Rites of Passage
Teenagers do stupid things. As a teenager I did stupid things. Psychologists have theories about why, but I can’t imagine anyone knowing for sure.
Jewish kids that I knew had Bar Mitzvahs and Bat Mitzvahs at the age of 13. Taking months of preparation, if not years, they are perhaps the only formal rites of passage from childhood to adulthood that seem to remain in Western cultures with any kind of rigour, and Jewish communities support this age-related graduation to responsible adult behavior wholeheartedly. The rest of us muddle along, inventing our own rites as we grow older. Here’s an example:
Like teenagers do, myself and four friends got it in our heads to go out on the town on the forth of July back in 1966. Basically what that meant for each of us at 17 years old was to drive around aimlessly looking for other friends who were doing the same thing.
John Cutrone’s family had a 1965 Mercury Comet. In fact they had two. They were horrible dumpy little cars with 6 cylinder engines and vinyl seats that stuck to you on hot, humid summer nights like those you encounter in Ohio in July. Stick shift on the column, no air conditioning, basic everything. Horrible, boring. But he managed to get one for our night out so at least we “had wheels”.
And to make up for the dumpy car, Cutrone was a character. Four of us had gone camping on Pelee Island in Lake Erie earlier in the summer. Pelee Island is Canadian territory and is well known as a destination for pheasant hunting when it’s the season for that. They make wine there, too, that tastes like Grapette with a dash of Listerine in it. As we were driving along a country road Cutrone spotted a pheasant crossing in front of us. He immediately swerved into the pheasant, killing it instantly and we ate barbecued pheasant that night at our campsite.
At the small building that housed the Canadian Customs office he had noticed a huge Canadian flag on a flagpole ascending from the middle of its roof. Although we discouraged him he really wanted that flag with its big Maple Leaf dead center. When we were leaving the island and heading for the ferry we passed the Customs station and the flag was gone. “Oh shit,” we all thought and started to grill him. Somehow he’d got on the roof, hauled down the flag, and to make sure we weren’t found with it, packaged it up and mailed it home from the post office next door to the Customs office.
He set fire alarms off at school. He put freshwater mussels under the rug in the library and stomped on them. What a stench a few days later. He made moonshine that we took to “away” football games. He finally got caught after another school-based stunt and ended up installed at an all-boys Catholic high school where he got “on track” pretty quickly. Years later he became a bank manager.
He wasn’t a bad kid, just mischievous. He had a good heart. I remember him telling my grandmother that he would light a candle and say a prayer at Holy Heart Catholic church for my grandfather shortly after he passed away.
Anyway, that forth of July evening, Cutrone was at the helm of the dumpy little Comet while myself, Bill Brauning, Dave Altekruse and Hoppy Howard rode along. We each had some money for eats and more importantly, we had a couple of bags of fireworks---cherry bombs, Silver Salutes, M-80’s, screech owl rockets, a metal pipe to use as a launcher and some tin cans. We started off early---maybe 5 PM.
To see who we could find prowling around out there we hit the drive-ins first---The Hungry I in Cuyahoga Falls, The Skyway and Swenson’s in Akron, and finally ended up in a teenage feeding frenzy at The Short Stop in Kent. In those days all those places employed carhops. The Skyway hired guys only, and at both Skyway and Swenson’s they had to run to the cars to get the orders and run back with trays full of food. The Hungry I has been gone for decades, The Short Stop became a used car lot, but Skyway and Swenson’s are still there, Swenson’s having expanded to at least two more locations when it’s Galley Boy cheeseburger was declared America’s number one burger in 1999 by Forbes Magazine.
We ran into folks we knew at each location, settling down at The Short Stop for their signature Butter Burgers, fries and Cokes at about 10:30 in the evening. Then the party started, our cock-eyed rite of passage for the fourth of July, 1966.
We drove to a nearby wooded area on the outskirts of Kent. There we started setting off the M-80’s, Silver Salutes and cherry bombs, lighting them, putting a can on each of them and seeing how far they would hurtle skywards. Before long we were lighting them and throwing them like grenades, first at trees, then at imaginary assailants.
Back in the car we headed towards Stow, firing rockets out the back window with the pipe launcher. We turned off Kent Road, drove behind Holy Heart School and stopped by the Rectory---the priest’s residence. There in a second floor window a fan was turning slowly. Altekruse loaded the launcher with a rocket. Hoppy lit its fuse.
It took off with a frantic fizzling and screeching, arced high and came down directly into the fan where it lodged in the blades and exploded. The fan stopped working and we, the Lords of the Flies, took off back towards Kent on Fishcreek Road, crazier than ever. As we passed through areas where there were a few houses we could see people lighting fireworks in their yards. This fueled our desire to light more of ours and to fire more rockets.
We made it to Kent, then Brady Lake, then onwards towards Ravenna on a country road past forests and farms that was leading us to West Branch State Park. Then we spotted it---a flashing beacon in the road warning of potholes or some construction activity. It was a red and yellow pillar type of thing with an orange light flashing on two sides. That was it---we had to have it. Cutrone stopped and I leapt out, grabbed the beacon and heaved it in the back seat with Altekruse, Brauning and Hoppy.
What possesses teenagers to do stuff like that? What the hell were we going to do with it? We drove along at a pretty good clip laughing frantically with the car lighting up, off and on, like a Christmas ornament.
We sped along that rural road in the darkness trying to figure out how to turn it off when we passed a police car going the other way. He’d obviously seen the flashing light and as we watched him slow and turn around to follow us the panic set in.
Cutrone floored the Comet but it was clear that it would be no match for the Plymouth cop car that would soon have us pulled over with the stolen beacon, some illegal fireworks, and five crazy teenagers inside.
But up ahead on the left there was a clearing that looked like a construction site of some sort. As we approached it, we could see it was a quarry. In the moonlight it was glistening---filled with water. So we screeched to a halt and Hoppy, who was the biggest and strongest one of us, leapt out of the car with the beacon and began hurling it at the ground, lifting it over his head and slamming it down to get the flashing to stop.
“Kill it, Hoppy!” Bill kept yelling. No luck.
Finally out of desperation he lifted it high in the air and threw it into the quarry. We watched as it hit the water and slowly sank, still flashing as it made its way to the bottom.
The cop never stopped to see what we were doing. We drove home silently, as exhausted as marathon runners after a race, our evening’s rites completed.
Sometimes I imagine that beacon is still flashing, lying on the bottom of a quarry in rural Ohio under twenty feet of water.
© Kent Jones 2016
Teenagers do stupid things. As a teenager I did stupid things. Psychologists have theories about why, but I can’t imagine anyone knowing for sure.
Jewish kids that I knew had Bar Mitzvahs and Bat Mitzvahs at the age of 13. Taking months of preparation, if not years, they are perhaps the only formal rites of passage from childhood to adulthood that seem to remain in Western cultures with any kind of rigour, and Jewish communities support this age-related graduation to responsible adult behavior wholeheartedly. The rest of us muddle along, inventing our own rites as we grow older. Here’s an example:
Like teenagers do, myself and four friends got it in our heads to go out on the town on the forth of July back in 1966. Basically what that meant for each of us at 17 years old was to drive around aimlessly looking for other friends who were doing the same thing.
John Cutrone’s family had a 1965 Mercury Comet. In fact they had two. They were horrible dumpy little cars with 6 cylinder engines and vinyl seats that stuck to you on hot, humid summer nights like those you encounter in Ohio in July. Stick shift on the column, no air conditioning, basic everything. Horrible, boring. But he managed to get one for our night out so at least we “had wheels”.
And to make up for the dumpy car, Cutrone was a character. Four of us had gone camping on Pelee Island in Lake Erie earlier in the summer. Pelee Island is Canadian territory and is well known as a destination for pheasant hunting when it’s the season for that. They make wine there, too, that tastes like Grapette with a dash of Listerine in it. As we were driving along a country road Cutrone spotted a pheasant crossing in front of us. He immediately swerved into the pheasant, killing it instantly and we ate barbecued pheasant that night at our campsite.
At the small building that housed the Canadian Customs office he had noticed a huge Canadian flag on a flagpole ascending from the middle of its roof. Although we discouraged him he really wanted that flag with its big Maple Leaf dead center. When we were leaving the island and heading for the ferry we passed the Customs station and the flag was gone. “Oh shit,” we all thought and started to grill him. Somehow he’d got on the roof, hauled down the flag, and to make sure we weren’t found with it, packaged it up and mailed it home from the post office next door to the Customs office.
He set fire alarms off at school. He put freshwater mussels under the rug in the library and stomped on them. What a stench a few days later. He made moonshine that we took to “away” football games. He finally got caught after another school-based stunt and ended up installed at an all-boys Catholic high school where he got “on track” pretty quickly. Years later he became a bank manager.
He wasn’t a bad kid, just mischievous. He had a good heart. I remember him telling my grandmother that he would light a candle and say a prayer at Holy Heart Catholic church for my grandfather shortly after he passed away.
Anyway, that forth of July evening, Cutrone was at the helm of the dumpy little Comet while myself, Bill Brauning, Dave Altekruse and Hoppy Howard rode along. We each had some money for eats and more importantly, we had a couple of bags of fireworks---cherry bombs, Silver Salutes, M-80’s, screech owl rockets, a metal pipe to use as a launcher and some tin cans. We started off early---maybe 5 PM.
To see who we could find prowling around out there we hit the drive-ins first---The Hungry I in Cuyahoga Falls, The Skyway and Swenson’s in Akron, and finally ended up in a teenage feeding frenzy at The Short Stop in Kent. In those days all those places employed carhops. The Skyway hired guys only, and at both Skyway and Swenson’s they had to run to the cars to get the orders and run back with trays full of food. The Hungry I has been gone for decades, The Short Stop became a used car lot, but Skyway and Swenson’s are still there, Swenson’s having expanded to at least two more locations when it’s Galley Boy cheeseburger was declared America’s number one burger in 1999 by Forbes Magazine.
We ran into folks we knew at each location, settling down at The Short Stop for their signature Butter Burgers, fries and Cokes at about 10:30 in the evening. Then the party started, our cock-eyed rite of passage for the fourth of July, 1966.
We drove to a nearby wooded area on the outskirts of Kent. There we started setting off the M-80’s, Silver Salutes and cherry bombs, lighting them, putting a can on each of them and seeing how far they would hurtle skywards. Before long we were lighting them and throwing them like grenades, first at trees, then at imaginary assailants.
Back in the car we headed towards Stow, firing rockets out the back window with the pipe launcher. We turned off Kent Road, drove behind Holy Heart School and stopped by the Rectory---the priest’s residence. There in a second floor window a fan was turning slowly. Altekruse loaded the launcher with a rocket. Hoppy lit its fuse.
It took off with a frantic fizzling and screeching, arced high and came down directly into the fan where it lodged in the blades and exploded. The fan stopped working and we, the Lords of the Flies, took off back towards Kent on Fishcreek Road, crazier than ever. As we passed through areas where there were a few houses we could see people lighting fireworks in their yards. This fueled our desire to light more of ours and to fire more rockets.
We made it to Kent, then Brady Lake, then onwards towards Ravenna on a country road past forests and farms that was leading us to West Branch State Park. Then we spotted it---a flashing beacon in the road warning of potholes or some construction activity. It was a red and yellow pillar type of thing with an orange light flashing on two sides. That was it---we had to have it. Cutrone stopped and I leapt out, grabbed the beacon and heaved it in the back seat with Altekruse, Brauning and Hoppy.
What possesses teenagers to do stuff like that? What the hell were we going to do with it? We drove along at a pretty good clip laughing frantically with the car lighting up, off and on, like a Christmas ornament.
We sped along that rural road in the darkness trying to figure out how to turn it off when we passed a police car going the other way. He’d obviously seen the flashing light and as we watched him slow and turn around to follow us the panic set in.
Cutrone floored the Comet but it was clear that it would be no match for the Plymouth cop car that would soon have us pulled over with the stolen beacon, some illegal fireworks, and five crazy teenagers inside.
But up ahead on the left there was a clearing that looked like a construction site of some sort. As we approached it, we could see it was a quarry. In the moonlight it was glistening---filled with water. So we screeched to a halt and Hoppy, who was the biggest and strongest one of us, leapt out of the car with the beacon and began hurling it at the ground, lifting it over his head and slamming it down to get the flashing to stop.
“Kill it, Hoppy!” Bill kept yelling. No luck.
Finally out of desperation he lifted it high in the air and threw it into the quarry. We watched as it hit the water and slowly sank, still flashing as it made its way to the bottom.
The cop never stopped to see what we were doing. We drove home silently, as exhausted as marathon runners after a race, our evening’s rites completed.
Sometimes I imagine that beacon is still flashing, lying on the bottom of a quarry in rural Ohio under twenty feet of water.
© Kent Jones 2016