My Criminal Memoir, Part Eleven. Fireworks, BB Guns and Porn. Louis Shalako.

"What didst thou havest in mind, oh Droogy-droogs???"

Louis Shalako

 

Fireworks, BB Guns and Porn. And that's just for starters. We had our own little gang, back in the early seventies. It was better to be in a group. We walked everywhere. There were a lot more young people back then, there were some rough neighbourhoods, and punks everywhere or so it seemed.

Walking out to the mall with a few dollars burning holes in their pockets, teenage boys will comb an entire store, an entire mall, looking for something to buy—at one end of the old Woolco store, there was a sporting goods department, right next to automotive. One of their displays was jackknives, buck knives, including the longest legal knife, long and skinny. The length when opened, of just on nine inches…a folding stiletto, if you will.

But seriously, kids will go up and down every aisle, what with a brand-new mall on the edge of town, and this is where I saw a fedora, and it was like $2.99.

I suppose I had been reading A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess. I suppose it had played at a local theatre, perhaps the old Mustang Drive-In on Plank Road…where kids from the south end were occasionally known to walk out that way on a summer’s eve, braving swamp and mosquitos to infiltrate in from the woods beside and behind the place, waiting until dark to steal in a little closer to the last few rows of parking spots, where we could at least hear the sound through all of those tinny little speakers, with their coiled wires and hanging on a post beside each parking spot.

Considering Alex and his droogs, we really couldn’t do the white long johns and a codpiece in the midst of a Canadian winter. What we did, was to adopt steel-toed work boots, jeans, leather jackets, and those fucking fedora hats. Oh, yeah, jackknives…

It’s not like we ever used them, but once you assumed that every other fucking kid in town had one, you sort of realized the dangers of pulling one out. The point is, that they knew it too—

Yeah—and every fucking one of us had a condom in our wallet, which you could get from a wall dispenser in any bar or even a gas station rest room, for a quarter. Twenty-five cents, ladies and gentlemen. And let’s be honest: you never know when you’re going to need one, right. Also, back then, any honest storekeeper would sell a bunch of teenage boys a pack of Colts or Old Port, wine-dipped cigars, which smelled good, looked cool but kind of tasted a lot like shit after the first few puffs.

Quite frankly, we might have been a little before our time, but we had a dance, a kind of mix between the Charleston and the Soupy Shuffle. Yeah, you’ve got a line of teenagers, walking out to the mall, in our boots and our jackets, all lined up under a streetlight and we were just plain boogying, ladies and gentlemen.

We can only marvel, and wonder what the occasional passing motorists might have thought of all that.

***

The Universe is composed of endless amounts of bullshit. Kids have to put up with a lot of such things, but we get our revenge too…

In my old man’s garage, tucked away in a massive home-made workbench, were two or three Playboy magazines.

A source of endless fascination to boys as young as ten or eleven years old, I don’t remember too much of the actual contents…we weren’t there to read the articles, but the one thing that does stick out is Elke Sommer. According to sources, she was one of the more popular pin-up girls of the time, in addition to her acting career, appearing in the pages of Playboy in 1964 and in 1967. The one I recall, was her walking nude around some Hollywood mansion, fresh, natural, just a nice, healthy young woman in her birthday suit. She really was beautiful, if you watch the Pink Panther film A Shot in the Dark, there is a shot where her and Peter Sellers are at a nudist colony, and it is still something of a thrill to see her naked, from behind, from the waist up…you have to admit, dimples above and behind the hips, nice shoulders and good proportions have an allure.

Just around the corner from Willy’s house, (and garage), was a place called Bell’s Variety. These little corner stores once dotted the city. The store was on the ground floor, taking up a couple of rooms, presumably the living room, front hall and closet deleted, and the dining room knocked together. The proprietors invariably lived in the building, a converted house, something which is almost unheard-of today. Let’s just say the health department frowns on the owner of a store or restaurant having a bed in the back room and sleeping on the premises. The bylaw officers frown on it too, as a place of business and not zoned residential.

And we had a plan to get a few fresh porno magazines, assuming we followed the plan and everyone did their jobs.

You have to admit she's cute...

At the back of the store was a magazine rack. Back then, the front covers of such magazines did not have to be obscured in the rack, with a strip of metal or wood high enough to blot out the pictures, leaving only the name of the magazine visible to casual shoppers, some of whom would definitely be children, or uptight adults, for that matter.

There were bundled products. These would be three low-budget, relatively unknown magazines, full-colour, but not Playboy, Penthouse or Hustler, to name the top three…

Ye olde magazine rack, home of comic books and porn.

Willy went into the store, asking the lady for large bottles of orange pop. Warm, orange pop. So, the lady turns, taking it at face value, ignoring Johnny, already in the store and in the back corner, ostensibly looking for Mad Magazine or comic books or something.

As soon as she disappeared into the back room, Johnny grabs three bundles of pornographic magazines, sealed in their plastic bags, which admittedly didn’t cost much but could not be sold to the underage group.

I was just coming in with a quarter and a dime in my hot little hand. Johnny goes running out the door. The lady comes back in, yelling. Willy literally puts up his hand.

I’ll get him, he says, whereupon he bolts for the door. And my job was to stand my ground, not being involved, after all. Fuck, all I want is a bag of chips and a chocolate bar. Reluctantly, the lady sort of has to stick around with this unknown teenager in the store…

What is really nuts is that Bell’s Variety was literally, two or three hundred feet from Willy’s house. He must have been in there every day, every second day at the least, but good old Johnny lived a couple of kilometres away. He didn’t have to worry about going back there, as I said, there were variety stores on practically every block back then.

Willy couldn’t have that stuff at home, not even in the garage, so after a suitable interval, and after having a good look through our booty, it ended up with a few other odds and ends in the ‘fort’ made of salvaged plywood up in the rafters of my old man’s garage.

***

I don’t know how I managed to get out of it, perhaps I was just manipulative. I was an idea man, whatever the hell that means. We pulled essentially the same stunt at another store, a good distance from our own neighbourhoods. This was a store on London Road, at the corner of Mitton Street, not too far from downtown. The original building was two-storey, brick, built in the 1920s by the look of it. This guy had fireworks, so it must have been early to mid-May. Back then, ‘firecracker day’, as the kids called it, was the May 24 weekend—Queen Elizabeth’s birthday.

Willy was pretty bold when it came to shoplifting from the small, neighbourhood stores. He had a big green parka, industrial grade, which had big side pockets to begin with. With the hood up, it obscured the face to some degree, and half the town was wearing those jackets anyways. He’d also cut a big horizontal slit, on the inside of the lining, one on each side of the zipper. He’s the only kid I knew, who could get a couple of the big glass pop bottles, twenty-five ounce bottles, into the side pockets and then, which was really brazen, to pick out a ten-cent bag of chips and actually pay for that at the counter. This after hanging around the cooler at the back of the store for some moments.

This time, Willy goes to the back of the store. Johnny is in one of several aisles, looking for whatever—something he was having trouble deciding on, or maybe just unable to find what he was looking for. I’m at the counter, where the owner is trying to decide, do I sell this kid a pack of Old Ports and take his money? Or do the right thing and refuse. Just as he turns to get the smokes, Willy grabs three of the biggest boxes of fireworks in the display. He makes his way down the opposite side of the store, obscured by the shelves, four or so feet high, with products lined up on top as well. All the guy can see is his head and shoulders, Johnny’s perfectly placed so that the one aisle the guy can actually see down from his place behind the counter is blocking his view of Willy as he goes past.

One more aisle, across the front of the store, and Willy bolts for the door…

“Don’t you worry, Mister—I’ll get him.” Johnny drops his candy or whatever and runs from the store.

All the poor guy could do was to take my money and hand over the cigars.

All I could do was give a shake of the head and shrug philosophically. Kids these days...right?

What are going to do about it...right?

Hours of fun for bad boys and other children.

***

It was summer, and we had arranged to meet in a vacant lot just across from the Beer Store on Mall Road. This was just behind a defunct scrap yard, where we took our BB guns a time or two, blasting away at abandoned cars. You can get pretty good at shooting out headlights, tail-lights, side mirrors, although the windows were a bit tough for even a CO2-powered BB gun. Even Rock’s .22 CO2 pistol, throwing lead pellets, had a hard time with the side windows, and the windshields were impenetrable…

Anyhow, Soupy was a few years older than us, and he had already gone into the beer store and grabbed a case of 24 bottles of Molson Golden Ale. Right about then, Johnny shows up, and he’s pissed. The four of us had our beer, and Soupy didn’t want to go back, and let’s be honest. It’s illegal to purchase alcohol for minors, right. He’s only pushing his luck so far. We were going roller skating, and knocking back six beers in a cornfield out behind the township arena sure made life a lot more interesting.

So, I took Johnny’s two dollars and said I would have a go. I was fifteen, wearing that leather jacket, with a little seventeen-hair mustache and I really didn’t think I was fooling anybody. To my surprise, the man behind the counter took my money and handed over a six-pack of Labatt’s 50, which we sort of denigrated as ‘an old man’s beer’, but that’s what Johnny’s dad drank and I suppose Johnny didn’t much care, it was what he was used to drinking, (when he could manage to sneak a few out of the beer fridge in the basement bar his old man had built).

I have to admit, I was fairly proud of that accomplishment, only problem now, was that we didn’t really need Soupy any more—now I got to go in and buy the fucking beer.

Such is the price of being tall, ladies and gentlemen.

And confidence is everything.

An old man's beer.

Imagine five of us, pounding back six beers each, over the course of half an hour, standing around in an empty patch in a cornfield. This would be the result of flooding, a low spot, but it served the purpose.

Once in the arena, the fucking change rooms were just clouds of smoke, back in those days. Some guy you know says, hey, and passes you a joint, and what are you going to do? Take a couple of puffs and hand it back, that’s what.

And after three hours of skating, it was time to walk home again. On at least one occasion, Johnny’s older sister literally picked me up, slung me over her shoulder, and carried me most of the way.

I always thought she really ought to have fucked me.

Well. If I was teasing her, it was only simple justice for her to tease me—and she did.

Yeah, she did.

Don’t worry, nothing ever came of it.

END

 

Louis has books and stories available from Amazon.

Louis has art on ArtPal.

Listen to his free audiobook, One Million Words ofCrap, here on Google Play.

My Criminal Memoir. (Part One).

My Criminal Memoir, Part Two.

My Criminal Memoir, Part Three.

My Criminal Memoir, Part Four.

My Criminal Memoir, Part Five.

My Criminal Memoir, Part Six.

My Criminal Memoir, Part Seven.

My Criminal Memoir, Part Eight.

My Criminal Memoir, Part Nine.

My Criminal Memoir, Part Ten.

Thank you for reading, and listening.

 

 

Let There Be Light. Horace B. Fyfe.

Let There Be Light

Horace B. Fyfe

IF Worlds of Science Fiction, November 1952

No matter what the future, one factor must always be reckoned with—the ingenuity of the human animal.

The two men attacked the thick tree trunk with a weary savagery. In the bright sunlight, glistening spatters of sweat flew from them as the old axes bit alternately into the wood.

Blackie stood nearby, on the gravel shoulder of the highway, rubbing his short beard as he considered the depth of the white notch. Turning his broad, tanned face to glance along the patched and cracked concrete to where squat Vito kept watch, he caught the latter’s eye and beckoned.

“Okay, Sid—Mike. We’ll take it a while.”

The rhythm of the axe-strokes ceased. Red Mike swept the back of a forearm across the semi-shaven stubble that set him as something of a dandy.  

Wordlessly, big Sid ambled up the road to replace Vito.

“Pretty soon, now,” boasted Mike, eyeing the cut with satisfaction. “Think it’ll bring them?”

“Sure,” replied Blackie, spitting on his hands and lifting one of the worn tools. “That’s what they’re for.”

“Funny,” mused Mike. “How some keep going an’ others bust. These musta been workin’ since I was a little kid—since before the last blitz.”

“Aw, they don’t hafta do much. ‘Cept in winter when they come out to clear snow, all they do is put in a patch now an’ then.”

Mike stared moodily at the weathered surface of the highway and edged back to avoid the reflected heat.

“It beats me how they know a spot has cracked.”

“I guess there’s machines to run the machines,” sighed Blackie. “I dunno; I was too young. Okay, Vito?”

The relieving pair fell to. Mike stepped out of range of the flying chips to sit at the edge of the soft grass which was attempting another invasion of the gravel shoulder. Propelled by the strength of Vito’s powerful torso, a single chip spun through the air to his feet. He picked it up and held it to his nose. It had a good, clean smell.

When at length the tree crashed down across the road, Blackie led them to the ambush he had chosen that morning. It was fifty yards up the road toward the ruined city—off to the side where a clump of trees and bushes provided shade and concealment.

“Wish we brought something to eat,” Vito said.

“Didn’t know it would take so long to creep up on ‘em this morning,” said Blackie. “The women’ll have somethin’ when we get back.”

“They better,” said Mike.

He measured a slender branch with his eye. After a moment, he pulled out a hunting knife, worn thin by years of sharpening, and cut off a straight section of the branch. He began whittling.

“You damn’ fool!” Sid objected. “You want the busted spot on the tree to show?”

“Aw, they ain’t got the brains to notice.”

“The hell they ain’t! It stands out like one o’ them old street signs.

D’ya think they can tell, Blackie?”

“I dunno. Maybe.” Blackie rose cautiously to peer over a bed of blackberry bushes. “Guess I’ll skin up a tree an’ see if anything’s in sight.”

He hitched up his pants, looking for an easy place to climb. His blue denims had been stoutly made, but weakened by many rips and patches, and he did not want to rip them on a snag. It was becoming difficult to find good, un-rotted clothing in the old ruins.

***

Choosing a branch slightly over his head, he sprang for it, pulled, kicked against the trunk, and flowed up into the foliage with no apparent effort. The others waited below. Sid glanced up occasionally, Vito idly kicked at one of the clubs made from an old two-by-four.

The other lay beneath the piled jackets; but enough of the end protruded to show that they had been chopped from the same timber, gray-painted on one side, stained and gouged on the other where boards had once been nailed. A coil of rope lay beside the axes.

High in the upper branches, Blackie braced himself with negligent confidence and stared along the concrete ribbon.

From here, he thought, you’d almost think the place was still alive, instead of crumbling around our ears.

The windows of the distant houses were dark, un-glassed holes, but the sunlight made the masonry clean and shining. To Blackie, the ragged tops of most of the buildings were as natural as the tattered look of the few people he knew. Beyond, toward the center of the city, was real evidence of his race’s bygone might—a vast jumble of shattered stone and fused metal. Queer weeds and mosses infected the area, but it would be centuries before they could mask the desolation.

Better covered, were the heaps along the road, seemingly shoved just beyond the gravel shoulders—mouldering mounds which legend said were once machines to ride in along the pavement.

Something glinted at the bend of the highway. Blackie peered closer.

He swarmed down the tree from branch to branch, so lithely that the trio below hardly had the warning of the vibrating leaves before he dropped, cat-footed, among them.

“They’re comin’!”

He shrugged quickly into his stained jacket, emulated in silent haste by the others. Vito rubbed his hands down the hairy chest left revealed by his open jacket and hefted one of the clubs. In his broad paws, it seemed light.

They were quiet, watching Sid peer out through narrowly parted brush of the undergrowth. Blackie fidgeted behind him. Finally, he reached out as if to pull the other aside, but at that moment Sid released the bushes and crouched.

The others, catching his warning glance, fell prone, peering through shrubbery and around tree trunks with savage eyes.

The distant squawk of a jay became suddenly very clear, as did the sighing of a faint breeze through the leaves overhead. Then a new, clanking, humming sound intruded.

A procession of three vehicles rolled along the highway at an unvarying pace which took no account of patches or worn spots. They jounced in turn across a patch laid over a previous, unsuccessful patch, and halted before the felled tree. Two were bulldozers; the third was a light truck with compartments for tools. No human figures were visible.

A moment later, the working force appeared—a column of eight robots. These deployed as they reached the obstacle, and explored like colossal ants along its length.

“What’re they after?” asked Mike, whispering although he lay fifty yards away.

“They’re lookin’ over the job for whatever sends them out,” Blackie whispered back. “See those little lights stickin’ out the tops o’ their heads? I heard tell, once, that’s how they’re run.”

Some of the robots took saws from the truck and began to cut through the tree trunk. Others produced cables and huge hooks to attach the obstacle to the bulldozers.

“Look at ‘em go!” sighed Sid, hunching his stiff shoulders jealously. “Took us hours, an’ they’re half done already.”

They watched as the robots precisely severed the part of the tree that blocked the highway, going not one inch beyond the gravel shoulder, and helped the bulldozers to tug it aside. On the opposite side of the concrete, the shoulder tapered off into a six-foot drop. The log was jockeyed around parallel to this ditch and rolled into it, amid a thrashing of branches and a spurting of small pebbles.

“Glad we’re on the high side,” whispered Mike. “That thing ‘ud squash a guy’s guts right out!”

“Keep listenin’ to me,” Blackie said. “An’ you’ll keep on bein’ in the right place at the right time.”

Mike raised his eyebrows at Vito, who thrust out his lower lip and nodded sagely. Sid grinned, but no one contradicted the boast.

“They’re linin’ up,” Blackie warned tensely. “You guys ready? Where’s that rope?”

Someone thrust it into his hands. Still squinting at the scene on the highway, he fumbled for the ends and held one out to Mike. The others gripped their clubs.

“Now, remember!” ordered Blackie. “Me an’ Mike will trip up the last one in line. You two get in there quick an’ wallop him over the head—but good!”

“Don’t go away while we’re doin’ it,” said big Sid. “They won’t chase ya, but they look out fer themselves. I don’t wanna get tossed twenty feet again!”

The eyes of the others flicked toward the jagged white scar running down behind Sid’s right ear and under the collar of his jacket. Then they swung back to the road.

“Good!” breathed Blackie. “The rollin’ stuff’s goin’ first.”

The truck and bulldozers set out toward the city, with the column of robots marching a fair distance behind. The latter approached the ambush—drew abreast—began to pass.

Blackie raised himself to a crouch with just the tips of his fingers steadying him.

***

As the last robot plodded by, he surged out of the brush, joined to Red Mike by their grips on the twenty feet of rope. They ran up behind the marching machine, trailed by the others.

In his right hand, Blackie twirled the part of the rope hanging between him and Mike. On the second swing, he got it over the head of the robot. He saw Mike brace himself.

The robot staggered. It pivoted clumsily to its left, groping vaguely for the hindrance. Mike and Blackie tugged again, and the machine wound up facing them in its efforts to maintain balance. Its companions marched steadily along the road.

“Switch ends!” barked Blackie.

Alert, Mike tossed him the other end of the rope and caught Blackie’s. They ran past the robot on either side, looping it in. Blackie kept going until he was above the ditch. He wound a turn of rope about his forearm and plunged down the bank.

A shower of gravel spattered after him as Mike jammed his heels into the shoulder of the highway to anchor the other end. Then he heard the booming sound of the robot’s fall.

Blackie clawed his way up the bank. Vito and Sid were smashing furiously at the floundering machine. Mike danced about the melee with bared teeth, charging in once as if to leap upon the quarry with both feet. Frustrated by the peril of the whirling two-by-fours, he swept up handfuls of gravel to hurl.

Blackie turned to run for one of the axes. Just then, Sid struck home to the head of the robot.

Sparks spat out amid a tinkle of glass. The machine ceased all motion.

“All right!” panted Blackie. “All right! That’s enough!”

They stepped back, snarls fading. A handful of gravel trickled through Mike’s fingers and pattered loudly on the concrete. Gradually, the men began to straighten up, seeing the robot as an inert heap of metal rather than as a weird beast in its death throes.

“We better load up an’ get,” said Blackie. “We wanna be over on the trail if they send somethin’ up the road to look for this.”

Vito dragged the robot off the highway by the head, and they began the task of lashing it to the two-by-fours.

It was about two hours later when they plodded around a street corner among the ruins and stopped before a fairly intact building. By that time, they had picked up an escort of dirty, half-clad children who ran ahead to spread the news.

Two other men and a handful of women gathered around with eager exclamations.

The hunters dropped their catch.

“Better get to work on him,” said Blackie, glancing at the sky. “Be dark soon.”

The men who had remained as guards ran inside the entrance of polished granite and brought out tools: hammers, crowbars, hatchets. Behind them hurried women with basins and large cans. The original four, weary from the weight of the robot despite frequent pauses on the trail, stepped back.

“Where first, Blackie?” asked one of the men, waiting for the women to untangle the rope and timbers.

“Try all the joints. After that, we’ll crack him open down the middle for the main supply tank.”

He watched the metal give way under the blows. As the robot was dismembered, the fluid that had lubricated the complex mechanism flowed from its wounds and was poured by the women into a five-gallon can.

“Bring a cupful, Judy,” Blackie told his woman, a wiry blond girl. “I wanna see if it’s as good as the last.”

He lit a stick at the fire as they crossed the littered, once-ornate lobby, and she followed him down a dim hall. He pulled aside the skins that covered their doorway, then stumbled his way to the table. The window was still uncovered against the night chill, but it looked out on a courtyard shadowed by towering walls. To eyes adjusted to the sunny street, the room was dark.

Judy poured the oil into the makeshift lamp, waited for the rag wick to soak, and held it out to Blackie. He lit the wick from his stick.

“It burns real good, Blackie,” the girl said, wrinkling her nose against the first oily smoke. “Gee, you’re smart to catch one the first day out.”

“Tell them other dames to watch how they use it!” he warned. “This oughta last a month or more when we get him all emptied.”

He blew out the dying flame on the stick and dropped the charred wood thoughtfully to the floor.

“Naw, I ain’t so smart,” he admitted. “Or I’d figure a way to make one of them work the garden for us. Maybe someday—but this kind won’t do nothin’ but fix that goddam road, an’ what good’s that to anybody?”

His woman moved the burning lamp carefully to the center of the table.

“Anyway, it’s gonna be better’n last winter,” she said. “We’ll have lights now.”

End

Yeah, you really got to hope the robots don’t look back just as you’re sneaking up on them…

One has to wonder what they run on, considering there’s some kind of fuel or lubrication tank in the belly or trunk of the beast. Also, road-repair or road-building robots wouldn’t necessarily have to be small and humanoid, tall, skinny things with bipedal locomotion. Some specialization would be in order, but it might be better to think in terms of an autonomous backhoe, an autonomous road-grader, or an autonomous dump-truck/snow-plow. They could come in various sizes, and be transported to the work area in groups, on an autonomous flatbed. In which case, running them on batteries and solar power makes more sense than filling up a tank with gasoline or diesel fuel, or any bottled-gas type fuel.

Basically, at the end of a day, any given autonomous vehicle pulls up to a convenient charging station and an extensible arm plugs it in to a storage/charging system for the night, all set for the next working period. The cycle might even be diurnal, in spite of robotic night-vision. Even for a robot, festooned with cameras and sensors, there’s nothing quite like plentiful, natural light.

A small group of hunter-gatherers taking down an autonomous bulldozer sounds like a pretty big challenge…perhaps some sort of deadfall trap might work, if it was big enough and you could lure the thing into it. Then all you have to do is unscrew the filler cap and siphon out the fuel, assuming that’s what it runs on. If you knew anything at all, you’d steal batteries, lights and electrical components including switches, relays, voltage controls, servo-motors, even just copper or other type of wire. You’d use the metal or plastic to make tools, weapons, kitchen utensils and even jewelry.

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Louis Shalako has four pages of books and stories, print and ebooks, available from Amazon.

Thank you for reading.