Bundy was the King Of Tapping. This is when you take a bolt
and scotch-tape it to some unsuspecting suburbanites front door so it hangs
down a few inches on the slack of a piece of fishing wire. Then you let the
wire out and go hide behind some bushes across the street. The string, when
pulled, makes the bolt tap against the door, like somebody’s knocking; but when
the person opens their door nobody is there. And because the string is attached
to the door they’re pulling open (and fishing wire being pretty near invisible)
they don’t see anything. They close the door. Then you yank the string a few
more times, the scene repeats itself, and you sit cracking up in the bushes
watching the homeowner grow increasingly frustrated. In a pinch you can pull
really hard and take the whole bolt with the string, if you need to. Bundy had
great touch when it came to this. He could lightly brush the bolt against the
door from 20 yards away with a mere lithe tweak of his wrist, creating just a
subtle grating sound, if need be. Conversely, he could thwack the thing so hard
against the door (without tearing the bolt off) that a few homeowners probably
thought they were being attacked by a medium-sized wild boar. He was the king,
and, well, the rest of us troublemakers deferred to him in all matters of
Tapping. And this made him almost sage-like to us in all areas of teenage
public nuisance.
I
grew up in a small Orange County town called Placentia. Orange County is
divided into North and South, the south being the ritzy, mansion-strewn,
beach-living sort of place you see on reality TV shows: Dana Point, Laguna
Beach, etc. The north is the towns around Disneyland. No beaches. No mansions.
Just places where orange trees used to grow. And, in a city called Yorba Linda
(which bills itself as “The City Of Gracious Living”), The Richard Nixon
Library and Birthplace.
Placentia’s
squashed between Yorba Linda and Anaheim like a dead ant. As teenagers we’d
often grow bored and restless, and would go out in my friend Matt’s 1974
Imperial LeBaron looking for adventure. This car was going to pot: what was
left of the ceiling hung down and got in your hair; there were no windshield
wipers; rolling the windows up with the hand lever was a challenge; and the gas
tank leaked. But we never drove it too far. Matt was very particular about
driving very slow around the suburban neighborhoods. For fun he’d keep the
thing below 10 mph, and would blast classical music with all the windows down.
This wasn’t always appreciated by our cadre of punk-loving passengers, but
there wasn’t much we could do about it. After all, it was his car.
One
of our favorite things to do was to pile into the LeBaron and drive out to the
Richard Nixon library late at night-- well after business hours. There was a
fountain there in the parking lot, and Matt would start circling around it,
slowly at first, while blasting the classical music. As we circled, the car
would pick up speed, and soon we’d be flying around the thing like we were on a
carnival ride: all of us being thrown against the far door by the centrifugal
force, the wind slashing in through the rolled-down windows. Around and around
we’d go, faster and faster, with all the windows down and the classical music
blaring.
Matt
was really pushing it one night. There were five of us in the car: Matt, Mason,
Lowell, myself, and, of course, Bundy. Matt was really flooring it around the
fountain, and we were all having a great time trying to lean towards the middle
while being pushed towards the outer window. Matt was circling
counterclockwise, in adherence with what he believed was the law: driving on
the right side of the fountain.
As
we reached an obscene speed (Matt was really having a hard time keeping the car
on track, and was starting to drift a bit) we saw flashing lights. It seemed
the Nixon Library security officers had come to pay us a visit. They were
barking something at us through their patrol car’s PA system, but we couldn’t
hear over all the wind and classical music. Matt kept circling. The lights kept
flashing.
Soon
we could hear some of what they were shouting at us, and it basically boiled
down to: “Stop circling that fountain!”
Well,
Matt soon got tired of holding the car steady, and slowed down, and then pulled
the car away from the fountain. The security officers were pissed. They tried
to follow us, but Matt started weaving around the parking lot, maneuvering the
LeBaron between parking blocks, and the poor security guards couldn’t keep up.
So, we sped off out of the grounds of the Nixon Library and pulled the car over
in an empty public parking garage across the street.
There
were cement walls separating the different sections in the garage, and Matt had
pulled the LeBaron over right next to one. We all sat on the hood and smoked
cigarettes under the garage’s sodium-yellow lights. We were feeling triumphant:
we’d escaped the long-arm of the Nixon Library security forces unscathed. Or so
we thought.
We’d
just finished our cigarettes when we saw the flashing lights of a police car
around the corner in another part of the garage. We scattered like cockroaches
and tried to hide. I lay down and hid behind the car. I wasn’t sure where
everybody else had gone. Soon the lights came closer, and over the police car’s
PA came a voice: “Come out from behind there. We see you. Keep your hands were
we can see them.” I didn’t move. There was no way they could see me. I was well
hidden behind the LeBaron’s immense backside. They must’ve been talking to
somebody else.
There
was some general commotion and some scuffling sounds. I heard Bundy yell, “Run
you idiot! Run!” That’s when I knew we were done for. I peered out over the
car’s trunk. It seems that Matt, that good noble citizen, had come out with his
hands raised. The cops, half-hidden behind their car and leaning over the hood,
had their guns drawn on him. It was a scary moment to say the least. But Bundy
wasn’t scared at all. He was screaming at Matt to run. It didn’t seem like a
great idea to me, and, luckily, Matt didn’t listen. Soon we all came out from
our various hiding places, and the cops gathered us up for questioning.
Bundy
was pissed at us for being such wimps, but came out to join us, as he saw that
we were defeated and that it’d be better to give up at this point.
We
were all 16, and had never been to jail before, and didn’t want to start now.
There were two cops, and they were extremely angry. They kept treating us like
terrorists.
“You
boys having some fun down the Nixon Library tonight, huh? You think that’s
funny?”
Bundy
was laughing. “It wasn’t that fun. It was okay, I guess.”
“Son,
where do you live?”
Bundy
pointed in the general direction of Placentia. “Over there.”
The
cop didn’t like that. “Okay son, where’s over there?”
“Son?”
This was cracking Bundy up. “If I’m your son shouldn’t you know where I live?”
This
made us all laugh a bit.
“Okay
you bunch of jokers.” The cop’s mustache was quivering. “That’s enough. Do any
of you have any idea of how much trouble you’re going to be in? That’s federal
government property you’ve been goofing around on.”
We
all tried to look appropriately scared. I was uncertain if this were true.
Could the birthplace of an ex-president who was impeached really be owned by
the US government? It didn’t seem likely, but thought it wise not to question
it at the current time.
“Messing
around with government security forces is not a good idea, okay? You get it?”
It
turns out the security officers had phoned the cops and given them the
LeBaron’s plates. I guess we hadn’t been too hard to find, parked across the
street like that in a deserted parking garage, though I’m still curious how
they’d found us so quickly.
The
cop continued: “Now. I’m going to need all of your phone numbers. How old are
you?”
Bundy
quickly replied, “Not old enough. Sorry. I don’t give out my number to…”
“That’s
just about enough out of you, son!” The cop screamed at Bundy. He took out his
handcuffs. I sensed this wasn’t going to be end well.
Soon
Bundy was cuffed, and they were giving him a pat down. It was absurd, and Bundy
kept giggling the whole while they searched him. When they were done, they put
Bundy in the back of their car, and then came back to chat with us.
“Okay
boys. See what happens when you don’t follow orders? Now, I’m going to need all
of your phone numbers. We’ll be calling your parents to come pick you up.” It
was after midnight. All of our parents were asleep by now. And, to a
16-year-old kid, the thought of a cop calling one’s parents was extremely
frightening. The cop took out a pad of paper, and one-by-one we all gave him
our names and phone numbers.
Bundy
screamed from inside the car, “Don’t give him your phone numbers, you idiots!”
The
cop screamed back, “Hold it down in there, son. Don’t get yourself in any
deeper. We ain’t done with you yet.”
Soon
the cop was calling in all of our numbers on his CB. The only person who picked
up was Mason’s mom, who was not happy at all about it. She’d freaked and
thought Mason had been nabbed for grand larceny or something. She arrived in
her bathrobe, and took Mason by the scruff and dragged him screaming and
yelling into her car. After a bit more waiting around, amazingly, the cops
released Bundy to us, as it seems they couldn’t really hold him, as he hadn’t
done anything besides mouth off. The rest of us were given a stiff warning that
we were on their “list” of persons to watch, and were told to behave ourselves.
They also did a search of the LeBaron, but didn’t find much besides fast-food
wrappers and smashed BigGulp cups. We drove off in the LeBaron, sulking and
downtrodden, but still sort of marveling at the whole ridiculousness of it all.
In the end, the cops probably had better things to be doing that night than
harassing a bunch of teenagers, at least we hoped; trying as they were to keep
Yorba Linda-- the land of gracious living-- safe.
Posts
