Mischief & Adventure - Part 1

Our gang’s life-blood was its collective creative energy. Winter or summer, this crew rarely spent much time pondering “what is there to do?” More often than not the 10 PM siren grudgingly pulled us home.  When we ran out of ideas, our secret weapon was - find Tubba. He was a fantastic sports organizer - the garage at his house had a basketball hoop; he lived across the street from the skating rink which served as a baseball or football field in the warm months and ice hockey rink in the winter. (Tubba played hockey in snow boots, not that great a disadvantage on a half rink.) But he was a bit older - and wiser - than the rest of us and tended to steer clear of the mischief activities we dreamed up.

One of our favorite places was “the old road”. This was our scene for high drama year round.  It extended the southernmost street of Lowry to the east and was a “zero maintenance” road.  In effect it was two ruts that could save the adventuresome soul a minute or so heading to the east-west trunk highway from the south end of town. At the east end of the "old road" stood the "stockyards" where the local trucking firm held cows and pigs for weekly shipping to South St. Paul and their demise. Certain gang members claimed to have ridden pigs down the loading chute from the "jobber", but that was an adventure that held no appeal. East winds were bad enough. 

On either side of its half-mile stretch, boulders painfully removed from the farm fields on the north and south were piled in clusters, with scrub trees trying to survive amongst them. This stretch became Mount Suribachi,  “Apache Pass”, “Devil’s Canyon”, home of the Lone Ranger, the Swamp Fox, Davy Crockett at the Alamo, or Major Rogers fighting the British. In winter, the huge rocks provided cover for snowball fights across the no-man’s land the road provided. It was a perfect hideaway for us, with forts amongst the rocks and “tree houses” to provide a lookout tower or the “crows nest” if we were in the pirate mood.

The old road forts also gave us a place to hide our contraband.  My first memory of willfully sinning is forever associated with that old road. Happy-go-lucky Frankie owned the local Sinclair station on the trunk highway across from the lumberyard, and it was a hangout for us. It was a good place to look at cars and people, and in the 50’s there were a lot of different flavors.  

Displayed openly behind the counter were packages of the devil-weed tobacco. Frankie was in-and-out so often and for predictable periods of time – those were the days of full-service gasoline stations – that we yielded to temptation and pilfered a pack of Lucky’s or Camel’s or Winston’s. Pilfered isn’t exactly correct, since we knew if we actually stole something, we were irreversibly bound for hell, so we always slipped the quarter for the pack into the till as we slinked away to the old road. So the old road was the setting for my first drag on a cigarette. I must say it was thrilling but not that enjoyable. I’m sure the coughing could be heard back at the Sinclair station. We’d hide the pack with our stash of treasures amid the rocks and it would invariably rain and turn the pack to mush. Mukka, the creative one, “bought” some cigarette papers and we tried our hand at rolling our own from the dried out mush at the bottom of the pack, but that just never seemed to work like it did on the cowboy shows. We also tried corn silk – once.  Our secret of course was quickly revealed by the reek of smoke in our clothes and breath - and we each received our punishments. Mukka’s father had him join him after supper for a fat cigar - in the closed confines of the bathroom - convenient for the retching that followed.

We also came up with endless variations on the game tag.  From pump-pump-pull-away on the ice rink to bicycle chase to boxcar tag.

Boxcar tag was played on the railroad cars idle on the siding by the elevator. There were usually a half dozen or so. This was certainly the most dangerous tag flavor we came up with, since it involved the climbing ladders to the top of these 15’ high cars, running along the top and jumping from car to car to avoid being tagged. These boxcars were not uniform in height. You can imagine the jump across that chasm from a higher to a lower car. That’s about 120 beats per minute, but the reverse could cause fibrillation in the most self-confident gang member.  

But nobody died.  

It was through this experience that I learned the fear of rejection or ridicule was far greater than the fear of death.  I fully expected to die falling off one of those railroad cars, but I went just the same. What ridiculous power the opinion of your mates has upon you. It used to puzzle me how Civil War or WW I  generals could get men to march in line to certain death. This must be why.

Another great venue for tag or hide-and-seek was the lumber yard.  The lumber yard had a long wooden shed with two levels of lumber bins and a balcony with a catwalk running the length of the building on either side and a couple 2nd level bridges crossing the great divide. Hiding places were abundant. But, the games here generally didn’t last long, since the lumberman was a retired WWII army captain and undisciplined hooligans chasing around did sit well with him.

The most popular form of tag was bicycle chase.  This flavor required acts of daring performed on bicycles, preferably after dark, and without ever being so wussy to ride on a sidewalk or street. No one’s yard was sacred – except Hank’s. You were “tagged” if the chaser’s front wheel overlapped you.

The main chase hazards were clotheslines that jumped out at you without warning. Back then, clotheslines were strung with wire, not the stretchy plastic stuff of recent invention. (that is, if you ever see a clothesline at all these days). In any case, the game invariably ended with some gang member unhorsed beneath a clothesline.  

Happened to me.  


But nobody died.

To be continued …