The Chicken Incident

Every high school senior has a dream. Some dream of fame. Others dream of great fortunes. Still others dream of finding the perfect soulmate. My buddy Dave had a dream when he was a senior, but it didn’t involve college gridiron glory, making a killing in the stock market, or any of Charlie’s Angels. No, Dave dreamed of stealing a chicken.

It wasn’t just any old hen that Dave wanted to steal; it was an eight-foot-tall fiberglass chicken that stood outside JoAnn’s Restaurant, at the south end of Main Street in Heber City. Dave and I endlessly dragged Main during the late winter and early spring of 1982 – listening to the music of the Go-Go’s, Journey, and Billy Joel, among others – and we passed that big bird a dozen times a night. As we burned our $1.28/gallon gasoline Dave would stare longingly at the hellacious hen and sigh wistfully, “There has to be something we could do with that chicken.”

Early spring turned into late spring. Soon graduation was just around the corner, with still no resolution to Dave’s poultry problem. I really don’t remember if me, Dave, Dale, Randy, or Jud finally decided that the fiberglass fowl would look pretty great sitting on the high school roof the morning after we graduated. It was probably a combination of all of our deviant minds. Anyway, whichever one of us who initially came up with the idea was a freakin‘ genius and – if there were any justice in the world – should be a multimillionaire now.

Finally, a plan was hatched – no pun intended. Dave and I made a sign to hang around the chicken’s neck. The sign read “Class of ‘82,” in honor of our awesome accomplishment of making it through high school. I guess for me graduation was an accomplishment, but that’s a tale for another time.

Graduation night – Wednesday, May 26, 1982 – finally came and, after all the pomp and circumstance, we retreated to a party at the home of Susan, Dave’s then girlfriend and now wife. 3:00 AM – the agreed upon hour – came agonizingly slowly, but it finally arrived. Our group of would-be poultry pilferers made our way stealthily out the door, so as not to arouse the suspicions of any females at the party who might have objected to our objective. We had already lost one good man for that very reason.

We took a couple of vehicles, including a truck, and proceeded to JoAnn’s Restaurant, the scene of the potential poultry plundering. Main Street was quiet, the silence broken only by the lackadaisical meandering of a bored cop, who was probably disappointed by the lack of action on graduation night. After ascertaining that said police officer was nowhere in sight, we made our move.

Lifting that bodacious bird turned out to be surprisingly easy. Not only was it held in place by just a few large chunks of concrete, it was unexpectedly light for an eight-foot-tall piece of molded plastic. While one of our group scanned Main Street for any onlookers who might have interrupted our larceny, the rest of us put the capacious capon into the back of a truck.

We approached the high school cautiously and made our way to the back of the building. There were garbage dumpsters there, which would make our lifting of the rapacious rooster onto the roof much easier. A few of our group, Dave included, climbed the dumpsters and stationed themselves on the roof in preparation for the placement of the plundered poultry. Two more stood on the dumpsters to relay the ripped-off rooster to the guys on the roof. The rest of us passed the pirated pullet to the men on the dumpsters, who in turn lifted it to the guys on the roof, who set the fabulous fowl by the large block W that stood guard over the main entrance of the school. Finally, Dave placed our “Class of ’82” sign around its neck.

At that moment, my best friend Don broke ranks, casually sauntered off, and hid behind one of the other dumpsters. I followed him to find out what the problem was. It turned out our adventure was a little too nerve-wracking for Don and he was worried what his girlfriend (and her family) would think if he were arrested for chicken rustling. I think he figured he could unobtrusively remain behind the dumpster should the cops break up our little poultry pirating party. After making sure Don was okay and that there wasn’t anything seriously wrong with him, I went back to the group in time to help down Dave and the other guys who had been on the roof.

We rejoined Susan’s party a little over an hour after we left. Our buddy, who couldn’t go with us because his girlfriend objected, looked at us dolefully, and we related the events of the previous hour to him. We spent the rest of the night watching videos, quite a comedown from the adrenalin rush we had experienced earlier.

At dawn the party broke up and all of us headed to a restaurant near JoAnn’s for an early morning breakfast. As we passed the high school, Coach Dan Hansen saw us, and Dave pointed to the rooster on the roof. Hansen gave us a thumbs up, which made Dave feel really good. Dan Hansen was the football coach, which at least doubled the value of his opinion.

We paused for a moment to appreciate the fruition of our night’s endeavors. As the first golden rays of the rising sun bathed the object of Dave’s finally appeased passion – no, not Susan; the ripped-off rooster – we all felt a sense of accomplishment. Not only had we graduated from high school, but we had also placed an eight-foot-tall fiberglass chicken on the roof of the school without getting caught. Life didn’t get any better than that.

Epilogue

I went home and collapsed into bed. Around two o’clock in the afternoon my mom woke me to tell me that I had a phone call. It was Dave. Our former high school principal, John Carlile, had called him to request that we return the chicken to its rightful owner. I’m not sure how Mr. Carlile found out we swiped the chicken; apparently, we weren’t as sneaky as we thought we were.

Dave picked me up, and then we drove to the Heber City Cemetery to retrieve Jud, who worked there on the grounds crew. The three of us went to the high school, climbed to the roof, reclaimed the chicken, and put it in the back of Dave’s father’s truck. We drove the short distance to JoAnn’s, where JoAnn herself was waiting for us. Expecting at least a tongue lashing for our misdeeds of the night before, we were pleasantly surprised when all she did was smile, shake her head, and say, “Thanks boys.”

After we left JoAnn’s, we decided to have a little fun with Don, our buddy who hid behind the dumpster the night before. We had passed Don’s girlfriend on the way to the cemetery earlier and stopped and talked to her briefly. We told her about the events of the previous evening and Don's participation in them. She got a big kick out of the story, especially the part about Don hiding behind the dumpster. I think she liked that Don cared about what she thought of him.

We paid Don a visit at the tire store where he worked. As Don broke down a tire, we told him that the police were now involved in our little escapade. We also told Don that because we had been honest, confessed our role in the crime, and returned the chicken to its owner, we were not being charged with anything. He, on the other hand, still had to answer for his part in the chicken theft. Don noticeably paled and became very nervous. We didn’t have the heart to continue the charade, so we finally told him the truth. I think he swore at us.

All the main participants in the Chicken Incident are now mostly respectable members of society. I’ve taught school for the last thirty years. Dave is an attorney and is a partner in his own law firm. Dale builds sheep camps in Idaho. Randy is a high school guidance counselor. Sadly, Don passed away nine years ago.

The moral of the story? Follow that dream, I guess. Even if the dream is just stealing a giant fiberglass chicken.

I’m a little in awe that it all happened forty years ago.

Lessons I've Learned The Hard Way ...

 

The strongest fences in our lives are the ones we build ourselves. 

Not to get all pretentious here, but I’ve had a lot of interesting experiences over the last ten years, and I want to share some principles that guide my life I’ve learned from those experiences. There is also a story behind every statement. I may even share those stories sometime …

1. Sometimes we don’t see our personal prison until we’re out of it. Comfort zones aren’t always helpful, especially when they keep us from progressing. Relationships, careers, or where we live can all be barriers to being a better person.
2. Find someone you can love wholeheartedly, passionately, and without fear of rejection. Love someone who loves you for who you are now, but makes you want to be a better person. Love and be loved unconditionally. If you already have that someone, hang onto them for dear life.
3. Like what you do, but realize a career doesn't define you as a person. If you don’t love everything about your life now, find at least one thing you can love - exercise, a hobby, the arts, whatever it is that helps you transcend drudgery for a while. Life is too short to never find anything that makes you truly happy. I like teaching, but I don’t love the politics that go along with it. I’m lucky to be in a place now where I'm happy and engaged with my work, but there are many other things that make my life good as well.
4. Appreciate beauty. This is a lot of good in this world. Recognize the ugliness and change it if you can, but don't let it define you.
5. Fear sucks. Don’t be afraid of your feelings. Accept them, and if they’re negative, channel those feelings in productive ways. Recognize depression and deal with it.  I once reached a point where getting out of bed in the morning became a challenge. That was no way to live, so I did something about it. Mostly, I found reasons to get out of bed – my job, my kids, and the people I loved most. Don’t be afraid of trying new things. Don’t be afraid of trying old things in a new way.
6. Don’t trust anyone who says he or she knows what God - whichever one you happen to believe in - wants for your life. Organized religion is mostly bullshit and is usually just a means for people to exploit and make money off of others. For a long time, I believed there were people who were more insightful or inspired about myself than me, because they claimed to have a closer relationship with God than I had. I finally realized that nobody knows me better than myself. Depending on others for guidance because they claim to be more inspired is an invitation to disaster. It’s your life. Live it your way, but always strive to be kind. Be true to yourself, and accept, respect, and trust yourself. Don’t worry about what most others think or say about you; you can’t really do anything about it. Care what your loved ones think of you, but realize even they don't always understand where you're coming from. 
7. Accept others for who they are, but don’t be anyone’s doormat. Recognize that otherwise good people sometimes have bad days. None of us are defined by who we are at our finest moment or at our worst moment. Most of the time we're just doing the best we can. Be patient, but don’t accept being treated less than how you deserve, whether it’s by friends, family, employers, religious leaders, or anyone else. It took me a long time to realize that I didn’t have to put up with being treated poorly just because I had invested time and emotional energy into a relationship.
8. There are crazy and/or mean people out there who enjoy hurting others. Learn to deal with them. Even better, avoid those people altogether if you can. Sometimes bad people put on a good front before you realize who they actually are. Some of the worst people I’ve dealt with in my life have had advanced degrees or have been religious leaders.
9. Be grateful. You’re blessed (or lucky) every day in large and small ways. Be grateful for the good things, because it could always be worse. 
10. Knowledge matters. Education matters. Experience matters. Ignorance is not bliss.
11. Intentions don’t matter. Actions do.
12. When you're gone, you're gone. Live a consequential life that influences others for the better. Give people a reason to say good things about you years after you've shuffled off this mortal coil.

Bernie

I have a friend named Bernie McGuire. Bernie is an amazing man; an attorney by profession, he specializes in Social Security disability cases. There are literally hundreds of people who know Bernie and admire him for a variety of reasons; Bernie has a great sense of humor, and he’s a babe magnet, among other things. Bernie is also an inspirational guy; he has a great attitude about life, and his resiliency knows no bounds.

Did I mention Bernie is quadriplegic? He is, and what happened to Bernie could happen to anyone.

Let me take you back to the last Sunday in October 1981, the twenty-fifth to be exact. It was the first Sunday after the time change back to standard time, which is a factor in this story. Other than the time change, it was just a typical Sunday. Bernie and I were in the same LDS ward. I’d known Bernie for the previous ten years, and he was a fun guy to hang out with. That particular Sunday he and I decided to skip Sunday School. We were loitering in the foyer outside the chapel and noticed that my mom, who was the Relief Society President, had posted sign-up sheets for enrichment night mini-classes. 

Let me stop right here to say that this story doesn’t have anything to do with what happened to Bernie, but it is a good example of Bernie’s sense of humor. I’ll get to Bernie’s accident later

Anyway, there was a man in our ward whom I’ll call “Roy Jones”  (not his real name, of course), who was the ward character. It seems that every LDS ward had to have one back then; it was required. Roy was in his late fifties, divorced, very obese, seldom bathed, and wore the same ill fitting ten-year-old dark blue polyester leisure suit to church every week.

What Roy was best known for was his OPD - obnoxious personality disorder - which isn’t a real mental illness, but ought to be. Roy was on disability, so he had lots of free time to bother people. The conductor of the Heber Creeper once kicked Roy off the train at Bridal Veil Falls because he was making such a nuisance of himself, and Roy had to find a way back to Heber on his own. Roy used to accost people in the supermarket where I worked after school, and follow them around the store talking to them as they vainly tried to escape from him. Roy was also infamous in our LDS ward for holding forth during testimony meetings for anywhere from twenty minutes at a time to most of the meeting.

Bernie and I saw those sign-up sheets on a table outside the Relief Society room door and had the same devilish thought at the same time: wouldn't it be hilarious if we signed Roy Jones up for every single one of those classes? We gleefully did, and then I forgot about it because of the events that happened later that evening. A few days later I heard my mom frantically talking to one of her counselors on the phone about how the bishop was going to just have to tell Roy that he couldn’t attend the classes because they were only for Relief Society sisters. Listening to my mom gave me the one good laugh I had during a rotten week, and I confessed that Bernie and I had signed Roy’s name to her lists. She was so relieved she forgot to be mad at me.

So, that was Bernie (and me too, I guess).

Later that evening, Bernie and some other guys from our ward were driving down a dark country road to toilet paper the house of a girl who Bernie liked. The time had changed the night before from Daylight Savings to Standard Time, so it had gotten dark early. October 25 was the girl’s birthday, and toilet papering her house was Bernie’s way of letting her know he cared. Bernie was driving, and they didn’t notice that there were horses standing in the road at the bottom of a hill until it was too late. The car hit the horses at the knees, bringing them down on top of the car and breaking Bernie’s neck. I remember hearing ambulance sirens - we lived right next to the hospital - but not knowing what was going on.

The next morning Mom woke me with the news about Bernie. I felt sick inside, and felt even sicker when I got to school and saw he really wasn’t there. I remember trying to talk about the accident with our choir teacher - a really good lady, and one of my all-time favorite teachers - but she was too upset to speak about it. Later that day, my brother Phil and I, along with one of the other kids who was actually in the accident with Bernie, went to the salvage yard where the remains of Bernie’s car were stored. While looking at the shattered windshield and caved-in roof of the car, which was splattered with gore where the horses landed, I came to the realization that it could just as easily have been me in that car.

Confronting my own mortality as a seventeen-year-old wasn’t an easy experience. I’ve had a few of my own brushes with death since, but that was when it really hit me I wouldn’t be on this earth forever. However, if I wrote here that on that spot in that auto salvage yard on that autumn afternoon I swore to live each day of my life as if it were the last, I would be lying. I was seventeen, for crying out loud. Seventeen-year-old brains don’t think that way.

What Bernie’s accident did for me was give me enough perspective on life to realize that the cliquish, kind of mean-spirited way that most high school kids live their lives was not the way to go. Since then, I’ve tried to be kinder to and more accepting of everyone who crosses my path, because you never know what life holds in store for you or anyone else.

Bernie never physically recovered from that crash, but he has done some incredible things with his life, such as graduating from law school and having a successful law practice while sitting in an electric wheelchair. I heard he even once bungee jumped. However, the greatest thing Bernie has accomplished - in my eyes at least - is teach by his example that no problem is insurmountable as long as you’re breathing and have a functioning brain. When life gets overwhelming, I stop and think about Bernie and what he has accomplished with his life. It puts my troubles into perspective. Bernie will be the first to tell you he didn’t do it all on his own. He had the help of an awesome family and good friends who didn’t let him down. Like I said, Bernie is an amazing guy, and I’m glad he’s my friend.

Here’s a ten minute mini-documentary of the man himself that someone posted on YouTube. It’s definitely worth checking out.

My Man-Crush

I’m going to see Bob Dylan in concert tomorrow night. He’s playing at Deer Valley in Park City. My wife surprised me with tickets, and I’m going with my buddy Ken. The Wife isn’t a fan, so it was mighty nice of her to stifle her gag reflex and get the tickets for me. I’ve been a Dylan fan since high school – nearly thirty years ago – and I’m as excited for this concert as any concert I’ve ever been to. The man is a living legend  – Dylan, not Ken. Ken is still working on it, but I digress. Bob Dylan is pushing seventy years old, so I’m very happy to finally see him in person. I missed out on seeing Johnny Cash – another big favorite – before he died, and I’ve always regretted it. Not gonna happen with Dylan.

Because of my anticipation of tomorrow night’s concert, I listened to one of the most important (and best) concerts ever recorded – Dylan and the Hawks in Manchester, UK, May 1966 – while I was riding my bike this morning, and I’ve been wandering around the house today singing Dylan songs and extolling his virtues to The Wife. She doesn’t get it, so rather than continue to bore her with my pontifications, I’m going to blog about my man-crush on Bob Dylan. I can sum it up with one incident in the man’s life, and it happened at the concert I listened to this morning.

If this bores you, you don’t have to read it.

Okay, so you’re still with me. Good. Let me set the scene. It’s Tuesday, May 17, 1966, in Manchester, England. Bob Dylan is playing a concert at the Free Trade Hall. Dylan and his greatest backing band, The Hawks (later more famous as simply The Band) have been playing Australia and Europe for six weeks. They are wrapping up their tour in the UK. One of Dylan’s greatest albums, Blonde on Blonde, was just released the day before in the US.

Ever since the switch from being an earnest acoustic folk singer who played protest songs at places like the March on Washington in 1963, where Martin Luther King gave his famous “I have a dream” speech, to going electric at the Newport Folk Festival the summer of 1965 and nearly getting booed off stage, Dylan has been heckled by his former fans. Rock and roll music doesn’t fit in with their folkie, protest singer image of Dylan. The UK fans are especially belligerent. Dylan has taken to performing with a huge American flag as his backdrop, further alienating his already testy European fans.

Dylan’s 1966 concerts are divided between an acoustic set and an electric set. At the beginning of the concert Dylan comes out with just his acoustic guitar and his harmonica and plays acoustic music. Bob Dylan is twenty-five years old with a wild head of hair and some pretty hip clothes for the era. He formerly performed in work shirts and blue jeans, so his appearance has changed quite a bit.

Interestingly, during the acoustic part of the show, Dylan doesn’t play any of the “classic” stuff that the fans want to hear (“Blowin’ In The Wind” or “The Times They Are A-Changin’”). Instead he plays acoustic versions of songs off his last three albums, Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited, and Blonde on Blonde, which are essentially rock and roll albums with a smattering of acoustic material included. Despite the lack of protest music, Dylan’s acoustic set is fairly well received.

However, Dylan then brings out the Hawks and rips into a song called “Tell Me, Momma,” and the audience starts to get agitated. In fact, not realizing that rock and roll history is being made right before their eyes, some of the crowd boos and shouts out rude stuff. A few of his former fans start clapping rhythmically at an inappropriate time, trying to throw Dylan and the band off. Dylan starts to mumble something under his breath until the clapping clods eventually quit so that they can hear what he is saying. Dylan’s electric set continues like this, even though Dylan and the Hawks are playing definitive versions of some of his greatest songs.

The jeering gets worse. Dylan and the band finally come to the last song. While the musicians are tuning up, an idiot in the audience shouts out “Judas!” (that someone would compare him to Christ’s betrayer is a good example of the depth of feeling some fans had about Bob Dylan playing rock and roll instead of folk music). Another genius shouts “I’m never listening to you again!” Dylan turns to the hecklers and says, “I don’t believe you. You’re a liar!” Then Dylan turns his back to the crowd and says to Robbie Robertson, his lead guitarist, “Play it f*cking loud!” And Bob Dylan and the Hawks tear into the greatest version of “Like A Rolling Stone” ever recorded.

So that’s it. I admire the man’s tenacity and audacity. I love the fact that Dylan wouldn’t be daunted or dissuaded by his erstwhile fans. Rather than caving and going back to folk music, Dylan made some of the greatest music of his career, even though it wasn’t appreciated at the time. And, despite a motorcycle accident where he broke his neck a few months after the concert in Manchester, Dylan has continued to make great music. Bob Dylan’s last four albums, Time Out Of Mind, “Love And Theft”, Modern Times, and Together Through Life, are some of his best, most accessible work, and he was sixty plus years old when he recorded them.

And, thanks to my wife, I get to see him in concert tomorrow night.