Oh man, Pony Boy just rolled into town.
You best believe that some horse sh*t is about to go down…
“Aw, crap! Now I’ll never get to be president with this on my record…”
In one fell swoop, I had just ruined my very nascent-yet-very-promising political career. And it was all because of that stupid ----- tree house.
Ok, I admit I’m being a little over dramatic here–calling it a “tree house” is stretching the truth a bit, seeing as how in SW Kansas trees aren’t exactly in ample supply.
It was more of a stilt-house, if you will. You see, someone had put 4 very tall poles in their backyard and built a sweet little clubhouse about 15 feet off the ground on top of them. And then, as luck would have it, whoever this mysterious someone was had decided to abandon their house (and our sleepy little hamlet of Rolla altogether), leaving it all vacant.
And that’s where a bunch of rowdy young vagrants came into the picture…
‘Twas the summer between 3rd & 4th grade, back in the day when my bro, 1 Skinny Jay (aka 1SJ), and I were living in Missouri with our mom during the school year. Which meant that we got to spend our summers back in our hometown of Rolla, KS with our dad.
We had come to an agreement with Dad that every other day we would go out to the fields and farm with him. And in then during the alternating days in between, we would get to live the city-slicker life and spend the day in town at our grandma’s and do fun kid stuff like going to the pool, hanging out at the Corner Stop,1The one and only convenience store in town. and engaging in general youthful chicanery.
Now, we were more than capable than entertaining ourselves on our own, but sometimes we liked to roll more than 2-deep, and on occasion we would form our own little posse to help keep us preoccupied.
During that fateful period back in the Summer of ’90,2Not to be confused with the Crazy-Ass Summer of ’99. we were trolling the mean streets of Rolla with an old classmate of mine–who we’ll just call Etu Brute for now–and a snaggle-toothed kid a year younger than me who had just moved to town–we’ll call him NKOTB (and yes, that is an unabashed reference to those early 90’s pop-culture icons).
Now, I don’t properly recall who discovered the empty “tree house,” but whoever it was was celebrated as a ----- genius amongst us. I mean, it was pretty dang sweet having a hangout spot that not only had a view, but where also we wouldn’t live in fear of being harassed for “trespassing” or whatever the term Old Man Degarmo used when he found out that we had been using the loft of his barn to stash our cache of trashy mags (but that’s a whole ‘nother story).
Yes, technically we were squatting, but we weren’t hurting anybody, and no one seemed to really care. So for a few blessed weeks, we were drinking up the high life, which was flowing like an avalanche coming down the mountain.
Or as the kids would say these days, we had a good thing going…
“Pony Boy? What kind of nickname is that??”
Yes, it was none other than our slightly older cousin, a teenager with such impeccable judgment that he somehow had ended up with the moniker Pony Boy–but for all the wrong reasons, though. Rumor had it that it had something to do with a very stupid dare made in the barns of the Stevens County Fair…and I’ll just leave it at that.
Anyways, thanks to his notorious judgment (or lack thereof, *ahem*), there was never a dull moment when Pony Boy was around, so we didn’t mind when he started hanging out with us.
In retrospect, that was probably our first mistake.
Our second mistake was when we listened to him when he got bored just kicking it in the treehouse and suggested we up the ante and explore the main house on the property.
And by “explore” he meant…how did he put it? Oh yeah, and I quote: “Yeah, let’s break in and see if there’s any stuff like stereos and other sh*t that we can steal!”
Yes, yes, a man above all reproach, indeed.
And since at that point he was the de facto leader of our gang, we were all like “Sure. It sounds like fun…I guess.”
Well, all of us except for that party-pooper Etu Brute, who was like, “You guys are pretty stupid, and I ain’t havin’ no part of your dumbassery–I’m out!”
That left the 4 of us to figure out how we were going to go about breaking and entering at 3…p.m. Yup, we were going to do this in broad daylight. The incredibly brilliant ideas were just flowing like wine that day, no?
Pony Boy, our resident criminal mastermind, eventually decided that NKOTB, being the new kid, should climb up the T.V. antenna and onto the roof of the back porch. From there, he was to shimmy through one of the upstairs bedroom windows, then come downstairs and let the rest of us in through the back door.
A solid, solid plan. What could possibly go wrong?
So up and off he went, surprisingly making it into the house with no issue. Once we saw him disappear through the window, we started eagerly waiting for him to swing the back door wide open for our greedy little asses.
But after 5 minutes or so…still no NKOTB. What the heck was going on? Did he trip over a can of paint in there and break his neck?
Well, sh*t. That would be no good, now wouldn’t it? For serious, here–isn’t it that if somebody dies during the commission of a crime, then all of the accomplices are guilty of murder in the eyes of the law?
Oh, Pony Boy, what have you gotten us into this time?
“Wait!” you say!
“So what happened to NKOTB?!?”
“Will the Hardly-Any-Common-Sense Boys be sent to federal ‘#-me-in-the-a$$’ prison for the rest of their lives???”
“Will we ever uncover the true origin story behind the name ‘Pony Boy’? Like, surely a real pony wasn’t involved…right???”
“And most importantly, does NKOTB–poor guy, Rest in Power–die and have to persist for eternity in heaven as an awkward snaggle-toothed 8-year-old??”
“INQUIRING MINDS WANT TO KNOW!!!”
Ok, I get it. You’ve still got questions.
Well, in that case, you’ll just have to tune in next week for the stunning[ly stupid] conclusion…
Content created on: 25/26 September 2021 (Sat/Sun)
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