Kids Those Days

One of these days I should commit all of my Dad's stories to writing, it would make for a solid movie in the genre of teenage buddy flicks. I keep on hearing new stories. Dad grew up in Hollywood of the 40's-50's, the last gasp of the old Hollywood before it went to hell. His cast of characters were worthy of that era too.. all white but of a variety of ethnicities. What is fascinating is that back then they used to get in all kinds of shit and never got in much trouble. Nowadays I don't think things would have gone so well.

They got into the usual shit. They knew how to sneak into every theater in Hollywood. I believe The Egyptian was the most difficult since you had to sneak past the projectionist booth after sneaking in. I forget which theater it was but climbing down from the roof of one of them they had a pure movie moment when a drain pipe one of the guys was climbing down broke loose off the side of the building and as the drain pipe swung down, so did he. They only got caught once, when they tried ot sneak into Wilshire.. not in their territory.

They were larcenous little bastards. My Dad as much as an upstanding citizen as he is now worked all the angles with his buddies. Most of them worked at a market and it was a cash cow. Stuff a wad of paper up inside the change slot in the payphone of the store. Wait for the customers to continually lose a nickel here and there.. empty.. repeat. Working the store's Christmas Tree lot was a great opportunity for some creative accounting and self tipping by the boys.. apparently the store wasn't the greatest at keeping track of what all they had and at what price.

All kinds of other stories.. food fights up in the Hollywood Hills, running from police (Dad getting literally clotheslined by a clothesline in someone's backyard), one of his buddies throwing a punch at some guy at a party, missing and decking someone's mother instead. What makes all of this more interesting to me was the setting. Special place, special time. To write it here would never do it justice unless I wrote pages. Maybe someday I will figure a way to tell the stories Dad lived.