Off the seat of a bicycle
Chapter 9) The car-wash night
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One night, two of us roamed around unsupervised most of the night, neither suspecting we would folly our way into gunplay. His father worked nights so he got out easy and I slipped out somehow.

We stole another friend’s bicycle for him to ride and then went to a local church (that used to be kept unlocked), where we ate chocolate bars until we nearly puked. From there we went to the grocery and tried to bust shopping carts, and then to the car wash where I used my father’s big screwdriver and tried to pry open a coin box for the dimes.

It was the big car-wash night.

It was all petty, juvenile stuff that would get you a stiff, well-deserved whack in the ase if it happened during the day, but night-time changes everything. When night falls, the risks are endless, as are the opportunities to prevail worse on the public.

The police saw us that night, but I saw them too, creeping up with their lights off. We headed out the back corner of the car wash heading north and climbed over a fence next to the funeral home. The police raced up the gravel lot and rounded the corner just as we ducked out of the shadows into a full run uphill toward another church, where on a previous occasion I had eaten their leftover potato salad and played the organ.

This was in the days before the police had good communications, which means if it happened today, we would’ve been caught in the following chase. Also, another thing has changed; as mentioned prior, there were actual cow fields surrounding the area. Today everything is accessible to the police car as one parking lot folds seamlessly into the next in a never-ending cement lawn that stops at the inevitable locked door of another storefront.

As fate would have it, the chase happened back then, and the two policemen lost communication when they decided to split up. Historically, splitting up has been bad for armies and teenagers in horror movies, but that’s what they did. One policeman ran after us while the other screeched off in the car, trying to outflank us to the west.

As soon as I saw the police car turn west, I turned east, climbed the fence, and ran across a dark cow pasture with my friend running with me step for step. He wasn’t going to throw up his hands at the first command to ‘stop,’ and it shows the true American spirit: run like hell and you’ll live another day.

The police were out of position with one change in direction. The police car was going off the wrong way and the policeman on foot was now 100 yards behind and losing ground fast.

He turned on a powerful flashlight, and our shadows angled out wildly in front of us, but it helped us see the cobbled field. Anybody who has run across a cow pasture knows there are innumerable surprises awaiting the ankle. The policeman yelled, ‘stop or I’ll shoot.’ And POW he shot. Just then we ran into a low spot, and my friend fell down! ‘They got him,’ but he scrambled up and we were gone in the night.

Unfortunately the bicycles were left behind: The stolen one and mine, both given over to the other team. I approached the carwash from an adjacent field the next day, and sure enough they were gone.

The real story begins here. The police are crafty and they know the suspect. Before two weeks passed, the Church pastor’s son sidled up to me and said he ‘found my bicycle at his church.’ I said, oh good, I’ll come over and pick it up. It was a good intuition not to bluff-out and say, what bike?

He said they gave my bike to the police for safekeeping, and it was in the front hall of the police station right now. All I had to was go talk to Sgt Somebody. ‘Well, thank you very much, I’ll go right down there,’ is what I said.

Like a boldfaced criminal with no shame, I rode one of my stolen bicycles down to the police station to reclaim my rightful property. And sure enough there was my bike.

I walked up to the secretary and made my claim, and she sent me to a room with two large men. They got out the folder and sternly asked a few questions. I said my bike was stolen and thanks for finding it blah blah … and then they asked if I owned a pellet gun. No. I lied.

They followed up with a surprise question; ‘did you know that bike was used in a robbery?’ My eyes popped out of my face, ‘No’ I said, and that was the truth. A robbery hell no.

Anyway I ‘passed’ the lie detector test and they gave me the bike. In all honestly, I didn’t know it was a robbery, unless they meant the chocolate bars we ate at the church.

It didn’t matter, they knew it was me. On the way home, I was riding two bicycles simultaneously, (would you expect less from a bike thief?) and who should drive by? My French teacher, Mrs. B who I secretly loved. She went out of her way to help me get through French class, and I remember thinking she was a good person. The look on her face said everything; she knew I was stealing something. God it made me feel bad and laugh at the same time.

Measure me how you want from what I’ve said so far. The next story has many elements that summarize my personality succinctly. Yes, I threw eggs at cars.

Chapter 10) The egg trap
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