My View from 1958

Dick was the Page County Deputy Sheriff, future Sheriff and future Chief of Police. He is one of the nicest guys in the world. Great sense of humor, friendly, outgoing. He speaks with what I would consider a southern accent, but he was born and raised in the Midwest.  His laugh is unmistakable. Dick was in North Carolina for a short while at umpire school but basically spent his whole life in the Shenandoah area. He has a twinge of southern draw in his voice that made him stand out a bit more, and his stories more interesting to listen to. He is a definitely a character. A famous story about Dick occurred while in high school. In track, he was a very promising half-miler, and was the lead-off runner on the Mustangs’ two-mile relay team.  At the famous Drake Relays in Des Moines, when Hunt stripped off his sweat suit and toed the starting line, on the back of his jersey was pinned a hand-written sign: “You have just been passed by Hunt of Shenandoah!”  Then he ran dead last!

Dick is the father of my good friend and fellow teenage rabble rouser Randy Hunt. Randy is featured in many of my Blog posts. We have known each other for about 55 years. Even though we now live in different states, we stay in contact and see each other a few times a year.

 In our early teens, we started to discover, as most teens of that time period did, beer and tobacco. We had code words we used so our parents would not catch on to what we were talking about. Beer was called watermelon and cigars were called bananas. When we planned weekend events, we would discuss our strategy to obtain the bananas and watermelons. Top Secret Parent Proof Code, or at least we thought. I doubt we fooled too many people.

I am not sure why I smoked cigars. Probably because my dad smoked them, and I thought it was pretty cool. They always smelled good, but I thought they tasked like dog shit when inhaled. And man did it leave a stench on clothing, body and breath. Randy enjoyed Marlborough cigarettes.  No, he loved them.  He smoked Marlborough Reds since he was about 12 years old when he started working at Lakes Seed and Nursery.

He picked up the habit while tying tree buds in the nursery fields and probably smoked for about 40 years straight after that.  It was easy to get cigarettes while working in the fields. Everyone smoked and everyone shared.  Randy smoked like a professional. He held the cigarette just right. The smoke never seemed to get into his eyes. He knew how to pack the cigarettes by slapping the box in the palm of his hand, and mastered the easy flow of the lighter or match to the cigarette. Man could he inhale those babies.  A nice, comfortable slow draw, and when he exhaled it was like he hit Nirvana.  I looked up on the Web why people pack their cigarettes:

This particular ritual is called ‘packing’ the cigarettes; and you actually tap the top of the pack, not the bottom. This is because the filter end of the cigarettes are at the top of the package, so when you tap the top of the package repeatedly before opening it (usually tapping it against the base of your other hand, but anything works), the tobacco in each cigarette gets packed down into the paper more. Depending on how long you pack your cigarettes, you might end up with an 1/8 of an inch of empty paper at the end of your cigarettes when you are done. This packing results in less spilled tobacco and you don’t have to suck so hard when you inhale.

Who would have thought? You know you are a professional smoker when you pack your cigarettes like that.

Beer was not hard to get. The legal drinking age in Iowa was 18, so we had our “sources” identified to buy for us.  We could walk into almost any store and get cigars.  We had a favorite place to go; Spencer’s. They didn’t care about our age. On weekend night’s there was usually another dumb ass teenager working the cash register, so buying cigars were not a problem. Randy always had a steady supply of cigarettes which I think he bought from or probably more likely stole from his older brother.

We would typically start making plans mid-week. This particular weekend, we were going to “camp” in Randy’s backyard, drink some beer, smoke and probably raise some hell. This weekend was special because Randy’s parents were going to be out late Saturday night at the Elks Club dancing to Harvey and the Hayshakers. We had a huge opening of no parental guidance, so we rounded up our pose of Bill H., Mike C., Randy P., and Tim M. Since we would be “camping” in a tent, we would have easy access to the wide world of Shenandoah and all it had to offer.

Most of us could get a buzz on just a few cans of beer, well I could anyway. Bill (RIP) could drink dozens and not seem to get fazed a bit. He was a machine when it came to drinking beer. Bill had a famous response when asked what kind of beer he liked. “Cold”, was his matter of fact reply.

If my memory serves, it was Olympia beer that we had that night. This beer is no longer made and for good reason, but it was cheap, and easy for us to get. Beggers can’t be choosers. We would not have known a good beer from a bad one anyway.

Since none of us had a car or a driver’s license, we walked around town looking for some action. No real destination in mind. We walked up and down Main Street, through some neighborhoods, through the park. We went to the La Dum Dum Pizzeria to hang out, but since we did not have money to buy pizza, we were asked to leave. We were just a pack of young wondering youths searching for some excitement. Tim went a little bat shit crazy when he drank and typically wanted to fight everyone, or yell obscenities at passerby’s. We walked around the streets of Shenandoah trying to be tuff, knowing that if we were challenged by anyone, we had Tim to shield us and Bill who was as strong as an ox.

We stopped at the Koral which was a community sponsored hangout for teens during the weekend. It was called the Koral because our high school team was the Mustangs. There was pool, ping pong, music (I think I heard the song “Signs” by the 5 Man Electrical Band over 7,755 times through my teen years) snacks, pinball and of course the class girls hung out there. I am sure we did everything in our power to impress the girls. We made sure they knew we had beer and of course that we were the toughest dudes in town. Well, when that did not work out we moved on.

The Koral was in the basement of the old Armory. Above is an actual picture of the Armory, and if you look closely you can see the door on the left side of the building leading to the Koral. I found the picture below on the web. We didn’t gamble.

That particular night of roaming around town did not last long as it started to rain. It was getting late, the Koral closed, no girls were interested and with nowhere to go, we headed back to the tent and the beer.

As the alcohol stated to take deep effect, the usually calm Bill (who probably weighed 230 pounds, a big guy back then) got in a three point stance like a football player and launched straight at Tim  who was pretty much 3 sheets to the wind at this point. I am sure Tim was being obnoxious, so Bill knocked him flat. This happened 3 or 4 times before Tim realized it may not be a great idea to get back up. Now this was taking place in a 6’ X 8’ tent with 5 teens inside while it poured rain. And of course, the tent was a piece of shit, so it started to leak.

Our next great move was to take the beer and tobacco inside to the basement of the Deputy Sheriff’s house. At that point I would say our brains just locked up. We never gave any thought to the fact that the Deputy Sherrif just might walk downstairs, see dozens of empty beer cans, smell the tobacco burning and deduce that these young dumb asses were underage, drunk, unsupervised and in the home of a well-known elected law enforcement official (past city policeman, current Deputy Sheriff, future County Sheriff, future Chief of Police, future magistrate, future Shenandoah Mayor), whose son was hosting a beer bust with underage drinkers. But, we never gave that much thought, of course. In the picture below, Dick is second from the left.

I am sure we drank for a few more hours, exchanged stories about how tough we were or what girls probably loved us and decided to call it a night. Dick and his wife Lois were still not home, so we knew we got away with it…..then………..

About 1:00 in the morning we heard footsteps upstairs. They were home. Beer cans everywhere….we were busted I just knew it.  Then we heard Dick yell these immortal words in his southern draw from the top of the stairs, “Randy, you down there boy?  We’re going out for some bacon and eggs”.

I am not sure how we responded. Maybe we didn’t. Randy was passed out. I know I was terrified of being busted so I pretended to be asleep. None the less, we heard footsteps moving away from the basement door and finally fade toward the exit.  That was it. We got away with it.

Dick’s easy-going manner belied the fact that he knew more about what was going on than we thought. In fact, he had a good handle on all the going on in Shenandoah. He was tough when he had to be, but on occasion I think he may have turned a blind eye to our mischief. He had bigger fish to fry. He knew we were home, safe and not causing any harm. I think he just let this kind of thing go, as well, boys will be boys.

We still talk about this famous phrase, “Randy, you down there boy?  We’re going out for some bacon and eggs”. Its just one of those things you don’t forget. Dick’s funny, southern accent. Him calling downstairs to us, hesitant I am sure to walk down and see what kind of stupidity we were up to.  All of us kids were scared that the Deputy Sherrif would haul us away and tell our parents. Maybe it’s one of those things that you had to be there to appreciate it. These words will live forever in our memory. It is one of many fond memories of good friends, growing up in a small town circa 1970, and of course the Deputy Sherrif who knew more about us than we did. To this day there are other people who claim they were in the basement and heard these words, but of course they were not. I guess it’s an attempt to be part of a famous event in small town history.

It wasn’t until much later that I learned that Dick was not Randy and his siblings, Jim (RIP) and Susie’s, biological dad. I tell you what, that surprised me when Randy told me that. Not only did they resemble Dick, but he always treated the Randy and his siblings as his very own. I never thought any different. He was always at their sporting events (especially wrestling and baseball) and strongly supported them through turbulent teen years. Dick is one of many solid men who lived in that small community. I am lucky to know him.