I’ve decided not to run for president. Not because I’m too old and clueless but because my past would be investigated. I’ve seen it happen, and they’re not just going back to college yearbooks; they’re going back to high school diaries. Next they’ll be searching grade school report cards for signs of character failings. I wouldn’t want them delving into my past, even though I shouldn’t be held responsible for my youthful indiscretions. Everything bad I did, I did because of John Gardner.
John was the oldest of the family living across the street from us when I was growing up. He had a younger sister, Ann, and a younger brother, Doug, who was the same age as my older brother. So I was the youngest by about three years. In addition to us, there were six or seven other kids that formed the neighborhood gang, and John was our leader. The gang was unarmed, of course, although come to think of it, John and my brother had BB guns. But only to shoot out streetlights.
This was in the olden days, when children spent after school and summers roaming around on their own, prey to the terrors that lurked in woods and fields, before parents knew they had to hover and over-schedule children into supervised activities. So we were left on our own to make teams for softball, argue over balls or strikes, and run pell mell when John yelled “scatter” after a ball detoured from the field to a window in a nearby house. In summer evenings after supper, we would assemble into two teams for a game of Hares and Hounds, where the hares would leave a trail of chalk arrows on trees or telephone poles or perhaps someone’s sidewalk for the hounds to trace. I suppose these activities could be construed as willful vandalism.
John invented the “putt-putt,” roller skate wheels attached to the bottom of boards nailed together to form a seat. We would take the putt-putts to the top of our steep hill and ride them down. A fleet of us made quite a racket as we rumbled down the street. Midway, we held our breath waiting to see if old Mrs. Dickerson would come out of her house that day to yell at us. There could be no doubt we were disturbing the peace.
It was when the Shumways moved in next door to my family that John really stepped up his game, and secret missions were carried out by just the trusty core group of five. The Shumways were insufferable. They never spoke to my family except to complain about things like our apple tree dropping apples on their driveway or our dog stepping on their grass along the sidewalk. They had a daughter, who was 18 or so at the time John was about 12 and I was seven. Gathering in my brother’s bedroom, we would spy on Bernadette and her boyfriend sitting in an outdoor swing seat in her backyard. We would yell out the window, “Bernadette and her boyfriend, sitting in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g” and then fall all over each other ducking out of view. I suppose this was defamation of character, though ours or Bernadette’s I’m not sure.
The most elaborate plot John devised against the Shumways entailed snatching a partially chewed mouse away from his old cat Alice, putting it in a box, wrapping it as a package, and depositing it in the Shumways’ mailbox. Maybe that was even a federal offense—mail tampering or worse.
The most frightening experience was the evening John led us on an expedition to Lake Whitney, a reservoir where fishing was prohibited. I had gone fishing a few times with my brother and found it incredibly boring, but this trip was thrilling because it was forbidden. We were speaking in hushed voices. Suddenly, a light shone on us and a voice said, “You kids come up here.” There was no way to escape, and so we scrambled up the bank and faced the policeman. John did the talking, and I think somewhere he let it be known that his father was a well-known lawyer in New Haven. Whether that was the reason or not, the officer sent us on our way with a stern warning.
Should I be held accountable for these youthful exploits? Would these offenses, should they be uncovered, be enough to end my political career before it started? I’m not taking that chance.
