The Fight

Mike had a great idea.  We were gonna rob the cash box at the little grocery store on the right hand side of the sweeping curve of Meyers Way as it heads north through Top Hat and crests the hill that curves down to South Park and the First Avenue Bridge to Seattle.  We were young and dumb, of course, but it seemed like a good idea at the time.

That old store, at one end of a building that later would be considered a strip mall that included Pat’s Top Hat Cycle, run by one of the old Seattle legends from the days when Harleys and Indians duked it out with Triumphs and Nortons on the main drags of places like White Center or the parking lots of the Red Feather Tavern, was an important resource for those of us in the neighborhood who were ready to party, but too young to vote.  It was where we got our beer on a Friday night when there was a dance at the field house in the old projects down on 8^th Avenue off 102^nd.

Before it was a store, it was a bar, and the side door was into the parking lot through a passageway that was not visible by the bartender, and they put a cigarette dispenser right there by the door!  We would slip in, put a quarter in the machine and pull the handle, and out would drop a Lucky Strike or a Pall Mall or a Camel, and we’d be outta there.  I remember being shocked when they raised the price to thirty-five cents.  I swore I was gonna quit when they raised it to fifty.

The way it worked with the beer, we would stand out in the parking lot between the store and the barber shop, kinda leaned up against the wall so as not to be too obvious.  One of us, usually the one who had the $2 it took to make this work, would size up the customers as they came and went, and approach a likely prospect, usually a guy old enough to buy a beer but young enough to remember standing in the same lot, and say, “Hey man, can you do us a favor, and buy us a six pack?  We’ll buy you one, too!”  Nine times out of ten they would say, “Sure, gimme the money,” and off they’d go inside, usually coming back out shortly with a six pack of cold Heidelberg lagers, the beer that tastes the same whether you’re drinking it or puking it back out.  Once in a while we’d pick the wrong guy and he’d buy a half rack with our money and slip out the back door, but that was the price of tuition.

Then we’d beat feet down 108^th to the schoolyard where everyone gathered, stopping on the way to huddle in the bushes on the southeast side of the park to slam down one Heidelberg each to give us the courage to face those dangerous girls in there, and maybe even dance with one.  The room would be dark, with various flashing lights, and one of the local garage  bands blazing away at one of the latest top 40 tunes with the amps set to 9.  “House of the Rising Sun” by the Animals was a favorite, and “Louie, Louie”, of course.  The dance floor would be crowded with boys and girls making with the latest moves from American Bandstand while a steady stream of people circulated in a clockwise direction constantly, feeding and being fed by the dance floor, while the walls were lined with flowers, mostly of the male persuasion.  Everybody was there.  All the popular kids were on the dance floor, or gathered in their cliques.  Outside, the bad boys and the tough guys squared off with the occasional jock in a constant testing of status typical of the young breeding male.  After the bands finished their battle – there was usually three bands on any given night, more due to the fact that none of them had more than one set memorized than anything else- there was always a fight or two in the parking lot.  We’d gather to watch that, then we’d head back through the woods to sit on a log and drink our second beer, which we hid in the bushes when we went inside.  One time somebody found our beer, and that sucked.  After that we’d head for the lake to see who was there and play footsy with the cops.  Life was sweet in the summer of 1967.  We had it made…

But back to the robbery.  Mike was the ringleader of our little neighborhood bunch, most of the time, and he always came up with good ideas.  He explained to us how it was gonna work.  “Okay, you two guys”, pointing at me and Lefty, “are going to walk in the store and get into a big fight.  You have to really make it look good, maybe one of you go in first and the next one come in, then you pass in the milk aisle, and you slap him, then you deck him, then it’s on! Meanwhile, while everyone is distracted, I’ll slip in the back door, which the old man always leaves open in the summertime, and grab the cash box, which he hides under the counter, then I’ll run out the back.  After a while, you two work your fight up to the front door, then you run out, and you call him a name, then you run after him, and chase him down the street.  We’ll meet up later and divide the loot!  So whaddaya say, you ready?!”

Lefty and I looked at each other.  The problem was, we had been buddies for so long, grew up together, really, but we never had actually come to blows, so we really didn’t know which one of us was tougher, and probably didn’t want to, either.  So I said, “It sounds good, Mike, but how about you and Lefty fight, and I’ll grab the cash box?”  Lefty said, “Bull Shit.  You two are the same size, and I’m smaller than either of you, so a fight with me won’t be convincing.  I’ll grab the cash box, while you two fight.”

The longer we negotiated, the farther we got from a solution.  So we decided to wait until dark and throw a rock through the plate glass window of the fruit stand/grocery on the other side of the old Flying A gas station by the actual Top Hat instead, and steal all the cigarettes and candy the old fool that runs the place displays in that window.  I tell ya, life for a juvenile delinquent in White Center in the early ‘60s was tough.  You hadda be on your game.  :-{)}

The Herd

Hicks Lake is a small pond in south Seattle where we grew up.  It sits in a bowl with hills on the east and west sides and Evergreen High School taking up all the land on the south side from SW 116^th to 108^th, where the main entrance to the county park is an extension of 8^th Ave SW.

When we were kids, the swimming area and surrounding grassy hillsides was the focus of most of our summer days.  The younger kids would take swim lessons from the lifeguards, and when we were older we congregated on the dock and socialized with the other kids.  The lifeguards were the kings of the beach, as I recall, long and lean with movie star tans that developed as they sprawled out on their elevated chairs with no sunshades on the hot afternoons.  I imagine they’re all dead of skin cancer by now; this was the ‘60s, and everyone smoked tobacco, too.

Back in those days, Evergreen High School did not allow smoking on campus, so the kids would run out to the fence between the schoolyard and the park and gather under a big tree near the fence.  That became the unofficial “smoking section” during the school year, and an informal gathering spot for the local bad boys and juvenile delinquents who had nothing better to do all summer but hang out at the park and get in trouble.

This group grew cohesive enough to be considered a gang, depending on who was talking.  Someone tagged us, “The Herd”, and it stuck, because we liked it, and didn’t give much thought about what it really meant.  We used to give ourselves the one fingered salute, but reversed, so the message became, “F*** Me”.  We were cool, and we knew it.

There was a regular routine to a hot summer day.  If you had no money, which was most of the time, you’d hang around at the lake most of the day and bum cigarettes from your friends and ogle the girls while at the same time offending the straight types who herded their children like baby ducks down to the swimming area and the sandy beach in front of it.

If you had a couple of bucks in your pocket, though, the sky was wide open.  You could go downtown and race your car at the slot car track on 16^th, or shoot some pool in the pool hall next door.  The pool hall had a row of coin operated Pinball machines that we became expert at cheating.  One of them in particular, we knew, had a spot on the underside where the plywood base was worn through, exposing the sheet metal under the body, because it would rack up 10 or 12 free games if you gave it a precise kick in exactly that spot when the manager was not looking.  You could play for hours on one quarter.

The roller rink was down the street on the same side, and there was a shooting range in the basement.  We were much too cool to do the Hokey Pokey any more, but it was still fun to skate, and lots of girls went there, too.  For fine dining, we had our choice of Lou’s .29 cent Ratburgers, a Root Beer Float at Dairy Queen or Frostop, with a burger and fries for $1.25.   At night, the hot rodders came out and the parking lots were hopping.

Back in the late ‘50s, early ‘60s Hicks Lake was a busy place every day.  The water was clean and clear, and the natural drainage supplied by the Little Lake on the north side of the park kept it that way.  Little Hicks was swarming with lily pads, bullfrogs and polliwogs in those days, and we used to hunt them with BB guns and kill them by the dozens in our ignorance.  People would catch crappie and bass in the big lake, and turtles were common.  Then it all died, through overuse and a series of bad decisions by the County.

We had regular joyful duels with the County Mounties who had the unfortunate task of keeping order down there.  At night the park would close and the Herd would be outstanding in their field most of the night, drinking beer and partying.  This offended the cops, and they would drive in with lights flashing, but none of us had cars, so we would run up to the upper parking lot and gather in the light from their spotlights and give them the Bird while doing the Monahan shuffle, so named after a teacher at Evergreen.  That would make them mad, and they’d drive back out the gate, then come tearing up the driveway to the upper lot while we ran back down to the lower lot and repeated the performance.  The banks along the shore of the lake on the south side between Cascade Elementary school and were steep and brushy, giving us many hidden spots to sit and drink beer while the cops cruised around looking for anyone who would volunteer to be caught without actually having to leave their cars and run after us (though that did happen, on occasion).

So the police complained to the Park department, and they sent a crew down to denude the hillside and take away our hiding places, which also had the affect of greatly increasing the washing of the muddy banks into the lake water and fouling it.  Then some genius at the County came up with a plan to fill the Little Lake and create a parking lot there.  That killed off the rest of the frogs and completed the ruination of Hicks Lake as a place where kids could come and swim and play in the summer time.  The water quality got worse and worse, and swimmer’s itch was frequent, so they spent a bunch of our tax dollars and built a chlorine- filled pool up on the hill, which remains the only swimming spot in the area.  They don’t even have lifeguards at the lake any more, nobody goes there.  Sic transit Gloria mundi.