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By Root 650 0

money backed up behind it to last a week. Once, because a Red Car conductor wouldn’t stop for us and we had to wait for the next train, we put thick axle grease on the tracks just where he had to brake for the station, then waited. Every morning three women took that train to work in Gardena. They stood on the platform as usual, and as the train neared the station the conductor applied the brakes—and kept on going. The women screamed bloody murder; they thought he’d ignored them on purpose, making them late for work. The conductor had no idea what happened. He finally stopped the train, got out, stepped on the track, slipped and fell. Now he knew. He had to collect dirt and sprinkle it on the grease. Then he backed up and let the women onboard and had to listen as they gave him a piece of their minds.

I knew who around town made their own beer and wine. These were small-time bootleggers—and neighbors—who did whatever they could to make a dollar during the Depression. They probably sold half of what they made and drank the other half. On Saturday nights, when everyone went to the movies, we’d break into their houses and steal the booze. Then we’d stash it in a cave we’d dug in the wilderness part of Tree Row. Our victims were helpless because even though we’d later walk around brazenly tipsy, they couldn’t report us without risking their own hides.

After I got nabbed drinking beer at Hermosa Beach, I had a great idea to get around getting caught. I worked at the dairy, probably to pay for some trouble I’d caused. I took a milk bottle, poured in white paint, and rolled it around, coating the inside. I turned it upside down and set it on a newspaper overnight, then put it in the sun and let it dry for three days. When I filled it with wine or beer and went to the beach, the lifeguards thought I was a good, clean-cut kid drinking milk.

Another classic prank was ringing the church bell to wake up the town. I figured out how to get up in the tower, tied piano wire around the bell, and dropped the other end down the side of the building. I walked the wire across the street and climbed into a pepper tree. When the town rolled up the sidewalks—usually at nine-thirty, ten o’clock—and the streets were mostly dark, my buddy and I pulled the wire. Ding-dong! Ding-dong! I could see lights blink on all over, and people rush out of their houses. One woman stood under the pepper tree and said, “Oh, Mama mia, it’s a miracle!” The only miracle is that she didn’t see me above her.

By the time the fire truck and police arrived, I had disappeared.

My favorite caper was stealing pies from Meinzner’s Pie Shop after a guy who worked there humiliated me by slamming the screen door in my face when my friends and I asked if there were any broken pies he would give away, like the restaurants regularly did with leftover cobblers on Saturday nights. A few weeks later another gang copied our crime, got caught, and bragged they’d been responsible for all the thefts. I wanted the police to know the real culprits were still at large, so my gang took more pies. The next day the headline in the Torrance paper read: MEINZNER’S ROBBED AGAIN.

Some incidents I’m still ashamed of:

I worked on a dairy farm when I was eight. A bull became enraged and charged me, and I had to dive through the fence to safety, scraping and bruising myself in the process. Later I used my Daisy BB gun to pepper the bull’s long, hanging scrotum. Let’s just say he was furious.

When a dog on my paper route bit me I used my BB gun once more, and the dog never bothered me again.

I was famous for shooting spit wads at girls but invariably ended up in a classroom corner facing the wall for my trouble. However, when a teacher put me there for a wad I hadn’t spit, I let the air out of her car tires after school.

Roger, a classmate with whom I had a disagreement, punched me in the back. I lay in wait for him after school and pummeled him bloody. Later, he and his father came to our house and accused me of breaking poor Roger’s nose. The dad was so pushy and insistent that my uncle Bert