Friends/Fiends #1 - The Ice and Fire Man

Everyone called him Boob. It was short for 4B (BBBB) which was short for his longer nickname, Booby Baby Bobby Bryan. He had received the notorious name sometime in grade school, or possibly even earlier... I don't know exactly when, but it was a well established monicor by the time I met Boob sometime in my early teens. His younger brother Jim (6B1J or Booby Baby Boby Bryan's Baby Brother Jimmy) was one of my best friends, and lived only a block away. Apparently, Boob hadn't changed much since those early days of Boobery, and was still viewed as an arrogant know-it-all by most of his peers. Boob was smart, but never learned how to socialize, therefore he came off as a bit of a snob. He was actually a pretty nice guy once you got to know him, but he certainly was opinionated... about everything, which made him a bit difficult to be around. One thing Boob had going for himself, at least as far as Jim and I were concerned, was that he had access to his parent's automobiles, and could take us to Salt Lake.* On one such occasion, 4B, 6B1J and myself had gone to the big city to catch a movie, and hang out. We were in Boob's father's blue and white Ford pickup truck, and had been through the drive-through at Arby's to get some cool drinks. We quickly consumed the cool liquid, and were left with large wax cups still nearly half full of ice. Jim and I (not Gemini) began using our straws to shoot small chunks of ice out the window at drive by targets such as cars, signs, and even pedestrians. We were having a ball, and began throwing the remaining larger chunks of ice that wouldn't fit through the straws. We had thrown numerous chunks of ice when Boob, in his usual manner said authoritatively, "Let me show you how to do it." He grabbed a small chunk of ice from Jim's cup and threw it from his window at the next oncoming car. Direct hit! Unfortunately the car turned around and gave chase. We could see that it was a man with short hair and a moustache driving an early 70's model Pontiac sedan. He followed us for several blocks, when Boob decided to get on the freeway in hopes of losing his potentially hostile pursuer. Unfortunately the sedan stayed in hot pursuit, so Boob took the next exit, and turned down one of the streets. We hadn't gone very far when suddenly there was a roadblock, and before we knew it, a bunch of men in uniform had surrounded us. They quickly removed us from the truck, separated us, and began to interrogate us. They were firemen, and Boob had unwittingly taken us directly past a fire station... and not just any fire station.

As it turns out, the person Boob hit with ice was an off duty fire chief, and had used his two way radio to stay in contact with his buddies at the station who set up the blockade. He claimed that he had been hit in the face by a chunk of ice, and pointed to an old scab as evidence. At that point I began to wonder if he had been hit at all... maybe his car, but no chunk of ice that Boob threw caused the injury the moustached man claimed.

A policeman issued Boob a citation, which meant that soon he'd have to appear before a judge in Salt Lake... and would need to borrow the truck again. He certainly didn't want his parents to know about the ice and fireman incident, so he used the excuse that he needed the car to get to work. Boob was a cook at the truck stop in Lakepoint, and frequently used the family vehicles to drive the ten or so miles to and from work. A seemingly perfect plan. No one would ever know... except that on this particular occasion, an unprecedented event occurred... Boob's parents decided they'd have dinner at the truck stop that evening.

When Boob's parents arrived at the truck stop, they saw a stranger in the kitchen. The waitress soon arrived at their table to take their order and they introduced themselves as Boob's parents, and requested to speak with their son. They were told that she hadn't seen him, and that Boob wasn't scheduled to work that day.

When Boob finally got home, he had a lot of explaining to do.

* Tooele was a good thirty + miles from Salt Lake, and riding freight trains was always a bit sketchy... It was easy to get to Salt Lake, but getting back to Tooele was a bit more challenging. Sometimes the train wouldn't stop where we needed it to, and we'd have to backtrack on foot, or catch another freight train that may or may not stop at Warner Station outside Tooele. The best place to ride is on top of freight cars, but some of them don't have ladders to the top, so we'd position ourselves between two cars, put our feet on one car and our hands on the other, arching our backs, and extending our bodies from one car to another, we'd inch our way up the ribbed exterior of the box cars. That was the easy part. When we got to the top, our bodies extended horizontally across the chasm nearly fifteen feet in the air, we'd have to make one hard lunge, and pull ourselves on to the top. Failure was not an option. It was an easier task to perform before the train was in motion. One night, we boarded one of the empty engines, and I stepped on what felt like a body. I didn't stick around to find out if it was... or who it was.