| It seems that most of Tim's and my childhood years consisted mainly of general mischief and irrating the daylights out of grownups. One such place we hung out at a lot and did all the above was Heckleman's Sohio gas station, which I alluded to in a previous story. When we weren't using clandestine methods to sneak cigarette purchases from the machine there, we were constantly riding our bicycles over the air hose that rung a bell inside to alert that a gas customer was at the pump. They repeatedly asked us not to do that, but we just ignored them! They got their "payback" on a few occasions. One such time was when I was putting air in my rear bicycle tire from thier outside air hose and one of the guys quietly threw a cherry bomb behind me! After my initial shock, I quickly felt the bike tires to see which one blew! After hearing hilarious laughter, I turned around, saw the smoke, and figured out what really happened. On other occasions, we would do more innocuous things. In late summer there were always numerous horseflies on the inside ledge of the big window in front of the station. We would catch one and tie some string on one of its legs and go outside and let it go. It was amusing to see it fly off with about 12 - 14 inches of string hanging below it! One of the guys named Kenny taught us how to take a broom straw and stick it in their rear end and let it go outside. We commented to Kenny about how fast they flew away with a broom straw stuck in them and Kenny replied and said, "YOU'D go fast too if you had a 2X4 rammed up YOUR a--!" The gas station is still there, but it has been used by a commercial electric business for several years. I STILL ride my bike around the building most every day when I go for my early evening bike ride to "unwind", but it's just not quite as much fun since the air hose for the inside bell isn't there anymore! |
