"The Jump"

We stopped at the intersection of Reading Road and Jefferson Street. Facing north, I floored the gas pedal of my blue 1968 Camaro. My copilot was my friend’s older brother. Why he was in the car with me that night, I cannot recall.

It was well after midnight.

We hit the crest of the railroad crossing grade at around 40 mph. It felt like we became airborne, but it was hard to tell with both of us in the car. We laughed hysterically as I brought my Camaro to a screeching halt.

The immediate question became: What if we, or rather I, could hit the railroad crossing at a higher speed?

We came to the conclusion that if I could come flying southbound down Reading Road, then make that hard left onto Jefferson Street, I could hit the railroad crossing at a considerably higher rate of speed.

With the plan in place, my friend’s older brother, who, I kid you not, would later in life become an internationally recognized professional athlete, volunteered to remain outside the car and stand next to the railroad crossing, thus bearing physical witness to this upcoming gravity-defying feat of considerable bravery and stupidity.

With my friend’s brother in place, I headed north up Reading Road, making a U-turn about a half mile down from Jefferson Street.

If my memory is correct, I approached the left turn onto Jefferson at about 60 mph, barely making the turn without crashing sideways into the street sign poles. Once completing the turn without crashing, I again mashed the gas pedal of my 1968 Camaro to the floor.

Looking back, I probably hit the crest of that railroad crossing a little too fast. I recognized this fact immediately when my entire body became pinned to the roof of my blue 1968 Camaro.

For a couple of seconds, we were weightless.

The second thing I deduced was that my Camaro and I came back to earth very, very hard.

Once stopped, I made a U-turn and headed back to my friend’s brother, who confirmed that not only did my Camaro and I “get air,” but we had, in fact, flown well over his head.

With this feat of daring and stupidity complete, I drove my friend’s brother home in my 1968 Camaro, which now sounded horrible and was apparently in much worse mechanical shape than when the night began.

I’ll never forget that night, nor will I forget the considerable damage my 1968 Camaro incurred.

The next morning, I made arrangements to bring my car into McCluskey Chevrolet in Reading, Ohio, which, coincidentally, was located directly across the street on Reading Road from where I had made that high-speed turn onto Jefferson Street the night before.

The service person at McCluskey Chevrolet agreed to replace the entire exhaust system on my 1968 Camaro, which had not survived the previous evening’s events.

The service guy then informed me that they would need the car for a couple of days and that, being under the age of 18, I would not be allowed to participate in their loaner car program.

Dejected and late for work, I headed out through the service department’s parking lot, thus beginning “The Summer of Luv.”

S, Monkey

 "Batman’s First Concussion"

To the best of my recollection, this took place back in 1967, but I could be off by a year in either direction. After all, it was 59 or so years ago!

It began with me being completely infatuated with the Batman series that was on TV at that time. I was so infatuated, in fact, that I had talked my mom into creating a Batman cowl and matching cape for me one summer afternoon. It was by no means network television-worthy, but it was highly effective at transporting my 7-year-old imagination directly into life in Gotham City.

The only thing lacking was an arch-nemesis.

With this in mind, I headed off in the direction of a neighborhood friend of mine whose father was also the neighborhood Cub Scout den leader, but that fact isn’t really pertinent to this story.

I made the half-mile or so walk to my friend’s house, which, I might add, was quite a trek for a lone 7-year-old back in the mid-1960s and would most certainly be grounds for a call to Child Protective Services in today’s social climate.

Once there, I explained my predicament to my buddy, and he agreed wholeheartedly to accept the role of villain.

At some point during our rambunctious fete, my friend ran between two parked cars in his driveway, with me, Batman, hot on his heels.

One thing that is pertinent to this story is that my cowl reduced my peripheral vision to near zero. Coincidentally, my ability to judge the distance from my forehead to one of the cars’ shiny chrome bumpers was also near zero...

I awoke some minutes later with my buddy, his sister, his mother, and his father, who had apparently gotten home from work while I was unconscious, standing over me on the concrete driveway.

Something was probably said like, “Thank God you’re okay,” after I awoke and shortly before I was yanked to my feet by my buddy’s mom and guided, rather wobbly, to the sidewalk in front of their house.

Squaring my 7-year-old shoulders in the general direction of my house, she patted me on the butt and said, “Go home and tell your mom what happened, Batman.”

I distinctly remember her calling me Batman! That was pretty cool.

No ride home, no ice for my head, or any other assistance was offered, which I don’t think was all that unusual back in the wonder years before today’s overly protective parenting.

After all, my mother once told a neighborhood kid, “Go home and tell your mom you were shot in the testicles with a .22-caliber round at the Hopkins house...”

(See “Box of Bullets.”)

So, off I set for home, with my Batman cowl still affixed to my head and my cape still tied around my tiny Midwestern suburban neck.

I don’t remember anything else about that day. I don’t remember the walk home, telling my mom about my brief encounter with unconsciousness, or even arriving home at all.

I do, however, on occasion, have this dream where a 7-year-old kid dressed like Batman is going from house to house in a mid-’60s neighborhood, asking residents if this is where he lives.

Still not sure what that means...

S. Monkey

"Box of Bullets"

First of all, before I begin, let me say that I will never admit the validity of this short story. Mostly to protect the embarrassed.

It all started one hot summer morning around 1968 or 1969. I'm not sure which. I was a young little monkey enjoying the summer and all its adventures when there was a knock on our back door on that morning of great fate.

My mom was in the kitchen, and I was watching TV in the living room when she said, "Monkey, it's your friend Tim!" (We'll say his name was Tim.)

Well, the only Tim I knew was one of my friends' older brothers, about two years older than me. It couldn't be that Tim! The heavens wouldn't bless me with such a visitor as he.

But they did.

"Hey, Screaming Monkey, wanna do something?"

"Boy, do I!" I probably replied.

Now, let me explain. Having my friend's older brother come to my house to see if I wanted to play would be the equivalent of having George Clooney knock on my door right now to see if I wanted to go get a cup of coffee somewhere.

I was starstruck!

We went out the back door of our "Wonder Years ranch house" and started kicking around things to do. We could go play in the woods behind my house, which was what we usually did to find adventure, or we could walk around the backyard until we had a better idea.

My backyard was pretty big. It was house-level for about thirty feet or so, and then there was a four- or five-foot rock wall that led to the higher and larger area of our yard. That upper level probably stretched back about one hundred feet or so to the tree line of the vast woods that lay behind my house.

We ended up just walking around, kicking things, until we found ourselves looking into the 55-gallon drum my dad used to burn wood or garbage or whatever, in the far back corner of the yard.

It was still smoldering from the night before, so we quickly put some small pieces of wood in it, and before long, we had it roaring!

At some point, we started wondering what else we could stick in it for fun when Tim said, "I wonder what would happen if we put a bullet in it?"

"Only one way to find out," I said. (Or words to that effect.)

"I know where we can find a whole box of bullets!"

I ran down to our basement and unlocked my dad's gun case, which was pretty easy because he always left the key sticking out of the lock.

I grabbed a box of .22 longs and ran out the back door, eager to impress my guest.

I promptly dropped the entire box into the fire, and we ran, laughing and giggling, all the way to a log on the other side of the yard and dove behind it, "combat-style"!

Did I mention that we were incredibly stupid?

Anyway, after a few minutes, one of the bullets cooked off.

Then another.

Then another.

Until we figured out that it might be a good idea if we counted them as they went off.

This was after maybe twenty or so had already "cooked off," but better late than never, I always say.

Finally, after being "pinned down" for fifteen minutes or so and not hearing any more "bangs," Tim thought he would make his assault on the drum.

I, on the other hand, stayed low, having just had a vivid image of a bullet piercing my forehead.

Tim thought, in his twelve-year-old library of wisdom, that if he moved up on the drum sideways, he would become a smaller target for the drum to aim at.

Brilliant!

He had closed in on the enemy position to a distance of about ten feet when...

CRACK!

Another one went off.

Here is where things get a little foggy, but I remember Tim instantly grabbing his crotch and letting out a yelp that could only be described as the sound a wounded coyote would make while falling off a cliff.

He pulled his hands away from the "fellas," and they were instantly covered in blood.

Neither of us had any doubt that the bullet had blown his privates off.

The next thing I remember was running in our back door to show my unsuspecting mother our handiwork.

"Tim's been shot!" I screamed.

She pulled down Tim's pants right there in the kitchen and made her diagnosis.

I learned in that instant that my mom was either incredibly fearless or completely nuts.

Later in life, I would definitively learn which, but that's another story.

"It just nicked his testicle!!" she said, grabbing Tim's hand and pulling him out the front door and toward his home, where his own mother would no doubt be equally surprised that her son had been wounded that morning.

I went straight to my room and enacted the first "self-grounding" ever performed in the U.S. up to that date.

It turns out the bullet went in on one side of his twelve-year-old "bulge," if you will, then traveled behind the zipper of his jeans, nicking said body part. The bullet then made a second exit hole on the other side of his zipper.

The bullet most likely flew over my head, missing me by inches.

I would see Tim about twenty years later at a party, where I asked him if he remembered that fateful day.

He gave me a strange look and said, "No."

Tim never married.

S. Monkey

"The Summer of Luv."

When I was 18 years old, I was a little odd, shall we say. I played by my own rules. I did things my way. I was an 18-year-old bohemian living in a mid-1970s suburb of Cincinnati.

At the time of this great adventure, I was living with my mother. During this period in American history, things were a little different. At least that's my excuse...

I was working at my first place of employment after dropping out of high school the year before. My dad died in 1975, so that left my mother and me.

My first place of employment was at U-Haul. My job was putting trailer hitches on people's cars so they could attach a U-Haul trailer and get the hell out of this "Wonder Years, middle-American town" we called Reading, Ohio.

On the day in question, I had set up an appointment with the local Chevy dealer to have a much-needed exhaust system put on the 1968 Camaro I was driving back then. The tailpipe and muffler were dragging on the ground behind my Camaro, so I had to get it in that day.

The service person said on the phone that if I dropped it off around 8:00 a.m., he would give me a loaner to drive to work that day.

Simple.

After watching my car being driven away from the service desk, I asked the service fella about my loaner.

"Loaner? How old are you?" he asked.

"18," I replied.

He then informed me that a person had to be at least 21 to get a loaner.

I did the best 18-year-old, middle-American kid "freak-out" I could muster on such short notice and stormed out into the parking lot of the service department, wondering how I was going to get to work.

The first thing I saw at that moment of destiny was a brand-new 1978 Corvette.

Red.

The keys were in it.

I could see them dangling there in the morning sunlight.

Apparently, the Corvette had been damaged during its transport to the Chevy dealer. The driver's side window had been knocked out.

I wouldn't dare believe for a second that I could climb into a red Chevy Corvette and drive it off the lot in the middle of the morning rush hour...

But I could climb into the white Chevy Luv pickup truck sitting innocently behind the Chevy Corvette...

The Luv truck had the same problem as the Corvette.

Broken driver's side window.

I nervously climbed into the said truck of Luv, nonchalantly started the engine, and drove off the lot.

I had to get to work!

There were desperate people depending on me to install trailer hitches on their cars so they could get the hell out of this "Wonder Years, middle-American town" we called Reading, Ohio...

For the next three months, I drove that little truck everywhere.

I figured that the fewer people who knew about the truck's history, the better off I'd be.

I came up with the following tale.

I said that my cousin worked on the railway system, and being that he would be working on the "rails" all summer, I might as well use his truck.

Perfectly simple.

Just like me...

I even told my girlfriend (now my wife) this story.

It was going very well up until one late summer evening when my friend Brian and I were out driving around, enjoying "nature," shall we say.

I was turning right onto a neighborhood street at the same time one of Reading's finest was pulling up to the stop sign as he was coming out of that same street.

Our eyes met in that split second of recognition as he pointed his finger directly at me.

It was on...

I remember telling Brian to "hold on."

I floored the little truck's gas pedal to the floorboard and made a quick left onto the next street as the police officer was making his U-turn in hot pursuit.

I made another right turn and told a very confused Brian, "When the truck stops... RUN!"

I knew we had only seconds to get out of the truck and run around one of the Cape Cod-style homes that lined the street before the cop cleared the corner and saw us.

At about 45 mph, I shoved the automatic floor shifter into park.

No brakes at all...

Before the truck came to a complete stop, I was out the door and sliding across the hood, à la Starsky and Hutch.

I picked the two nearest houses to run between, with Brian right behind me.

We had done the impossible.

We stopped the truck, exited it, and made it to cover before the policeman had come around the corner and made visual contact with us.

We virtually disappeared...

Just when I thought we might make it, a girl's voice rang out.

"Hi, Brian. Hi, Charlie."

I had picked the one house to run behind where Terri (last name withheld) and her entire family were cooking out in their backyard.

Terri had been in our class at school since kindergarten.

"Hi, Terri," we said as we hurdled her father's fence and disappeared from her obviously horrified family's view.

I almost forgot to mention that I was wearing bib overalls, no shirt, gym shoes, and a bright orange U-Haul baseball hat.

Brian was less conspicuous in his blue jeans, T-shirt, and a large white plaster cast encasing his right arm from wrist to elbow...

That was the first and last time I ever ran from the police.

It was both exhilarating and terrifying at the same time.

Brian and I found ourselves on the property of Sacred Heart Catholic School within moments. It was about two miles from where we left the Chevy Luv.

We then trekked across a cornfield and out onto Kemper Road.

One of us put his thumb out, and the very first car stopped and picked us up.

The gentleman took both of us wild-eyed teenagers down to Reading Road, but he was unfortunately going to turn left, back toward Reading, so we excused ourselves and started walking north on Reading Road.

We had traveled approximately five miles within ten minutes!

On foot!!

We didn't get far down Reading Road before an Evendale police officer drove slowly by us.

"Be cool!" is what I'm certain one or both of us said to each other as the cop made a U-turn and pulled in behind us.

I remember exactly what my brother-in-law/attorney said to me on the phone from the Reading police station, which is where we ended up after being arrested by the Evendale cop.

He said, "Charlie, you're going to prison!!!"

And I believed him...

They released Brian and eventually dropped the charges against him because, like I said, he knew nothing about the fact that the Chevy was "stolen," per se...

I went to juvenile court a month or so later and told the very nice judge that I had seen the truck parked outside a fictitious girlfriend's apartment for three months with the keys in it, and that I had given in to temptation one night after having a few beers.

"After all, Your Honor, the keys were in it!..."

The judge bought the story and said that if I went and explained to the owner of the Chevy dealership how I had ended up with his truck, all charges would be dropped.

I thanked her and headed off to see the dealer.

He also bought the story.

The truck had been missing for almost three months, but I convinced everyone that I had succumbed to temptation one night and was caught driving the Chevy Luv within moments...

The dealer said he understood.

He informed me that he had also been young at one time in his life and wanted to know if I would be interested in buying another one of his Chevy Luv trucks, being that I liked them so much.

I declined the offer and left the Chevy dealership no worse for wear, but with one hell of a story and a ton of great memories from my "Summer of Luv."

S.Monkey

"Mud Balls"

Standing in our driveway, I swung my twelve-year-old leg over the seat of my baby-blue Fuji ten-speed. I kicked off with my feet and began my short trip to my friend John's house.

With my wide denim bell-bottoms draped loosely over my Frye boots, I was styling. Life was good.

I pedaled my underappreciated Fuji hard and turned right onto Carol Ann Drive. Ten-speed bikes were the bike of choice in the late '70s. I think they might have been about the only bike they made back then, other than a Schwinn Krate or something.

Many summer nights were spent sleeping over at someone's house, either inside or outside in a tent in the backyard. John had a family tent we would put up a couple of times a year. It would sleep about a dozen or so full-grown adults and ideally would have taken about that many to put up.

John and I would lift and pull that heavy canvas, never knowing for sure if we would be successful until it was completely up.

We would wait until everyone was asleep, then fly down the deserted streets at breakneck speeds on our bikes. A lot of times, we would end up miles away at the Kenwood Mall at 1:00 in the morning, where we would pedal up the five- or six-floor parking garage (I forget exactly how many floors there were). Then we'd fly down, side by side, totally blind to any cars coming up the ramp.

Life was good!

To this day, I can ride my bicycle at night and smell the exact same summer air I did back then.

I had just crossed Furman Road when I heard the first BOOM!

That had to be a cherry bomb! Only cherry bombs were that loud from that far away, I thought.

Turning left onto John's street, I heard the second BOOOMM!

Louder!

I was just turning into John's driveway when the next blast hit my ears.

BOOOOMMM!

It was coming from John's backyard.

I parked my bike and walked through the gate to find John sitting cross-legged behind a small carbide cannon.

BOOOMM!

Carbide cannons obviously used carbide to fire. You would put a couple of inches of water into the bottom of the cannon, then the carbide crystals would drop into the water, creating an explosive gas that would ignite when a flint on top created a spark.

Like I said... BOOOMM!

John had a perfect pyramid of little mud balls sitting next to his cannon. A mud ball shot lazily out of the barrel when it fired. The blast was far out of proportion to the speed of the mud ball it fired.

"What the hell are you doing, John?" I asked.

"Bombing the Hefners," he said.

The Hefners were John's sworn enemies for no apparent reason. Maybe it was because they had a couple of boys who were older and bigger than John. That was probably it.

I wondered back then what the Hefners thought of this bizarre behavior going on at their neighbor's house.

I pictured Mrs. Hefner cooking breakfast in front of their kitchen window when one of her kids would say, "What ya looking at, Mom?"

"Oh, that crazy boy behind us is shooting little cannonballs at us. That's all. Now eat your breakfast," she'd say.

After a couple more shots, we figured out that the mud balls were a little too small, letting the blast sneak out around them.

"Make the balls bigger," I said. "So they barely fit in the barrel."

John picked up another mud ball from the pyramid gingerly with two fingers, kind of like a French chef would pick up a piece of fine chocolate for an expensive dessert.

He pushed it into the barrel, hit the plunger that released the carbide crystals, and struck the striker.

Wump!

That's all we heard.

"What happened?" I asked.

"I don't know."

John reached down to unscrew the carbide releaser-striker thingy, still sitting cross-legged behind it.

When the cap came off, a blue-orange flame shot up out of the one-inch-wide hole, completely engulfing his hand and continuing about six feet into the air.

Awesome!

Life was good!

The mud ball kept the blast from escaping out of the barrel, but it still did not come out!

It was still stuck!

At some point, we ended up on John's front porch, trying to use a stick to get the said "ball of mud" out, when an older kid from down the street showed up.

"What are you guys doing?" Tom asked.

We told him we were shooting off the cannon but failed to tell him it still had a mud ball stuck in its barrel.

"Can I shoot it?" he asked.

"Sure," John said.

He told Tom how to put the carbide into it. Then, when asked how many times he should push the plunger down to release the carbide, John said, "Hit it about ten times."

John usually hit it three or four times at the most.

As Tom was preparing to hit the striker, John and I exchanged glances.

The striker was hit, but nothing happened.

"What's the matter with it?" Tom asked.

"I don't know," John lied. "Try taking the top off of it."

He began doing this with his face directly over the opening.

Now, John or I could have said, "Stop!" or "Don't!" or something, but we said nothing.

Tom opened the cap, and a blue-orange flame shot up, hitting him square in the forehead, traveling around both sides of his head, meeting again on the back of his head, and then traveling another six or eight feet straight up into the summer sky.

John and I fell down laughing.

I-can't-breathe hysterical laughter!

After about twenty seconds of hearing us laugh at him, Tom turned back to face us.

His eyebrows were gone!

Almost gone.

Where they had been, there were little plumes of smoke traveling upward into the air above Tom.

John and I were going to die laughing, right there on his front lawn.

I could not breathe!!

I wasn't exactly laughing anymore. I was just lying on the ground, preparing for death to take me.

Tom stormed off, and eventually, we composed ourselves.

We took the cannon into John's house and put it back on the shelf in his bedroom, where it came from.

Mud ball and all.

Chapter 2

John had a great idea moments later.

"What if we put water in a Clorox bottle, then dropped carbide crystals into it, screwed the top back on, and lit it with a firecracker fuse?"

Luckily, John had all of these materials.

Moments later, John and I were standing over a Clorox bottle with a red firecracker fuse sticking out of it in the middle of John's backyard.

I'll say "we," but really, it was John who put almost the entire tube-like container of carbide crystals into the Clorox bottle.

He lit the fuse, and we stood there over it, daring to see who would stand there the longest, when I finally said:

"BOOOOOKK!"

The phrase "book" was used as a verb and meant to go really fast "back in the day."

We ran about twenty feet, then did our best Pete Rose headfirst slide into the grass, our feet toward the blast.

When it went off, it felt like someone had stood over me and hit the bottoms of my feet with two sledgehammers!

One on each foot!

Then we heard the dirt falling back to Earth and hitting the aluminum awning on the back of John's house.

Pieces of dirt were everywhere. On his roof, in his driveway, and God only knows where else.

The blast was like ten cherry bombs going off.

It was mind-blowing.

As we stood to inspect the small crater it left in John's yard, I noticed that my right leg was a lot shorter than my left.

The two-inch heel on my right Frye boot was gone!!

We found it about five feet past the spot where we were lying, and to this day, John swears it was blown off by the blast.

I'm not so sure it didn't come off while I was running.

No one came out to see what happened.

No parents, no police, no Hefners.

Nobody.

Just another summer day at the Frohlich house.

We said our goodbyes a while later, and I rode my baby-blue ten-speed back home, carrying my Frye boot heel in one hand.

I remember my dad saying he would drop off the boot at the local shoe repair shop the next day.

I also remember not getting those boots back from the cobbler for a long time.

One thing's for sure: That guy would never guess in a million years what caused the heel to fly off that boot.

And to this day, as God is my witness, my right leg is one-quarter inch shorter than my left...

S. Monkey