Crimes and Misdemeanours

I was reading of Dan's former exploits in crime (or lack thereof) on his blog over the weekend. I always find these stories the funniest, especially when you put into context what kids actually do today. We were just having good clean fun, today they're packing guns and knives.

I would say my life in crime started in 1978. We were flying along the 401 in my Dad's Lincoln on the way to my Grandparents house. There was a story on the radio about how PM Trudeau was trying to establish the "Young Offenders Act". Essentially this "Act" would make it so anyone under the age of 18 could literally "get away with murder," and everyone would receive a clean slate upon their 18th birthday. It was as if my Father was having a premonition, or out of body experience. A vein was throbbing in his temple, and his skin turned crimson. At this point in my life, I was a very innocent 8 year old boy. I had never really been in any trouble, I was scrappy, but that's because I was always standing up for something or someone. Hell, I'm still scrappy now. My Father focused his eyes on me in the rear view mirror, and just randomly said "You son of a bitch!" It was a very odd moment, but also a sign of the future. I was always the unwanted child. Here was a simple radio report, stating that something was being tabled in the House of Commons, and I was already guilty of somehow taking advantage of it. Very strange man my Father. About a month earlier my brother was picked up by the police for shop lifting from Sailor Pete. As I have said in a previous story, Pete would always run a tab for you, so it was a pretty bonehead manoeuvre. When the police brought him home, my parents instantly thought I was some kind of influence even though I was four years younger. I came closer to being punished than he was.

We moved to Calgary the following year, and things calmed down for awhile. My brother received the appropriate therapy so I could no longer influence his wicked ways. Whatever.

When I was eleven, a group of us boys went to hangout at SouthCenter Mall for the day. We were basically goofing off. Checking out albums (yes, there were still albums,), looking at clothes, and checking out the girls. We were walking through The Bay at one point, the Sporting Goods section to be exact. As we were walking through I decided to grab a full bag of golf clubs, and hide it under my jacket. Being eleven the golf bag was about the same size of me, and I got the laugh I expected from my friends before returning the bag to where I had grabbed it. As we walked out of the store about 20 minutes later we were nabbed.

"Trying to steal some golf clubs, eh boys?" the stern hack of a security guard said.

I was a little scared, but still giggling at the thought of what was going on. They dragged the four of us into the basement of the store and split us into groups of two in separate rooms. It was time for the interrogation to start. The room was horrible, it was like that office that Tom Hanks works in at the beginning of "Joe vs. the Volcano," the walls and furniture were drab green, and the fluorescents flickered as if they were trying to hold onto life itself. The desk was steel, and the chairs had more exposed foam than fabric. The moron guard had one of those old coil style desk lamps that he tried to twist around towards my like an interrogation light in an old Sam Spade movie. The tension was gone in the main arm of the lamp, and it kept slowly falling to the desk surface until the frustrated guard smashed it off in some vane attempt to intimidate. He was trying to force a confession from me about trying to steal the clubs. I kept trying to point out that the whole situation was moot, as I hadn't tried to leave the store with them. The friend that was with me was near tears, he thought we were finished. (sheltered child.)

About 20 minutes later one of the other guards came in the room. Turns out my buddy Mark in the other room had lifted a cassette that none of us knew about. Great. The parents were called, and the police were on the way. I was terrified of Mark's dad. He looked and sounded like Goldfinger. I was convinced he had a table in the basement of their house with its own laser weapon. I can't tell you how terrified I was a year later when Mark and I totalled his wife's new Mercedes.

"What do you expect me to do Goldfinger, fix the car?"

"No Mr. John, I expect you to die."

The police showed up and loaded us in two cars. Fortunately I wasn't with Mark. I got the pleasure of being dropped off first. My Mother was waiting at the door as the policeman walked me up the walk, slowly opening the screen door as if it weighed 500 lbs.. She gave me that hard stern look, my Father was away, and she knew that she was going to get blamed as much as me.

"Looks like you have a little trouble maker here ma'am." The officer said.

"How so?" my Mother softly replied.

"Looks like he was trying the old golf clubs under the jacket ploy."

I couldn't help but snicker then, this guy was channeling Peter Sellers or something. What the hell is the old golf club under the jacket ploy?!?

My Mother pinched me and told me to go to my room, she stayed and finished her conversation with the officer.

She came up to my room after, and my Mom being who she is had a good laugh with me. We never told my Father. It's always been our little secret.

One afternoon the following summer, we were lying on the trampoline in the backyard trying to think of something to do. Nothing worse than bored kids. Mark had been sent to private school that year, and then straight to camp (go figure), so he wasn't around to help us plot. Eventually we got some fishing line and strung it across the street hanging a dish towel in the middle so it looked like it was floating in midair. It actually looked kind of cool from about 30 feet away. We pestered some cars for about half an hour but soon got bored again. I figured lets make a dummy and put it in the middle of the road. Really bright huh? We took some of Trev's brother clothes and filled them with newspaper, we had a hockey helmet for a head. We were looking at it and knew we still needed more. There was an old bent bike we had in the garage ( actually, it was Trev's little brothers, we threw it off a cliff once when he was following us.) We wrapped the "body" around the bent bike and put it beside the street. I still thought it was missing something and dashed into the house. I soon returned with an open can. I told Trev to move the bike and body out into the street. Once set I approached, producing a can of Beef Ravioli from behind my back. The icing on the cake!! I dumped the can all around the helmet. We were giddy with expectation now, the neighborhood kids were all gathering around. We quickly jumped the fence and went to our assigned knot holes. Drivers slowly started coming by. They would stop, curse, then drive on. The high fives were going around. Then, about ten minutes later you could hear a sound in the distance....Sirens!!

Before you knew it there were 2 ambulances, 2 firetrucks, and 2 police cars. The scramble was on!! We lived on a private lake. All the backyards across were open, and kids ran everywhere. Trev and I had hollowed out a breathing space underneath our dock just for an occasion like this and we dove into the water. When we surfaced under the dock we were both laughing so hard we had to force the other underwater for a moment to keep each other quiet. There was no way to know when the coast was clear and we just floated there for half an hour. Then the load speaker went.

"BOWMAN...HARTWICK...WE KNOW IT'S YOU. YOU DID IT IN FRONT OF YOUR OWN HOUSES!!! JUST COME OUT BEFORE YOUR PARENTS GET HOME!!"

We did it in front of our own houses....stupid, stupid, stupid. We went out, there had to be eighty people standing around now. They loaded us in the cars, we got the same old speech.

"Why don't you boys use all that energy for something good" they would always say. They took us to the station and we were charged. It actually went to trial about a year and a half later. This is the priceless part. The prosecutor called for exhibit "A", and low and behold they dragged this dummy into the courtroom. The ravioli had been on it so long now, it had a huge green afro of mold, it looked like a clown. The judge lost it and threw out the case due to the incompetence of the prosecutor. He then singled out the girl who had called 911 and berated her for making a farce out of a couple of boys "just havin' fun."

In grade 12 we had a tradition that on the first night of school you did a sleep out at the school. We all met at our assigned places and did the things that grade 12 students do. All the boys were hanging out in the parking lot when the girls showed up in Deb's Volkswagen convertible. (The guys and girls always hung out separately before hooking up, it was kinda like "Grease", but with better hair and more sensible clothes.) They had a cardboard cutout of "Grimace" from McDonalds. They had stolen it of course, to them it was their big trophy of the evening. We weren't to be outdone of course, and the plans were soon made. There was a McDonalds in West Vancouver that had a full size solid statue of Ronald McDonald. The game was on. We all piled into my friend John's Boogie Van, I drove, most of the other guys had...well, already too many. I flew down Cap Road. There was 10 of us in the van and it was really off balance. I had to slam the brakes at Marine Dr. and Jean Tenn lost his balance (there were no seats in the back) and smashed his face on the back of my seat knocking him unconscious. One down. We arrived at the McDonalds about 5 minutes later. I pulled up right outside and the side door and back doors flew open, the boys spilling out like ants from the van. I stayed with the van running, and my unconscious friend. I decided I would pull out to Clyde Ave. so the boys could have a clean run at the van, with as few witnesses as possible.

I started getting a little nervous, the police station was just across the street, and the boys were taking a little longer than I thought. Just then the back door of the McDonalds flew open. It was Graham, one of my fellow linebackers from the team, with no less than 3 tiny McDonalds workers attached to him. He was walking like the old stop motion King Kong as he dragged them along, the other guys came crashing out the side door with the statue with patrons chasing after them. I started driving slowly, trying to get a head start. Graham finally shook the last employee and made a dash jumping in the back. The boys with the statue got to the back and started pushing it in as I sped up, all of them were in now except for two guys that were holding onto the bumper. I was going to fast for them, in a rush of adrenalin, I hit the brakes. Of course their faces hit the bumper. They dropped to the ground and I floored it. We sped off up the hill on 15th. I went up about six blocks and stopped. Everyone was in a panic. Some wanted to go back for them, most wanted to just keep going which we did.

We arrived back at the school. The road ends in a cul-de-sac. I stopped and let everyone out about half way down the street were there was a trail that went to the field. Right then the whole street lit up, there had to be five police cars down at the end. I slammed it into reverse and floored it, pulled the best Rockford of my driving career and almost flipped it as we went around the corner. Before they could react we were already gone. There is a hidden road at the end of Clements, we hid the van down there and stopped to breath for a moment. It was now just me, the owner of the van, and Jean Tenn, who was slowly coming around not having a clue what was going on. The statue was with us. We decided to use the trails to walk the statue to the school and we set off. The thing must have weighed 200 lbs. We finally got there about an hour later, a hero's welcome no doubt. The police were still off looking for us. We laid the statue down in front of the school, and grabbed a couple of the beers everyone was offering us. It was only a matter of time of course before the boys in blue returned. They found the statue. The funniest thing is they did a chalk line around it like it was a corpse, a chalk line of the now deceased Ronald waving. They took it away, but without the van, there wasn't anything they could do with us so they just asked us to disperse.

We all decided to meet at Cleveland Park. Everyone jumped in their vehicles and took off. We, for some reason still unknown to me to this day, went back and got the van. By the time we got there, all the parking was taken, so me, being the genius I am decided to leave it in the middle of the road with the hazards on. It took about hmmm...3 minutes before they swarmed upon us again. This time they brought their friends from the West Van police dept. with their paddy wagon. They just started loading people us. I was freaking out because of all things I didn't have my drivers license on me. I finally decided the gig was up and approached one of the officers and said I was involved.

He said, "Kid we're kind of busy here, please go back up to the field." Which I did.

All my friends got to spend the night in the slammer, they got dropped off in the paddy wagon for the first day of school, where their parents were waiting. It was all over the news. Knowlton Nash even closed out the national news the following day with his "talk about a Big Mac attack" story. Headlines of the newspapers, everything. I was the only one walking free. They were putting the heat on everyone of course, and about three months later I was ratted out. The one guy that was in the van that didn't normally hang out with spilled the beans. I was arrested in Geography class. Let me tell ya, if you want a hundred invites for a date to the prom, get arrested in class, works every time.

The judge decided to have a discovery hearing before the trial. The owner of the McDonalds was there, all of us, our parents, and the Principal. They interviewed us one by one. When they got to me I had my innocent story of thinking we were just going for cheeseburgers, that is until my friends Dad stood up and called me a lying sack of some type of horse by-product. My Dad leaned over and told me that if I wanted a place to sleep that night I better start talking. I came clean. We had to pay restitution to the owner, and we were banned from the West Van McDonalds for life, probably saving me a few bypass operations. My Trams-Am that I was given for graduation was taken away. Good clean fun though. Two weeks later I glued the school shut, giving everyone a day off. Never got caught for that one!!!