The Tomato Incident

At some point during my youth a guy named Jeff and Jay Hawkins moved to my neighborhood.
Good at heart type guys, but also never afraid to mix it up to stifle the boredom.
Before we got older and were closer to being peers it was really just Jeff, Scooter, and
I. Our parents bought us all the toys, bikes, balls, bats, etc. you could want when we were
younger, but for some reason we always had to have some kind of thrill factor in our ventures.
Throwing and catching a baseball can only last so long...........
The day I'm gonna describe to you here, is just one day. I could write a whole blog just
on the kinda of stuff we did. Usually it went like this. I would say man wouldn't it be cool
to......not really thinking these guys would go for it and many times regretting I ever
brought it up. Well we did stuff like climb those big grey power line things, crawl through
drain tunnels, play war with BB guns, you know the usual things most kids do. Hell, one
hot summer day were so bored we sat around Scooter's house and ate whole Jalapenos and would
see who could last the longest without a drink.
Anyway, one summer evening we were bored as usual and while just walking through field
under aforementioned power lines, we came upon a garden. In it there were at least 200 tomato
plants, rife with ripe tomatoes. Well we each grabbed as many as we could carry and headed
toward Stage Road. It was a four lane deal, divided by a median that sloped downward on each side.
This section of the road had woods on each side. I think maybe we were eleven or twelve at the time and our curfew was dark. It was getting close to dark so we got to the top of a small hill on the side of the road, shielded by trees on both sides and started heaving. We each had like five or six tomatoes, and the deal was to hit a moving car. Anybody knows a good quarterback leads the receiver with the pass, and lets him come to the ball on the run. This was also the way to score a hit on a car. I think we had maybe two hits out of our first night. Yep, this was fun and we would do it again.
The next night we came prepared. I got three paper sacks from my parents house and we met on the way to the garden. We took pretty much all of the ripe tomatoes and filled the empty space at the top with green ones. Note: If you planted a garden off Stage Road around 1979 or so, and came out one day to find it empty, I deeply apologize. We decided to cross the street to get a better vantage point for round two. We stomped out a place in some pretty thick brush with trees on our left and right. We were on a small hill about 10 or fifteen feet above the street. Perfect. Nobody could see us from the road or anywhere else. Then we started. I don't know how long it took us to empty the bags, but I know I finished first and I was just laying back in the brush waiting to go re-fill the bags. I don't remember how many cars we hit, but the road looked like a tomato truck had a spill. Next thing you know, up out of nowhere
jumped this guy and he said "gotcha". He was proof we hit at least one. I turn to run and tripped over some kind of vine. Next thing you know I have Jeff's foot in my back as he steps on it to jump start his flight. After that Scooter does the same thing. Now as far a speed goes, I was the biggest of the three of us and the slowest. By the time I get going the man grabbed me and my goose was cooked. He took my wallet (why the hell did I have a wallet, I was only twelve) and got my name and address so flight was no longer an option. He tried to get me to get in his car, so he could take me home or to the police station, but I was having none of that. I guess he had already called the cops. Because after we walked the mile or so down this gravel road to my neighborhood the cops were waiting in the cove that backed up the the woods.
During that walk my buddies tried to distract the guy in various ways to spring me loose, I'm guessing they knew if I went down they were guilty by association. Meanwhile, my Dad's two brothers were in town and they were, up until this point, enjoying a nice dinner (in the only used on special occasion) dining room. So here I was at my front door, dirty, tired, scared and entertaining a cop. Ding-dong. My dad comes to the door and I say you need to come out so this guy can talk to you. The dining room had a perfect view of the front door, by the way. Not very complicated from here. I went directly to my room, without passing go.
I stayed there for at least a week. I think the only thing that saved me was the fact that my Dad's brothers were there for the dinner. In fact I probably made that one of the best dinners they ever shared. I could hear them laughing out loud about every five minutes and I figured only the first outburst was over me.