Let's rob the liquor store

One of the pastimes you get into at a certain age is you relive life. The highs, the lows. Yesterday. This morning. Forty years ago. It all runs together in some dreamy technicolor way. You can't even imagine that you're the person who did this or that. The farther away it gets, the harder it is to imagine. But, God willing, you remember it all the same.

The leaves are off the trees here at Falling Downs. The snow hasn't arrived, but it will soon. And it'll come soon and stay long, from what I hear. Global warming. If global warming means more snow and longer winters, shouldn't it be called global cooling? Wish those scientific types would make up their minds. We might have global warming, and we might have global cooling. Don't see how we can have both at the same time.

So you sit around reminiscing. I'm not quite at the stage where I'm sitting around waiting for somebody to wipe the drool off my chin. I can still do that myself. Getting close though.

Let's rob the liquor store. Seemed like a reasonable proposition at the time. The time was either really late at night or quite early in the morning, depending on your perspective. Perspective changes everything, doesn't it?

So there we were, four or five drunken idiots in a car. Can't remember who was driving. Could have been me. Not even sure what we were driving. I think it was Johnny's '69 Super-bee. Had the big-block race motor in it. He'd blown the original motor doing full-on smoke shows around town. Most impressive.

I was a couple blocks away once when he lit it up on the main street of Guelph. A sixty-five hundred rpm brake stand that went on and on and on. I could see the smoke rising over the tops of the buildings on the main street, and that big-block just in full throat, shaking windows for blocks. You do that a few dozen times and you need a motor.

We found one in a '68 Road Runner that had been a NHRA sanctified SS/D race car. Man did that thing make some serious power! Had that motor out of the Road Runner and into the Bee in an afternoon.

We were sitting around somebody's place, like I said, the wee hours, and the realization hit that we were close to running out of booze. One of the lads came up with a brilliant plan: lets break into the Elora liquor store.

I don't know if you've had occasion to make this observation, but when there's a bunch of youngish idiots sitting around drinking for ten or twelve or sixteen hours, they never come up with a bad plan. Every plan is brilliant. And this one was double A+ brilliant because we had INSIDE INFORMATION!

Seems one of the lads had been apprenticing with the sheet metal crew that had done the duct-work when they renovated the old Elora armory into the new Elora liquor store. I was pretty well aquainted with the place myself. Used to walk past it every day on my way to school back in those evil days when I was the only kid at Elora Public who couldn't speak English. It was the armory in those days. Now it was the liquor store. And we had inside information! When this kind of opportunity hits, you gotta strike while the iron is hot!

So the crew loads into the Bee. One of the lads had to be carried out. Pretty much comatose, if you know what I mean. Tends to happen with inexperienced drinkers. Managed to roust himself enough that he got the back window down. Just in time too. Barfing all over the back quarter panel.

We're heading out of town. It's three or fourish in the morning. Stop at a red light at Woodlawn Road. The Bee is just a sitting there with that beautiful thump thump idle. And here's a cop car coming across Woodlawn. Shit!

I think we woulda been OK if it wan't for Buddy hanging out the back window with his knuckles dragging on the pavement. That just says "oh please officer, pull us over." Sure enough, the cop wheels around, the big red light starts a-flashing, I stick my foot into five hundred horsepower of big-block Mopar, and we're on our way up Highway six.

That flashing red light was getting pretty small when we hit the Elora cut-off just past Marden. But we knew the cops had a big advantage. Radios. Did a couple minutes flat out up the flat-as-a-board Elora Road at 150 and then turned up the Ponsonby side-road. Then it was back-roads all the way.

Back roads here, back roads there. Arguments about which way to turn at every back-country stop sign. At the rate we were going it was gonna be daylight long before we got to Elora.

Then we ran out of gas. Shit!

It's these unforseen complications that separate the big dogs from the puppies in the world of crime. In that entire car-load of drunken hooligans I found only one true believer, one acolyte who believed we could still walk to that liquor store and pull off that perfect crime. Luckily it was apprentice boy, the guy with the inside info. That allowed me to keep believing.

We started walking.

We walked and we walked and we walked. The more we walked the more we sobered up. It was a longer walk than we'd imagined. As we sobered up the sun was coming up. Four hours later we get to the Elora liquor store.

There's people going in and coming out. The place is open already. Shit! Can't imagine slipping in through the ventilation system while there's customers in the store. Hell, just getting on the roof is gonna draw attention in broad daylight. We're screwed.

Between us we had enough change for a couple six-packs. Bought our beer and headed back to the Bee.

With the leaves gone I can see lights at the far end of Bass Lake. It's a beautiful time for reminiscing.