Chapter 3

 

Kid of the 50ties

Chapter 3

      Back in 1948, during the summer, I hitchhiked to Cape May New Jersey. My brother jimmy used to go to a shooting gallery and I used love to ride the roller coaster. I stayed with him for a week and then hitchhiked back. I didn’t like the traffic circles on the roads because it was easy to get lost. My brother Jim taught me a drive that summer.  He took me out by the local church where there was no local traffic around to drive his 31 chevy until I got familiar with clutch and shifting gears.  The next day, over at his friend George Mitchell’s house Jimmy gave me the key and told me to drive it around the corner and park it under a tree because it started to rain.  I started it up and when I drove around the corner. I didn’t loosen my grip on the steering wheel and Chevy jumped the curb and hit a telegraph pole guide wire.  My brother Jimmy and George Mitchell ran to see what happened and then started laughing loudly.  I was scared and when jimmy saw the flat tire, he stopped laughing.  He and George jacked up the car and took off the wheel. With a stern look, Jimmy told me to take the tire to the gas station and get it fixed.  It took over an hour to do this. My first solo driving lesson didn’t turn out so well

          My next grand experience happened when my brother Jim, Jerry Mitchell and myself chased a duck around the golf course pond for an hour.  We finally caught it stuffed it into a  bag and took it on a camping trip to cook it that night.  I had to pick all the feathers of it.  We then tried to cook it over a fire for about 1 ½ hours.  But it didn’t cook so we threw it away and went home. Hahaha.

My best friend Richard McKeever and I strung some cans on a string, and while the customer was in the store, tied the cans to the frame under his car.  We then climbed a fire escape a local building and waited for him to come out.  When the guy came out, Started and his car, and started driving away the cans made such a racket that he pulled over and looked under his car to see what the noise was.  We heard him cussing as he drove off with cans is still rattling. We laughed till tears filled our eyes. Another hahaha!!

      In the spring of 1950, My Mother informed us that Jimmy, who had just turned 17, has stolen the payroll of the company he worked for and with his friend left town.  She later found out that he had gone to North Carolina, where they bought two motorcycles and headed for California. They stayed out there in California around Long Beach for about a year.  My mother informed him in the spring of 1951 that he had to come home and sign up for the draft.  He showed up about two weeks later driving a cool 46 Ford two door sedan. That winter during Christmas Break from boarding school I got my learner’s permit and Jimmy taught me how to drive.   Jimmy made me drive around downtown Philadelphia traffic at night. I still remember him sitting in the back seat telling me to look in the rearview mirror every three or 4 seconds and kicking it every time he didn’t see my eyes in the mirror. Later on, after my 16^th birthday in October of 52, my mom took me for my test. I passed the written test but I flunked the driving test.  Ha ha ha, she was so mad and said nobody in the family had ever flunked a driving test.

I flunked the test because I let the car roll back a little on a hill while removing the emergency brake. I passed the driving test on the second try and got my license. The spring of 53 Jimmy got called up the draft.  By then he had sold his 46 Ford and bought 48 Harley motorcycle.  When he signed up for boot camp, he left his Harley stored in the garage.  He put a piece of paper between the ignition points to keep anybody from riding it. I soon decided that I was going to ride it. I had gained a little knowledge about cars in the last two years helping Jimmy with his cars. When the Harley wouldn’t start, I checked for ignition spark and found the paper in the points.  When I removed it the Harley started right up. I moved it from the garage, and started down the driveway.  When I reached the street, I tried to turn right but it wouldn’t turn and I crossed the street and dumped the bike in the neighbor’s front yard.  So much for my first Harley ride but I learned a lifelong lesson, always lean the bike when you turn it.  Later that summer the lesson would become a reality. Jimmy, after coming home for a three-day pass, returned to find that some of his possessions had been stolen.  It caused him to go AWOL and they caught him and put him in the Brig.  Jimmy called and asked if I could pick his motorcycle up at the Fort Belvoir Virginia base storage yard and ride it home. To a sixteen-year-old boy it was the adventure of a lifetime.  I hitchhiked down to Fort Belvoir Virginia and picked up the motorcycle and rode it back home and stored it in the garage.

   The summer of 1953 I was in between my sophomore and junior year in high school and I didn’t see my brother Jimmy again until the fall of 1957. He refused to go to Korea, so they put him in Lompoc Federal Prison for the next two years.

    I spent four years at Campion Jesuit High School between September of 1951 and the spring of 1955. My parents drove me from Phila. Pa. to the small town of Prairie du Chien Wis. because they thought I would run away but I came to love the place very much as my home. It was strict but I learned my values.  The 1^st 3 months I was at Campion, I was very lonesome. It was a boring but good life. My one memory there was always looking across the Mississippi River, which ran next to the school grounds, and wanting to cross over and see what was out there on the other side. I eventually would in the summer of 1955.

       In 1953, my oldest brother Hugh, just home from the Navy, told the story about being in a poker game on a ship at sea and of three armed masked sailors coming into the hold of the ship and robbing the sailors of $3,000. They were never caught because it was illegal to gamble on a ship. He helped my parents relocate to South Miami Florida where my mom started a fancy women’s clothing store called “The Cruzana Shop”.