The “Bulletin”

West Roxbury / Roslindale, Massachusetts

Published originally in the West Roxbury/ Roslindale Ma “Bulletin” May 24, 2004

“Death-Defying Stunts by Davey and Me”

By Hank Brandli (Melbourne, Fl)

On Easter Sunday in my 67^th year, I was lying face up on the massage table. My physical therapist, Paul, was working on my aging/aching body. I was reminiscing about how I survived to be 12 years old. In the late 40’s, that wasn’t easy, and especially if you hung around with a kid like my friend Davey.

I first met Davey when I moved from the Mozart School district area on Beech St. north of Washington Street to the Phineas Bates School south of Washington St. in the 5^th grade in Rozzie. I immediately connected with him. He was an outdoor, adventuresome, active, and all-around kind of kid. While I worked very hard in school, that wasn’t one of Davey’s strong points. Still, he was clever and had a multitude of talents. Boy, could he fix things! He could fix: anything on a bike (flat tires, chain repairs, spoke tightening); golf club head adjusting and rewinding; staining; loft filing; shellacking; and replacing the cowhide in a baseball glove. He was truly amazing and self-sufficient.*

One of the first ”crazy” and wild antics we did was climb trees together. We loved to climb trees and hang by our legs in the top branches of the trees. We went into the girls’ school yard at the Phineas Bates, and, at the end, there were two huge trees. Each of us would see who could climb to the top and hang the longest by our bent legs. Of course, we loved trees with no low branches so we could “shinny” up to the first branches. We loved to do this stunt; in fact, we would actually “shinny” to the top of some telephone poles.

We loved the woods; after Christmastime, when all of the fir-tinseled covered trees were discarded, dying ,and rotting, we would “collect” them and bring them way up into the woods.

In those days, the woods extended from Beech St. to the Turtle Pond Parkway and beyond. St. John’s Church wasn’t even built. We would “carelessly” start a Christmas tree fire and sometimes it invariably would spread because of the wind

One time, it got out of hand and I remember standing on the porch of our home with my dad looking at all the fire engines zooming by and heading for the woods in a frantic attempt to put out this rare substantial blaze.

My father looked down at me and said, “Did you have anything to do with this?”

I nervously shook my head up and down.

He said, “You know I too did the same thing when I was a kid.”

We also turned things like ice skating and playing hockey at Swedes Pond into thrill-seeking. As the season waned and the ice started to melt, Davey used to like to skate with me during the thaw. Many times while the ice was melting, the pond surface started rippling as the ice softened even more. Davey used to venture out on the pond with me as we still skated and the thin ice started undulating in a sinusoidal fashion so much so that it crackled wildly.

Then, we went to the next step, which was when the ice got mushy and started to break up. We would climb on the large sheets like flat icebergs. Several times we almost fell in. We could have drowned, but somehow the wind would blow our little ice rafts, and we would jump to another float and then to shore and escape before we entered the treacherous waters with all of our winter clothes and boots on, avoiding death. On solid ice later on, Davey was a star hockey player for Hyde Park High School in the fifties.

The winter season was spent skiing, tobogganing and having snowball wars on the George Wright Golf Course. The skiing was mostly cross-country, as there were few steep hills to ski on. After climbing the fence or going thru a cut hole in the fence on the 3^rd hole, we skied down the 2nd or 3rd fairway over to the 7th, down the 9th, and over to the 10th where Davey and I would ski down the steep hills on the 10th and 11th fairways and of course “Suicide Hill” on the 12^th hole. At the bottom of “SH”, we would take a sharp right over to a small pond on the 13^th, covered with snow covered ice that would crack as we zoomed across. SCARY!!

Some of the best skiing was next to the toboggan chute that ran from middle of the 5th fairway—the highest point on the course -- down to the low point next to the 13th fairway. Many times, I can remember skiing in the toboggan chute. We were at least slightly crazy in those days, because the toboggan chute was made out of wood. Any fall down that chute would have been disastrous.

Another one of our adventures was climbing -- not trees/poles-- but cliffs. Between Swede’s pond and the golf course was a rock cliff. Davey and I not only climbed it one way, we set goals each time we did it: to see who could climb the cliff more ways than the other. Why we never fell off that cliff I will never know. Recently, I talked to my younger brother about it because, although he never climbed it, he knew about the cliff. He said ,“if you ever fell off that cliff, Brother, you would have broken your back.” Well, we never did that either. How? I don’t know.

Our climbing exploits also included going down to what we called the quarry. My brother said it was really a large sand pit cliff off of Dale Street, next to the Connelly school. This large cliff enticed Davey and me. And we climbed it many times. At the top it went outward and tree branches stuck through the soil. We used the roots as climbing tools or pinions to get to the top. One day, one of these climbing roots broke, and Davey fell and started to slide down the sand cliff. I reached out and grabbed his hand and saved him from a fall. The two of us just clung there frightened. I wonder what would have happened if we had slid all the way down. We probably would have been crippled or dead.

And then we spent a lot of time fleeing from Bill Hackett, the City of Boston motorcycle policeman with the silver Harley and sidecar, whose job was to patrol the George Wright Golf Course. Every time Bill Hackett came around the course patrolling to keep us kids out, we always ran and hid from him, sometimes on the island between the 2^nd and 3^rd so that he didn’t see where we were.

One of our more scary adventures occurred between the 12^th and 13^th hole where there was a pond with a raft in it. One day we were on the raft when Bill’s motorcycle suddenly appeared descending the hill on the 12^th. He had us trapped on the pond. He stopped quickly, jumped off, ran to the pond’s edge and yelled at us to come off – so he could do what to us – we didn’t know. We always heard that he would take us to the jail at Hyde Park. We stayed on the raft and wouldn’t come ashore. As we got closer to a group of rocks, we both jumped on the rocks and hip-hopped to the bank ahead of him. We ran over two fairways to the high fence at the 15^th hole. He then climbed on his motorcycle and started to chase us. We escaped his grasp by climbing over the fence and disappearing into the woods; he never caught us.

One day on my own, I was looking for golf balls on the 16^th hole, and Bill Hackett started to approach me on his motorcycle. I ran and quickly climbed over the fence onto West St. Bill drove up the tar path by the 17^th and through the parking lot onto and coming down West St. So, I climbed back down onto the golf course. Frustrated and yelling at me, he drove back up and in. This time I climbed back over the fence and ran through the backyards while people tried to catch me as Bill pursued me -- this time on foot.

I made my way to the top of the hill. As he got on his cycle to go up around the bend, I hid in a culvert pipe with little water. I heard him walking above the culvert, looking for me everywhere, but he never found me. Not only did I hear him, but I heard my heart pounding for a long time until I knew he had given up. I went home that night really scared. I still think of the fear I felt of the motorcycle policeman catching me. He never did apprehend us, although he caught many other kids on the golf course at the wrong time in the wrong place.

Davey and I had many adventures our bicycles. We would ride our bicycles up and down hills, down the streets, standing with one foot on the seat and the other foot on the handle bars. These crazy stunts were usually done to show off for the girls. Why we never fell off and got hurt I’ll never know.

During that time, there was an Army-Navy store down in Roslindale Square. They used to sell surplus knives like Jim Bowie’s, very large, and, lo and behold, I recall that they cost about 99 cents. We saved our money that we earned selling golf balls, and we each bought a knife which came in a large case and mounted to the side of our dungarees on our belts. We used them to chop down little trees and make bows and arrows and do our carving.

Every once in a while we would do something really daring and death-defying. We would throw the knives at each other -- taking turns standing in front of the wooden garage and pretending to be like the knife throwers in the circus. One of us would stand against the wall, spread eagle and the other one would throw the knife trying to get as close as he could. A miss would probably have killed either one of us. Davey promoted this reckless behavior, and I followed him in this.

Davey was a great Marksman with his Red Ryder BB gun. He could shoot out a match from 40 feet. And, he could clean the inside of the barrel with cotton and 3/1 oil, adjust the sights, and maintain/adjust/lubricate linkages.

We used to have BB gun wars with other boys. Long sleeve shirts, heavy pants, gloves, no face protection -- this was the uniform of the day. To this day, why no one lost an eye remains a mystery to me.

One Saturday morning , Davey and I were cleaning my BB gun in my back yard when a bunch of birds landed on the roof of our neighbor’s garage. Davey jumped up and stood on the arms of our lawn chair holding the gun to his shoulder and he fired killing one sparrow.

Mrs. Bradley, on her second floor porch and hanging clothes saw this incident and yelled,”I’m going to call the police on you bad boys!”

As she went in the house, Davey took off and I took the gun in the cellar through the outside door. After a while, I went up the cellar stairs into the front hall. I was very quiet. Dad was in the living room reading the paper. As I stood near front door, I looked out window and saw a Boston blue and white patrol car coming down the street. Scared, I very quietly snuck up stairs and went to my bedroom and hid under the bed.

The doorbell rang and Dad answered the door. I heard muffled dialogue. He yelled for me. I didn’t answer. He yelled to my mom. She did not know where I was.

Then, he ran upstairs yelling and searching for me. I was under my bed. He looked but I had learned to lift myself using fingers and feet along bed railing so you couldn’t see me if you looked under the bed. I was great at hide and seek. No one could find me!

Then, Dad went back to the police and said he’d take care of me. They left. A long time passed; dad went to the store. I finally came in the kitchen and mom told me dad was furious at me.

He eventually came home, cooled off, yelled at me, told me to get my BB gun, and meet him in the back yard. There, Dad took me by my shirt sleeve, picked up the gun, and smashed it against the huge apple tree shattering the stock. Then, he threw the broken BB gun in the rubbish barrel and sent me to my room. He never beat me although I certainly deserved it.

For bow and arrows, Davey used birch and red wood from special wood locations and chicken feathers on arrow tails and nails or crushed bottle caps as arrow tips. Davey could skewer a polliwog deep in Swede’s pond with difficult refraction problems (“you had to aim below wog to hit him”). Then, he would slide the developing tadpole off the arrow so it would live to mature into a frog.

Davey could make paper airplanes of any shape and size. Sometimes, he would put wooden matches tied with thread to the nose so when the model plane hit the pavement or other hard surface, it would burst into flames.

Davey wasn’t crazy or deranged. He just operated in a world in which limits were out there to be tested. I tested them with him, and we both took risks that didn’t seem crazy at the time. Looking back over fifty years later, it would not be difficult to conclude that someone was watching over us.

Mom somehow steered me clear of Davey as we went to different schools starting seventh grade. But, we still connected a few times in the summers for woods, golf course, and Swede’s pond escapades.

As a teenager Davey got into motor cycles; first an Indian, then a Triumph, and finally an orange Harley with huge ape hanger handle bars. He would go racing both up and down Beech Street hill (even though it was one way). He would be going nearly 100 mph in front of our house with his blond air billowing behind his head. I can still see my father standing on our porch, his hands clenched on the thick wooden railing and looking through the huge mulberry tree usually filled with voracious flapping starlings. Dad’s mouth became slightly pursed, and he would yell over the loud motorcycle engine noise, “That Crazy Bastard! He‘s going to kill himself!”

*Davey still owns/operates his machine shop down the cape in Rochester.

THE END

Thanks to WILK