Blast from the past.

How many people remember these:

 

 

 

 

Yeah, I was going through some of the things I rediscovered from the garage clean out.  A bunch of slides was in there and I contemplated how many of my students would recognize them.  I think I’ll have to bring some in August to find out.

I also found this picture, which made me laugh.  It’s a little dark, but that’s me in the driver’s seat, and my friend Dave “holding the gun”.

It was the mid-80’s and I was in my mid 20’s.  I’d had to ret a car for a few days and ended up with this blue-grey 4-door K-Car.  It could have been reality or something perpetuated in the movies and TV, but blue-grey 4-door K-Cars were often associated with suit wearing police-type government officials.  Which is what we were discussing at HQ* when we came up with a brainstorm of a practical joke.  It took us a couple hours to plan the whole thing, choreographed it down to the last minute.

We positioned Bill at the pay phone on the corner of 800 So and State Street (1), a busy corner on a weekend night.  Rick, Rae and Dan were positioned on the other side of the streets (2) walking down the sidewalk.  Dave and I were dressed in our best suits, wearing sunglasses and armed with a water gun and a “car phone”.

We pulled into the Sears parking lot and went over to the corner where Bill was.  Screeching to a halt, we jumped out of the car and got out to hassle Bill.  Hung up the phone on him and had a heated discussion for a couple minutes.  Bill pointed across the street towards where the other group was stationed and Dave and I jumped back into the car and took off. squealing the tires as much as I could get the K-Car to.

We crossed through the light and squealed to a halt up on the curb right in front of the other three.  Another heated argument and then we took Rick and shoved him in the back of the K-Car.  He was screaming the whole time, yelling “They’re gonna kill me” and, as we drove off, was pounding on the window so hard I thought he was going to break it.  Or a hand. (He did hurt his hand).  We took the first corner, Rick stopped banging on the window, and we all headed back to HQ.

With the political climate today (NSA, Homeland Security), surveillance cameras on every corner and everyone having a cell phone, there is no way I’d do that now.  Even if I was in my early 20’s.  It probably wasn’t the smartest thing to do even back then, but, hey, I was young and stupid.

*What we called the house a bunch of us were renting together.