That Memorable Spot

All right, all of you out there that view me only as a devoted father that tries his best to make wise choices ethically, environmentally, and well maybe even logically please read no further. Perhaps I'd like you to keep thinking of me that way...

Okay, everyone gone? Good. Now for my private writing.

I've been thinking a lot about my teenage years lately. I guess growing older does that. Teenagers need to feel the sense of rebellion. They thrive on the rush of doing things that are taboo or dangerous. I was no exception.

Most tweens and teens also have that special someplace that they go to "cause mischief", I love that term. For my friends and I it was the Pilgrim Road rock quarry near my friend Aaron's house. For several years it was our playground. We explored the caves around it, climbed down the cliffs, skated on the ice in the winter, picked berries along the creek, rolled boulders down the hill, and even built a rope swing near the quarry. But it wasn't all innocence. Since the quarry was still in operation, there also came a bit of *ahem* vandalism.

We started out spying on the workers. We had binoculars and would watch them from above. We really wanted t see where they kept the dynamite, but we never found out. One time one of the workers spotted us. We saw him pointing at us to another worker. Since they were down in the quarry, we could watch their every move. Finally one of them looked as though he was going to come after us. We knew the surroundings so well, we had no fear of getting caught. A couple times we even threw rotten apples into the backs of the trucks from our hidden cliff as the trucks drove beneath us.

After the spying came breaking and entering. We managed to get into one of the cabins at night. We ended up taking some Field and Stream magazines for the novelty of it, but that was about it.

Look at me, what a punk* Taken some time  high school

The worst came one evening we were in a particularly foul mood. I guess the heavy equipment just pissed us off. And we wondered if a boulder really could break the windows of those big trucks. The answer? If the rock or boulder is big enough. I believe that was the same evening that my friend Jason also took a crap in the cab of one of the trucks.

Did we ever get caught? Well, one winter day we were shooting fireworks off on the icy pond, when a pick-up came driving down the road into the quarry. We had a dufflebag of fireworks, the good kind, but had no where to run. The guy turned out to be one of the head honchos of the quarry. He started rattling off about the vandalism that had occurred, like smashed windows, picked locks, and then he said "slashed tires". We both looked at each other in this shocked way because we had never done any tire slashing. There were other vandals on our turf. He threatened to call our parents and turn us in, but knew there was no way to link us to anything, but trespassing. He also may not have even thought we had done anything because we were just a couple of young country kids who acted as though the acts of vandalism were awful. He took down our names and told us that if he caught us again he would call the cops. Yeah, yeah.

Oh, but we did return.