cheesesticks and paddles

Every neighborhood has a proverbial bad influence in its midst. Ours was Barry Dempsey. He was a year older than me, short, chubby and nothing short of hilarious. He was the sort of guy you smoked pot with for the first time, the sort you knew would never do a whole lot, but when he did, it was epic. In retrospect, nearly every action of criminal mischief I ever participated in was at his side.

One of my first memories of Barry was walking home from Loge Elementary school with him. He pulled out a camel non-filtered and started smoking with the ease of seasoned professional.

Barry: "I got paddled today. You know how we supposed to get three cheesesticks? The lunchlady only gave me two. I said, 'Where's my other cheesestick?' She said, 'You don't need another one.'.

Ruel: "That got you paddled?"

Barry: "Nah, then I said, BITCH, GIVE ME MY FUCKING CHEESESTICK!. That got me paddled."

I was in fifth grade.

By his own words, when Barry got bored he became destructive. The summer of 1994 must have a been a doozy of a boring summer. Barry unleashed a torrent of vandalism the likes of which had never been seen. His parents didn't pay a lot of attention to him and his house was easy to sneak out of. This led to his new found love for the art of neighborhood rearrangement. This was where he walked around the neighbor hood at night and took items from one home and place them in the appropriate location at a home down the street. He was especially good with clothes on clotheslines. He would remove somebody's laundry, take it down the street and clothespin it up on somebody else's line. Yard ornaments and decorative lighting were also always good targets.

We had an old junior high school near my home which had been abandoned. On one night of sneaking out, we made our way to the petrol-pantry where we knew "Cack" was working and would sell us cigarettes. It didn't really matter if "Cack" was working or night as Barry was a master shoplifter, but we were fairly honest. We made our way back to the junior high to sit on the steps and smoke. I looked in the distance and saw the cherry red ember of Barry's camel hovering in the night.

"Hey you guys, come here, I've got an idea."

That spelled trouble.

The old junior high was built into a hill. From the top of the hill you could climb onto the roof of a storage building that stood above the basketball courts.

"Help me get this rock onto the roof."

It was real heavy so it took three of us to hoist this huge rock up.

"Now go stand back and watch the light."

Above the basketball court was a dusk to dawn light. We heard some grunting and thuds as Barry rolled the boulder across the roof. He positioned the rock above the light and gave it a push. The rock tumbled down and decimated the dusk to dawn light. Now it was about 2 in the morning in a small Indiana town. The only noise was crickets chirping until that rock hit. A small boom accompanied by a fireworks show as a shower of sparks flew across the night sky filled the air.

I looked up and Barry was gone. He could always run pretty damn fast when the need arose, despite being a pack a day fat kid. Slowly all the nights in the neighborhood began to come on. We bugged out.

Barry's dad had an assortement of hot rods. You know, tricked out cars and trucks. Needing a vacation his folks took off and left him alone for the weekend. Naturally, we all spent the weekend at Barry's house. It was a Saturday evening, none us could drive yet and we were trapped in house with no parents.

"Hey guys, I've got an idea."

Uh oh.

Barry: "Let's go cruise green, we'll take the hot rod." (Green = greenriver road, a big strech surrounded by shopping malls in a larger town near us where bored midwestern kids would go on the weekend, getting to go there was a treat)

Ruel: "YES! That's genius, but we'll have to find someone with a license to drive us."

Barry: "Nah, I'll drive, after all, it's my hot rod."

I was 14, he was 15. He had a learner's permit so maybe that counted for something.

After a fabulous lawless night, we awoke the next morning to the sound of a lawnmower. "WTF? Dempsey's mowing grass?"

No, it turned out that Barry woke up, quickly became bored. He went outside and turned on the garden hose and watered sections of the garden creating a mudpit. We walked out to see him driving the riding the lawnmower (which sank a little more each time) through the mudpit of the garden.

"What are doing?"

"I'm muddin' the rider."

Genius.

Barry eventually found the snort, or the snort found him and things sort of when downhill from there. I ran into him once a few years ago but he wasn't the same guy.