Bleach

Limburger Cheese

Dog Turds

Enough! No more, you say. Just the beginning. I remember turning fear into fun. That damn dog of Gordinier's would chase us and bark and bite at our legs every time we rode our bikes on that end of Hanover Street. We really had to crank those bikes to outrun that mean son of a bitch. Still, it was exciting, and dogs have to have fun too, so we put up with it. We didn't invent mischief, but we were good at it. This circumatance presented a great opportunity. We had squirt guns, so we would ride by that dog to get him to chase us and then squirt him with the squirt guns. Not a good idea, just pissed him off, and he'd chase that much harder. Fun though. If that dog had a brain, he'd have said, leave these mean little pisspots alone. He didn't have a brain. We did. We put Clorox bleach in those squirt guns. New game time. Pedal as fast as we can, 20-25 miles per hour, bark like hell to make sure the dog sees us and comes flying at our pantlegs. Just as he's about to chomp down, squirt, squirt, right in the eyes. 20-25 miles per hour and he instinctively reaches his front paws to his eyes to try and stop the pain. If he came off a diving board it would be called a 6 1/2. That's about how many somersaults a dog does at 25 miles per hour when he neglects to put those front feet down. That was fun, but to be honest, it wasn't all that bad a dog, just hated bikes, I guess. We rode all over town trying to get the dogs we were actually afraid of to chase us and apply the treatment.

Some people are real proud of having mean dogs, and it kind of gives them perverse pleasure that they scare people. You gotta see the expression on their faces when their mean dog is tumbling and ky-yiing down the street. Ya gotta love it. Our dog was Laddie. He was mean, but we really didn't know that. He was nice to us. Maybe he was aware of our unique abilities with bleach. One day Laddie went up to sniff a big cat. That cat raked him across his nose like a bolt of lightning. You know those thin razor like cuts that don't bleed for about 30 seconds. Laddie had about three of those, but he wasn't paying any attention to those as he went after that friggin' cat. We thought that was pretty funny and figured that Laddie learned something. As it turned out it was the cat that got the education, because Laddie caught that cat and with one bite and a quick shake he had broken that cat's neck. He carried that dead cat around with his head held high. He never forgot it either, because he brought every loose cat in the neighborhood home in the same manner afterwards. We were real proud of Laddie, because we had seen some of these cats run off some ferocious dogs with one quick swipe.

You know how you hate to step in a pile of dog shit. Boy, we had some precocious shitters in the neighborhood, and really hated those land mines they left around the yards. That is, until we found out you could scoop a pile of dog shit into a paper bag, light the bag, and put it on a neighbor's porch, knock on the door and hide somewhere with a good view of the action. I couldn't believe how many times the same person would stomp on the bag, no matter how many times you did the same trick. Some people are just dumb, and there's no other excuse. Soap windows on Halloween. No sir, soap screens. Got a nice jar of Limburger cheese. We wander uptown, looking for inspiration. We walked by a gin mill (bar) and noticed the doorknowb was about the same size as the opening in the top of the jar. Twist the jar onto the doorknob and now the knob is gooey with limburger. Across the street, sit on the curb to watch. Along comes a drunk, used to be enough bars in town that to hit them all on one trip would get anybody drunk. This guy looks like he hit them all. He grabs the knob and feels something slipping. Looks at his hand, and then puts it close to his nose to sniff what was on the knob. He pewked all over the place. I suppose everyone has blown up a paper bag and then tied a long string to it and hidden in the bushes and when a car came down the street, pull the bag into the headlight beam and bring the car to a screeching halt. We did a lot of that, and we did it to the same drivers many times. There was one that had made threats that he was gonna get us for that. That was Tom, so Tom got special attention. We got lots of string. We took apart a few baseballs, which used to be wound with string. We must have had a thousand feet, don't really know how long, but a lot. We tied the string to the bag, and then ran that string under the bushes at school, across a driveway, under about 50 feet of really thick thornbushes, under more regular bushes, under a fence, then under more bushes with lots of dog shit on the ground. That dog shit is hard to see at night, but you know its around after you get some on you. Here comes Tom. Yank the bag into his headlight beam. He screeches to a halt, jumps out of the car, and he knows he's gonna get us because all he's gotta do is follow the string. We were hoping he was smart enough to figure that out. He was smart, and he was quick, and he was all scratched up and smelling of dog shit. Yep, he's gonna give us a lesson. Anytime we saw him at the gasoline station that we hung out at, we'd say. "Do you smell dog shit?" It wouldn't have been any fun if he didn't know who did it to him.

We used to put apples on the end of sticks about two feet long and throw the apples at cars. We were just little kids, but with the stick you could wing an apple about 300 feet or more. we used to love to hit the cop car with the apples, because the cops have always been smart, like Tom. They'd screech to a stop, jump out to see what hit the car and then look to see who was close enough to have done it. We were so far away, they knew it wasn't us, and we stood in plain view, with balls of brass, that made them doubly sure it waasn't us or we'd have been running like hell. We did it different in the winter. We'd watch for the two bull legged cops in the same patrol car. We'd be all bundled up so they couldn't see our faces, normal for winter. Smack, we'd rock the police car with snowballs. Quick stop, here they come. Bull-legged, did you ever seee a bull-legged person run. Not fast. The trick was to run just fast enough that they thought they could catch us. Lead them up a path with holes dug, filled with piss and dog shit, and covered with thin sticks and snow. No problem, we dug the holes, knew where they were and deftly dodged them. It didn't take long for the cops to decide not to give those kids a little scare for smackin' the cop car with snowballs. I can't believe that there isn't a high dollar market for dog shit, especially with all the different uses there are for it. We really liked the cops, and they were always good for a laugh. They used to leave their patrol car running while they checked some of the Main Street door locks. Cold, keep the car warm with the heater on. We should have stayed to watch the night we swiped their patrol car and hid it under a nearby bridge, but we didn't want to take a chance on being arrested for car theft, even though we only drove it about 300 yards. There was never any report that the cops had misplaced their car, might have been embarrassing. At least we didn't hide the keys, we left them in the ignition. There's just not a lot to do in small towns.