Living Nativity scene

In high school I ran with a group of 5 or 6 borderline hooligans. We did things that could have gotten us into a lot of trouble if we had been caught. We lived on an Army post and each of the five regiments put together a life sized nativity scene for the holidays. They were done up for the entertainment of families that drove around at night to enjoy them. My house was right across the street from one of the displays. My grandmother was visiting and one evening while watching the traffic go by slowing to view, granny said " wouldn't it be funny if those characters were alive and moving around when the cars came by?" That's all it took to get us started.

The following night which was probably a Friday or Saturday night, My friends arrived with sheets and blankets and we made Jewish robes and head wear for ourselves. During a lull in the traffic we hurried over to the scene and took frozen positions among the other characters. When the first car slowed in front of the nativity scene, we began to slowly move around the manger. We would go over and look at the baby in the manger, nod approval to Mary and pat Joseph on the back. We would shake hands with the wise men and the shepherds. As the evening progressed we became bolder and more irreverent, picking up the baby and burping him or holding him up for all to see. Someone found an empty whiskey bottle and was feeding it to the baby. My dad called me over to the house and said to quit it because someone was bound to call the police (MP's) before long. I went back over and told the guys and we left. We hadn't been gone from the scene for ten minutes when an MP patrol car pulled up and stopped and began searching the area with a spot light. We were all in my yard but the clothing evidence had disappeared so the police may have suspected but they had nothing to pin on us.

My Dad heard later around the office that the 35th Infantry Regiment went all out and had live characters in their display. I may have mentioned before that I was dating the daughter of the Provost Martial (chief of police) and my apprehension would have meant the termination of a wonderful relationship.

Is it Larceny or Opportunism?

I mentioned growing up as an Army brat with little supervision other than "don't do anything that will affect my career negatively". Actually that was never said but it was certainly implied.

I spent the wonder years, freshman-junior high school years in Hawaii. We lived in the town next to Schofield Barracks and before I could drive we had to bike from town to the post. Not far but a ways. There is a commissary on a military base that is the same as a supermarket for use of the military families at a significant savings over civilian markets. I suppose because of the lack of state taxes and military supplier contracts. On Saturdays the commissary allowed youngsters to serve as bag boys at the checkout lanes. A young G.I. Would be in charge of assigning boys to work at each of the 9 or ten lanes on a split shift, AM and PM.

We would all show up about 7 AM. The shifts were from eight to One and from one to five. The first lane was the fast lane ( 15 items or less). Lanes two to about 5 were always open even on slow days. The remaining lanes opened if needed but maybe never. The GI in charge would write the lane numbers for both shifts on slips of paper and we would draw them out of a box. If there were 20 work opportunities and thirty boys, the appropriate number of blank slips would be included. Pretty fair recruiting method actually.

If you were me and my friends, and you rode all the way from Wahiawa It was a great disappointment not to get a job and even worse if you drew lane one or one of the low potential end lanes. Payment for your work only came in the form of tips from the folks who let you help them load the groceries into their cars. You had to hurry because you wanted to get back to your lane before the next customer was ready to go. No tips could be expected at lane one (more about that later) and of course no tips from an unopened lane even though you had to hang around in case it did open later. On an average day your five hour shift could provide five to ten dollars. Not too bad when other kids were paid 50 cents an hour to do other jobs. Month end Saturdays could go even higher. Enlisted mens wives were more generous tippers than officers wives and wives were better tippers than the their husbands.

OK so what? I mentioned this was a sought after job with more kids than jobs every Saturday I also mentioned the disappointment of not getting a job. So, how to mitigate those issues.? My friends and I discovered that the GI in charge was almost always dragging on Saturday morning because there was a Friday night beer garden that sold nickel beers. By Saturday morning he would just like to rest, and he always complained about the chore of making up those little slips of paper. It came to our minds that we could help him and maybe help ourselves if he would let us. We wouldn't ask him to let us cheat, and really all we wanted was a little advantage over the others. Finally we told him we would be happy to prepare the lane number tickets for him if he wanted.

We wanted to have some assurance of being able to draw a "good" lane on almost every draw. We knew we would have to be able to see in the box, and the papers couldn't be obviously "different" from each other, like folded different or dog eared or what ever. The plan that we came up with, and the one that worked for as long as "our" GI stayed on that job was relatively simple and obvious only if you knew the clue.

At home on Friday we took a sheet of common loose leaf notebook paper and cut it in strips top to bottom after cutting off the holes on the left. that left about 4 or five equal width strips, two of which had a red line running through the middle. Then we cut the strips into equal sized squares on which we wrote the one through ten numbers for each shift. The "good" lanes ( 2 thru 6) we wrote on the slips that had red lines on them and the others on plain white paper. And of course 10 or fifteen blanks to balance out the number of participants present. We told our GI that if everyone could see in the box the drawing would go quicker and more efficiently and since the papers were all exactly the same size nothing would be lost in secrecy. He agreed because holding the box over everyones head did slow the process down. From that first Saturday, my friends and I always got the good lanes.

I mentioned that the fast lane was not desirable because one never got to carry out the one single bag for anyone. Another enterprising lad , knowing that a GI wasn't assigned to bag on lane one, put a cup down by the bagging area with a couple quarters in it and began bagging groceries for the customers. When he would hand them their bag he would ask if they needed help. They would of course say no but drop a quarter or two in the cup for the bagging help. As it turned out, a quarter from each customer in five hours could amount to more than the other boys were getting on the other lanes. So we began including lane one on the red striped papers.

am and PM

Wild Hogs,Man!

When I was younger, about the age of my daughter, I read a National Geographic article about a couple of guys who went on a biking road trip in south Texas. They actually started in Arizona on a two lane blacktop that went through El Paso and then followed the Tex-Mex border down through the Big Bend area and then along the river all the way to Brownsville. They spoke of camping out along the way, meeting local folk in small border towns, seeing things they had never seen before and most importantly, the thrill of driving fast on curving, nearly deserted two lane highways. It sounded like a fun adventure then and it does today as I recall it. The problem then was that I was raising a family, trying to be a responsible parent ,husband and provider. AND, I didn't know how to ride a motor. Today I have the time and to some extent, the resources to saddle up for a road trip but I still don't know how to ride a bike.

Some years later I and the "fam" including only my oldest son vacationed in South Texas because our school vacation was in March/April. We drove to Padre Island to be as far south as possible that time of year. It was essentially Spring Break but school kids hadn't discovered the Island as a party spot yet. We Camped in a vacant public campground on the Island, and drove on the beach sand.

When we left we followed that border highway all the way from Brownsville to just short of the Big Bend Area. We ate our meals at local family owned cafes and tried all the home grown chili tacos, burritos and things we never heard of before. Then we angled north toward Alpine Texas where a high school buddy of mine lived. We stayed at a public campground outside of Alpine and that is where my second, youngest son was conceived. 4/2 - 1/2. As we neared Colorado from Amarillo we entered a snow/ ice storm that made our camper so heavy we had to drive in a lower gear just to keep up speed. And that was in a full sized K5 Blazer with a 350 cid v-8 motor. And if thats not right, it ought to be.