Erev Halloween

 So I was in a gang, from probably 4th grade through junior high school. We were a mosaic of White Ethnic New York: Eric and I were Ashkenazi Jews, Gerry and John fully Irish, Mark of a Swedish Dad and Italian Mom, and Mike of an Italian Mom and Irish Dad. What diversity! When you grow up on Blue Collar Long Island, there is no Black or Brown. I think there was one Asian kid. Protestants were even in short supply: when you met a kid in grade school, the question was "Are you Catholic or Jewish?" The majority were Catholic.

Our gang's purpose was to have fun, with only small lapses into criminality, like the time Eric needed a part from Radio Shack and we were short the money, so several of us us distracted the nerdy clerk while Eric and Gerry pocketed the part. We thought we had gotten away with it, too, until the clerk, who my poetically licensed memory recalls actually had taped up glasses, came after us and shouted to bring the part back.

We knew there would be a dragnet looking for 5 14 year olds, so we broke up into two groups. Mark and I met 2 girls on the way home, Irish Diane and Italian Diane, and ended up dating them in a Bob Seger-esque way, though we were too young for cars.

Anyway, it seemed to us there were two holidays where bad behavior was allowed and even encouraged: July 4th and Halloween. For the former, it was pyrotechnics. We would begin gathering firecrackers by the gross (144 packs) and carefully remove each one's gunpowder to make a pile for bigger bombs. Amazingly, no one was seriously hurt, except for Eric, who I think still has some hearing loss from being too close to one of our absurd creations. Eric, who went on to become an engineer, estimated our greatest creation was as powerful as 1/4 stick of dynamite. Again -- it was dumb luck that we all made it past the stupid adolescence of boys.

And then Halloween. We would start buying eggs and shaving cream in early October. The stores got wise and stopped selling those products to young kids in late October, and month old eggs, kept outside, were properly rotten, so the egg-ee would stink as well as be sticky. It was Long Island late Fall -- cool nights, with that exquisite scent of fireplaces.

We would visit houses of "mean" neighbors, or kids who we had decided needed to have their houses egged. When I moved to Miami, I learned that "papering" was a thing -- where you would toss rolls of toilet paper into the trees -- but we never did that. The shaving cream was for girls we would run into -- teen and tween girls were NOT happy having it sprayed into their hair.

And one year, I think maybe when I was 12 or 13, I came close to death as a result of these hijinks. The cops would patrol on Halloween, and when they came upon older kids or teens, would stop and line us up. I guess it never occurred to us Nassau Countians that "profiling" or "stop and frisk" was a constitutional insult.

The cops would say in their great LI accents "Youse carrying any eggs?" and before you could answer, they'd smack all of your pockets, so that if you were a would be egger, you became an egg-ee. We were wise to this.

So on the night of near Fate for me, one of us saw a Nassau County patrol car coming up the streets, and Mark yelled "Hide your eggs!" I was standing next to a street lamp, and noticed the service panel on the base was missing -- so I put my 7 or 8 eggs inside before The Law came. Sure enough, they lines us up (in my memory the cop was named Sweeney) and we passed the egg smacking test. They drove away saying "Be good, fellas."

I went to retrieve my eggs by reaching into the lamp base, and got the literal shock of my life -- it threw me back a good 5 feet. I guess the fact that I was wearing sneakers, and it was dry, saved my life, but it was a feeling I never forgot. Years later I cringed at the thought of my loving parents getting the call about their supposedly smart son dying in such a stupid way. But I guess the Big Man had other plans.

So years later, the gang all survive. Eric became a computer engineer, married wrong and then married right, and is now mostly retired on the Florida Gulf Coast. He and his wife Jackie travel a lot -- never wanted or had kids. John is married and a retired CIA man, with a big TV show coming out next Fall about his experiences with Saddam Hussein. We've kept in pretty close touch. Mike never married, as far as I know, and lives somewhere in North Florida, a retired printer. Mark and his high school girlfriend/now wife Rita and I remain closest -- they live on Long Island and never planned to have kids, but were blessed with Joseph, who is now a young patent attorney living in D.C. and newly engaged. Gerry is the mystery, mostly. Mark keeps in touch with him -- he lives, we think in his parents' house in Seaford. He worked for TV shows in the City for awhile, but is always cagey about what he does now. I made the reference to "Spinal Tap" that Mark agrees with: some things are best left unexplained.

Tomorrow is Halloween. Wifey and I ordered candy, and will greet any trick or treaters that come our way. Our grandsons are off to an Aventura party. We meet D2 and Jonathan early Friday for our LA trip.

But the memories live on of cool nights and nearly dying ...