We Want Your Kid's Spine

Back in September of 1987, otherwise known as the Glory Days, the Best of Days, Those Were the Days, or the OMG How Did I Get This Fucking Old Days, it was a typical Friday night with a bunch of guys in my less than rockin car, an Olds Calais.  Stuffed in the car that night were R, E, Butthole, B and BFF, and me driving.  BFF was sitting on B's lap (her boyfriend) in the front seat, and the rest of the guys were in the back.  We were driving down Mayfield Rd. in South Euclid, the reason why we were in the area escapes me at the moment.  Butthole and R wanted to stop to get something to drink at McDonald's so I pulled into the parking lot and let them out.  Why I didn't go to the drive-thru, I don't know.  Bad move.  Things immediately looked off.  Butthole and R went inside... R about 6 feet tall, mohawk, leather, hot.  Butthole about 6 feet tall, leather, crazy, loud, probably shooting off his mouth somehow.  Outside in the car, the rest of us started to feel very tense as swarms of high school kids who were there after a football game paced back and forth outside my car, giving us far more than just the stinkeye.   We were pretty used to being stared at, made fun of, harassed and whatever and apparently there wasn't a big population of punks in South Euclid.  But this, this was very different.  This was menace.

Suddenly Butthole and R came out of McDonald's, VERY QUICKLY, yelling at me to start the car.  They jumped in, I peeled out and the chase was on.  Three car loads of teenage boys followed us.  The guys in the back were screaming out for me to go faster, to cut down streets, to try and lose them.  B held onto BFF tight as I raced through the streets of South Euclid trying to ditch these assholes.   And then I made a big mistake. I turned down a street that had it's lanes separated by a median.  This enabled the chasers to block us in.  One raced in front of me and skidded to a stop, forcing me to stop.  One stopped on the side of my car and one in the back.  We were seriously fucked now.  The boys all got out of their cars and I locked all my car doors.  R, Butthole and E were screaming at me to let them out but I wouldn't, there were too many, I was afraid they'd get really hurt.  And then it happened, baseball bats came out and suddenly these asshole kids were beating on my car, breaking headlights, making dents and then the loudest crash I have ever heard when they bashed out the rear window. 

I completely stopped thinking at this point, threw open the locks on the car, jumped out by myself because the guys in the back couldn't get out yet, and started screaming my lungs out at those fucking pieces of shit.  R, E and Butthole finally got out as did L and B and the guys started to go after the attackers, but they were already jumping in their cars and taking off.   I collapsed on the median strip in some kind of hysteria and R jumped on top of me and tried to calm me down.  L, always the cooler head, was trying to get license plate numbers.  Once R effectively snapped me out of it, we started knocking on doors to see if someone would call the police.  It was pretty late in the night but we did find people who were willing to help us.

The police came to where we were, still on that street, and took our statements and immediately began rounding kids up.  That same night, on that same street and then back at McDonald's, we positively ID'd several of the culprits.  And wouldn't you know it, one of the assholes was the chief of police's son.  Isn't that always the way?  What a douche.

Police reports, court dates and all that happened, but in the end we didn't have to appear in court.  I don't even remember what happened to those kids, probably nothing.  But I did get a letter from the parents of the kid who broke out the back window, with a check for the damages.  She apologized for her son and yadda yadda yadda.   I posted that letter on my refrigerator at a party I had about month later, so everyone who was with me that night could see it.  And this is the reply E wrote to her that night...

In case you can't read it, it says... "Dear Mr & Mrs. Whatever (he used their name but whatever), We don't want money, we want your kid's spine in a bottle of formaldehyde or at least his stomach lining in a bowl of Campbell's soup."  Obviously, since I still have it, we never sent it.  Maybe we should have.