Chapter 7, Brush With The Law

During the summer vacation between my Junior and Senior year, I hitchhiked from Sacramento to Big Lake Minnesota to spend the summer on a farm owned by a friend of my brother Kenneth’s. It was an exciting adventure for a 16-year-old youth from the city. I met many interesting people on the way, including an artist from San Francisco, a truck driver who took me from Ames Iowa to a remote truck stop near Minneapolis, and a wealthy man driving a Rolls Royce, who picked me up from the truck stop and drove me into Minneapolis. It was raining and “Big Girls Don’t Cry” by the Four Seasons was blasting on his radio all the way. It was my first time ever in a luxury car and that Rolls was smooth and heavy, and a ride that I will never forget. On the farm I helped with all the chores and actually got to “pitch hay” onto the wagon after it was baled. I met Vinnie Ann, the daughter of our hostess, while on the farm. Vinnie Ann eventually ended up marrying Alan Henderson (no relation), the base guitarist for Van Morrison’s band “Them” a couple of years later. When I returned home after the summer, our family had moved yet again, this time, near Broadway, only a few blocks from where we started in the projects 12 years before.

At the “Broadway” house, near the corner of Harkness and 2nd Avenue I was, once again, in the C. K. McClatchy school district and would complete my senior year at McClatchy.

We only stayed in the “Broadway” house for about 3 months before we moved again to another “Broadway” house just a few blocks away. This home was located on the N.E. corner of 17th St. and Burnett Way, very close to the Tower Theater (where years previously I had attended many Saturday Matinees) and record store, on Broadway. I spent many hours in the record store, in a booth listening to 45 rpm’s of Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Buddy Holly, and others. I was re-introduced to my old “first kiss” Valerie S., who was also attending school at McClatchy. She was as nice as ever, but we did not connect other than a cordial relationship. My new friends here were Alex E., Juanita H. (my girlfriend all through my Senior year), and Dave M. I also kept a close relationship with Bill L., and we got together very often. Alex was the son of an engineer who had emigrated from Russia. He was the studious type, but kept up with Bill and I in all of our adventures.

We swam at the Slough House (near Elk Grove), explored the gold country around “Hang Town” where we walked the wooden sidewalks and talked like westerners of old. "Howdy Ma’am," while tipping our hats. We explored many old gold mines which, of course, were very dangerous in hindsight, but we were young and invincible at the time. Bill, Al, Juanita, and I spent many long Friday nights drinking and playing cards until the wee hours of the morning. We would “drag” K Street on Friday nights with an occasional stop at Mel’s drive-in. In 1961, that was the “thing to do.” Down K street to about 8th or 9th, then south to L street and back, past the Capitol Building to 16th street and then North to K street and do it all over again. We would spend hours burning gasoline (at 21 cents/ gal.) this way.

One time, Bill and I had borrowed my brother’s 48’ Ford while he was in San Francisco visiting our Uncle George (actually, Uncle George was only a family friend). Bill and I had been out late and we ran out of gas about a mile from his mom’s house/shop (she was a beautician) near 24th and G Street. We decided to siphon some gas from a parked car but we were discovered by the owner who chased us all over town for about an hour or two. The police got into the chase, and we narrowly escaped being imprisoned. While being chased by police who were in a car, I turned down a dark alley and leaped a 6-foot fence, landing on the other side, in someone’s back yard. Within seconds, the police had made the turn and stopped on the other side of the fence wondering where I had disappeared.  They were too close for me to chance making a move, so I stayed very still until they moved a short distance away. By this time, the owners of the house were aroused and I had to make a hasty retreat through several other yards to get away from the area.  Eventually, I worked my way back to Bill’s mother’s house only to find that Bill was already there, having escaped through a friend’s restaurant. Now all we had to do was figure out how to get my brother’s car back. The police, as we found out later, had impounded it.

I came up with a workable plan, which we put into action the following morning. I called the police department and reported the car “stolen.” They asked me to come down to the station to make out a report, which I did. They were not fooled by my story, but nothing could be proven so they had to let me go. They wanted $120 to release the car from the impound lot, which was an astronomical sum at the time. I called Kenneth in San Francisco and told him I had a buyer for his car for $60. He said “Sell It.” When Kenneth came back to Sacramento we had gathered together the necessary $60 that we gave to him, and we let the police keep the car. Whew!! We got lucky again.  I would graduate from High School after all.

                                         My Yearbook Photo

An interesting event happened at about this time.  I don't remember the exact date, but if you need to find out I'm sure you could find records of it in the San Francisco newspapers.  I was on a Greyhound bus on my way to visit my Uncle George in "Frisco" and was just rounding the curve that leads to the Oakland Bay Bridge.  I looked across the bay in the direction of the Golden Gate Bridge and saw a huge red ball behind the bridge and half hidden by the cliffs.  I would estimate that the ball was several hundred feet in diameter.  I thought it was very unusual and didn't give it much more thought, but when I arrived at my Uncle's apartment on Natoma Street, it was announced on the radio that the red ball had "shot up into the air at fantastic speed and disappeared."

Next: Meeting My Grandparents