. It was from the Civil War, like 1863 to the early 1900's. We
had all these newspapers. All of the attic was filled with them. And so we took
them and there was this barber shop across the street. We had told the barber
about what we found. He said, “I’ll give you quarter for everyone you give me.”
So we were selling all these old newspapers for a quarter. Then we started
coming across the ones from the Civil War. We said, “Maybe we ought to save
these things.” Bob saved most of the ones of the Civil War news in them. He
says he still has them to this day. I saved a lot of papers too and I traded
them...I gave then to my uncle for something and he put them in the attic. I
don’t know if they are still there or not. I don’t even know if they’re worth
anything but it was cool. We did things like that
Some of these abandon farm houses… someone
would come along and set fire to them at night and you would see these great
big blazes the sky at night. My Dad used to love to go fires and we’d see a big
glow in the sky and he says, “COME ON Billy, Jeanne, there’s a fire, come on
let’s get in the car and go. Mom would never go. I think maybe she went once
but she always stayed home and let Dad take Jeanne and I to the fires. When
we’d get back, Mom would always say, “You guys smell like smoke.” So we would
have to change our clothes. Eventually Wiliby’s mansion got torched. I think it
was the.....I don’t think it was kids, I think it was probably the fire
department themselves or the city setting them on fire so they didn’t have to
pay to demolish them.
Bob and me and Tommy used to like to go to
forest preserves. Well Tommy, I hung around with him but you know, he wasn’t
really a close friend like Bob was or John. Anyway, we used to go to the forest
preserves west of here and take our BB guns in there and spend all day in the
summer time in there on the bridle path with our BB guns shooting things. If we
ever got caught in there with our BB guns we would have gotten into trouble.
When someone came along we would hide our guns. I still like to go....I think
that’s why I like trees. It’s just beautiful in the forest. Oh, and Bob and I
would find a nice skinny tree but real tall. We’d climb toward the top and
start swinging on them. Boy, could you get those thinks going back and forth.
That was a lot of fun.
Another thing I was interested in when I lived
here was, the new jets came out....The Boeing 707, that was it! And they were
first introduced at O’Hara airport. And when I first went there, the first time
I went to O’Hara airport, it was like a little rink-e-dink country airport. I’m
not kidding you. It was just one little building made out of wood and that was
it. Well eventually they started building on and then they had the 707's. Bob
and I walked one time all the way from here all the way to airport. Boy, was
that a walk. That was an all-day thing. That was cool, but when we got there,
we asked if we could go up into the tower. We got to go up to the tower and
look around. We had to keep our mouth shut and stand still and don’t move
around. And so they let us in the tower and then we asked if we could go on a
Boeing 707 and they let us walk through, of course it was empty and everything
but when we walked through the 2nd plane we found a pilot and a
stewardess making out on one of the seats kissing. So that was really cool. I
just loved flying. We used to go over there and collect the ah....what do you
call it? The departure...The Schedules. They used to give out schedules, big
thick schedule books of arriving and departing planes. We used to collect them
from all the departing airlines. They don’t have them anymore but at that time
they did. I wish I would have kept them. That was cool!
______________________________________________________
Back Home
Again ( Part 11 )
5598 Vine St
Everything
Was an Adventure Back Then
This is the way our Home looked back then when we lived there
June 6th
1997
I remember
one time there was this Electra. One of the prop planes but the Electra. And it
took off and started to bank to turn and it went right down and it hit the
railroad track embankment and it just exploded into the ground and to the
forest there. So I heard about it on the radio. I took my bike and I asked Bob
if he wanted...he didn’t want to go, it was too far. So I went by myself. I
rode out there. And I got out there and at first they weren’t going to let me
through. A cop stopped me. Oh, I had asked John if he wanted to go. His Dad was
the chief of police of Harwood Heights, a little town over here. And he was the
Chief of Police and I asked him, “Could I go over there?” He said, “Sure.” Well
he had no authority out there but he said, “Sure, go on out there.” So when the
police stopped me out there, I said, “The chief of police of Harwood Heights
said I could go out there and I could go past. Anyway the guy let me through. I
went out there and they started carrying all these bodies out with the heads
gone and the arms gone. They were all charred bodies. God, did that make me
sick. That was the last time I was ever interested in airplanes again. I swear
to god. To this day, I still don’t like flying. That just really shocked the
heck out of me. I don’t ever want to see that again.
During this time, before I saw that plane
crash and I was afraid to fly anymore, before that. Bob and Tom and myself,
they decided.....we were at the airport and saw that they had helicopters that
went to O’Hare to Midway and then to Meig’s Field downtown and then back to
O’Hara again. So when we were at the airport,
we found out how much it cost. It turned out to be, what was it.... twenty
dollars apiece if the three of us went. Ten or twenty, something like that or
$20 altogether. Anyway, we came back. We had to ask our...you know my Mom and I
thought, oh man, she’s going to turn me down. I want to go on the helicopter so
bad. Everybody had to ask their parents. Well all the parents said yes. We
couldn’t believe it. Tommy’s Mother drove us out to the airport. Ah, was that
ever COOL! That was one of the most exciting things that ever happened. We got
on the helicopter and it....helicopters are really cool and it took off and we
just flew over the city. You know, real low and went to Midway. And then they
dropped off some passengers and picked some up. And we flew on and flew over
the downtown and out to Meig’s Field there and landed, and we took off and came
back to O’Hara airport. Oh, was that ever Cool! That was a cool ride. That was
fun. That was worth every cent.
When Bob and I used to go hunting in the field
here, the field and what we called the Big Hill. The Big Hill, let’s see,
there’s my house here and just to the left is another house that the Morelands
built. And everything south of here is all prairie. Off to the southwest here,
they have pilled a great big mound of dirt. You’ve seen them every once in a
while. The road graders would make this big mountain of dirt? Well, that’s what
we had over here. And we called it the Big Hill. We played a lot on that. We
used to go hunting around there. Take our bikes up there.
Anyway, we were out with our bow and arrows
one time out in the field and I was with Bob. He was shooting his arrows into a
hill. We were target practicing. There was nothing else to shoot at. So he shot
his arrow first and then I shot my arrow and I split his arrow right down the
center. Now, I’m not anywhere near that good a shot. It just happened to be a
lucky shot....Or maybe not. Because he got so mad, he turned around with his
bow and arrow and immediately shot me right...right in the stomach with his bow
and arrow. And that arrow....Thank God....hit my belt buckle. Otherwise that
thing would have gone right in me. Anyway, as soon as he shot it, he turned
around and ran when I doubled over. We weren’t friends for a year. I don’t think I snitched on him right away.
Finally I told my parents what happened. Anyway, my parents finally got us
together again. They went across the street and made friends with
ah.....starting talking with his parents and then finally one thing led to another
and Bob and I were friends again. But I can’t help think about what would
happen if it didn’t hit my belt buckle. WOW!!
Another thing Bob and I did in the field back
here was, we looked for fossils. I guess in school we started learning about
fossils. So we started looking for fossils in the field back here. We found a
lot too but just little eddy-biddy ones. Oh, and then we discovered that there
was the fool’s gold. It looks like real gold and its real heavy and there was a
lot of that out there. So we started collecting that stuff. And I came
across...I don’t know if it was a rock or a fossilized something. But it looked
just like a petrified claw of a turtle. I think that’s what it was. I don’t
think it was a rock. It was hollowed out underneath. It looked just like a
petrified claw. It was cool. I saved it but I don’t know what happened to it.
So, I still collect rocks today. I have a whole bunch of them at home. You know
those geodes with the crystals inside? You break open the rocks and there’s crystals
inside and they’re real pretty. Well, I collect those because of what happened
back here on Vine St. That’s where I got that from. It’s amazing sometimes. You
wonder, you know later on in your life. Why do I do things, why do I collect
things or why do I do things. And when you do a tape like this, you find out,
you go back in your life and you find out, well, so that’s why I do that. A lot
of things happen that way. At least that’s what I’ve been finding out.
Oh, when we were in the field back here, Bob
and I saw these...we called them wild dogs. In fact we talked about them
recently and we still think it was wild dogs. Anyway, back then we had our bow
and arrow and he said, “Bill, those are wild dogs.” And they were fierce looking and they would
just roam around in the prairie there. Somehow we got this stupid idea. I’m
going to kill the dog. So I go up there, in fact I did it right down the street
here. Looking south, I did it right down the street. It was all prairie then.
And the dog looked up at me and I took my bow and arrow and I shoot him right
in the side. And you don’t think anything of it until that arrow hit and you
hear that dog squeal and roll over on its side. And I said, “What have I done
now. I can’t reverse it, Oh Man! So I
try and go up there and I was going to pull the arrow out of him. Well he’s so
mad his teeth are snarled up. There was no way I was going near that dog. The
dog rolled over and the arrow snapped off and half of it was inside. The
workmen were nearby on the other side of the street, building a house. One
workman yelled out, “Did you shoot that dog?” Boy, he was mad. We said no and
then we left real quick. We went back there later. The dog must have ...it
looked like he had crawled through the weeds but he wasn’t there. Either that
workman took him or the dog crawled off. But I don’t see how he could have
crawled off on his own. After I shot and put an arrow into him, Bob put an
arrow into him. So he was shot twice. I’ll never forget that. That was one of
the worse things I did.
Oh Bob’s father had the whole basement filled with
guns. He used to make his own bullets. So there was a lot of gunpowder in
Bobby’s basement. One day we got the idea of making skyrockets. We found tissue
paper and got gunpowder and rolled it and found a long straight stick. We
rolled gunpowder and tissue paper and made a fuse out of gunpowder and we were
shooting skyrockets off. That was cool. That was a lot of fun. The only thing
is, later on, I wasn’t around then. This was much later. Bobby decided to make
a bomb. He took a pipe and do I have to say anymore. He took it out to the Big
Hill over there to blow it off. This is what the other guys told me, he went to
light it and throw it and it went off. It blew part of his thumb off and knocked
him unconscious. I asked him about it and he told me what happened but after
that he didn’t want to talk about it anymore.
Since John got his go cart. We used to have so
much fun in that thing. We’d take it by the Big Hill because there was no traffic
and no buildings out there just new paved roads out there. We’d take it out
there and oh, we used to have a ball out there. So everybody else decides…
everybody else wanted a go cart. And Bob’s Dad didn’t buy him one but his Dad
built him a go-cart. I went down there. He had just finished it. It was still
in the basement and I sat on it. I did something and I broke it. Boy, did his
father get mad. It was just an accident. Anyway, so he fixed it and Bob tries
it out down the street here. And something went wrong or he couldn’t steer it
right and he’s going lick-a-ty-split and can’t control it. I never laughed so
hard in my life that was funny. But later on he got to learn how to use it
better.
Oh, Tommy’s father bought him a go-cart. Dog
gone, I didn’t get one. My parents won’t buy me one. I guess maybe they didn’t
have the money, I don’t know. I always wanted a go-cart. I wouldn’t buy one now
because there’s really no place you can drive them anymore. Oh, another place
we drove the go-carts was west of here and across Cumberland Avenue. There’s a
street. It’s all built up with big buildings and apartments now but at the time
it was nothing but a field and the road went right through the field for a
little over a quarter of a mile. It ended at the forest preserve at the other
end way in the back there. We used to call that the drag strip. People had
marked it off a quarter of a mile and they use to race cars there all the time.
You could hear them all the way from our house, the big powerful cars. You
could hear them squeal their tires and come roaring down the strip especially
on Friday nights and Saturday nights. We’d go down there and watch. Somebody
had ground up some trees and we’d sit in a big pile of wood chips. So we’d sit
there and watch the cars racing down. Of course the cops always kept an eye on
it after a while. You’d see them get a ticket for drag racing. Or better yet,
there would be an accident once in a while. I saw a corvette....I didn’t see it
crash but I saw the results. It went into a ditch. He crashed his brand new
corvette, uh, it made me sick. But anyway, we used to drive the go-carts there.
That was a lot of fun. If you start at the drag strip on the west side and came
east, you’d hit the quarter of a mile mark at the end there and then right away
there was a forty-five degree turn in the road. So if you didn’t slow down fast
enough and make that turn, Crash, right into the ravine there. That’s where the
corvette went.
One time, Bob and I, there was a tree
right around the bend from the drag strip. As soon as you make the turn there
was this tree. We cut it down one time and laid it across the road and we get
in the pile of wood chips. We see this car come roaring down the drag strip
again. He makes the turn ok. He’s still going pretty fast and sliding around
the turn. All of a sudden the tree’s right there. He slams on his brakes and
you hear screeching, uh, we thought he was going to end up in the ditch. That
was something else. We didn’t do that again.
(“Ahh, the cops just went by as usual when I
stop at a house here. They usually... someone calls the cops and has him check
me out. No big thing, Here...uh-oh, he’s turning around, coming back. I wonder
if he’s going to stop...Yeah I think he’s going to stop me. This should be
interesting. I think so. He’s sitting there looking at me. He stopped for a
while. Right across from me, he kept staring at me. I guess he checking out my
plates and then he left. This happened once before at another house. Oh while,
on to the thing.”)
I started hanging around John a lot because he
had the go-cart and not only that but he got this.... He was the first guy in
the neighborhood to get a car. It was an old red Crosley station wagon. I don’t
know if you know what they look like but their small and ugly. It’s the only
way I can describe it. Anyway he got this old Crosley someplace. No license or
anything and we used to pile in there. It ran pretty good I guess. But I don’t
know, when you’re thirteen, fourteen that’s fantastic. So we took it down to
the drag strip one time, maybe two times that I can remember. We rode up and
down. It didn’t go very fast. But then later on, he stored it in my garage for
some reason. He had to store it in our garage and I don’t know the reason and
Mom was in the hospital at the time. And all the kids were in the garage. My
Dad was out for the evening. So all the kids were in the garage with the
Crosley and John wasn’t here. He had gone home and left his car in the garage.
I
didn’t introduce you to this new guy. He’s not new but he’s new to you. His
name is Skip. What a character! He lived in back of Bob and uh, he was the bad
guy in the neighborhood. Anyway, he was over that night and he was with some
other friends he brought, that came over that I didn’t know that well from
school. They had motor scooters and they were riding around the yard and oh
man, what a mess. Anyway, Skip gets in the car and he goes nuts. The guy was
nuts, really. And he kicks all the windows out of John’s Crosley. I couldn’t
believe it. You know, it’s in my garage. I felt responsible but I could control
the guy. John comes over later on after dinner. He sees what happened. Holy
Cow! He went ballistic and he just hauled off and slugged Skip in the face so
many times, geez. I don’t blame him. Eventually he trashed the Crosley and he
got this 1950 Ford business coupe. Really, it’s a classic now. So I hung around
his garage where he had the car in the back of his house and we worked on that
car a lot. Instead of going out with the girls, I ended up working on cars. We
put a “57" it was either a “57" or “58" Chrysler engine in it,
the one with the big heads on it. Oh, was that cool. When you put it in the
engine compartment, the heads touched either side of the engine compartment.
You could even put your hands down the sides, it was that close. God that
engine was big. But that’s what we worked on.
Once we got it running, we were down on
Canfield there and one of the other guys that he knew said, “Can I drive it?
I’ll show you what it looks like when the front end comes up.” So he goes and
starts way at the end of the street here on Canfield and we’re at the other
end. And we watch him and you can see the whole front-end lift up and the
roaring and everything and we’re watching it. And the guy blows up John’s
engine. Ahhh, was he devastated, after all that work. He ended up putting an
Oldsmobile engine in it. But he could never get it started. So he sold it to
some guy he knew and the guy brought it to a mechanic and got it started right
up. John was so mad. He said, “Dog gone it, I should have kept that car.” I
spent many days in the garage working on that.
John’s Garage
When John and I weren’t working on the cars,
we started smoking. We had to sneak our cigarettes. We called them weeds so our
parents didn’t know what we were taking about. Yeah, Right! Anyway, when we
were working on the car and felt like a cigarette, we’d have to hide. We used
to even go out back where they had just put in these new sewers for some new
homes they were going to build. We’d put a whole bunch of hay at the bottom of
the sewer and that’s where we had our cigarettes so no one would bother us and
we wouldn’t get caught smoking.
There was this little tiny Ma and Pa
grocery store on the corner of Canfield and Higgins and we used to go in there
and steal cartons of cigarettes. Put it in our jackets, underneath your arm and
walk out with them. I don’t know how many we took. Anyway, one day the owner
confronted John when he was over there by himself about the missing cartons of
cigarettes and John said, “Yeah, we took them. So he ended having to pay, Oh, I
don’t know how much money it was and he wanted us to ... because we were all in
on it together. He wanted us to split it. And I didn’t have the money and to
get it, I would have to tell my parents. And I wasn’t about too. So I never,
you know, split the money. I never came up with the money. I wasn’t about to
let my parents know about that.
John and I used to go out to the Big Hill.
His father had some fireworks hidden the house. Since he was the chief of
police, He would confiscate the fireworks and then bring them home and blow
them off himself. Anyway, so John went in the attic and got two aerial bombs,
ah, really cool. We brought them to the Big Hill and shot them off. Man, did
they make the racket. That was really cool.
Oh, I got to tell you more about this Skip. He
was the punk of the neighborhood. He looked like you know, with the hair coming
down in the front, with the pompadours or whatever you call them. And he always
thought he was so cool and he wasn’t. He had glasses and he always acted tuff.
Ah, he’s the one who got me smoking. He used to hang around with this gang at
Oriole Park, which is, I don’t know, about a mile from here. I don’t know why I
got into that. I didn’t hang around that gang so much but I used to go with
Bock and he knew all the guys at the park. You felt like, your cool. Anyway, He
would lie so much. You couldn’t believe if he was telling the truth or not half
the time. And he got me smoking. About the first couple of weeks, I was so sick.
I’m trying to be cool and smoke. Then I finally got used to it and got hooked
on it. Wonder if I would have ever
smoked if it wasn’t for him? You never knew when you went out with him whether
he was going to start a fight or not. He’d always lose. But he would always act
tuff and start a fight with somebody. So I never wanted to be around him
.
One time while I was walking with him
across the expressway on this bridge on Cumberland, just talking and walking
and he stopped at the top of the bridge and he sees this parking lot full of
cars and say’s “Come on, let’s go steal a car Bill.” I said, “Get out of here.
I’m not stealing no car. What are you nuts?” He says, “Ah come on, let’s go
steal a car.” I said, “The hell with you,” and I turned around and went home.
He went on and said, “I’m going to steal that car.” I don’t know, he said he
did the next day but like I said, he lied so much you never knew if he was
telling the truth or not. But he said he took it.
We were all at the Big Hill one time. There
was Skip and Bob. I guess the whole group were out at the Big Hill. We had our
bikes out there. We get to the top of the Big Hill and we’re going to ride down
this real steep part. And when you get to the bottom, there’s another little
hill maybe about twelve feet high. So you go down the real big steep hill and
then you go over the little hill and if you don’t slow down on your way down
the big hill, you’ll kill yourself when you fly off the little hill. So
everybody’s taking it easy and having fun. Skip, he wants to show off. This is
how stupid this guy is. He gets up and peddles he PEDDLES down the steep hill
as fast as he could. And he didn’t slow down at all. He went off the little hill and he must have
sailed twenty-five into the air and came down headfirst right in to the ground.
God, he just laid there, he’s unconscious. He had knocked himself out. We all
thought he was just kidding like he always does, goofs around. We all went up
there and said, “Wake up, wake up Skip” and nothing happened. Finally he came
around. We still thought he was kidding but he wasn’t. He was knocked out. And
then a few minutes later, he says, “I going to try that again” and we all said.
“You’re crazy, don’t do that you’ll kill yourself.” The guy was absolutely
nuts. Nobody wanted to be around. We all said, “Well we’re going to go home.
You can go down if you want but we’re going home.” So we all left him there. We
went about to pick him up and drag him home. So, I don’t think he went down
because he didn’t have anybody to impress anymore. Boy, that guy was stupid.
On the way to the park, there was this
little Ma and Pa grocery store that we bought our cigarettes from. The old man
behind the cash register really couldn’t see very well. He wore these really
thick coke bottle glasses.
One day, we found that we had run out of
cigarettes. We didn’t have any money to buy any more. So I looked around my
dresser drawers to see if I had any change. All I came up with was this big old
Mexican Peso that my grandparents gave me when they came back from their
vacation. I said to my friend, “I got an idea, let’s paint it silver. We’ll
make sure the old man is behind the cash register and give him the painted
Peso. Since it’s the size of a half dollar, he’ll never know the difference.”
We said, “Yeah!” and I got out the can of silver spray paint.
We had to wait a day for the paint to dry
on the coin. The next day my friend and I started walking to the park. We
stopped off at the little Ma and Pa store. We both argued who was going to go
in and do this. We both were afraid we could get caught. But since it was my
idea, I was the one to go in. I went up to the counter and asked for a pack of
Marlboro. I gave him this silver painted Mexican Peso. My heart was pounding.
The old man held the coin right up to his coke bottle glasses and looked at it.
He looked at it for what seemed like an eternity. I just knew this wasn’t going
to work. It was taking this old man to long. All of a sudden, he reaches into
the cash register and gives me my change for what he thinks is a half dollar. I
couldn’t believe I got away with it. I walked out with my cigarettes and my
friend and I started laughing. We light up and continued our way to the park to
hang around with the other guys.
We never did go back to that store again.
You can only get away with that once. The following summer, the store was
closed for good.
One time, I
found out how to make little miniature rockets out of matchsticks. I buy the
wooden matches and take little tin foul and wrap the tin fouls around the tip
of the matches and you prop it up against something and take another match and
put it underneath by the tin foul. And when it ignites, it builds up enough
pressure so this match shoots just like a little rocket. A lot of times during
the summer, I’d be in the garage and I’d shot these little rockets. There would
be match sticks all over the floor. I remember that.
I bought this cannon. I don’t know where I
got it from. Boy was it loud. You mix something in it. I can’t remember what it
was. They gave you some kind of powder and you mix it with something. There was
this plunger on top that when you push it down it would rub against some flint
and ignite the mixture inside the cannon. You would pound this plunger down on
the cannon and it would go KAA-BOOM and the flames would shoot out. Holy Cow,
that was cool. I wonder what happened to that?
Summers were neat when school got out. I
used to sleep all the time until like noon, one o’clock. Then I’d get up and Oh
No, I’m wasting the day. That was neat being a kid because you could always
wake up and find somebody to hang around with, somebody to play with. Now I’m
72 and I wake up (Thank God) and there’s nobody to play with. That sucks! I’d
like to be a kid again. That was fun. Everything was an adventure back then.
I remember when I used to get sick a couple of
times. I remember when I was sick, my Mom would always take care of me. That
was always a great feeling. I always knew she’d be there. That was neat. When I
got bored and when I was starting to feel better, I used to get magazines and I
cut pictures of deserts out. Like cake and ice cream, anything that was a
desert and paste it in a scrap book. Boy, that was a lot of fun, I think. Not
being sick but at least I was busy pasting things. That was interesting. But
NOW I’m sick and.... That’s what I hate about being sick now. Mom isn’t here.
Nobody really gives a rat’s ass what happens. And I’m all by myself in this
apartment. No one to take care of you. Man, that’s the pits. I wanna go back!
I remember one time my parents were sick.
My Mom and Dad were sick and Jeanne and I decide to.... No, they weren’t sick.
I take that back, there weren’t sick. They were sleeping and they had the day
off. It was Sunday, I think. Jean and I decide to make breakfast and serve it
to them in bed. Now I think we had....we made the regular breakfast of bacon
and eggs and toast. But it turned out so crummy. I wasn’t eatable let me put it
that way. I think my Mom tried to eat it. My Dad definitely did not eat it. Oh
boy, that’s funny thinking back on things like that.
Well, I’m going to stop here and I see you
over on the next tape.
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