Hmmm… I did a lot of stupid things when I was a teen. But, these two stand out as the stupidest. My friend Roger had a cool dad who would always buy him the best toys. We were poor, so I had to make my own toys mostly. I got pretty good at it early on. At about 13 I really wanted a scooter. Of course, my mom wouldn’t think of letting me get one… couldn’t afford it anyway. So, I hunted around my usually junky friends and found a 1948 Cushman scooter. I got it for 15 dollars. Naturally, it wouldn’t run, so I learned how to rebuild little engines and fixed it. Mom just couldn’t take it away from me after all that work; so at 13 I had a cool scooter! Was the envy of the neighborhood.
‘Ol Roger just had to have one too. He begged and pleaded with his dad until he finally bought him Sears Moped. It was a pretty neat little 50cc thing and he rode it all over everywhere. Still my old Cushman would always outrun it. ‘Ol Roger kept on browbeating his dad until he finally got him a Sears Allstate Vespa. Now, Roger was top dog, and oh how he gloated over having such a nice ride. It was a real girl getter too. I wanted one bad. I was 14 now and had a paper route (actually 2) making pretty good money for a kid. I found a used Cushman Eagle for $200. and bought it. That was a lot of money back then for a kid to save up… but I did it.
Now I was the coolest kid in the neighborhood again… And, I liked it. The girls all wanted to ride on the back of MY scooter, much to ‘ol Roger’s dismay. He had to get poor ‘ol dad to buy him something better. His dad went and got him Honda Dream. And honest to pete MOTORCYCLE. Danggit, ‘ol Roger did it again. It took me till I was 16 to finally save up and buy a used BSA Bantam 125cc. It had a lot more chrome and sounded a lot more like a motorcycle than ‘ol Roger’s Dream. (no guts in the pipes). And, it was faster too.
Well, I guess ‘ol Roger just went nuts? Someone broke into my little workshop at the back of the carport and stole all my tools… used my newspaper route bag to haul ‘em off in. I was one pissed off kid. It took me years to buy all those tools. It also took me about 6 months to find out who had done the dirty deed. Peanut McDonald finally told me it was Roger! My friend? I had to get even.
Now Roger lived in a big house right on the St. Johns river. One night, me and little ‘ol Peanut sneaked onto Rogers back porch and took his Honda Dream. I rolled it quietly out the long dock about half way and cranked it up. I rode it right off the end of the dock! I didn’t intend to go in with it but did anyway. Made a huge splash and I figured ‘ol Roger would come out and catch me bigtime… But he didn’t. It went missing for months.
His Grandpaw finally found it fishing off the end of the dock about 6 months later. It had barnacles on it and looked terrible.
I didn’t tell ‘ol Roger I was the one who stole his bike until 20+ years later. He was home on leave from the Air Force and I ran into him. We got to talking over old times and it just came out… don’t-ya-know? He was embarrassed, and apologized for stealing my tools. I haven’t seen him since then. He retired in Hawaii.
Gotta go eat some turkey now... Hafta tell the other story another time... Ya'll have a nice Thanksgiving!
friend ~ Brick