THE 70s AND NOW CONTINUED
I don’t know - the ease in which we broke into Daniel Webb’s house to eat all the raisins out of their Raisin Bran? It only seemed to embolden us, make us giddy. It was just so much fun, we decided - oh, we should definitely branch out with our endeavors. I mean, why only eat the raisins out of their Raisin Bran when we were capable of so much more? Intoxicated with our new-found prowess, it was decided between us that we had barely scratched our vast potential up until this point!
We reasoned that they would be gone for hours on Saturday - so why should we restrict ourselves to merely eating all the raisins out of the Raisin Bran? Why not more? At this point, our minds begin to fill with all sorts of delightful ideas! Our next step is to eat all their Cool Whip - and replace it with shaving cream ( back in those days, shaving cream had no menthol smell, or anything - it was just plain), of course, we would continue to spy on them at dinnertime, having ourselves a fabulous laugh when his mother made a strawberry shortcake - using the shaving cream as frosting!
Soon, we begin cooking hamburgers and watching TV at their house while they’re away. Before we leave, lock all the doors from the inside - effectively locking them out of their own house...it is becoming a truly blissful routine, and has the effect of restoring our battered self esteem from the horrors of high school. One by one, we embark on ever more hilarious activities - drinking half their bottle of Schweppes Ginger Ale and replacing it with tap water (they always think it has gone flat), and - finally, removing all the furniture, pictures, rugs and bikes from their front porch - while they were actually home, watching TV in the living room, no less - and hiding it in the tool shed in their backyard. But more on that one later. We’re not finished yet, oh no!
Our crowning, most auspicious activity, however is what we consider our coup de grace - our grand finale
Ah yes - a stroke of pure genius! We decide to do the unthinkable - switching their entire living room - with their bedroom furniture!! Their bedroom was upstairs - we bring down their bed, the bureau with the mirror on top, the night table - EVERYTHING - and bring the couch, the TV, the stereo up to the bedroom! Hahahahaha….I shit you not! We are beside ourselves with glee, doubled over with laughter, for at least an hour. This is the proudest we have ever been of ourselves, as we feel we’ve gone above and beyond the call of duty! We cannot WAIT till they come home so we can see their reaction…
When the time is almost there for them to arrive home - we position ourselves in the bushes so we can get a good view. The car pulls up....Mr Webb gets out, followed by the rest of the family and opens the door to the living room…
“What the hell - ?
These poor people - what did they ever do to deserve this?!
EXHIBIT B - THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN NOW AND THE 70's
t all begins while me and my cousin Skinny are watching ‘The Creature From The Black Lagoon’ on TV. Down his basement - a Saturday morning in March of 1974. The 12th time we’re watching it, as it is part of ‘Creature Features’ horror festival. In Roselle, New Jersey.
We’re 14 years old, and definitely shaken by the sudden forced racial integration of our new high school. We’re kind of jittery and jump - but also bored and restless - all mixed in with our emerging teen hormones. Another source of confusion.
“Hey - let’s break into Daniel Webb’s house!” Suggests Skinny spontaneously.
“Yeah!” I respond gleefully.
Now the thing is, Daniel Webb is probably our best friend. We know his whole family well. We’ve even eaten dinner over there. God, I mean, we pick him up for Church every Sunday morning. But we’re also kind of annoyed at him. He’s been elected the Treasurer in every club we’ve formed so far ( the last being Club UFOR - Unidentified Flying Object Research) and yet, we never know where the dues money went after each of them folded. We suspect that he has ALWAYS been embezzling the funds! That is treason, we decide among ourselves!
He lives 4 houses down from Skinny’s...and we know their EXACT schedule for every Saturday. They go shopping at the A&P at about 10 am, come back to put away their groceries, then pile into the Dodge to visit their grandparents in nearby Kenilworth - where they stay till early evening.
“Let’s go!” We both squeal at the same time.
It couldn’t have been easier to break in - they have one of those totally useless chain link locks on their side door - I mean - WHO was that supposed to stop? The Hamburgular from McDonalds?! We easily pick it - and we’re in! Exhilirated - crazed with power - INVINCIBILITY even! We survey the living room riches around us - the deluxe 26 inch Admiral color TV, the Zenith 8 track stereo system, the antique armchair in the corner - all waiting to be plundered! And - and...we decide to eat all the raisins out of The Post Raisin Bran. I don’t know, it’s again spontaneous, I guess...we pour the cereal into two small bowls. Skinny and I both proceed to eat EVERY raisin out of the said bowls, pour the bran back in the box, seal both the packaging - AND - the box top with Elmer’s Glue (very carefully) - placing it back in the EXACT same spot on the pantry shelf! We CANNOT stop laughing!! We are so PROUD of our achievement. We leave, re-locking the door. Little do we know this will become our Saturday afternoon ritual for the next year. The worst part of it is... we don’t stop there. No. We THEN take to spying on them... from outside their dining room window while they are eating dinner! Stepping on cinder blocks, barely able to control ourselves -
“Hahahahah! Shut up! Put your hand over your mouth then! Do you want them to hear us?”
The dinner table conversation would inevitably come around to the dearth of raisins in the Raisin Bran - again. They are puzzled. Hahahaha….this is the fuckin’ FUNNIEST thing ever!!
Oh, and we continue to pick Daniel up for Church the next morning every Sunday for a year.
This could NEVER happen today - there would be the home security alarms, the cameras - and the cops arriving immediately. We would be facing a lifelong dosage of Adderall.
THE DIFFERENCE FROM THE 70's AND NOW
This is what I mean by how different society was back in the 70’s - much looser - the society now is WAY too corporate and tight-ass - everything now is so tightly controlled.
So, it’s maybe the second week of January, Roselle, NJ - 1978. I’m 18 years old. It’s fuckin’ FREEZING out - like 2 o’ clock in the morning. Just one of those bleak, endless winter nights where everything seems like a barren landscape. The holidays are over, and it’s just kind of depressing, y’know? Especially when you’re 18 years old, not working and you just have WAY too much time on your hands. So, me and my friends, Richard and Luddy are doing what we do most every one of these endless winter nights. We sit in Rich’s 1967 Dodge Dart, smoking weed and drinking bottles of Michelob, crackin’ on each other, laughing, just basically trying to alleviate the boredom of winter existence. We’re still kids, really, only out of high school maybe six months - and this is what we do. Like I said, it’s the second week of January, holidays over, and everybody has thrown out their dead Christmas trees in front of their houses, on the curb. We’re park a couple of blocks from Rich’s house, right in front of this dead end street. The night’s almost over, we’re baked - and we’re bored. Now, Luddy, who always carries a Bic lighter on him, ‘cuz when he farts he puts it near his ass - and the flames grow really big, y’know, because of the methane gas, I guess. He’s kind of a genius like that. Suddenly, we notice - hey - there’s, like, about fifteen or twenty dead Christmas trees all in a row in front of us! Let’s - let’s LIGHT them on fire!! Hahaha - yeah - nobody’ll get hurt - we’ll just scare them. So we drive slowly and sneakily down the street with the Bic lighter - and we light each and every Christmas tree on fire! We can’t stop fuckin’ laughing, man! Pretty soon, when we’re on our way back to our parking spot, the whole block is ablaze with the Christmas. Luddy, for no apparent reason, carries this megaphone with him all the time, and all of a sudden, pulls it out:
“Evacuate your houses! This is the Roselle Fire Department! Evacuate your houses! One by one, all these lights go on in the houses - people start milling out in their bathrobes and hardhats and slippers - they’re gasping in horror at their trees being all lit up. They think their houses were on fire! We turn off the car lights and duck - we’re on the floor - dyin’.
Soon, two fire trucks come screaming down the street, siren’s WAILING - by the time they get there - the trees have just burnt the fuck out! No fires - just a bunch of people standing around at 2AM in their pajamas in 13 degree cold. Everybody just kind of looking at each other with puzzled, embarrassed looks. If that was today, it would somehow be construed as a hate crime - or a terrorist attack - or something, and we’d be getting fuckin’ waterboarded in some kind of Guantamo Bay set-up.
LA VENDETTA 2 - A HEARTWARMING CHRISTMAS TALE
So, it’s real early January in the winter of 1976. There’s this guy- his name is Shankel ( that’s his last name) who lives on Gordon Street in Roselle, NJ. Yeah, I find this guy to be a bit of a dick, y’know? I mean, he’s on my paper route ( Yeah, I had a paper route when I was 16 and even 17 - The Star Ledger - cuz I got sick of sweeping up hair at Mike’s Barbershop), the guy NEVER answers the fuckin’ door when I’m collecting, I ALWAYS have to go back again to get my money - and when he does finally open the door, he has this perpetual scowl on his face - for no reason I can think of. Never says anything to me. So Christmas comes, right, and this freakin’ mook not only doesn’t give me a Christmas tip, he stiffs me - yeah - gives me an envelope with a Christmas card - NOTHING in it! Nothing - swear to God! Can you fuckin’ believe that?! This guy has to get it now!
After Christmas, people throw away their dead Christmas trees by putting them out in front of the house and waiting till the DPW picks them up. So, one frigid night, me and my cousin Skinny see his dead tree lying in the little grass part in front of his house - and we get this simultaneous idea. We pick up the tree, wedging it between his wooden front door and the screen door in front of it... then ring the doorbell. We run like hell, and hide in the bushes across the street. Of course when Mr. Shankel opens his front door - the Christmas tree falls right into his face! It's so big it fills the whole doorway, So he literally can't move or escape - he's cursing and yelling - can't move - And he's got all these dry pine needles in his face.
Meanwhile, we're across the street - and we are DYING, man! Skinny's laughing like a crow (like he usually does), and I'm cackling, too. Shankel finally extricates himself from the Christmas tree - and he is fuckin' furious! He comes running across the street after us like a freakin’ raging bull, and all - he’s threatening to kill us! Skinny sees this and jumps over a nearby fence. He's yelling at me - “Hurry up! Hurry up! Hop the fence! - This guy’s gonna kill you!” But I’m on the ground, I mean, I'm laughing so hard - HAHAHAHAHA! I can’t breathe, man! TOO funny! The guy is just about to grab me - when in a last ditch effort - my cousin pulls me over the fence, ripping my coat sleeve, and SMASHING down on the cement hard winter ground. Right on my arm. Blood is oozing out of my jacket sleeve. I go from laughing to crying in a second. Shankel, frustrated as hell, is cursing and cursing - threatening he'll kill us if he ever sees us again! But we keep running - and laughing. Hey, at least we escaped! Happy Holidays everyone!