Tales of Halloweens Past- Part 3

I'm hesitant to tell this story, because it involves at least one person who has quick-n-easy access to my blog, and said person might not like this unpleasant story retold. But it's one hell of a great story, and so I'm gonna tell it, with a few name changes here and there to protect the identities of those involved. Even though a lot of you will know EXACTLY who I'm talking about.

This happened in 1988 or 1989, I'm not sure which. I was driving around on Halloween night with 4 of my friends:

Jerry was the driver that night. He was the oldest of 8 kids, and came from a relatively wealthy family. Jerry was known to have a wee bit of a hot head at times, and a tendency (at that age, anyway) to think that the world revolved around him in very tight little circles. Jerry was also somewhat of an athlete, and was plagued by knee injuries, and that particular night was hobbling around with his left knee in a brace and a bandage.

Next to Jerry, in the front passenger seat, was Antonio. Anthonio had moved to our corner of Massachusetts from a tiny little farming community in northeastern Utah when he was about 10 or 11, and while he was a very nice kid, he brought a lot of Utah uptightness with him. But Antonio could nearly always be counted on to Do The Right Thing and/or Take a Stand.

I was seated squarely behind Jerry. To my immediate right, riding the center of the back seat bench, was Bubba. Bubba was 6'5" tall and was the hero of his football team, and was midway through the season that would eventually culminate in their upset victory in the state championship football game, the first of two he would lead them to. Bubba was the kind of guy that a tiny little smartass like me liked to have around, because he was big enough to have my back, and because he laughed- LOUDLY- at nearly everything I said. And his laugh was a total Bubba-sounding laugh, too. Bubba was awesome.

To Bubba's right, seated behind Antonio, was Ron. Ron and his family had moved to Massachusetts from Texas just a year or so earlier, and WHOA NELLY were they ever your stereotypical Texans! They had that get-'er-done mentality and that thick Texas drawl, and that LAUGH- you know the laugh that makes the hairs on the back of every New Englander's neck stand up stright? That "Duh HUH HUH HUH HUH HUH!" guffaw that you just naturally think of when you think "Texas"? Well, Ron had it, and a bad case of it, and he employed it often.

And it got him into trouble.

So like I said, it was Halloween night, and we were driving around. We had stopped somewhere to say hi to someone, and when we came out to get back into the car, we discovered that some passing a-holes had egged Jerry's car.

They were splattered all over the windshield and driver's side of the car. It was recent enough that the eggs were still tacky to the touch, but long enough ago that they had fused themselves to the paint and glass with that teflon-like bond that eggs attain.

Now, this wasn't Jerry's own personal car. This was his family station wagon. And as such, it wasn't some kind of luxury vehicle or sports car. It was just a ride; a sturdy, can-do vehicle intended to haul kids and groceries all over suburbia. Cars like that are made to handle whatever can be thrown at them.

Including eggs.

But for some reason, Jerry took this egging as a personal affront. To him, these kids hadn't tossed a few eggs onto a random station wagon as they walked by. No, they had egged JERRY. They had egged his FAMILY. They had left a mess that Jerry knew his father was going to make HIM clean up the following morning.

They had insulted him and walked away, in the dead of night, under cover of darkness, leaving Jerry with nobody to vent his rage upon.

Wait- nobody? Not quite accurate....

We all loaded into the car, 4 of us still in jovial spirits, but Jerry with a simmering rage that was slowly heating up and approaching the boiling point.

As we cruised along the backroads, we were all still laughing and joking around as we had been before we discovered the eggy mess on the car. Anecdotes and stories were being bantered about, and Ron was guffawing with rare abandon.

That laugh.

It was so loud. It was so... emptyheaded sounding.

"DUH HUH HUH HUH HUH HUH!"

Over and over. Whatever anyone said, everyone laughed, but Ron's laugh was loudest of all, even overpowering Bubba's Bubba-laugh. And it never seemed to cease. No sooner had one joke passed, than another was told, and Ron laughed once again, or continued laughing without even stopping.

"DUH HUH HUH HUH HUH HUH!"

Now, I knew Jerry better than anyone in the car. Jerry was my best friend. I had seen Jerry at his best, and at his worst, and I knew his moods and his anger and I knew what generally set him off.

But even I didn't see this coming.

They say that every 7 minutes in a conversation, there is a lull, where everyone just kind of settles down and regroups for the next 7 minutes of talking. Nobody knows why, exactly, it just seems to happen.

We had a lull. Things were quiet. Teenage boys are uncomfortable in quiet lulls. We all look for something else to make fun of, something to mock, something to make a joke about to get the noise rolling again.

Ron looked out the windshield, and found his target. "DUH HUH HUH HUH... Some cornhole egged your car, Jerry! That's funny! DUH HUH HUH HUH HUH HUH!"

SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEECH!!!!

I still remember flying forward in my seat, held back by my seatbelt from hitting the back of Jerry's head with my teeth. Jerry slammed on the brakes as hard as he could, and in one swift motion, craned himself around in the driver's seat, and just let the fists fly.

I don't remember how many undefended shots he landed on Ron's big Texan head, but it wasn't many. Texans are trained to fight back when attacked, and Ron started swinging as hard as Jerry did.

Whump whump whump, for about fifteen seconds it was just a flurry of fists. Jerry was craned around to his right, and was trying to hold the brakes down with his left leg, but that was his bad knee, so the car was still moving, slowly, heading for a ditch on the side of the road.

And then Ron had had enough. He opened his door, gave Jerry one last head-whack, and jumped from the moving vehicle. He slammed his door shut, and Jerry turned around, and hit the gas.

Have you ever heard stunned silence? It's damn near palpable. Me and Bubba sat there with classic "WTF" expressions on our faces, trying to process what had just happened. We didn't say a word. We were afraid of setting Jerry off again.

Then Antonio finally spoke up after maybe a minute.

"Pull over."

"What?" Jerry said.

"Pull over. I'm getting out."

"What? NO! I'm driving and you're not-"

Antonio opened his door, and Jerry, shocked, pulled over. Antonio jumped out before the car stopped and immediately started running back to find Ron and see if he was alright. Jerry? He pulled back into traffic and just kept going.

After a moment Jerry spoke up, looking at Bubba and me in the mirror. "Do you guys want out too?"

We silently shook our heads. No, we wanted to get back to our own cars and get the hell out of there. That's all we wanted.

The ride back to Jerry's was a running monologue. Jerry was furiously trying to talk me and Bubba into believing his weak justification for his outburst. But we weren't saying anything. We were just listening as he intently rambled on and on, explaining- mostly to himself, I think- why Ron's laughter HAD to be responded to with violent blows to the skull.

Finally we got to Jerry's house, where the worst was yet to come.

Jerry had to face his dad.

My memories of this part are pretty hazy, but as I recall it, Jerry had decided that a preemptive strike was the base course of action. Obviously, Dad was eventually going to find out that he had brought the smack down on his friend for no good reason, so Jerry was going to go with the outright confession, with doctored up reasoning for the attack, in hopes he could convince the old man that he had acted out correctly.

Dad was unimpressed. He saw through the family-honor tack that Jerry tried to take.

Dad: "Jerry, you're saying you HIT your friend?"
Jerry: "Dad, he was MAKING FUN of our CAR!"
Dad: "You HIT... another PRIESTHOOD HOLDER??"

Ooooo... Jerry's Dad had him there. That was always where it went with Jerry's Dad- he pulled out the Priesthood card. See, as young Mormons, we received the Priesthood at age 12. And we were expected to act a little better than our peers because of it. And we were expected to treat our fellow Priesthood Holders as brothers, except without all of that sibling rivalry hitting that sometimes goes on amongst real 17-year-old brothers.

That was the end of the discussion. Jerry tried, God love him, to explain himself a little further, but Jerry's Dad wasn't having it.

Calls were made, apologies were forced out of Jerry, and begrudging animosity remained between the two of them for some time. To be honest, I have no idea how the two of them feel about each other today. I don't know if that friendship was ever patched up.

All I remember was sitting there, in stunned silence, watching Jerry and Ron pound each other in a moving vehicle without an attentive driver.

All over eggs.

Happy Halloween!