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.

High School and the Meaning of Life

 

The fortieth anniversary of my high school graduation is coming up this month, so I’ve been feeling nostalgic for 1982. The pictures posted above were taken in my parents’ backyard in June 1982, a few weeks after I graduated from high school, and more recently at a store in Draper, UT. I like the juxtaposition of the two photos – same person, same pose, same attitude, forty-year difference. That’s my 1971 Dodge Charger I’m leaning against in the photo from ‘82. Spring 1982 was a good time in my life. Not only was I anticipating graduating from high school, I had the general expectation of great things just over the horizon that only a seventeen-year-old can feel so defiantly and yet be so oblivious of what life might really hold in store.

 

One memory in particular stands out. I had a P.E. class from Coach Mecham, the wrestling coach at Wasatch High School. Mecham was a fairly young guy, mustached, in his late twenties, originally a farm boy from Montana. He had that compact wrestler’s build and was friendly to a point, but you knew you didn’t give Coach Mecham crap. I didn’t think Mecham liked me very much because I had quit the wrestling team the previous year. At the time I quit the team I was recovering from a severe bout of the flu and trying to juggle academics with a job bagging groceries at Days’ Market after school. Something had to give, and wrestling was what gave. I wasn’t very good at it anyway.

 

Coach Mecham let us have a class baseball tournament the last month of school. He divided us into teams, and we agreed that the losers had to buy the winners milkshakes at JoAnn’s, a restaurant near the high school. JoAnn’s was home to an eight-foot-tall fiberglass statue of a chicken that stood in front of the place. That chicken would play a pivotal role on the night of our high school graduation, which is a story for another time.

 

We spent the last few weeks of our senior year playing baseball during PE class. My specialty was hitting the ball as hard as I could and running like hell to first base. If anyone stood in front of the base, I was just as likely to knock him over as try to get around him. What I lacked in finesse I made up for in brutishness. It worked; I usually got a base hit, even if I didn’t score. What can I say? We were a bunch of lower to middle class seventeen and eighteen-year-old boys growing up in a small town in Utah where education wasn’t a high priority, but sports were. I remember in one of the games I was up at bat and the guy playing shortstop on the other team started to talk trash. I believe the words he used were “easy out.” I hit the ball straight at his head, probably not intentionally, and he had to duck in order to not get hit in the face. Coach Mecham, who was umping the game, admiringly said “Nice hit.” I felt pretty good about that.

 

What makes me nostalgic about the whole experience is that not only was it a lot of fun, but it was also emblematic of a whole different era in education, one that is probably long gone. Nobody walked away angry about the results of the tournament. Somebody had to win, and somebody had to lose; that was life. As I recall I was on the losing team and I gladly drove to JoAnn’s to buy one of my friends on the opposing team a milkshake, during school time of course. Coach Mecham probably didn’t expend a lot of energy in planning the tournament – I’d bet he doesn’t even remember it – but here I am forty years later thinking about it. As a teacher I look back on that time and wonder if anyone will feel nostalgic about being in my class.

 

I wrote earlier that education – at least in academic areas – wasn’t our highest priority in May 1982. Like most high school seniors, we had other things on our minds. One of my friends lost his mother that spring, and another good friend was learning to adjust to life in a wheelchair. We didn’t go to the best school (by modern standards), but then some of us weren’t the best students, either. We did have some teachers who gave a damn, and who persevered despite the lack of money and other resources.

 

Looking back, the majority of us who went to school together in that era are successful. There are teachers, doctors, nurses, artists, attorneys, and newscasters among us. We didn’t have laws like No Child Left Behind to force somebody else’s version of success on us, nor did we have a bunch of right-wing politicians dictating what was appropriate for us to learn and what wasn’t; we discovered success for ourselves, and we actually learned American history, warts and all. I kind of miss that, and I hope my daughters are finding success without some fascist politician or educational bureaucrat defining what success – or failure – is for them.

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.