When I was a kid, my friends and I spent most of our time playing outside. I quickly became adept at finding wildlife, mostly toads, around the neighborhood, which would prove to be the seeds of a lifelong obsession with wildlife. Cupertino during the seventies was a mixture of suburbs, orchards, and vacant lots. In other words, perfect for outdoor play. I feel kind of sorry for kids who are growing up there now, since the open spaces have all had condominiums and shopping centers cemented down on top of them, sealing away the dirt and life forever.
We would wander into fields and orchards to catch lizards, dig holes, climb trees, and more generally, just explore. There was a boy who lived in a big house attached to the orchard behind 7-ll (which is now a Q-mart), and I remember that on our first meeting he brandished a knife. He was one of the only African-American kids in the whole neighborhood, with the remainder being almost entirely Caucasian (a big contrast to the Cupertino of today, which is almost entirely Asian). I think his name was Malcom. I don't remember ever going into his house, but he had a great tree house high up in the huge Oak tree that spread into the sky in front of the house. That was much more interesting to us than his house anyway.
There was another vacant lot abutting Steven's Creek Boulevard which at one point had a bunch of metal stakes driven into the ground across its expanse, maybe for a Christmas tree lot or something similar. One day, when a bunch of us were playing there, a man walked by and said he'd pay us if we bent them all down. Excited at the prospect of easy money for a fun task, we naively got to work. Shortly, a police car pulled up and a nonplussed cop wandered over and asked us what we were doing. We told him, and when asked, provided a description of the man who promised us money. The cop drove away, and in no time at all, was back with the man in the back of the car. We positively identified him, and away they went.
Here is a picture from around that time.
That's me on the right, wearing a Lord of the Rings shirt. The boy brandishing a skateboard in the back is Jeff. He was a little younger than the rest of us, and was treated accordingly. He continued his interest in skating as he grew older, but I lost touch with him and have no idea what eventually became of him. The boy on the left is Joe, and this picture was taken in his driveway, I think. I did run into him at least once as an adult. At the time, he was a salesman for Bose (if I remember correctly). That was years ago though, and I have no idea what he's doing these days. The short kid in the middle was perhaps my best friend during my elementary school years. His name was Steve. As he grew older, he got into drugs, and was eventually killed in some sort of drug-related frame job. His murderers were caught trying to burn pieces of his body (or so I've been told). By that time, I hadn't seen him in years and years, and didn't know him any more, so it wasn't quite as shocking as it would have been had we still been close friends. It was still plenty shocking though.
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