Prelude to “Fun with Cops, part I”

As I look back on my parent’s job of parenting, it amazes me exactly how naive the 60’s and 70’s were.  My parents did, or allowed, things that quite frankly would have their children removed by DFS if done today. We would sit in the front seat of the car, completely unrestrained except for mom’s arm which would automatically swing out whenever she had to stop suddenly.  Sometimes we would be sitting on dad’s lap, helping him steer our bright red 63’ Chevy wagon down the highway.   And when we weren’t in the front seat, we were often laying down in the way-back (the cargo area of a station wagon, behind the back seats) with all our camping gear floating around us, a hundred lethal projectiles surrounding us as we cruised the highways at 85 MPH. 

Then there’s the summer we spent on Martha’s Vineyard.  Yes, they hired a nanny to watch over the 4 of us while they were working the deal for my dad’s Calculus book.  But picture a family of 6 cruising around in that 2 seater Fiat my dad is standing next to.  Mom & dad in the front seat, the 4 kids (ages 3, 6, 9 and 11) sitting on the trunk with our feet, safely anchoring us to the car, in the space behind the front seats.  Tell me that wouldn’t bring a social worker to your house these days.  Oh, and the hitchhiking.  We were allowed to hitchhike all over the island.  Of course, the 3 year old was not allowed to participate, and the 6 year old could only hitchhike if accompanied by the 9 and 11 year olds.  But my older brother and I had free run of the island.

Yeah, those were the 60’s.  When my parents were still the up-and-coming suburbanites.  Then the 70’s came, with my mother’s cancer, chemotherapy and the subsequent doctor-endorsed (for my mom at least, and quite nudge-nudge, wink-wink) marijuana use.  Curfew at my house during my teen years was (actually a very strict) 9:00 on school nights and, well, “Call and let us know if you’re too drunk  to drive home and going to spend the night at your friend’s house” on weekends.  My friends knew this, and would call for me if I was already “asleep”.  It was not unheard of at Friday dinners for me to say “We’re going camping, I’ll be home by 9:00 on Sunday.” and simply get a “Have a great weekend.” from the parents.  Which leads to the whole purpose of this tirade – the prelude.

My dad was, and still is, a very prominent Professor, he was hired by the University to help build a world-class department because of his reputation and connections.  This meant that he and my mom did a lot of traveling, leaving a house full of teenagers completely unattended.  This is the prelude to the future post to be titled “Fun with Cops, part I”, a week during my senior year in high school where, at 17, I was the oldest one in the house.

Now, before you ask yourself “is this guy writing this from behind the bars of a state prison?”, despite all those things my parents did that would get them arrested if they were raising kids in 2010, they did a pretty damn good job.  All 4 of their children graduated high school.  3 went to college.  NONE of us have a criminal record or have even had any serious problems with the law.  3 of us are married with children, one with grandchildren, and all 3 who have been married have never been married to anyone but the person they are currently married to.  We have all spent our lives supporting ourselves and our respective families, never expecting anyone to take care of us financially, other than during emergencies. 

Whatever my parents did do wrong, they must have also been doing something right.

Road Rage in the 80’s

It must have been ‘86, I was working at the Free Wheeler in West Valley City.  A co-worker had a 1966 Plymouth Fury and my little brother had a 1973 Cadillac.  One of our favorite past times was to drive around in the two cars and slam into each other at stop lights.

We wouldn’t be going very fast, it never did any real damage to either of the car bumpers, but it would jolt them and get people looking.

The fun part was when we would start yelling at each other out the car windows.  We’d hang our heads out, shake our fists, sometimes the passengers would sit on the doors pounding their fists on the roof of the car.  All just to see what the onlookers would do.

Usually it would be just stare, one time a lady who was going to pull out of a parking lot into the lane next to us choose to back up and use the other exit, but if never lasted long because the light would soon turn green and we’d be on our way.

Until the next red light.

Hunting with dad.

For my birthday, my dad gave me this birthday card: which is in reference to my one and only hunting experience.

I can’t remember if my older brother was still in high school at the time, but I know I was.  My father wasn’t a fanatical hunter, but he loves the outdoors and took the opportunity to enjoy it with his buddies every hunting season.  This year, my brother and I were invited to join them.

Now, dad and his friends got up there the first day of the season, spent the week getting up at 4 AM, getting up on the ridge and working hard to stay downwind from the deer.  They had not got a single deer in their crosshairs by the time my brother and I showed up halfway through hunting season, in the middle of the night, relatively unprepared.  The next morning all the adults were up bright and early, scouting for good spots.  We, the teenagers, on the other hand, got up at the crack of noon, had a hearty breakfast and headed out to hunt in the afternoon.   We’d been walking around in the woods for an hour or so, talking the whole time, just kind of wandering around, when we came upon a clearing right on the ridge of a hill.  We sat down at the edge of the woods, at the top of the clearing, to have our mid-afternoon snack.  Joking around, I said to my brother “In about 10 minutes a deer is going to stop right there (pointing out into the clearing at the edge of the ridge), look right up here at us and stand there and let you shoot it.”  About 15 minutes later, with my back to the clearing, I see my brother’s eyes go wide, he stands up, aims the rifle and says “The deer, right there!”  Yeah, right.  I’m not that gullible.  Until the shot goes off right next to me.

So, to recap:

• 
  
  We show up in the middle of the hunting season
• 
  
  We come in in the middle of the night
• 
  
  We get up at noon, start hunting in the afternoon
• 
  
  Spend an hour wandering around the mountain
• 
  
  Get the first deer of the group
• 
  
  Leave, with a deer, before the end of our first day of hunting.

We were never invited again.

80 year old party animal.

Grandma Ida again.  She used to come visit us here in Salt Lake on a regular basis, every couple of months or so, since she was living in Tucson.  My parents often invited her to parties they were going to when she was here, she seemed to like to go and their friends liked her to come.  She must have been in her 80’s at the time, but she could party with the best of them.

One of the times when she was up visiting for my high school graduation.  My best friend’s (Ed) father was here too, although his mother was unable to make the trip from New York.  Since Ed’s older brother was a colleague of my father, Ed’s father was invited too.  They all went out to a bar in Salt Lake that was called “My Wife’s Place”, which, not because of their behavior, is now names “My X-Wife’s Place.”  Being underage at the time, I wasn’t there, but it seems that when everyone else was ready to go, Ida and Ed’s father were just getting warmed up.  They hit it off pretty good, in a platonic drinkin’ buddies way, and ended up closing the bar that night.  I can still picture my parents and Ed’s brother sitting in a corner falling asleep and Ida and his father party it up until the bartender finally has to ask them to leave so he can lock up.

Another time she was at a party at one of my parent’s friend’s house.  They lived in an area where a gully bordered their property, so walking around the back yard included a lot of stairs.  According to my mother, Ida, glass of Gin in one hand, cigarette in the other, took a tumble down one these short flights of stairs.  Eyewitnesses saw her do a full 360 somersault and come up without losing a drop of the gin, cigarette still smoldering.  Yup, for all her faults, Ida never believed in  wasting a good vice.

The case of the bootleg bus pass.

My grandma Ida moved to Tucson, Arizona just after we moved out to Utah.  Partially to be closer to her only child (my mom) and grandchildren, but also to get out of the cold New York winters.  She lived down there in the same apartment complex as her last husband’s sister (Sadie) and Sadie’s sister-in-law, Adele.

In fine Jewish tradition, she married her late sister’s widower, my “Uncle Sid”, many years after divorcing my grandfather.

I was somewhere in my early 20’s when my older brother and I went on a road trip to southern California, via Tucson.  Yes, it’s quite a bit out of the way, but we decided it would be nice to visit her while we were out and about.  Other than blasting “Hotel California” as we crossed the border between Arizona and California, my most vivid memory of that trip was an argument between the three elderly ladies over a $5 bill and a bus pass.

While we were visiting with them, my grandmother asked Sadie if she would pick up a bus pass for her, since she was going down to get herself one then next day anyway.  Sadie said of course and my grandmother took a $5 bill out of her purse and handed it to Sadie.  As Sadie was tucking the bill into her own purse, Adele chimes in and tells her to pin the $5 bill to the inside of the purse so that she would know which one was Ida’s.  I’m taking a little poetic license here, because I don’t remember the exact conversation after all these years, but it went something like this:

Adele:  Make sure you pin the bill to the inside of your purse.

Ida: Why?

Adele:  So she can make sure she buys the bus pass with your $5.

Ida:  What does it matter?

Adele: If she doesn’t use your $5, then it won’t be your bus pass.

Ida: It doesn’t matter what $5 she uses, I gave her $5, she gives me my bus pass.

Adele:  But if she doesn’t use your $5 it won’t be your bus pass.  It will be her bus pass, and then she’ll have two.

Ida:  It doesn’t matter what $5 she uses, it will still be my bus pass.

This went on for, I kid you not, 15 minutes before Sadie finally gave in and said “Here, look, I’m pinning it to the inside of my purse.”

We left the next day, so I’ll never know if Sadie really used Ida’s $5 bill, or if Ida spent the next month riding around on the bus with Sadie’s second bus pass.

My best friend, Ed.

It’s been over 30 years and still every time we meet someone new together they get to hear this story.

I was 16, it was Christmas break of my Junior year.  The department my father worked for was having a conference up in Park City, so there were professors from all over the world coming into the Salt Lake airport.  I was one of the people hired to shuttle them from the airport to Park City in my dad’s 1974 Dodge  Van, about a 35 mile drive.*  Ed (who was brand new to Utah, and whose brother worked in the same department) was hired to assign people to the different vans.

I was getting paid good money, for a 16 year old, so my parents tacked on the added responsibility of taking care of my little brother.  No big deal,   there was room in that big old van.  Except…

When I picked up Tanja.  If you’ve ever watched “That 70’s Show”, Tanja was our Fez my junior year.  She was a Foreign Exchange Student from Holland that hung around with my group.

So, my little brother, Tanja and I walk up to the table where Ed is sitting in the middle of the airport and somewhere in the conversation I con him into watching my brother while I drive up to Park City (and back, alone with Tanja) shuttling professors to the hotel there.  For the next 3 or 4 hours my brother had the run of the airport, and I had 30 minute stints alone with Tanja on dark, and fairly deserted, I-80. 

I didn’t know it at the time, but as Ed tells it now, he was a little bit impressed at my manipulations that night.  He says that as I walked away with this  tall blond Dutch girl, my brother  sitting next to him, he thought “I have to hang around with that guy.”

A month later we ran into each other on the stairs at school and the rest, as they say, is history.

.

.

*Yes, it was 1976, when a 16 year old was allowed to drive University professors 35 miles in a big old van without seat belts, and you could stick a complete stranger with your 10 year old brother in an international airport.  And nobody thought twice about it.

Sadness, memories and humor.

I just got news that the older brother of my best friend in high school passed away this week.  The details are not important, but it did remind me of this story.

E was my best friend in high school, and we are still close as ever 30 years later. We met because his older brother, C, taught in the same department as my father, and in the winter of ‘76-‘77 E came out to Utah to live with his brother.  (The night we first met is a whole other story).

I was 17 the one and only time I got myself arrested.  I had some beer in the car, and a little bit of an illegal substance.  As I was coming home from E’s apartment on the Avenues, I flipped an illegal U-turn on the U of U campus.  I was pulled over several blocks away, and immediately went for the registration on the visor.  Oh, crap! I was driving my mother’s car, and she didn’t leave the registration on the visor.  It was in the glove box, with my –ahem- substance.  Now, mind you, this was 1977.  Cops would still have their faces in the driver’s window as you went through your glove box, which made it really hard to hide anything you didn’t want them to see in there.  But hell, I was 17, I was smarter than any adult, I’d just quickly move the papers around and that dumb ol’ cop would never know.  Yeah, not so much.  He noticed, and I got handcuffed, stuffed in the back seat and brought down to the U of U cop station.  

As luck would have it, my parents were in the middle of hosting a party when I called home with my one phone call, and my dad and C were elected to come pick me up.  They got there right as the cop told me I had to pour out the beer (Heineken imported from Evanston, Wyo.), and the first thing my dad said to the cop was “Uh, I’m over 21, can I take that home?” Nope, it just needed to be poured out.  Some lucky squirrel had the night of it’s life.  I don’t even remember how long all the paperwork took, but I do remember the drive home.  I got some of the best advice of my life from my father that night - “Don’t break two laws at once.”  If you have illegal stuff in the car, drive p-e-r-f-e-c-t-l-y.  This has helped me many times in the last 33 years, for things as simple as making sure my registration is up to date before I go on any long trip, because I never really had many heavily criminal tendencies (and there’s another story to that). 

C, on the other hand, gave me a big lecture on how you NEVER hide your marijuana in the glove box.  Dumb, dumb, dumb.  Under the seat, in the trunk or even in your book bag, but never in the glove box.  Might as well sit it right up there on the dash.

A pain in the boob.

Both my grandmothers worked in the garment district in NYC.  My father’s mom (Nonni) made coats and my mother’s mom (Ida) made hats.  This is a story that Ida used to tell.

Ida had breast cancer and had one removed while she was still working.  Pins were a mainstay in the industry, and my grandmother decided that it was too cumbersome to carry around a pin cushion, especially when she had her own portable built-in pin cushion.  One of her favorite jokes to play on new hires was to, in the normal process of hat making, pull a pin out of a hat and jab it into her fake breast.

You can imagine how funny it looked seeing her walk around with a bunch of pins sticking out of her chest, but the faces of new hires must have been hilarious as they watched her take a pin and stick it in her breast (She would do it before there were any others there).  I still laugh picturing my grandmother mimicking herself jabbing the pin in.

Uh, Dad…

It had to be before we sold the Chevy in ‘72, so the oldest my little brother could have been was 6.  We were coming home from a road trip in  our family’s 1963 Chevy Biscayne wagon.  Dad was upset for some unknown reason, it couldn’t have been because of us kids.  We always behaved so well stuck 4 across in the back seat for who knows how many hours, so it couldn’t have been us.  Nonetheless, Dad was not happy, we’d been threatened several times with being forced to walk the rest of the way home, but since we were closer than our elementary school that was no longer a threat.

We were playing that game where whenever Dad took a turn, we’d all slide into it and squoosh the kid at the end into the door.  We were making the final turn onto our street, all pushing on my little brother who happened to be on the outside of the turn.  I guess we pushed a little too hard because the door popped open and he vanished out the door into oblivion.

“Uh, Dad?”

“Shut Up, we’re almost home!”

“But DAD!”

“I said SHUT UP!”

We pull into the driveway, all get out and Dad asks “Where’s your brother?”

“Uh, he fell out at the corner.”

Now, in my memory Dad came back with “Well, why didn’t you tell me?”, but since he is a smart guy I’m pretty sure he immediately figured out that we did try to tell him.  The entire family starts to run down the street, just to meet little brother two houses down.  He had hit the road, rolled into the front lawn of the house on the corner, got up and walked home.  Nothing broken, nothing damaged.

Serial bed-breakers

Not that the 4 of us were hard on furniture or anything (later stories will reveal this statement to be a big, fat lie), but we’ve broken beds on 2 different continents, and in I don’t know how many countries.

I don’t think  we broke one during our stay in London, but I know we broke one in Grenoble, France.  We broke at least one in Lexington, Mass and one when we stayed in Montreal, Canada.  Who knows where else, but this story is about breaking my parent’s bed right here in Salt Lake City.

The 4 of us were a very timid group, passive, quiet, reser … ok, I can’t keep a straight face any longer.  We were rambunctious.  We traveled a lot together, even if it was just going to our cabin in New Hampshire or visiting our grandparents in New York, so we were quite used to playing together as a group.  Which often manifested itself into our breaking into two groups and chasing each other around the house (coalitions changed, we didn’t always pair off in the same groups).  This continued well into our teen years, which leads into my story.

We were all in, or close to, our teens.  Who knows how long we’d been chasing each other around the house, but at this point we were headed  down the hall to my parent’s room.  The three boys were in the front, my sister behind us.  When we got to my parent’s room, the natural thing to do was a pig-pile on their bed.  As the three boys landed on the bed, we heard a big *crack* and the bed dropped to the floor.  I know this is physically impossible, but I swear my sister, who was lagging behind us, froze in mid air and, like in the cartoons, reversed through the air, landing on her feet before the bed.  To this day she still claims no responsibility in the breaking of the bed, after all she never touched it.

We immediately stopped the chase, all rivalries forgotten, as we worked together to fix the bed and cover our crime.  Who knows if we ever got caught, but if we did, I’m sure my parents weren’t all that surprised.

Yeah, I did it too…

I can’t remember how old we were, but my younger must have been at least 3 for this to have worked.

My older brother and I told him that he was adopted.  As a matter of fact, we told him, the Lexington Police had found him in on the streets and had asked our parents to take him in.  And the only condition to keeping him was that he had to do whatever his older brothers told him to. 

This worked really well for a week or so, until MOM found out what was going on.  Little brother was assured he was not adopted, that he wouldn’t be given away no matter what, and older brother and I weren’t allowed oxygen for a week.  Ok, we were allowed to breathe, but only the air in our own bedroom.

More big-brother antics.

I vaguely remember the house we rented in Waltham, Mass the year I was 3.  I do remember losing at least one night’s sleep because my big brother caught me digging with a knife into the front porch banister, and told me that if I kept it up the roof would fall in.

Thanks, I really DON’T need a light.

… The 80’s saw the phasing out of leaded gasoline.  For most of them you could buy both unleaded and leaded gas, which is why cars started coming with smaller inlets that had flaps over them to prevent people from putting leaded gas in their unleaded car.  That’s because using leaded gas in a car with a catalytic converter completely negates the benefits of the converter (ie: more pollution).

… I know you’ll find this hard to believe, but I had 2  Mustangs during the 80’s.  One was Christine,my beloved ‘83 convertible, and the other one was ‘Stang, which I bought for parts for the convertible.  Being a parts car (body parts, so it still ran), I decided to save a little money and mess with the fuel filler so that I could put leaded gas in it.   After all, I only needed it to last until I got Christine all repainted and ready to go.

… I figured that if I bent the little metal flap back out of the way, then the gas would flow easily into the tank, even though the leaded gas pump wouldn’t go inside the hole.  I grabbed a screwdriver and tried to bend it inward, but it just flipped right back in place when I removed the screwdriver.  Then I tried with a pair of pliers, again to no avail.  Last try, let’s see if I can bend it back with one of my fingers.  Great idea, was working until my finger slipped in between the two metal strips holding the flap on.  I don’t know if you can tell by looking at it, but it’s kind of like those little finger-handcuffs, in that the more you pull on it the tighter it gets.  I was stuck good, and just over an hour before I had to go to work (Little Caesars at the time).

… So, that’s how I got into the predicament, but the getting out is a lot funnier.  Fortunately my foster brother was home at the time and I just yelled for him.  We tried oil, we tried soap, we even tried jamming the screwdriver behind my finger to push the flap loose.  Nutin.  Getting close to working time, so I have my foster brother call my boss to tell her I was going to be a little late, maybe a lot.  She, of course, asked why and was told “Because Steve has his finger caught in the gas tank of his car.”  Yeah, right, what’s the real reason.  Foster bro told me that it took a few times before she believed him, and then she dropped the phone laughing.

STRIKE 1 – You’re going to be laughing stock of the pizza parlor (and that’s no easy feat, if ya know what I mean), when you finally get there.

… Foster brother comes out to tell me all the fun he had telling my co-workers that I was stupid enough to get my finger caught in a gas filler, with a cigarette in his mouth.

“Kenny, the cigarette!”

“What, you want one?”

… No, what I want is for you to get it the hell away from this tank full of gas that I’m stuck to, that’s what I want.

.. Now it’s been about an hour, I need to start getting ready for work, and worse, my finger is beginning to go numb.  I’m picturing it turning all black and getting ready to fall off, though that’s just my phobia.  So, I decided it’s time to call in the professionals and get my foster brother to call the paramedics.  10 minutes later there is a fire engine and a paramedic truck out in front of my house.  Even better, it’s right around 3:00 on a weekday, and we lived right around the corner from Canyon Rim Elementary. 

STRIKE 2 – The neighborhood kids walk by, see the fire and paramedic trucks and see you leaning up against a car like, best case scenario, you have your finger stuck in the gas filler.

… The paramedics try unbolting the filler and wiggling it out of the tank itself, so at least I’m away from the car.  Nope, that ain’t gonna work.  They try more oil, more soap, other tools to push that stupid flap back to get my finger out.  Still no luck.  One of the firemen asks if we have a hacksaw.

“We’ll just hack this pipe right here (pointing inside the trunk)”

“Um, uh, won’t that make sparks, gas, boom?”

“Heh, heh, yeah, and you can’t even run away.” Chuckle, chuckle.

STRIKE 3 – You get a fireman that thinks your imminent death by an exploding gas tank you got yourself stuck to is amusing.

… We compromised.   Foster brother got the hose, turned it on full force and let it run down the filler pipe while they were sawing it.  Which got me out of there in one piece, but made the car completely un-drivable until the spring thaw, since the water in the gas tank froze into one huge ice cube before I could pull the tank out and drain it.  Which defeated the entire reason I stuck my finger in there in the first place, since Christine was on the road before spring.

Anyway, my finger was a little disfigured, but still completely alive, so I got to keep it.  I got a standing ovation when I finally made it to work and a good story out of it.
And, yes, I do still have that part.  That last picture was taken today, where it sits on a sill on the chimney. 

Suprise, suprise!

When you’re 4 years old, your big brother is the coolest person on the planet.  Everything he does is cool, from slurping that last bit of milk from his bowl of Cheerios to the way he brushes his teeth in the morning.  You want to do everything he does, the way he does it.  Which is why I ended up peeing out our bedroom window.

I don’t remember exactly how long after we moved to the new neighborhood it was.  My big brother and I had the larger bedroom upstairs, basically in the attic, my baby sister had the other room to herself.  The neighbor kids were in our driveway, my brother was showing off his ability to create a pee waterfall off the garage roof.  I, of course, had to join in.  Even though the kids down below were still highly amused, my brother all of a sudden disappeared.  4 years old, I figured he just couldn’t pee any more, when out of nowhere, *SLAP*, I feel the wrath of my mother right across my bare little ass.  Shocking, to say the least.

My brother, I found out later, had heard my mother coming up the stairs and quickly hid under the bed.  I, on the other hand, was totally oblivious.  Now, I know he was only 6, but really, would it have killed him to say to me “MOM” as he hit the floor?  Maybe a tap on the shoulder?

I don’t remember if mom ever found out that big bro was a party to the whole thing.  My guess is that she knew, or at least found out.  But no matter what, his punishment couldn’t have been worse than standing there, gleefully amusing the neighborhood kids, then hearing, and feeling, the crack of mom’s hand hitting your bare skin.  Yeah, no matter what, he got off easy.  Especially since he fed his adoring little brother to the shark……

Strolling through the park one day...

This must have taken place sometime in the 30's, my mom's grandparents were a young couple at the time.  Ida, my grandmother, tells this story from one afternoon in Central Park;

They were walking through the park one warm afternoon and caught up to another young couple they did not know, walking in front of them on the path.  My grandmother reached forward and quickly goosed the girl.  The boy turned around and shot my grandfather a nasty look, as if to say "the nerve."  A few minutes later, my grandmother reached forward and goosed the girl again.  Fortunately, at this point there was a fork in the path, and my grandfather quickly led my grandmother the opposite way the other couple went.  He said to her, as the boy shot them another nasty glance, "Ida, I can't take you anywhere."