Don’t ask what made me think of this, it just popped into my head this afternoon. Since I am spending a lot of time healing, I end up with a lot of time to think, and remember things. By definition, remembering is all about the past, right? Well, if I go back far enough, I remember probably one of the dumbest things I ever did. It scared the daylights out of me at the time, and is kind of funny, but it was really dumb! Good thing my parents never found out about this!
My really early years
My family lived in Rosslyn, Virginia, right across Key Bridge from Georgetown University, where I was born (in a hospital there, not in a classroom!). We lived in a small apartment, right next door to the second most important people in my life, my second parents, Evelyn and Andy. I was told later that Ted Koppel also liven in that building, but he was a few years older than me, so I doubt we ever noticed each other! Somewhere there is a picture of me as a two-year old riding a tricycle naked down the halls of the apartment building. Why? I have no clue. That was surely dumb, but it does not measure up to my big one later!
Three years after I was born, my first sister was born (in the same hospital). Now, the small apartment we lived in was way too crowded, so we moved to Falls Church and got into a two bedroom apartment. That did not last very long either. I think we stayed there until I started kindergarten. Then we moved into a real (small) three bedroom house in Dunn Loring, Virginia. All of these places were less than 10 miles apart, but to a kid, those were huge distances.
My second sister was born while in that house as well. We stayed in that house for about three years, until shortly after I started the fourth grade.
Now for the dumb part
Before we moved away from Dunn Loring, I had quite a few adventures, all good for a growing boy to have at that age. I had also stared my wandering ways with a couple of friends, Mike and Rodney, who lived up the street. We all went to the same elementary school, all of two blocks from home, so we hung out. We used to wander through the forests (something not common here in Texas, Virginia trees are really BIG (especially when you are that young). We would walk for miles into the woods and explore every creek, train track, and critter path we could find. This was long before developers decided to build homes or “luxury apartment buildings” on every square foot of undeveloped land in every city on the planet! (How come no one builds normal apartment buildings anymore?)
On one adventure I remember stepping on a stone in a creek, and it moved while I was standing on it. We had discovered a snapping turtle about a foot across. (We told my dad about that and he tracked it down and relocated it some distance away. He wanted his son and all of his friends to have all their fingers as they grew up!
One day, the three of us were wandering in the woods not far from home when we ran into a roll of what must have been telephone wire. In those days, telephone wires were strung from (wait for it) telephone poles! Some how, the phone company folks had left a huge roll of the stuff in the woods. Why, well it must be a telephone company way to get rid of stuff they do not want. In my day, I have found old rotary telephones, switching equipment, and more wire in the woods. Some of that stuff I took home to see if I could make something out of it, the rest, we just cataloged in case we ever needed it in the future! (The phone company left me a really nice pole against my fence here in Texas. I really wish they would stop doing that.
Decisions, decisions!
Now what can three kids do with a roll of wire?
Well, Rodney and I were pretty tame, so we thought about climbing up a tree and stringing up or own private phone system. Way too dull for Mike, who was something of a trouble maker anyway. Mike heard cars driving by on a street nearby and came up with a much better plan. Twang
Mike’s idea was to tie the wire between two trees on opposite sides of the road, and the right height to catch radio antennas that most cars had. We would sit there and watch the fun as cars drove by! By golly, that did sound like fun, so that is what we set out to do.
Now, this wire was not very thick, but it was thick enough to be pretty strong, so we unrolled the entire roll to see if it would be long enough (it was) them started off by pulling it out of the woods to the street. We pulled one end across the street and sat there as a few cars drove by. The wire was on the ground, so nothing happened. We were just taking a break.
Now, we tied one end in a tree nearby, and made sure the wire was securely attached to the tree. Then we ran across the street and dragged the other end to another candidate tree (more woods there as well). We waited until it seemed like no traffic was coming, then pulled the other end up and tied it to the tree at what we thought was the right height.
Guess what! It worked. We watched about three cars go by and heard a loud “twang” as antennas hit the wire. We were sure nobody had a clue what happened to their antenna, they could not see that silly wire. Success! Then disaster!
There were farms in the area where we lived, and most farmers drove pickup trucks. Quite a few of them had gas tanks mounted in the bed of the truck they would use to refuel their tractors. They would drive to town and fill up the 100 gallon or so tank to use for this purpose.
Each of those tanks had a pump nozzle and fuel line attachment mounted on top of the tank, which stuck up above everything on the truck.
Can you see this coming? We could not!
Along came one of those durned trucks. When it hit the wire, something we never expected happened. The wire did hit the antenna, just like we planned, then it hit the pump attachment on the tank. Now, it would have been nice if the wire had simply snapped, but that did not happen. Instead, as the three of us watched with eyeballs bulging out of our heads, the entire tank assembly came ripping out of the bed of the truck and headed up into the air, pretty high as I recall! It crashed into the middle of the street and broke apart, spilling whatever gas was in the thing all over the road. I do believe the wire did end up breaking after all this happened.
Now, if this had been a Hollywood movie, the tank would have exploded incinerating all of us, including the truck driver. Actually, if it had been a Hollywood movie, the tank would have landed on another car and that one would have blown up as well! Instead, it just made a lot of noise, and definitely got the attention of the truck driver, who slammed on his brakes to figure out what happened! Living another day
By rights, we should have been caught and paid a price for being such idiots. Instead, we took off running through the woods as fast as we could. We were certain the truck driver did not see us, and we were not going to be there if he looked around! We were smart enough not to run directly home, but ran toward school, through the woods, and came out near the playground, where we rested and acted like we had been there forever. Later we walked calmly home with no one the wiser.
A few days later, we went back to the scene of the crime, and there was no trace of anything. The wire was gone, even the parts tied into the trees. All the tank’s parts were gone as well. Even the gas had dried up. Boy, that was disappointing. There was nothing to show what we had done, so the story would be hard to prove. So we let it die into our minds, only to surface almost 60 years later in my head. Kids will be kids, right?
Kids will do dumb things.
Some of that is about exploring the limits of life, and that often involves doing dumb things. It is amazing some of us live to even grow up! Boys are definitely more likely to do dumb things than girls, we all know that. We could have hurt someone with our stunt, something I did think about at some point in my life. It ranks up there are one of the first really dumb things I ever did. Sadly, it was not the last! I will save that for another day, when the urge for confession again strikes me!
Wonder if Rodney or Mike remember any of this?
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