This will be the final 'winter' post on the blog. Heck, we've had more than our share of 'winter' here on Long Island, and since we've finally lost most of the remaining white crap today, it's definitely time to move on to blog posts about car shows, rock and roll shows, and food!
But today, I want to post the sequel to my last blog, the one about tossing snowballs at moving objects.
When last we left our intrepid heroes, they were posting themselves in one of a few prime locations to hit cars, trucks, buses, and even trains with snowballs. As we got older, and some would say more inventive, a small group of us decided we wanted to reduce or eliminate the possibility of being chased by an aggravated motorist out of the activity.
In high school, I hung around with three or four kids who were bright; really bright. All good students, good grades, and sort of early techno geeks. These guys were into electronic gadgets, home photo developing and printing, all sorts of cool stuff. Very interesting to talk with, and to watch them come up with various schemes. The kind of guys that would get you to thinking that you were glad they were on the side of law and order!
So one night, it's me, Brendan Kirby, Steve Langfelder, Don Monsees, and maybe Jon Allen, all standing on the hill by Colonial Avenue and Tanners Pond Road, tossing snowballs at cars. Don, who wasn't wild about actually throwing the snowballs, is standing near the bottom of the hill by Tanners Pond Road, and he's watching the cars approach the firing zone, then watching them drive past to make sure they don't turn up into the back streets and circle around behind us. But it's cold, and the trains and cars are noisy, and the rest of us can't clearly hear him from where we're standing. It was a good idea, but it needed improvement. And the guys sure figured out how to improve things!
A few days later, we're all in New York City. We used to hop the LIRR on the weekend, I think it was about .90c one way to NYC from the station near our house. We'd drag our cameras with us, take the subway down to lower Manhattan, and wander around the army surplus shops, used clothing shops, and other businesses that lined the streets back before the World Trade Center caused the area to be cleaned up.
So we're walking around, and Kirby spots a set of WWII field telephones in one of these shops, two hand sets, and a spool of a couple hundred feet of wire, for about $3. He twists our arms, we all chip in and buy the things, and he tells us that he's come up with a 'foolproof' system for hitting cars with snowballs and not being chased/caught. Of course, we're all curious, but he won't tell us anything more. So we finish our scrounging, we all bought a few silly things, like metal ammo boxes, which were waterproof, and great for holding tools, and I think a couple of used military jackets, the light ones; they were really in style back then. Over the next week or so, things went on as usual, school during the day, delivering newspapers after school, and goofing around after dinner, which usually included wandering up to 7-11 and hanging out there with a slurpee or if it was cold, a hot chocolate; maybe going to Kirby's house and running his electric trains (which took up his entire basement); or really pushing it and going up to Burger King for a shake.
We'd all pretty much forgotten about those silly field telephones we'd bought, until one day, when the forecast was for snow, and Kirby says 'when we're ready to do the snowball thing again, I've got a foolproof plan, there's no way we're gonna get chased or caught'. He wouldn't say anything else, just that he'd worked out some sort of early warning system for the drivers who'd want to chase us. So we pretty much let it go, we get the snow, a pretty good one, if I recall, and after a day or so, we're all itching to start throwing at cars again. So we plan to meet up at Kirby's house after dinner one night, and head over to the hill on Colonial to throw. We all meet up, and off we go, with Kirby carrying a small canvas bag, with the field telephones in it. Down the road, up the hill, and before we can even start making snowballs, Kirby tells us his 'foolproof' plan. Seems he's taken the wire that came with the field phones, and run it along the fence that lined the sump, with one end down at the bottom of the hill, and the other up at the top. Using the fence as a common, he wired one phone into the wire at the bottom, and one at the top, and lo and behold, the darn things worked! We could talk back and forth from the bottom of the hill to the top! The grand plan, it seemed, was that Don, who wasn't much of a thrower, would sit behind a large scotch pine tree at the bottom of the hill with one phone, and Kirby would be on the other phone at the top of the hill. The idea being that Don would call out when a car was coming, what kind of car, and could then give us good warning if the car stopped or went around to catch us from behind. Brilliant! A snowball thrower's early warning system! Foolproof!
And off we go. Don settles into a big pine tree, you probably couldn't see him in broad daylight; at night, no way! And we head up the hill, pack up a bunch of snowballs, and get Brendan on the phone to Don. Here comes the first car, Don tells Brendan, "it's a chevy, hit it!" So the rest of us pelt the hell out of it! Car keeps going, doesn't stop, doesn't turn, and we figure we are just so smart! Heck, nobody's smart like this, we're 'foolproof'! This goes on for maybe 10, 15 minutes, one or two cars turned to try and come up behind us, but with Don warning us, by the time the car got to where we'd been, there wasn't anything, or anyone, left.
We happily kept hitting cars, having a blast, then Don says "It's a Ford, hit it!" We pelt the car, and suddenly Don says "Oh SH** It's a COP!" Yeah, the 'foolproof' system just hit the wall. Don, it turns out, couldn't tell a bright white GC Police car, with big red 'gumball' lights on top, and a big 'chiquita banana' sticker on the doors, apart from your joe average car!
Somehow, we scrambled like crazy, each of us going our own way, figuring the cop could only spend so much time trying to chase us, and really, as a practical matter, could only pick one of us to go after. I hopped the fence to the sump, and got down into the sump, where you couldn't be seen from the street. Kirby climbed up into a scotch pine and stayed there, hidden by the thick needles. Langfelder cut through backyards until he felt he was far enough away from us, then popped out on to Tanners Pond and began slowly and casually strolling home. The cop kept circling around the blocks in the neighborhood, shining his floodlight all over, looking for us. I worked my way down to the park that was adjacent to the sump, hopped the fence into the park, and cut through to the end of my block. I once again hopped the fence, and like Langfelder, just walked nice and slowly up the street towards my house. Suddenly, a car came up from behind me - the cop! He slowed down, rolled his window down and said "Hey kid, come here". Haltingly I walked over to his car, stuck my face in and said, in my sweetest, most innocent little voice, 'yes officer'? 'Where are you going'? he demanded. Not being one to want to lie to a police officer, I said, 'home' - that's where I really was going. He asked where I lived, I told him, then asked what I'd been doing in the park; he had seen me walking through it! I told him I'd been at a friend's house, and was just cutting through on my way home. He looked at me and said, 'yeah, you were cutting through all right; you wouldn't be one of the wiseguys who was throwing snowballs at cars a few minutes back would you"? Again, in my most innocent tone, "oh no, officer, not me, no". And then, he did a very smart thing. He asked to feel my gloves. Yeah, they were wet from the snowballs. "Gloves are a little wet tonight, aren't they"? I gave some weak excuse about having tripped and fallen, and 'maybe I threw a couple of snowballs at streetlights tonight'. He gave me a look that said it all - he knew. And then he said, 'DON'T DO IT AGAIN.' Rolled up his window, and off he went.
So the first high tech 'foolproof' snowball early warning system came to a fast, inglorious end. We used the phones once or twice more, but never with the same cockiness that we had before that first night. There were other 'high tech' gizmos that our little group came up with, like the car battery powered go-kart that Kirby built, the auto radios that we bought at the junkyard and then modified to use in our bedrooms, little remote control on/off and volume controls that we built for our bedroom televisions, and they were all pretty cool. But nothing was as cool, in it's sick and twisted way, as that snowball warning system; true genius!
That's it for the winter posts, in two weeks, it's the Easter Parade and Car Show in Garden City, Tommy and I will be there with the Yellowfish, and that will start off the sping blog season. Stay tuned, plenty more nonsense ahead!