I HELPED MY FRIEND STEAL A CORVETTE
and we never went to jail.
# 43…………..Our penpal letters from James to Love
Dear love,
well here it is Saturday. This is my favorite day of the week because on Saturday morning I get to watch Buck Rogers and some excellent cartoons.. TCM is just like going to the kiddie matinee on Saturday morning. The cartoons are ancient Popeye cartoons. The kind that are in black-and-white, when Popeye was funnier.
Also, I can catch up on Buck Rogers, still trying to save the universe. He always gets himself into one “mell of a hess” each week as he is thrown into life-threatening situations. Such a cruel world that I have to wait till next week to find out if he makes it out alive..
Your reaction to what I told my mother about oral sex was priceless.
I was reading the story about your mother and how you mom was behaving right after your father’s death in 2005. I am very good at empathy. I feel like I can become your mother in a way. After suffering such a great loss, she was trying to hold on as best as she could. What you saw was just the tip of the iceburg of the psycho-drama in her head. She couldn’t see that little drama and mystery she was creating over your Dad’s safe, was not fun for you.. I’m surprised she even tried to brighten up your Christmas because obviously it didn’t work. I understand what it’s like to lose yourself in your head when you still need to try to act appropriate for those around you. Of course she felt responsible for you and all the other kids. I think she was trying to be humorous or cute when she was actually going crazy being locked in her mind over your father’s death. She obviously loved him immensely.
Your dad really valued Playboy magazines didn’t he. He valued them so much that he kept them in a safe. When I was a kid, I kept my dirty magazines under a drawer so you had to remove the drawer to see them.
Pardon me for a moment, I was just reminiscing.
The custom of men getting everything and women get nothing when someone passes is a shitty deal . This unfair custom has probably has been handed down since we were wild beasts feeding on a kill. The lioness kills the antelope, but the alpha male eats first. Next, the lioness eats and then the rest of the tribe. It could be instinct that the good stuff goes to the male. I think if I was a woman, I would be amused that nature felt the need to give me any extra rewards. It’s as though the great spirit beyond is trying to compensate for making man such a complete idiot.
So let man have everything the world wants to give him. Women have something way more valuable . The life of every living thing on this planet in the form of a human came from her. Try closing the doors on that a see what happens to all mankind.
You’re right, talking about politics just makes me angry because I could run the world perfectly, but no one is listening to me. I often joke about if I do that or if I do this I could rule the world. That would be an interesting concept. What would you do if you could rule the world. Oh my gosh, I don’t think I would be very good at ruling the world. I just started thinking about what I do and that was awful. I think I’ll just stick to telling stories on Medium. That’s what I love doing the most anyway.
I love the world of pretend. I pretend constantly. One time, I remember dreaming that I was pretending to pretend. I woke up screaming and pretended that didn’t happen. I think my pretend world got a little bit out of hand when it started turning real. That happened when I was about 15 years old and had cars and girls on my mind. If you added rock ’n’ roll into the mix you have one out-of-control loose cannon. I was definitely a handful for my mom and dad. I look back on the tortures that I put those two beautiful people through and I am sorry to my core. But at the time I had an awful lot of fun.
When I was a kid, I was friends with a very dangerous guy. Well, at least he thought he was dangerous. His name was Ron and he wasn’t dangerous at all. I think you just want to appear dangerous for some reason but I was the sort of guy that thought all of his tough guy demeanor was hilarious. We definitely played rough. He was always holding a knife up to my throat which cracked me up because he would never hurt me. One time Ron and Keith and I were exploring the woods and Ron, who had fallen back, had a gun and was shooting over our heads in our direction. We could hear bullets whistling through the leaves above us. He was just angry hung over. Kieth and I were giving him the business for being such a weak tit who couldn’t handle booze,so he decided to let us hear his rifle a few times .
He never would have actually shot close to us but he had a flair for the dramatic. We played in his backyard with brooms that we had soaked in gasoline. We jousted and threw them at each other like spears.
Once we decided to go out in the middle of the night dressed like ninjas and hide from oncoming cars . Don’t ask why little boys do what they do. We had no frontal lobe. Young boys can’t help their impulsive behavior. Besides, young boys should be watched very carefully because everybody knows how we are. When young boys act out, it is not the fault of the young boys. It’s the parent’s fault. The children can never be blamed for their impulsive behavior. Yeah, that’s the ticket, we were not responsible for what happens next. Somebody should have been watching us .
Ron came from a wealthy family and they had two cars. Mom had a four-door Chrysler and dad had a brand-new 58' Corvette. It was loaded, seafoam blue paint, leather seats, removable hardtop (which was always removed ) and four on the floor, baby. This car was sexy and it had so much power and sound equipment that could literally rock the balls off a Clydesdale.
How could we not open the garage door and push that car out in the middle of the night for a small joyride. Nobody else was using it and it would be a shame to let that car go to waste. Ron me were coming-of-age and both of us had just gotten our driver’s licenses and there was a big bore engine Corvette just sitting there. . We had no choice. 16-year-old boys cannot resist that kind of temptation. One sip of the stolen fruit made junkies of both of us. We were Crockett and Tubbs way before Miami Vice. A boss stereo blasting at us while we were riding around with no particular place to go whatsoever. We were masters of the universe with this car. We might even be able to find GIRLS……..Who knows anything could happen.
It never dawned on us that Ron’s dad could discover his car missing and call in a stolen car report. Well that never happened.
I think we discussed how the Corvette had a positraction rear end. Of course scientific minded 16-year-old boys need to verify a car’s performance so they know what to do in case of an emergency. This time , we didn’t chase wheelies on the local golf course. We decided to go to the local sewage treatment plant that burns methane gas 24 seven. Out in front of the sewage plant was a huge grassy area that wasn’t really designated for anything . They mowed it so it looked nice but nobody had a picnic there probably because of the fart burners overhead. Who wants fart ash on their sandwich ? We hopped the curb and started driving around in this grassy area testing the traction of the rear end and there was a rabbit ahead of us. Ron punched it to chase the rabbit and I thought it was funny because I was thinking jackrabbit meat might taste really good in Chile. Of course we didn’t do very well catching the rabbit. We did, however, succeed in chasing that nasty old rabbit off of the grass and prevented him from harming the lawn, what there was left of it. Some of the things Ron and I did could have landed us in the slammer. We were pretty lucky because we got away with everything almost.. We decided that as civic minded youths, we should do every thing possible to protect the local golf course from the scourge of rabbits. There are tons of rabbits on the golf course and they just watered. We found that when you slam a Corvette down into second and floored it, you slowly sink in but you also start to slowly gain momentum. You’re really better off to slowly accelerate because then you can slowly build up speed to 50 or 60 and just for fun put it into a four-wheel drift by spinning the steering wheel. That Corvette cornered so beautifully on the lawn at 50 miles an hour. The car stayed flat as a pancake. I don’t think we ever did catch any jackrabbits but we did find out that groundskeepers are very fussy. They seem to be angry about something when we drove by the next day. That’s the thanks we get for chasing all those rabbits off of the golf course and aerating the soil underneath the sod.. One time we were chasing down a jackrabbit and it was an owl. We raised hell for several hours and then went back to Ron’s house to return the car to the garage only to find out we had been busted. Ron’s dad had an emergency doctor call in the middle of the night and had to use mom’s car instead of his Corvette. We never got in trouble, Ron’s Dad didn’t say a thing . But, I think that was the last time we stole Henry’s Corvette.
