Aventures of Youth

In an earlier post I mentioned that when I was around 19 years old, I and 5 friends occupied 3 apartments in the same apartment building. It was a wild time when parties were rarely planned, but just happen ... very often. A few stories from that period come to mind. Please remember that this is not an endorsement of the events described below.

The first story is one of opportunism. Several of us worked for a local property management company. That company provided maintenance and grounds keeping services for several condominium homes associations. One dry, hot summer we ran out of legitimate work to do for the homes association. The grass had quit growing, as it will in typical Kansas City summers, and the company owner began thinking of other tasks we could do to create billing. His solution was dog poo. He had several of us police the common areas picking up dog poo.

After a few hours of this, we had several good sized bags of dog poo. If you go through the degradation of picking up dog poo for a living, you start thinking of ways to make the situation work for you. Practical jokes are always good use of one's time. The question of the day became, "What should we do with bags of dog poo?" One of the apartment buddies had somehow taken possession of a used toilet which he proudly displayed by the front door of his apartment. It didn't take us rocket scientists long to find the connection between poo and toilets.

Fortunately for other residents in the building, these apartments had exterior entry doors instead of common hallway access. So they were not directly exposed to the sight of a toilet completely full and overflowing with poo. Our buddy was subjected to this sight and smell. The toilet with contents were soon disposed of.

The second story recounts the events one unseasonably warm New Year's Eve. Since the weather was a good excuse the be outdoors, that's where the party moved. Adult beverages were flowing freely as the new year approached. At midnight the celebration began. One of the apartment buddies owned an old clunker that no longer ran. He decided that since he was having it towed away the next week, we might as well use it in the festivities.

Imagine seeing a car in the apartment building parking lot, with 5-10 guys standing on top, jumping up and down. Also imagine an additional 10-20 people gather around the vehicle hitting with hammers, throwing objects and kick it. That is exactly how the other tenants of the apartment were seeing as they greeted the new year. Not knowing what was happening, but knowing well what their 6 neighbors were like, they called the police who responded within a couple minutes.

If there were 30 people participating in the car bash, 29 saw the police coming and returned to the relative shelter of the apartments when the patrol car rolled up. My roommate, very inebriated roommate, was the lone car stomper. All that participated that evening will remember him as he realized he was all alone, stopped jumping and turned to the patrol car. After a brief hesitation, he pointed and yelled "Hey, its the cops!" The humor in this scene was that he was no more than 20 feet away from the cops as he yelled it at them and no one else. Even the patrolmen could be seen snickering at the sight. You had to be there to appreciate it.

My final story also involves my ex-roommate. His name was Dave, and we were good friends. He stood at my wedding, and I at his. Since then we have lost touch but not the memories of younger days. On this particular weekend evening, Dave was out with another apartment buddy. Dave was driving in the vicinity of our apartment.

As they passed a police vehicle on a traffic stop, the apartment buddy hangs out of Dave's vehicle and shouts, if memory serves well, "Hey you Pig!" I am sure the "you Pig!" is accurate, but not so sure of the "Hey". Regardless, the traffic officer made a quick decision that catching the disrespecting shouter was more important than the traffic offense, at started pursuing my roommate.

While this is going on, I am at the apartment and sound asleep. My roommate and the apartment buddy beat the police to the apartment and run into the apartment buddy's unit. I am then awakened by a telephone call. "Don't answer the door" is the message. "Why?" "Never mind, just don't answer the door". So instead, I crawl out of bed and across the floor to the window. I peer from behind the curtains just as a billy club is used to knock loudly on the front door. The scene below was hard to believe.

It seems that the local police department was building a SWAT team for use anyplace within the county when an appropriate situation might arise. They saw this "manhunt" as good practice for the newly formed team. As I looked down from my third floor apartment, the SWAT team was storming the building. They completely surrounded the building to prevent escape of the name-calling scoundrel.

The police had come to my apartment after checking for home address off my roommate's license plate. I do not know if the SWAT unit would have battered down the door because the culprits tried to escape from a rear bedroom window in the other apartment. The SWAT team spotted the attempt and turned their focus to that apartment and away from mine. The siege ended a few minutes later when the police decided not to obtain a warrant to enter the premise. I suspect they were just practicing anyway.

Scenes like these recurred very often. There are other stories of couches flying off of balconies, people flying off balconies (only to hook their arm over the rail and not plunge to certain injury) rude treatment of neighbors, and other despicable acts that will not be retold. I previously mentioned that the apartment complex management was plotting to remove us. That attempt became a success when our lease expired. We found that our rent checks were no longer good. The first to leave was Dave and me. Dave moved home with his parents, I moved downstairs with other apartment buddies. Our 3 apartments in the same building were reduced to 2, and later to 1 and none.

Most of us moved on to marriage and families and respectability. A couple hung on to the party life. I lost touch with all the guys, but occasionally bump into one by accident. When we have that chance meeting, we always say that it's time to get everyone together again and reminisce. But we won't. While the memories were great, the environment was not. I still feel sorry for the other tenants in our apartment building. We deserved much worse than eviction.