Thinking about Bill

I was thinking about my friend Bill today, and all the things we got into during our junior and senior years in High School.  Thinking back, it seems like we managed to cram a lot of adventure into a relatively small window of time.

Bill                                                       Robert

 Bill and I were using my brother’s car one night and we ran out of gas and barely managed to coast the vehicle in the parking lot of an apartment complex.  Like a couple of idiots, we decided to siphon gas from another vehicle that was parked directly next to us and we got discovered.  After a two hour chase on foot by the vehicle’s owner and a police squad car, we managed to escape but the car was impounded.  The next morning I reported the car stolen but the whole episode still cost us $60.

Another time we were spraying weeds, as a summer job, for a UC Davis professor who had an experimental field of 40 acres in Dixon, CA.  It was hot and we were shirtless, carrying heavy spray tanks around that field when we thought it would be fun to take some honey from the nearby beehives.  We boldly walked up to the hives and removed a lid, and the bees seemed to be ok with it.  I pulled up one of the slats that held the honeycomb, while Bill gently scraped the bees off the comb with his knife.  All was going well until I dropped the slat!  The bees were instantly aroused and the noise from their buzzing increased tenfold.  I told Bill not to run and for a few moments he held out, but he eventually took off down the road at a full sprint.  Within a few more moments I was alone at the hives and all the bees had taken off after Bill.  He was stung many, many times that day while I escaped unharmed.

On another adventure at Lake Tahoe we hiked up the ski slopes above the lake when they were devoid of snow.  On the way down, there were long stretches of open, sandy terrain and I began to run slowly but, as anyone who has run downhill knows, you have to be very careful that your legs don’t start cartwheeling.  I learned that the hard way and after a short stretch at an easy canter, I was completely out of control and looking for the easiest and softest way to stop my forward progress.  It came in the form of a large rock and a tree!  Ouch!  I did not escape unharmed that time.

 Another time we were in the storage yard of a “war surplus” store after hours when we shouldn’t have been there.  At one point we rounded a corner and came face to face with the proverbial “junk yard dog.”  For a moment we all froze; Bill, me, and the dog all standing there staring at each other.  I don’t remember what triggered our flight, but all three of us broke at the same time.  Bill and I headed for the nearest fence with the dog hot on our heels.  We managed to make it to the chain link fence and launch ourselves onto it just in the nick of time, with the dog snapping at us all the while.  Another lesson learned.

On yet another adventure we decided to take my dad’s boat on the Sacramento River while they were out of town.  We hitched it up and hauled it to the ramp and, again like a couple of idiots, we pushed it out into the current before we tried to start the engine!  We tried in vain to get it started, but no luck.  There we were drifting helplessly down the river, in danger of being run over by the many barges on their way up.  It was only with the help of another boater that we avoided a complete catastrophe.  We were towed back to the ramp where we promptly loaded the boat a put it back where it belonged.  We sure learned a lot of things together, Bill and I.