BOOMER by Tim Engel (smallest ebook reader txt) 📕

racer for sure! The thing with loss is that the world keeps turning and lives go on. Time heals. We had school, play, food, bikes, toys, friends. We hadn’t gone far. We would be seeing Dad on weekends. Mom was soon dating. She had met Tim at the store where he worked. I certainly resented him at first. How dare he invade our Camelot? Little did I know that he would come to be a wonderful 2nd father. Not take the place of Dad – but be a great man, husband, and 2nd father to Tom and I.
I remember we didn’t have closet space at one time and Tim asked Tom and I what we thought about building these free-standing wardrobes . Yes, it seemed like a good idea. He even asked us to help build them. It was surprising and a breath of fresh air as well because it was the first time I can remember an adult giving us a challenge like this and asking for our help. One time Tom was walking his bike across Lakewood Blvd. A guy had stopped well past the limit line and was half way into the intersection with Del Amo. As Tom made his way behind the car, the guy decided to back up to where he belonged, running over Tom’s bike wheel in the process. Thank God Tom wasn’t injured. When he brought the bike home, it looked like a Pac Man head. A nice circle, but with a big triangle formed in the wheel! Oops! Off to the bike shop to get a new wheel!
I met a kid that lived in a house right across Lakewood. His name was Billy Frisco. He had white hair – or really blond hair. I don’t think he was an albino. But he was a pretty wild kid. Never met his parents. Since this was the 60’s we were allowed to go home for lunch if we wanted. So I remember Billy inviting me over to his place. We rode our bikes off from Riley and headed over to his place. “Ever had fried baloney?”, Billy asked. “No”, I answered. Fried baloney? No kidding? Never heard of such a thing. So he got out the frying pan and put a dab of butter in and let it melt and he got out the Oscar Mayer baloney and threw a few slices into the pan. Sizzling baloney smelled pretty good. Kind of like 2nd rate bacon or something to that effect. We put mustard on a couple slices of Wonder bread and were good to go! Man, a warm meal for lunch! Rare! Mom worked and we usually took our lunch to school. A peanut butter sandwich, chips, cookies, and milk in a thermos with matching lunch box. Loved the lunch box. I can still remember that unique smell of the lunch box. I think it was a bit stinky because of leaky thermoses. But the food was always good. Billy and I ate our Baloney sandwiches. Then we jumped on our bikes and headed back to Riley. The Schwinn Sting Ray was the equivalent of the Corvette sports car. Lean, cool, sporty, and fast. Or at least I thought so.
Billy also introduced me to shop lifting. “It’s easy”, he said. “Yeah?”, I answered. “Sure”. “You just act cool and pick up stuff and when no one’s looking just put it in your pocket”. Was that all there was to it? So this was the beginning of something I’m certainly not proud of. I would steal stuff that wasn’t worth much. But just the same, it was stealing. Usually it was erasers, pens, pencils; school stuff. Small stuff that would fit in my pocket. I remember stealing a pack of those short ‘golf’ pencils. Dice, a deck of cards. I thought it was kinda cool – but the stuff I got from stealing was ‘tainted’ somehow. It didn’t bring the usual fun or joy of getting things the right way. I probably shop lifted off and on for maybe a year. Thank God I never got caught. It was as stupid a thing as you can do. That’s all I needed was a record! Go to military academy or juvenile hall.
I can’t remember the number of times we heard about the military academy. Only later did I find out that indeed there was a military academy very close by. Right on Signal Hill. Southern California Military Academy. It was probably a 10 min drive from home. And as far as juvenile hall, It sounded like prison for kids. I could imagine a place where all the kids wore jeans and 1 size too small t shirts and rolled up their cigarettes in their sleeves. How about that for a vision? And they greased back their hair like John Travolta in Grease only they weren’t nice like him, they were mean like the Owens boy who stole the mail truck. Tom and I sometimes got carried away. As patient and loving a home and Mom and Dad made for us, we sometimes pushed the envelope. So Mom would say “boys, boys, please!” To which we wold pay no attention. So the next step she would grab us by the arms and try to get our attention. If we didn’t shape up by then, we got the military academy or juvenile hall story. Juvenile hall…there’s Bobby Owens; Sal Mineo look alike. Top lip snarling, cigarette smoke. “Hey, guys, there’s a new fish!” The tin mugs slide up and down the bars banging in unison the crescendo sounding like thunder. I feel my knees knocking. “I’m not scared”. Not much, I’m not.
The guards are 6’6” and at least 300lbs. The Rams’ fearsome foursome are jealous of these guys. “Alright junior!” “Says here you couldn’t keep your sticky mitts off the golf pencils!” Ha ha haaaaaaa!!! Somehow I’m thinking this isn’t James Whitcomb Riley Elementary School any more. “Well, let’s see; there’s a couple of open cells we can put him in. But he’s gonna have to bunk up with either Butch or Chuck!” Both of them sounded like mean motor scooters. Petty crimes, you know, stealing cars, breaking and entering, assault and battery, burning your victims with cigarette butts ala Sal Mineo. No big dealio. The horror! I think we got scared straight way before anyone thought of scared straight. The Parents mentioning military academies and juvenile hall and the bad movies we watched on TV all combined in a swirling, smokey, sweaty, violent nightmare that was successful in scaring Tom and I straight – straight away from ever wanting to deal with either of those places.
Many years later I would drive a few minutes from McDonnell Douglas up Cherry avenue and over Signal Hill and as I went down the south side of the hill I noticed on the west side of the street the military academy. Now it didn’t look like such a bad place. But as a kid I remember thinking that they probably required perfect discipline. And when we failed to make the mark, we would probably be doing push ups “drop and give me 20!” Which probably would have been a good thing for me.
Billy Frisco seemed like the kind of kid who might have done a little time in Juvenile Hall. He was rough, wiry, unkempt, smart, and fun. I still liked him. He also introduced me to mustard sandwiches. At this point I figured that he may have had some rough times in his past. Mustard sandwich? No baloney? No meat? Just bread and mustard? Yep. That’s right. And it was even better toasted. I noticed that the windows in Billy’s garage door had been broken and covered with wood to retain some kind of security.
Sometimes on the weekend we would ride our bikes around. One Saturday morning we ended up over at Lakewood Center. When you’re 10 years old and you’re on a Sting Ray it seems that the possibilities and opportunities are endless. We would race around the center. One place was cool to ride was behind the grocery store, because it had a ramp and you could get going down that sucker really fast. So we did that and we rode some more. Then we noticed something interesting behind the grocery store. A large, tall, stainless steel case sitting on 4 wheels. Just sitting there. What must that be, we wondered? Why would that just be sitting out here? Could it have something inside? Of course, it was absolutely none of our business, but we decided t check it out. We pulled and pried and tried to get the thing to open up. It was like a strange, space age puzzle. But finally it gave up the ghost and we slid a panel up and opened her up. And to our surprise, we found that it was full of bakery goods. So we decided that it must all be day old stuff that’s getting thrown out and took a couple of packages of pastries. Pastries for breakfast! Heady stuff! Up and on the Sting-ray fueled by pure sugar and white flower! And deep down we knew that the bakery locker was not day old stuff. That it was new, fresh bakery goods that we had stolen. Mental note: “Don’t ever do that again!” And we didn’t. We realized that we were lucky to have gotten away with that. That if the nice Lakewood Police had dri ven by, we’d have been off to Juvenile Hall.
We were getting used to living at the apartment on Lakewood. It was a nice place. Clean and with lots of windows. Funny, I remember one night Tom and I were home alone. We had watched a scary movie – maybe the Creature From the Black Lagoon. Or worse. But it was late, we were alone, and we heard ‘noises’. The wind was probably blowing or something like that. But Tom and I armed ourselves with weapons (wood sticks) and took up defensive positions on the folding couch. The couch was cool – you simply lifted up on one side and it would unlock the other side and you ended up with a flat bed. All the blinds were pulled tightly down – and the traffic was streaming by on Lakewood Blvd, but we were certain that someone or something was trying to get into the apartment. But that never happened. We finally relaxed, turned on Leave it to Beaver, and the fear and tension of the sneaky burglar melted away on the sound of Mrs Cleaver’s heavenly voice.
I didn’t have any fear perse of the future. Tom and I didn’t discuss how we were going to live. Dad lived in the Hayter house, Mom and Tom and I lived in the apartment. We’d be fine.
Dad liked museums. He would take us to the