1. "Master of Mayhem" Allen Krueger
He was the master of mayhem on Halloween night. We all waited for what Big Al would have up his sleeve. It was usually some type of revenge to a buisness that had complained to the police when our neighborhood gang would hang out by their shop.
He was ingenious,like the night he started up the construction equipment that was part of a new housing development behind our neighborhood. No one could turn the machines off. Not the police, not the fireman, nobody. The cops asked us a lot of questions but nobody said a word. We all knew it was big Al.
Sometimes I would find him alone in a clearing in a large abandoned lot. Smoking cigarettes and drinking beer. He would set a blaze in the dry grass in the weeds, just starring into the fire until we would hear the sirens coming from up the dirt road. Then he would hop on his beloved Honda 90 and disappear into the night.
I saw him years later and he told me he was living in a trailer park. I could see the despair in his eyes. This once brilliant mind had given up on getting out of the poverty he had grown up in. He said I was fortunate to have moved away from where he was still stuck.
A year later I heard he had acted out his last bit of mayhem when he leapt off one of the giant electrical power line towers that snaked through the backwoods of southern Maryland.
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2. "The Spot"
Far into the woods, past the thick brush and
wetlands was an open circular clearing that we
referred to as "the spot". We would spend the
days there drinking and smoking weed and taking
in the sun.
A friend's brother who had spent some years in
the jungles of Vietnam set up human traps in various
places surrounding "the spot". He let it be known to
people that he had set up a series of deadly snares
in that section of the woods so they'd better stay clear.
No one knew for sure if he was serious about them but
no one ventured in just the same. He told us where these
human traps were set and we'd navigate around them to
get to our little oasis away from it all.
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3. "Psycho Bobby"
Bobby ran a motorcycle gang.
Drug and alcohol fueled he would spin out
of control becoming confrontational and dangerous
and frankly, scary.
I was thirteen and for some reason he looked
at me as his little brother. Maybe it was because I
was the only one who could talk him out of going into
one of his infamous rampages which earned him the title
of "Psycho Bobby". That's the name I would hear people
call him when he was not around.
I didn't fear him. I just felt somehow sad for him and the
the uncontrollable nature that possessed him.
When we used to hang out together we would laugh a
lot and he'd let his guard down.
As the years went by things got crazier for him and I lost
contact. His parents and siblings moved to an undisclosed
address in order to avoid him and the trouble that always
followed.
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4. "The Crossing"
Billy liked to test our limits and would
often push the envelope. Like the night he killed
his engine as he drove across the train tracks just
as an oncoming train was approaching. I got out
of the car immediately having already survived
two other car wrecks he and I had been in. He was
fifteen and I was thirteen at the time of the accidents.
First he had totaled his Mom's car and then his
sister's. He was my best friend but I couldn't play along
anymore. He was living like someone who knew his life
would be cut short. And sadly, as fate would have it but not on this particular night, it
was. I'll never forget the adventure and laughter you
brought to everybody Billy McGuire.
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5. "Midnight Barn"
When I was eleven I spent one summer at
Rehobeth Beach Delaware with a large
family. They ran an antique business
and sold them out of several barns that they
owned. The kids and I would spend the
mornings visiting homes of people who we
had heard by word of mouth had antiques
to sell. Later we would greet people as they
made their way along the country road
directing them to the barns full of antiques.
After a long day's work of buying and selling
we would all pile into the oldest sister's '67
Impala convertible, and with the top down
sitting on the ridge of the back seat we would
head out to the beach for a late afternoon of fun
and play at the beach.
Back at their house when we'd finished dinner
we would roam the barns and take some items
outside and look at them in the moonlight. Under
the big night sky we'd sit and wonder aloud where
all these things came from and who had owned them
and what had become of them.
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6. "Black Swamp Farm"
On weekends I would head out to this farm where there was
always some sort of partying going on. Loads of people drinking
beer and smoking weed. Skynard or The Allman Brothers blasting
out of the speakers placed in the open windows. Back behind the
house the Putexant River ran through huge and slow moving.
It was all very nice until Angel Dust became the drug of choice.
All those friendly people suddenly became creepy and the more
they smoked the creepier they became.
And then out of nowhere appeared this mysterious scary girl.
None of us knew her or anything about her but she set her sights
on my friend Johnny Pinkert and later it was revealed that she had
a plan to set him up to do her dirty work. She was tough and would
quickly size you up upon meeting her for the first time.
The two became an item and she played Johnny into a jealous
triangle between him and the air force officer she was married to.
Then one Angel Dust afternoon she brought her husband
along with her out to the farm. She pulled Johnny aside and somehow
convinced him to kill her husband. Then she would collect the Insurance
money and they'd be together forever.
The story went that Johnny, who had never been in trouble with the
law shot this husband of hers in front of everyone hanging out at the
farm that day. Nobody there wanted to turn him in or see their friend
go to jail so they helped him dispose of the body along the banks of the
river. After days of his disappearance friends, family and the air force
knew something terrible had happened. Meanwhile the wife cried her
crocodile tears on the local TV begging for someone to come forth with
information about her husband's whereabouts.
Eventually somebody fessed up and they found the dead man's hidden
body. It became a national story that played out for about a year until they
sent Johnny and the girl to prison for life. The others involved got five or
more years behind bars. So many lives were wrecked in the wake of this
crime, that summer that Angel Dust drifted down on Black Swamp Farm.
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7. "Tree House Days"
In my neighborhood of jocks, rednecks, and greasers
we were the misfits. Peter, Danny and myself.
Rural Maryland was the backdrop.
We did our own thing. Building cabins tucked away in
the backwoods of an abandoned farm.Underground forts
that would have tunnels from one yard to the next.
Always exited and planning out the next project.
And then there was our ultimate construction. The tree house.
My family's yard bordered on the woods and on it was a massive
Elm tree. We built it so high up that no one
dared climb it for fear of falling.
But the three of us could scale a tree in a heartbeat and we had
no fear of this monster. It was ours and we alone could look down
over the whole neighborhood. A view only the three of us (and the birds)
ever saw.
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8. "Fully Loaded"
Danny was ten and I was eight the year we found the key
to his perpetually absent father's gun collection.
We retreated to Danny's basement bedroom, eating peanut
butter and jelly sandwiches as we removed the pistols and
all the amo, spreading it out on his bed, then loading the
cartridges .
Danny was already a hunter and knew how to handle firearms
having spent time with his father stalking deer and other game
in the nearby woods.
I would often spend the night there and we when would get up as
early as we could and head out deep into the woods.
Wearing my Baltimore Colts jacket, holding tight to the bottom
so that I could carry the German Luger, the Midnight Special and
some other revolver who's name escapes me now.
We would head to this ravine where there were two Fiat 500's
that had been dumped there. Shooting with glee,round after round
into the sheet metal until we ran out of bullets. The we'd head back
to the house and quietly replace the pistols before his mom would notice.
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9. "Glass City"
Next to this dirt road that was part of a farm that was rented
out by a local biker gang was a little spring we kids called
Glass City. Years of pitching empty beer bottles at the rocks
had formed layers of broken glass at the bottom and it
shimmered quite beautifully we thought when the sun (or moon)
shown down on it.
The bikers didn't seem to mind us hanging out there and barely
even glanced at us kids as the dozen or so of them blew by us heading
to or from their clubhouse. Their old Harley's and Triumphs rattling
and snorting and kicking up dust as they passed us.
Skipping school, surrounded by my friends, passing the day away,
it seemed then that life couldn't get much better.
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