floating,
fleeing,
wondrous
orb of youth.
Slipped uninflated over the end of a water faucet,
filled with water and tied off:
threatening,
soaking,
wondrous
orb of youth.
One weekend when my parents were out of town (after
they either believed that my brothers and I were responsible enough to leave
home alone or more likely couldn’t find a formidable enough babysitter to make
any real difference), the three of us raced down and bought several bags of
party balloons at the Rexall Drug store in our small town.
In today’s world, where spray paint is locked up
and dynamite isn’t sold without a permit from the ATF, it may seem strange to
you that back in our day, weapons of mass confusion were readily available; underwater
fuse by the foot through the mail, various chemicals that could be compounded
together with spectacular results at the Army surplus store, and party balloons
at the Rexall.
As the heat
reached its peak that late summer weekend we set up an assembly line in the
bathroom. Opening bags, filling balloon after
balloon with cool water from the sink faucet, tying them off, and stacking in
the bathtub for storage until darkness fell.
Slowly, balloon after balloon the tub was completely filled with grapefruit
sized water balloons. Skin stretched to
translucence, small “bubble” of air slipping back and forth with the undulations
caused as each new balloon was added to the stockpile.
As night fell, we gathered up as many of the
colorful orbs as we could carry and we set out to wreak havoc around the
various neighborhoods in town.
I wouldn’t want you to get the wrong idea; it wasn’t
all “fun and games” as they say. You
might be surprised how demanding it is to sneak around a town, throwing water
filled balloons at unsuspecting dogs, cats, cars, garage doors, patios and
porches without getting caught by a police department that has nothing else to
do on a boring Saturday night other than chase three fun-loving teenaged boys.
Not only is ducking the cops tiring, but it takes a
special commitment and true dedication to throw 300 water balloons in a single night. Not a goal that the faint of heart should
reach for. But our years of throwing newspapers
every morning proved to be perfect training and conditioning for this
particular sport.
As the night wore on and the stockpile in the bath tub
seemed to barely subside, the radius of each trip slowly and inexorably began
to contract. Trip after trip, shorter
and shorter afield, until we were reduced to throwing balloons from the same
block we lived on.
We were down to our last double handful each, well almost,
and had snuck through Mrs. Peterson’s backyard without waking her chickens,
past the edge of the convent’s fence line without the Mother Superior noticing,
and were hidden in some large bushes between two small old row houses. These two houses were twins, each no more
than 20 foot x 30 foot, with detached garages out behind the house, and a
common driveway between them. Like most older houses in town, the floor was
raised up off of the dirt by 3 feet or so, and that put the bottom of the
windows about 6 feet off the ground. Although
I know the builders never considered it, the design was perfect for sneaking
past without being seen.
Right at the front corner of each house, along
opposite sides of the driveway were large Camellia shrubs. Sized just right to hide behind while
scanning the approaching traffic to be sure there wasn’t a roving police car in
view.
Barry, exercising his rite of supremacy by virtue
of age, had decided that he would stand on the sidewalk and be the lookout,
picking the car that we were going to unload on. Seemed like 100 cars drove by one way or the
other and as each approached Barry would state; “Nope, too many people in this
one”.
Now I have no clue how many people were in any of
those cars, ‘cause I was pressed up against one of the houses out of
sight. But by judging from the final results,
each of those first 99 cars must have been clown cars. Cause when Barry finally said: “This one,
there’s only the driver”, we all leapt out to the sidewalk and lobbed our balloons.
We were quick, we were practiced, we were dead accurate.
All 6 balloons hit that car.
The brakes locked up, squealing protests from
rubber against asphalt ripped into the quiet of the night.
All four doors of the car popped open expelling a
college football team.
Well, okay, maybe only the front line.
But those were four big, I mean really big, college
guys looking for some heads to knock.
Now, perhaps I do them a disservice, you see, I
didn’t stick around long enough to truly determine if they were going to knock
heads together, instead I beat a hasty retreat and simply malign their intentions
in the retelling.
But I can tell you, that if knocking heads wasn’t
on their agenda, they sure spent a lot of time and effort chasing us around a
couple blocks, over a number of fences, through several backyards and didn’t
sound too happy when they lost us after we ducked into a pigeon coop and “roosted”
off the ground for a while.
© Copyright 2014, Marty K Vandermolen, All Rights Reserved
