The Cross

One of my earliest funny stories occurred when I was in scouts.  I did the full nine years of scouting with Cub Scouts, Boy Scouts and Explorers.  I think I was a Boy Scout when this happened.  The scout troop was part of the local Catholic Church and held meetings in the Scout Hall.  This building was constructed with the volunteer labor of the fathers of the different scouts and was on the elementary school and church property.

Our meetings were at night and the first part was for the kids and the second half was just the parents hanging out socializing.  This left us kids to entertain ourselves.  You can substitute “get into mischief” for entertain here and not be too far off of the mark.

On this particular evening, my friend Brian and I climbed over the wrought-iron gate that dropped us into the school courtyard.  From here we could perpetrate a crime which we had pulled off numerous times before.  We were clever beyond our years.

We knew that one of the windows to the cafeteria didn’t lock and could be opened just by pulling and wiggling the frame.  The awning type window could be opened just far enough for skinny kids to slip, one at a time, into the dark cafeteria.

Once inside we would proceed to the gleaming aluminum box that held the treasure that would soon be ours, the ice cream freezer.  This freezer was locked by two long aluminum bars that were held in place with padlocks.  The bars passed through aluminum plates on either end of the top loading box and prevented the hinged lids from being opened.  Or so they thought.  Silly adults.  They really thought that something so simple would prevent two advanced primates from acquiring their frozen treasure?  I repeat, silly adults.

The bars you see were not straight.  Over years of use and misuse the bars had become bent.  We may have helped in the bending a bit, I don’t remember.  By merely turning the bars so the bowing was up allowed us to slide the hinged top plastic covers to the side.  Once that was done we would grab handfuls of strawberry and chocolate cups of brain freezing delight.

Ice cream is good.  It is even sweeter when it isn’t yours.  We didn’t consider it stealing.  If anyone had a claim to ice cream it was the cows.

On this one fateful night however all was not going to go as planned.  Window open, check.  One kid through the window, check.  Second kid through, check.  Ice cream freezer open, check.  Chocolate and strawberry ice cream down the hatch, check.  Lights on, oops!  Yes, on this particular night some cafeteria worker was in the back office and heard the squeals of delight and the slurping of ice cream coming from the darkened cafeteria.

What she then witnessed was two skinny kids trying to claw their way through one, not wide enough window, with telltale sticky fingers.  We didn’t think she saw our faces but she surely saw our scout uniformed butts.  Somehow we both defied all laws of physics and made it through the narrow window.

Now in the walled-in courtyard of the school we were still trapped.  We couldn’t just go back over the gate as it was now bathed in light from the cafeteria.  We ran like little cockroaches away from the light.  Into the school hallways we ran from door to door.  Eventually we found an open office door.  We then went through an office window to drop on the east side of the school away from Scout Hall and the cafeteria, aka the crime scene.

We had just pulled off the crime of the century but needed a good get-away.  We had never planned that far ahead.  Time to hide.  We were on the front side of the school which was also the front side of the school auditorium.  When the new church was built the old church was converted into the auditorium.  It had a covered entranceway with decorative open block walls on the side.  These walls were perfect for climbing.  We made our way to the flat roof area over the entrance.  Behind us was a long high wall that was the front of the church.  A giant aluminum cross was mounted by stand-off brackets to the wall.  It was delightfully dark up there and two large arborvitaes grew just barely above the roofline and offered limited cover.

We reveled in our escape from cafeteria justice.  We waited and waited.  We needed to lie low until things blew over.  That’s how they did it in the movies.  Outlaws would always lie low after the hold-up.  Waiting is boring.  Brian was not one for boredom.  He began to climb the cross.  He shinnied up the lower part and had just arrived at the cross member when it happened.  A Miami Shores patrol car turned the corner and stopped in front of the auditorium.  I shout whispered a phrase that I would shout whisper several times in my life, “The cops are here”. 

Brian froze.  I froze.  I then peered through the top of an arborvitae. I watched one cop exit his vehicle and start up the walkway.  I then turned a saw an image that will forever live in my memory.  Brian, arms outstretched, was hanging on the cross facing the wall.  

Fear stifled my hysteria.   I quickly turned to see the cop advancing up the walkway give a casual upward glance toward the cross just before disappearing under the open entranceway.  I heard the church/auditorium doors shake as the cop was checking them.  I turned back to see Brian sliding down the vertical cross member to gently touch down on the roof.  I turned back to watch the cop walk back to his car.  He paused at one point, glanced back to the now empty cross and had a puzzled look on his face.

The cops drove away.  Ice cream, cops, adrenaline, laughter, could there be anything better in life?  We didn’t think so.  Since this incident took place in the ‘50’s it certainly pre-dated the 1979 movie, The Life of Brian.  Could it have served as inspiration, remotely possible?