Getting Caught by Ricky

          From June of 1956 to June 1958 I was living with my grandparents on their farm in Isanti County, Minnesota.  I was eight and nine years old at the time.  On Saturdays, after the morning chores were completed, grandpa always drove us into Cambridge, in their 1949 Kaiser Deluxe Sedan.

He and grandma would run their individual errands as my uncle and I eventually ended up at the drug store to spend our allowances.  My weekly allowance of $1.00 allowed me to purchase a model airplane kit and a Cherry Cola from the drug store’s “soda jerk.”

          In the beginning, I could buy each weekend a model airplane and a comic book for 98-cents, including the tax.  The comic book was only a dime.  As time passed, the comic book price increased to 12-cents and I could not buy both for $1.00 so I began to buy more comic books and the Cherry Cola.  My grandma said I had to save the left over money so I could still buy a model and drink or model and comic book, if I had saved enough left over allowance.  I really didn’t like that plan, but I did not have a choice between alternatives.

          Thus, for two years I developed a strong attachment to reading and building my model airplanes.  Now jump forward to when I lived with my mother, stepfather, stepbrother, and my twin half-brother/sister at South Lake Tahoe.  The year is 1960.  I am 12 and we live in our second rented home on Birch Street.

3745 Birch Street, So. Lake Tahoe, CA

          The house is a two-story edifice of what I call a rather rustic design and matching interior.  Our allowed part of the upstairs is about one-third of the total area available.  Crammed into that small space were two cribs, end-to-end, and a set of bunk beds.  Back at the first rented house, I had the bottom bunk as my then fifteen year old step-brother, Eugene (Gene for short), insisted on the top bunk.  In this second house, at seventeen Gene was literally tired of climbing into bed and so claimed the bottom bunk.  The twelve-year old man that I was enjoyed climbing into my top bunk.

          The roof sloped steeply but not quite as steep as an “A-frame” constructed house.  This resulted in a shortage of space near the upstairs walls that were actually the sloping roof.  Nonetheless, Gene and I made two small “cubby holes” among the “rafters” for each of us to use as a study and personal area.  It was a tight fit for Gene, being bigger than I am.  I was considerably smaller but it was a tight fit for me also.

          Gene and I got along well.  We never fought, wrestled, or were loudly argumentative with each other.  I suspect that was mostly because he was so much bigger and intimidated me by his size and status of being in high school.  We each were very protective of our study areas and did not like the other to enter or touch anything in our areas.

          Our parents did not bring home cookies very often, but when they did the package contained about 40 or 50 of them.  Gene and I learned early on that the cookies (or other treats) would disappear quickly.  Therefore, to ensure we both got an equal share, when the cookies arrived home, mother would watch us divide them up between us.  She always held some back.  Gene and I took our cookies and “hid” them in our study areas so we could not steal each other’s treasure.

          One day, being the immature man that I was then, I ate my last stashed cookie but still craved more.  Since Gene was not home, I searched his study area and found his cookie stash.  I didn’t think he would miss one or two and that’s how many I ate of his.  I did it again a couple of days later and he noticed.  The next time our stashes were refilled, he raided mine and of course, I retaliated once too often.

          I came home from school one day and found that Gene had broken a part off two of my model airplanes.  I bought these same model airplanes with my precious left over allowance money back on the farm in Minnesota.  As such, they were important to me.  I thought that breaking my airplanes was going too far.  I mean I didn’t break anything of his—I just ate his cookies.  I quickly escalated the “war.”

          I loved model airplanes.  Gene loved his paint-by-numbers kits.  I took four of his small paint bottles and began to throw them out the upstairs window onto a pile of chunks of broken concrete on the vacant lot next door.  My step-father was home but I believed him to be inside doing something.  I was wrong.  He came in from outside and called to me asking if I was throwing anything out the window.  I lied and said I was not.

          He went back outside and I watched from the window as he began looking around the vacant lot but didn’t seem to find anything and left the area.  Apparently, he either remembered what it is like to be 12 and questioned by his father, or somehow he knew I was lying and was waiting for me to throw something again.  In any case, I still had two little paint bottles to throw so I did.  This time he called me down to him and asked what I threw out the window.

          At that statement, my guts and butt suddenly developed a serious case of major “pucker factor.”  I did not lie again.  I told him what I threw and when he asked why, I explained that Gene broke my models.  I was afraid he would spank me or do something similar but worse.  He didn’t.  He only told me not to lie to him again.  I never did and never needed to either.  I do not remember if I told him the whole truth though.  I am fairly sure I did not tell him I started the “war” by eating Gene’s cookies.  If I had, things might have turned out different for me.

© 4 February 2013

About the Author 

I was born in June of 1948 in Los Angeles, living first in Lawndale and then in Redondo Beach. Just prior to turning 8 years old in 1956, I began living with my grandparents on their farm in Isanti County, Minnesota for two years during which time my parents divorced.

When united with my mother and stepfather two years later in 1958, I lived first at Emerald Bay and then at South Lake Tahoe, California, graduating from South Tahoe High School in 1966. After three tours of duty with the Air Force, I moved to Denver, Colorado where I lived with my wife and four children until her passing away from complications of breast cancer four days after the 9-11 terrorist attack.

I came out as a gay man in the summer of 2010. I find writing these memories to be therapeutic.

My story blog is, TheTahoeBoy.Blogspot.com.