The Great Midnight Procession

I’m gonna get in trouble with someone sure as hell for blogging this one…

Back in the 80’s I had a couple of crazy friends who I used to hang out with quite a bit. RBY and Hunter. Now understand before I begin the story, we were fully grown adults.

RBY had gotten in trouble with us when we went to Pepes on the River following a three day road trip to North Texas. We had inadvertently left him there, and he had to catch a ride home with some old wrinkle-neck, and when he walked into his house, his wife noticed that he had his shirt zipped through his pants zipper. She suspected something.

So RBY got put on restriction. We tried to get him exonerated, even sent his then-wife a “Honey-do” basket, complete with flowers, toilet scrubber and paintbrushes. This resulted in an even tougher sentence.

After sitting around one night with Hunter drinking Cuba Libres, we decided we’d extract our own form of punishment on RBY for being such a pussy and not standing up to the old ball and chain. Show her who’s boss.

We jumped into Hunters mothers big black Lincoln Continental (he was babysitting the thing for her while she was out of town) and throwing a great fishtail, lunged off towards RBY’s house on the golf course with no real plan in mind. Once we got there though, we knew what we had to do.

Near the curb, Hunter gave the big old black boat the gas, and we hopped the curb into the finely manicured St. Augustine lawn, spinning the tires and digging a trench at least 6” deep the length of the front yard. We sideswiped the big green plastic trashcan, as Hunter looked in the review mirror and declared that he was going back for the two plump black trashbags laying alongside, so we repeated the offense in reverse…..

We decided that that’d show the bastard.

Well, this started years of payback. No sooner had one lawn recovered, than another one fell victim. First Hunter, the RBY then myself, in a revolving cycle of retribution, someone always had the handiwork of the midnight burnout in their front yard.

As the game escalated, we found new and creative ways to torment one another. One creative method was to stuff the head of a recently slaughtered deer (does only) into someones mailbox as a sort of scaled down version of the “Godfather”. This however came to an end, when one of RBY’s boys decided to copy the trick and try this on an ex-girlfriend. Her father however, failed to see the humor in this, and called the local sheriff, who, thinking it was an infestation of the mailbox by a rabid bat, shot the damn thing with his .357, and realizing his error, hauled the errant head away in a big ziplock bag labeled “exhibit A”. This ended the head incidents.

RBY got remarried, Hunter was trying to settle down (unsuccessfully), and I was an “older student” in college living out in the country, in a groovy little place I called “the nest”.

We used to have some insane parties out there.

It was my birthday in 1993, and there were about twenty five people out there, seven or eight cars. We had spent the evening barbequing, indulging in copious quantities of alcohol, and around midnight, in a fungal inspired haze decided to burn through Hunters lawn. It was something we hadn’t done in a long time.

Assembling in a procession of cars in the dark near the canal that bordered Hunters house, with me in the lead in my topless little Suzuki Samurai, we lined up. As if on cue, and with a sudden collective lurch, we each ground through his perfectly manicured grass, throwing great hunks of sod on the cars behind us, on the walls of his house, and into the street. Little man, at the tail of the procession said that he saw Hunter peeking out from behind the curtains. We dug a virtual Grand Canyon that night in Hunters lawn. Later we wound down by driving the unholy procession through about four or five other lawns of people we didn’t even know, unleashing all of the fury that Detroit and Tokyo could muster…..

I guess that was the last time I ever extracted the revenge of the lawn burnout on anybody. It was a wonder we never got caught anyway. As with all things in life, that which doesn’t kill me (or sends me to jail) makes me stronger.

Every now and then though, I get the notion to hop a curb, and leave my calling card across a well manicured front lawn in some quiet neighborhood….