We would buy a giant bag of dried peas, 21 cents, for our pea shooters, then, knock down our plastic soldiers with ’em, for hours. Do your paper route, then, roll by Winchells and get a bag of day-old donuts for a buck, sell them for a quarter a pop at the Slot Car tracks… Slot cars. Every small town had one. You would ride your bike to one with your pals, your box of cars and parts rubberbanded on your rear bike rack. Put up quarters on lap bets. Put a penny in the other guys track when hes not looking and make his car flip in the air. Get chased down the street by his pals. No one ever got hurt. We would have BB gun wars in the orange groves at Villa Cabrini. Toss oranges at the giant hogs they would slaughter. Make forts in the trees. Climb down into the dried up storm reservoirs at De Bell golf course, with flashlights and packs, plus, plenty of kid weapons. Twenty five pound bow and target arrows… Wrist rockets. A good shot with a wrist rocket is equivalent to Kirby with his B.A.R. on the show, ‘COMBAT’, with Vic Morrow. I talked to the Second unit director on ‘The Twighlight Zone’, location, when the out of control chopper, cut off Vic Morrow’s head, and the two kids he was running with for the scene… Another story… Always had a good pocket knife. Boy scout multiple if smart. The ones with the tiny fork and spoon you tried once, then, never pulled out again. A special pocket for your ball bearings, collected in the alleys behind the machine shops while taking your pop bottle returns to Bill’s Ranch Market. A ball bearing made a hobo see god once as he chased me down some tracks in Sylmar. I missed his melon by an inch. You can put a bearing right through a stop sign, no problem. Oh, and walking sticks, like little John in ‘Robin Hood’. Sticks are a must. Poke snakes, fight each other, make you feel confident. Anyhow, once into the water works basin, a short climb to the cement overflow lip, then into the abyss of black, the start of an L.A. storm drain system. As you head downhill, sometimes there’s a small stream of water going down the middle of the fifty foot wide, thirty foot high cement drain. As you leave the sunlight, it becomes green with algae. If really young and scared, you would be left behind by the bigger kids to catch tadpoles and frogs, then, go home with the dogs that always followed you. In my day, dogs sort of belonged to everyone. When you camped out at a pal’s in his backyard, your dog did too. Ditto for them… As you proceed down into the black of the unknown, the square light aperture behind you grows smaller and smaller. As your reach your first bend, it’s suddenly stygean black. On come the henflashlights. NO CANDLES! Even a kid knew these tunnels had gas in them. Duh. No lighters or cherry bombs in the sewers. Usually the upper parts were fairly clear of obstacles. Some smaller rafts of sticks and gravel, an old boot, tree branchs. It wasn’t until you had gone farther down, then, into a tributary, that things got really interesting. My stories of the giant Alligators were always laughed at. Up in the blue of outside. Five miles into the getting smaller and smaller tunnel, with your footsteps echoing off the dank, gooey walls, made them seem possible. Just before you came to a tributary of the L.A. River, the big game appeared. Animals chased into the tunnels for safety by counterparts like us from their parts of town, playing in the vast cement drainage systems, would be caught between a rock and a hard place. As we got closer, we could see their silhouettes in the bright sun behind them. A deer with antlers was easy. Coyotes, bobcats, raccoons, tons of big Norwiegan wharf rats, opposums, fox, all of ’em at one time or another. We would hear the other kids shout as the animal broke for the outside. Once we came into the sun, your eyes had to adjust. Fights or trouble for being on other guys turf? Never once. Not even close. Sure, we would have ick fights. You pick up a handful of the green slime in the slower currents, then, nail the kid closest to you. Since you got nailed back, no one gave a crap. We would end up playing them football. Your team leader would pick a kid, any kid from all of us, then the other captain chose. No fights. It was all normal… When you hit your early teens, you moved to the big time. Sneaking into the L.A. Zoo through the backs of the animal exhibits, or, the Holy Grail of all scary places, the creek under the old Pasadena bridge, into the land of evil things where kids bikes had been found many a time, but no kids. And that was no bullshit…
