Thieving Savages

The picture of two boys on the banner of this blog is a slice of this photograph featuring Roy (on the left) and me (on the right) doing our very best "Native American" impersonations. I don't have the original photo, but somewhere I found several badly degraded 50-year-old negatives from which this image was scanned.


This snapshot was probably taken by our oldest brother Joel with his brand new Boy Scout box camera, which he'd received as a Christmas present. The year can be established by the fact that I'm sitting there with my right arm in a cast. I broke that arm when I was in the first grade (1958-59) when I made a somewhat-less-than-fully-successful leap from halfway up a baseball backstop. The time of the year can be established by two things: first, 90% of all pictures taken with Joel's camera were taken within the first month of his ownership; and second, there's all the brush that's not so neatly stacked in the upper right of the photo. That brush is the remains of the Christmas trees from which our tepee's support poles were made. So clearly this image dates to January 1959, which would have been right around my seventh birthday and a few months before Roy's 9th.

By now you must be asking, "How many Christmas trees did you have that year, that you could make a tepee with the trunks and and still have a pile of left-overs?" To be honest I don't remember how many we had, but trust me, it was a buttload. Of course, we had only one tree in the house at Christmas, but within a week after Christmas we'd found a bunch more just lining the alley that ran behind our house. I don't remember who first decided that discarded Christmas trees were valuable collectibles, but within a short time we had a dozen or more.

One day Martin and Freddy (from down on the 3100 block) came by and were mightily impressed with our stash, especially with that massive twelve-footer we'd found up on Philmore Avenue, so they decided they'd start their own tree collection. Unfortunately for them, we had a big head start and by then the pickings along the alleys were getting sparse. But that didn't deter them, and within a week or so they'd managed to acquire a pretty sizable assemblage of defunct trees, which Martin invited Joel to come admire. Joel went down to Martin's prepared to laugh in his face at their puny efforts to catch up with us. But there leaning against the wall that separated their yard from the neighbor's was a very familiar-looking twelve foot tree. Sure enough, Joel checked our tree inventory and found it shy one twelve-footer. The count was off by several, so all three of us went down the block to demand our trees back, but Martin and Freddy denied everything. As they told it, they'd found that big one down on Copia Street -- could they help it if we kept losing our trees?

There and then we brothers three swore vengeance, and thus (to right the injustice that had been done to us) was hatched "Operation Midnight". That next morning we woke at 4:00 AM and under the cover of darkness stole every single tree that Martin and Freddy had. Somewhere around 8:00 Martin and Freddy came up the block to inspect our holdings. Accusations followed. Hey, we'd found these trees down on Copia. Could we help it if they kept losing their trees?

But our victory was short lived. Dad (noticing that our backyard had become a forest of desiccated ex-Xmas trees) inquired, "Boys, just what do you intended to do with all those trees?"

I believe we were unanimous in our reaction to this line of questioning: Do? Why did we have to do anything? The final disposition of our loot was way beyond any of our thought processes. But Roy (being the quick thinker among us) came up with a brilliant answer: "We're gonna strip off the branches and make poles for a tepee."

Dad thought that was an acceptable goal, but he noted that most tepees use something less than the forty or so support poles we had at our disposal. So he laid down the law, "You have until next Saturday to strip them and put the branches and any left-over trees out for the garbagemen. As you can see from the above photograph of our tepee (the fabric of which someone may recognize as the filthy carpet that once covered our living room floor) we did manage to hatchet the limbs off three tepee poles before our motivation flagged (or our attention wandered, more likely).

Here's a view of Joel (obviously taken by Roy) opening the flap of our tepee to let one sweaty little injun with a broken arm escape from its stifling heat.


Oh, one last thing. If you happen to be Martin or Freddy from the 3100 block of Van Buren Avenue and just happen to read this post, remember -- the statute of limitations on discarded-Christmas-tree larceny has long since expired.

UPDATE
For the benefit of my baby sister (whose husband has honored this post with its first comment), here's a shot of her being held by our Aunt Mary (in the middle). Mom (the very tired-looking woman on the left) I think is holding Bonnie; and I'm pretty sure Gramma is holding Beth.


Oh yes, just one last thing -- notice that the screen door has been snapped off. Savages, I tell you!