Annoying the Elderly

I'm sitting here listening to the One Hit Wonders from 1978. God, they were so young then with hopes of being the next thing. The reason I hopped on to this was that Sammy Johns, who did the sugary Chevy Van song, died. See how a life of vile sin is answered with death?

Again, listening to these old songs is great for bringing up old stories.

Barry M. was an entertaing friend. He was the type of kid you could goad into doing anything if you mentioned how “fun” it would be to do. When we had our two weeks off during the blizzard of '78, we hung around where we always hung around, the mall plaza on Armistice Blvd. I guess we were the part of the original mall rats then. We were rats in every sense of the word. We brought nothing positive to that property. We were chased out by various store managers who shouted after us, “Don't you brats have anything better to do?” Again, we were bored and causing trouble was exciting.

The plaza always cleared their parking lot after each snow and the blizzard was no different. This time though, the mountains of snow reached perhaps fifth-teen feet high. It was like scrambling along the Himalayas when we played in them.

Though, that got boring soon enough.

We were sitting ontop of one mountain of snow by the Egan's Laundromat when I, and Jimmy, noticed that old crone who used to manage it at nights. She looked to us like she was 98 years old. She was as ornery, wrinkly and bitchy as old women come. She never let us inside of her establishment knowing we were up to no good.

Barry was with us. He was grabbing two foot round boulders of snow and tossing them onto the street beside us. They'd splatter with a great poomf and Barry had thrown about ten of them into the street to create a pile of snow other cars started to drive around. I guess one of us, I forget who, suggested to Barry that he should get a boulder of snow, walk up to Egan's, let the automatic door open and toss the boulder as far as he could inside.

So, Barry, being ready to prove “he wasn't scared,” grabbed a good sized rock of snow and ambled off towards the store. The old crone inside was behind her counter and her sight of the door was blocked by a line of dry cleaning inside their plastic bags. Barry walked up to the door and flung in the snow boulder. We were about 20 yards back, hidden in the snow piles and had a bird's eye view as the boulder smashed onto the floor of the store, scattering quite far and that surprised us.

We busted out laughing. The old lady came running to the door but Barry had hidden himself rather quickly behind some parked cars. She then got the shovel and dug out the inside of her store, then mopped up the snow melt.

All good jokes have to be repeated you know. Barry came back to us and we told him to wait about 15 minutes before he did it again.

So, the second time he goes up, with a bigger boulder that he's having a hard time carrying. The door opens and this one doesn't go quite as far inside the store but it smashes with greater effect. He fled as fast as he could into the maze of parked cars while the old girl comes running out screaming obscenities. It was hilarious to hear an old women shout out, “You little FUCK! If I catch you I'm going to break both your arms!!”

We were well hidden and she had not a clue to us in the snow piles though. I'm surprised because we were laughing so hard that it struck me odd that she couldn't hear us.

So, we wait about 20 minutes before we send Barry in again. He gets the largest boulder he can find and again, has trouble carrying it to the front door. As he approached the door, this old women, who apparently had slipped out the back door and came around the dark side of the building, comes flying around the corner.  She moved at a startling speed that old people can sometimes have. It was more than fast enough because she grabbed his hair with a good yank.

We saw this and realized one of our own had been KIA. She shook Barry's head like a dog shakes a Raggedy Ann doll in it's mouth. Oh was she pissed! What did we do? We bravely abandoned Barry to his fate.

The next day, we found out she dragged him into the store, by his hair, and tortured him this way till he coughed up his Mom's phone number. Mom showed up, Mrs McK., a woman we learned to give wide berth to as her temper was glorious, and she shoved, prodded and forced her son into the car.

He wasn't bothered by this at all, as he was constantly being inflicted with his Mom's punishments. It was just another day at the McK's house.

Barry grew up eventually, married, had two kids and a decent career. His life was cut short when died suddenly last summer from an embolism.

Barry was never a “pre-criminal” He was just another rambunctious boy from our crowd. He gave us some great laughs from the stuff he'd pull from time to time. His greatest feat was getting two of the four Pawtucket Fire stations to show up at a fire he started. He found a pile of carbon paper, which flares like gunpowder when lit, behind the old Atlantic Mill store at the plaza. Too bad it was windy day as the little balls of fire managed to be sucked into the open door of the warehouse. No biggie, the fire was knocked down in minutes but the smoke from it was incredible.

 

 

C'mon. If this was doing your dry cleaning, you'd toss more than snowballs at her!