Joining the Church – Part One of Three

This will be a long one… buckle up!

The day started with excitement, not like a normal Sunday; today was the day I, along with several other young teenagers, was going to be confirmed as full members of the congregation of the United Methodist Church of Patterson. Unfortunately, like many things in my life at the time, I didn’t fully understand, or really care to understand, the import of this commitment.

For several months I had been getting up early on Sunday morning, getting all doodied up, and walking to church early; my parents were probably cautiously optimistic, hoping that their wild child was finally maturing into a young man they could be proud of… and when I think of this now I have a pang of regret. There were many times in my young life, up until the time that I finally met my Angel that changed everything, that my actions surely hurt their hearts and hurt their pride… my solace now is that they got to see me finally become the person they always hoped for. When I graduated from ULL with a Bachelor’s degree, they were busting with pride! And the memory brings tears to my eyes…

But if they would have known my true motivation for getting up and going to church early they would have had a bit less optimism; I had a crush on one of the young ladies that was my age, and who would actually be joining the church the same day as me, Carla Fox. And at the risk of being crude, she was definitely a fox. And she laughed at my attempts at humor, and was a friend, and sometimes we talked on the phone for a while; and I had dreams of maybe someday being her “steady”, as we called it at the time. but my actions later that day probably ended any chance I may have had with her, as far as her parents were concerned anyway.

Moving on, I made it through the ceremony without doing anything outrageous or embarrassing; and the congregation probably held their breath until it was finally over… and everyone left the church in high spirits, the new con-celebrants going off with their families to celebrate in their own ways… we went home to eat dinner at the house, as my Mom and Dad had some function they needed to attend out of town that afternoon. Probably due to the false sense of optimism about my decorum and civility to that point in the day, they did not impose any restrictions on our activities while they were gone, to their later regret!

Sunday afternoon back then, in a small town, was a quiet time of the week; most people would go to church, then go home and have a nice dinner with family, then sit out on the front porch with extended family while the kids visited and played with cousins in the yard; it was quite Norman Rockwellian, if you know what I mean; and if you don’t you can look it up and see what it was like. His paintings chronicled small town life to a very accurate degree in the fifties and sixties, and earlier; and even though the world was changing drastically and at a dizzying pace in 1970, it was still an accurate depiction then, there.

I met up with my camp-out buddy and best friend at the time, Keith Gary; we had many adventures over the years, but unknown to us at the time, today was destined to be one of the most un-forgettable… we had no clue how un-forgettable! Looking back, I wonder if someone would have told us how it would turn out if we would have avoided it or embraced it; we both had a keen sense of adventure, and skirting the line of appropriate behavior was our Modus Operandi. Well, today, we crossed that line.

We were walking down the sidewalk discussing what to do; and as we finally decided we wanted to get some beer, we agreed we didn’t have the money to buy any… so, what to do? We were coming up on the Patterson Pantry at the time; it was a small convenience store on Main Street (Highway 182, once US 90); and the Devil, seeing his chance to get revenge on the fact that I had joined the church that morning, jumped dead square on my ass… “We’ll go in together; and while you occupy the cashier, I’ll grab a couple of quarts and stick em in my jacket…”! Yeah, that’ll work! I had on an Ike jacket; for those that don’t remember, it was a tight jacket that had two inside breast pockets that you could stick a couple of quarts in, upside down; of course, after this maneuver you looked like Mae West with breast implants…!

…but it went off without a hitch! Well, is 2 enough? Nah, we did it 2 more times! Then went back in and asked for some paper bags, in order to carry them down the street discreetly… just as we’re finishing bagging them up on Pop Rizzo’s side of the store, we are aghast to see the Patterson Police Department (only) patrol car coming down Main Street!!! So we immediately ditch our booty under the store… but they drive by with nary a glance in our direction, and continue down the road; Whew! But on retrieving our 3 bags of beer, we find that 2 have broken… DAMN! Being emboldened at our previous success, we get 2 more, and a bag for them… we were on a roll…

Now we head on down the sidewalk, and begin pondering the next big question; where are we gonna go to drink our beer un-interrupted? As we are passing the park, I have an inspiration that, I’m sure to this day, made the Devil smile; “We can go in the Church, it’s never locked!”. So we walk up to the Church, and walk in; going up to the front, we pull out a couple of quarts, open em up, and begin sucking down some suds… and after a few minutes we hear a car pull up outside the Church! We immediately move into one of the side rooms, and hunker down; Keith is behind the door as we hear footsteps in the church, coming closer; I am looking out the window as the door suddenly opens behind me; I freeze and continue to try to casually gaze out the window; after what seems like forever, the door slowly closes behind me… to this day, I don’t know who that was… maybe a warning shot from my Guardian Angel?

Unfortunately, I ignored the warning…

To be continued; same life, different story…

© Dewayne P. Blanco 2021

Joining the Church – Part Two

At the end of Part One, I had just received a warning shot from my Guardian Angel; maybe the beer was beginning to take effect, but the warning was ignored. After a couple of minutes recovering from the near miss, we decided that the Church was probably not a good place to be now. And we realized that our beer was beginning to warm up a little; so I had another bright idea; the Rectory has a kitchen with a refrigerator! And it’s never locked either… definitely a different time…

So we exit out the back door of the Church and go to the rectory immediately to the rear of the Church; after stashing our extra beer in the freezer of the fridge in order to accelerate the re-cooling, we go into the Minister’s office. There were comfortable chairs in there, and a phone at his desk… well, who are we going to call while we relax with our beer? I bet some of you have already guessed; I called Carla! Unfortunately (for her, anyway) she answered the phone.

A brief aside here to reflect on telephone communications back then, versus now; cell phones were not dreamed of then… wireless phones, either. Most households had one phone wired to a jack on the baseboard in a convenient central location, and maybe a couple or three jacks were available in the house to enable moving the phone around. You could have several phones connected to these jacks, but they shared the same line, so if someone picked up another receiver while you were talking they could join in on the conversation, wanted or not… the 1960’s version of a conference call, if you will… and if you wanted more than one phone line, a new line would have to be run into the house, and new jacks installed for it! These were rotary dial phones, connected to mechanical/electrical switchgear, which had some quirks you needed to be aware of; if you dialed all but the last number of someone’s phone, and didn’t hang up, it would lock their phone out from receiving a call… and if you dialed their number and they answered, they could not dis-connect the call by hanging up unless you hung up also!!! This comes into play later on in the story…

We’re getting pretty comfortable here, and drinking our beer, and I’m having a good time freaking Carla out with the story of where we are and what we’re doing, when suddenly Keith rushes into the office from a beer run to the kitchen yelling “There’s somebody here!”; not being the argumentative sort of guy in a situation like this, I drop the phone, and yell back “out the front door!” and proceed to do so, not even looking around as we exit in a hurry, to say the least… we ran across the Risher’s front yard, then crossed the highway. Then we started back down the sidewalk on the other side from the Church, trying to not be too guilty looking as we re-evaluate the changed situation… and I guess the beer is really starting to have an adverse effect on Keith’s decision making; right about now, I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s time to retreat to a safer position, and let the dust settle. But suddenly, just as we are directly across the street from the Church, Keith blurts out “we gotta go wipe the fingerprints!”, and dashes across the street toward the Church! At this point, looking back, I should have kept to my plan and headed home… but I’ve never ascribed to that old saying “no honor among thieves”; and felt more like “one for all and all for one”; so after I recovered from my “WHAT THE HELL?” moment, I took off after him.

Before I could catch up to him, before I even got to the Rectory, I hear a car pulling into the parking area near the back of the Church; without a second thought I dive under the Church near the back steps, and begin crawling as fast as I can, as far in as I can… no telling what was under there with me, this Church has been here since the late 1800’s, ya know? But none of that mattered at the moment, as I can see a couple of pairs of black slacks with blue stripes down the sides strolling around the Church and Rectory! I don’t know how long it was before they finally left; it seemed like forever; then, I hear Keith loudly whispering “Buzz! Where are you?”; my first thought was to ignore him, because at that moment I was ready to strangle him! But I was ready to get outta there, so I finally responded and began crawling back out.

When I got back out and met up with Keith by the back steps, I said “Okay, now lets get the hell outta here!”; and to my dis-belief, he said “We gotta wipe the fingerprints!”… AGAIN!!! and headed back to the Rectory. At this point, I feel like my readers are thinking “Why the hell did you follow him and not go HOME!?!”. My only defense is that we had done a lot together up to that point, and he had never left me or let me down; “thick as thieves” comes to mind; the thick part is probably the most relevant word there…

So now the doors are locked, so we head around the back; I knew that usually the bathroom window was unlocked, so we went there; as I’m trying to push it open, he suddenly yells “COPS!”; well, that triggered my “flight” response, and I was gone… the Risher house was next door to the Rectory, and on the property line there was a row of Pampas bushes; they usually grow to about 4 feet wide by 4 feet tall or so; I went right through one, didn’t even slow me down… and the next property line had a 4 foot chain link fence; I dove over it and hit the ground running, and did the same at the next one; by this time, I’m behind the house of another friend, Timmy Leggett; so I decide to go there and try to hide out. I ring the back doorbell, and Mr. Leggett, Tim’s Dad, answers the door. When I ask for Tim, his Dad says “Tim’s not here now…”; and as we’re having this conversation I look back toward the river and see a cop, with Keith by the arm!!! I tell Mr. Leggett “Thanks Mr. Leggett, I gotta go!” and head back toward Main street, post haste…

You may have heard the term “Bee Line”; it refers to the way bees, after making their pollen runs, return to the hive in the shortest route possible. That can accurately describe my route home that day… back yards, chicken pens, front yards; a bee woulda been proud of the route I took to get home at that point. No fence was too high and no yard was too private; I saw more property in 20 minutes than a Real Estate agent sees in a month! Once I got home, the first thing I did was start making a pot of coffee…

…and then, the doorbell rang…

To be continued; same life, different story…

© Dewayne P. Blanco 2021

Joining the Church – Part Three

…and then, the doorbell rang…

Time stopped for a few seconds, one or two; and as my sister headed toward the door, I said: “Don’t answer it!”; immediately followed by “I’m not here!”; but, as usual, she ignored me and answered the door… and my fears are justified when I hear Murray Gros (one of the Patterson cops) asks “Is Buzz here?”; and I am aghast to hear her reply “Yes…”! Well at this point I am resigned to my fate, and head on over to the door. When I get there, and ask as innocently as I can, “Yes?” Murray ask me “You don’t know why I’m here?”; well, I lied earlier when I said I was resigned to my fate; so I replied “No…”. Then he replied “Then you won’t mind coming down to the station with me?”. Like I had an option at that point… “No, no problem…”

As you may have noticed, I had decided to go for the “Innocent Until Proven Guilty” line of defense; I got into the back of the car, and as we drove away toward the station, after a few moments, Murray ask me “Where did you get the beer?”; and my immediate response was “What beer?”… then he asked me “You don’t know what I’m talking about?”, and I answered “No…”. At this point he probably figured out my plan, and the rest of the ride to the Police Station was quiet…

Once we had arrived at the Station, I was led into the dispatchers office, and sat down into a chair; and while I was waiting for the next phase of the inquisition to begin, I saw them leading Keith out of the Chief’s office into the front waiting area. I still remember my shock to see his appearance; for he was white as a ghost, and had a lost look in his eyes, like he couldn’t believe what was happening… but my long history at that point of being in trouble (though minor, compared to this…) allowed me to absorb the moment, and resolve to not allow myself to go there. One thing I had learned in my life up to that point was that there were only two options to pursue when you are in this type of situation; deny culpability until you realize that it is undeniable, or fess up immediately and ask for forgiveness. But if you pursue the latter option, you give up all hope of maybe escaping punishment, so I usually chose Option One!

So the Inquisition began; to my mild surprise, a State Trooper entered the office, and closed the door; and he pulled up a chair close to me, and took off his hat, and began asking me questions. He must have been practicing what he had been taught in the classes they go through for interrogating suspects; he kept his aviator sunglasses on (even though we were inside!) and began with the question “Where did you get the beer?”; But he was speaking in a low and menacing tone, so low that I wasn’t sure what he had asked… so I replied “what?”… so he asked me again, in a slightly louder voice, “Where did you get the beer?”. And my reply, again, was “What?”; exasperated at this point, he loudly asked me, “WHERE DID YOU GET THE BEER!?!”; to which I immediately responded, loudly, “WHAT BEER!?!”, which made him jump back away from me in surprise…

At this point, from somewhere in my memory, I recalled that my Dad had had a run-in with a State Trooper in the past, and had vowed that if he ever met up with him again, he was gonna whip his ass; and the name tag had a familiar ring to it; so before he had recovered from my yelling out “WHAT BEER!?!” at him, I launched into a diatribe against him; ” I know who you are, and so does my dad; and he’s gonna WHIP YOUR ASS!!!”. Now he’s on the defensive, and asks me “Who’s your Dad?”; and I tell him “You’ll know soon enough!”. Well, at this point, he has had enough of this interrogation… he probably decided he better find out who my Dad is… and I am left alone again for a while.

I found out later that Keith had cracked, and they already knew the details of the day; and not long after my interrogation, they moved me into the front waiting room. I wasn’t there long before my Dad came in; and to my immense relief and surprise, he didn’t appear angry… and as he asked me “What did ya’ll do?”, someone was dictating the charges to the person typing up the report: Shoplifting; Breaking and Entering; Drunk Under Age; Resisting Arrest… and I answered “that…”. His understated response was “Huh!”. He had a brief meeting with Jessie Paul (Chief of Police at the time) in Jessie’s office, then we left to go meet my Mom at my Grand-mothers.

For anyone who has never made serious errors in judgement in their lives, I don’t think you can understand how much it means to have someone, anyone, to be understanding; that will be willing to calmly discuss with you the situation, not necessarily condoning your actions, but not immediately condemning you as a bad person. I was blessed in my life to have two parents that could be those people for me. They taught me how to confess my sins, and ask for forgiveness, and accept my punishment. I am not proud of some of my actions in my youth, and merely document them as a way to hopefully provide some guidance or possible forewarning to other young persons who may be afflicted with the same problem as mine.

For those who may have read my Mustang story, this time it was my Dad who saved me from Mom’s wrath; on the trip from the Police Station to my Grand-mothers, my Dad was preparing me for the meeting; “You know your Mom is not going to be happy about this; she’s pretty angry; don’t say anything but “I’m sorry…”; let me do the talking, okay?”. And he made sure to stand between me and her while the meeting happened… and though painful, to see my Mom’s anger and pain, we all survived it… and it was a LONG time before I was arrested again, for another minor infraction 10 years later…

We apologized at the store, and paid for the beer; and apologized to the Minister and the Church; and I apologized to Carla for having to go to the Rectory and hang up the phone so her phone line was usable; and Keith and I were barred from being together for a while; and I wish I could say it was a life-changing event for me… but no, it would be many years until something would happen to change my mind.

To be continued; same life, different story…

© Dewayne P. Blanco 2021