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Oregon Street Gang

Chapter 18
Bowlands Pond

The Oregon Street Gang was going fishing at Garvin Park.  We all
loaded our bikes with our fishing rods and reels and tackle boxes.  Mom
gave us some bacon to use for bait.

   On the way to Garvin Park, Dwight stopped in the middle of the street 
and motioned for everybody to ride their bikes over by him.

"Hey, I got an idea, let's go to Bowlands Pond instead of going fishing,"
Dwight asked.

"Yeal, we went fishing a couple of days ago, let's do something different,"
said JP.

We knew we were not supposed to go to Bowlands Pond, but we decided
to go anyway.  We changed direction and headed for the railroad overpass
that led to Bowlands Pond.

When we reached the railroad overpass, we pushed our bikes up the banks
of the overpass and rode our bikes into Bowlands Pond over the raidroad
trestles.  We passed a couple of hobos on the way.

There it was, Bowlands Pond.  It wasn't really much of a pond.  The deepest
part of the pond was just a foot deep.  Surrounding the pond were hundreds
of abandoned cars.  Some stacked on top of each other.

Next to the pond was a water tower.  Steps went in a circular direction
aroung the water tower up to the platform at the top.
Some of the steps were missing and some were broken.  This
made the trip to the top of the water tower a little more exciting!  This
was Bowlands Pond, a nightmare for parents, but an adventure paradise
for a kid!

The pond didn't have any fish it it - just tadpoles, frogs, turtles, and
an occasional snake.

"Let's look for frogs and turtles," said JP as he took his shoes and
socks off.

"Last one in is a rotten egg," yelled Jimmy as he and the rest of the
Oregon Street Gang took off their shoes and pulled off their socks.

The warm, shallow water was soothing on a hot summer day.

"Hey, look at all these tadpoles over here," screamed Rock as he
pointed to a large school of tadpoles.

"Is this a snapping turtle?" asked Mr. Kevin as he pointed to a
large turtle swimming toward shore.

"If it bites you, it is!" laughed Tree.

We were all laughing and splashing water until we saw a water
moccasin swimming across the pond.  Splash!  Splash!  Everybody
ran out of the pond as fast as they could.

As we put our shoes and shocks back on Dwight yelled, "Look
what I found!"

We all looked and saw Dwight hold up a Playboy magazine he
found in the trunk of one of the abandoned cars.  We all gathered
around Dwight as he thumbed through the magazine.  Our eyes
grew large as he opened up and displayed the centerfold for all
of us to see.

After looking through the magazine, the rest of us spread out and
started searching the abandoned cars to find our own treasures.  We
accumulated quite a cache.  But the most importand treasure we found
was pop bottles.

We put all our pop bottles together and sent Mr. Kevin to the nearest
grocery store to sell the pop bottles and bring us back some food and
cold pop.

While he was gone we played Hide and Seek and army.  The
abandoned cars were ideal to hide in and even more exciting to play
army in.

Finally Mr. Kevin came back with four cold Double Colas, four packs
of Twinkies, and three candy bars.  It was like a buffet to us as we
passed around the cold pop, Twinkies, and candy bars amongst
ourselves.

Now the last thing for us to do was climb the water tower.  We
climbed to the top one at a time.  When we all reached the top,
we sat on the platform with our backs against the water tower
and surveyed the land before us.  We all felt like kings.

Dwight reached into his back pocket and pulled out the Playboy
magazine.  We passed it back and forth and talked about sex and
girls - a subject none of us knew anything about!

"Look at those boobs," yelled JP.

"I wonder if Sue has boobs like that?" asked Tree.

"Ask Mat, he went to the show with her," Dwight kidded.

"I went to!" yelled Luke.

As the gang laughed, Mat threatened them,
"Any of you say anything bad about Sue and I will smack you!"

"Well, did you two kiss her?" asked JP.

The whole group laughed again.

"Put it this way, it was dark in the theater," bragged Mat.

The gang members quit laughing.  None of them had ever
even come close to kissing a girl.  And since none of them
  knew if I had really kissed Sue, they looked upon me with
a new found respect.

While we were looking at the magazine, we didn't notice Mr. Kevin
climbing back down the ladder to the groud.  He came back up with
his arms full of bottles.

The Oregon Street Gang was no longer interested in the magazine.
We started dropping the bottles from the tower and watching them
break on the ground below.

This is what we were doing when a police car pulled into Bowlands
Pond.  We immediately stopped dropping the bottles and sat quietly
on the water tower platform.

  "You kids - come down!" demanded the policeman who got out of the
police car.  We slowly climbed down the stairs from the water tower. 
Then we all sheepishly walked toward the policeman.

"I got a call that there were some kids here trespassing," said the
policeman.

"Are we in trouble?" I asked.

Should you be?" retorted the policeman.

None of us said a word.

"Now get out of here before I have to arrest you and take you all to
jail!" ordered the policeman.

"Yes sir!" we all yelled out.

Then we ran to our bikes and left Bowlands Pond behind us as fast
as we could pedal out bikes.  We could hear the policeman laughing
as we left.

While riding our bikes, we decided to go to Garvin Park and fish
some before we headed back home.  We parked our bikes by the
bridge and sat on the edge of the bridge and began putting the bacon
mom gave us for bait on our hooks.

Dwight had borrowed his dad's tackle box.  When he opened it,
there lying at the bottom of the tackle box was a can of Sterling Beer!

"Look what I found!" yelled Dwight as he lifted the can of beer out
of the tackle box for the rest of us to see.

Sure enough, Dwight had a full, unopened can of Sterling Beer!

Dwight had a little more knowledge about the grown up world than
the rest of us had.  He had three older brothers.  He introduced us
to our first cigarette a couple of weeks ago.  But this was different -
 this was beer!  You had to be twenty-one years old to drink beer!

"Have any of you guys ever had a beer before?" asked Dwight
as he looked at each of us.

We all mumbled, "No."

"I'm gonna open this beer up and pass it around," said Dwight.
"You don't have to take a drink if you don't want to," he added.

"Can you drink it hot?" asked Tree.

"I heard my mom say that if you drink beer you can hurt your
eyesight," added Mr. Kevin.

Dwight laughed.  "Then your dad must be blind!"

Everybody laughed, except Mr. Kevin

"But can you drink beer hot?" I asked Dwight.

"Yeal," said Dwight.  "Why in some foreign countries, that's
how they drink it."

Dwight pulled the tab off the beer can and slowly took the
first drink of beer.

"Ah," Dwight moaned as he swallowed the beer.  "Anybody else,"
he asked.

He handed the beer to me.  All the others were watching me.  I
slowly put the can of beer to my mouth and took a drink.  It tasted
horrible!  But I wasn't going to let on to the others.

"Mm," I said.  "It's good!"

Now everybody else wanted to take a drink.  Each gang member
said it tasted good.  But I didn't believe them.  I thought they were
acting just like I did.  We passed the can of beer back and forth.
Each gang member took a drink when it was passed to them.

Finally the beer can was empty.  I was glad.  We had our first beer
and we were just in the seventh grade!

The fish weren't biting.  So we decided to head back home.  Dwight
laughed as he told us it was against the law to drink and drive.

When we got home, mom smelled the beer on me and Luke's breath.

"What's that I smell?" asked mom.

What do you mean?" both me and Luke asked.

"I know the smell of beer!" retorted mom.

"We just took a sip mom - I swear to God!" I pleaded with her.

"Where did you get beer?" demanded mom.

"Dwight found a can of Sterling Beer that his dad left in his tackle
box - we all just took a sip mom!" I said as quickly as I could.

"Go to your room 'til I tell you otherwise - best hope I don't tell
you dad - he'll put the strap to you!" said mom.

Me and Luke went to our room.  We had never seen mom so mad
before.  If she told dad, our butts would be sore.

"Well, at least she doesn't know we went to Bowlands Pond,"
Luke told me as we reached our room.

"Yes, if dads finds out we went there, we'll be in double trouble,"
I told Luke.

We did feel sorry for ourselves.

"I wish we were dead and lying in our caskets,"I told Luke.

"Yeal, then they'd be sorry they ever got mad at us,"
replied Luke.

Me and Luke began planning an elaborate funeral for ourselves.
By the time we finished, our funeral was a ceremony fit for a president
or the Pope.  We stopped planning our funeral ever so often and
agreed amongst ourselves: mom and dad would be sorry they ever got
mad at us - now that we were dead!

 Too bad we couldn't attend our funeral as spectators.  What a sight to
be seen.  Luke was buried in his football uniform he got for Christmas and I was buried in my army shirt with my machine gun. 

As we were debating the final arrangements for our funeral, Luke
wanted a twenty-one gun salute and I wanted our caskets carried
down Main Street, mom came up the stairs to our room and told
us she wouldn't punish us if we promised never to drink beer again.

No Problem.  We swore to her we wouldn't take another drink of beer
ever again. 

We even added "I swear to God," to make it official.

 Mom told us she wasn't going to tell dad either!

Relieved - we quit planning our funeral and went outside to play.