Centerfolds, Alleys, and Mischief

A recipe for youthful mischief

1.  A shelf full of Playboy Magazines.

Our next door neighbor kept a beautiful house and garden. Picture worthy. He had high redwood walls surrounding his plot providing a high level of privacy for his family.  My guess is he had to build the redwood fences due to his living next to our chaotic home. I am pretty sure this was the case.

Within his redwood walls he had a lush garden which he kept excellent care of. I knew the garden area well because when he would go on vacation, he employed me to tend the vegetation. This was mostly watering the roses and other plants during the scorching Arizona summer.

I did my job well. He often commented on his return how flowery and green I had kept the garden. But there was more than roses to interest me in that backyard. On his patio, in the redwood shelving he had back there, was a generous supply of back-issue Playboy magazines.  In an era with no WWW to tempt young teens like me, his stack of Playboys were a rich playground of enticements. I have nothing but praise for the rich lure of the female anatomy that I was able to view indiscriminately.

2. The businesses across the alley.

Behind our house on Amelia street there was an alley for the garbage trucks to negotiate. And across the alley from our house was a row of small businesses that fronted Indian School Road. Our favorite was an Indian trinket store. But there were also some apartments, a paint store, a bike shop, and medical supplies business, among others.  The only one that had a private parking lot was the medical supplies business. The parking lot was right across from the back gate to our house.

The businesses were one story. My brothers and I had long discovered the various ways from the alley we could gain access to the roofs of the businesses. From there it was easy to lob water balloons down upon cars passing on Indian School.

3. Teenage boys.

To this day, whenever I hear someone wondering why a teenage boy does some act of mischief I am amazed.  To me, the why is obvious. If there is something mischievous that can be done. it will probably be done.  There are very few shackles on the strange urges that a teenage mind might come up with.  Not only was I capable of coming up with strange plots, I had little natural resistance to actually acting them out.

That teenage boys survive to adulthood is an amazing thing. That more are not incarcerated is even more amazing.

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And so it was. The mischievous urge came one day when the neighbor was on vacation. Looking at one glorious centerfold and the seed was quickly planted within my small little mind.  The thought or urge came from that deep dark place that all teenage urges come from, the source still a mystery.

So, I ripped the October centerfold out, found some strong, lasting glue in my Stepfather's supplies, and the adventure was on.

Climbing to the roof of the Medical Supplies place, I pasted the centerfold high on the wall overlooking the parking lot behind our house. From below, she looked good enough to command all the asphalt that her eyes partook.

It was several weeks that went by before someone even tried to remove her from the cement brick wall. But when they did, they were only partially successful. And by some miracle of glue science, the best parts of Ms. October proved the most difficult to remove. Some of the choicest parts of her hung there for many many years after.

That no one suspected any of the four teenage boys that lived across the alley was somewhat strange.  But no one was ever fingered for the caper, until now the culprit was never identified.

Teenage friends and my brothers never dreamed it had been me.  They flocked to view the results of the mischief, but I kept silent and no one ever asked.  If my closet voyeur neighbor recognized his endowed art hanging from the wall, he too never mentioned it.

1 year later, as I could not resist the similar 'call'....I added a second awesome centerfold to the explicit gallery. By the same miracle as the first, the workers at the medical supply company could only remove some of the picture, again leaving most of the very best parts from a teenage boy point of view. There were now two amazing examples of airbrushed female anatomy resident upon the crude  walls of the parking lot.

I never did add to this endowed collection.  And only now do I admit to this inexplicable act of teenage defiance.  I am thinking that the limitations of the long arm of the law do not reach out 40 years. But if they do, no doubt I deserve the consequences.

Cheers, nca


p.s. I checked and the centerfolds are no longer there, some 40 + years later.  I half expected them to be.  The picture above is the actual wall where they posted. Now, there is a 6 ft cement wall to keep modern riffraff out.

The Hindengurg

It has been 32 years since I made one very key choice between to full time jobs. My wife and I were just married and we had one daughter, with one on the way. I needed a full time job with benefits to take the reigns on my growing little family. With my wife pregnant, health benefits was my primary goal, along with some type of decent regular salary.

Up to that time in my life, I had been a carefree nomad, working various part time jobs month to month, barely getting by, with no aim or objective. But my new family status had made that type of life impractical, irresponsible. Yet, I had not adequately positioned myself for the alternative.

I had not completed my degree, nor did I have any formal training to speak of.  My nomadic life had moved me from one college major to another, from one college to another...and therefore a proper education was out of my grasp.  I needed a steady salary and insurance....and I needed something immediate.

After applying and interviewing for countless jobs, within one week of each offer I received two offers that met the immediate needs.

One offer was working at a document imagining company that would take business documents and copy them to microfiche. This was the first job offerered, I had interviewed well and the offer was immediate. I accepted it right off the bat, no questions asked.

The second offer was working at the local University for the IT department. My initial job would be as a courier for the Computer Services Department. This job would entail driving a Cushman cart around campus delivering computer printouts to the remote sites. This offer came several days later.

I had accepted the first offer, yet the second had much more appeal to me. There were several reasons for this.  First, my family had a history of working for various State and Federal agencies. My Dad had worked for the V.A. My brother, mom, and sister, had worked for the State of Arizona. The State offerered more stability, a steady income, and the requisite insurance my family would need. But, even more interesting to me was the possibility to learn young computer industry from the ground floor.

I had not had a great deal of computer experience in my past. At the Library were my wife and I met, they had an old TI 99/4 in the basement that I played on. I had actually read through the BASIC manual and taught myself some rudimentary BASIC. And Lori's uncle had a APPLE II in his house I played with on occasion. But my skills were very amateur. It was 1983 and Computers were not yet a household appliance.

Yet, in my heart, the choice was too simple. I never showed up for the microfiche job. Yes, very rude of me. They later called me and told me how rude it was. But I had decided on the job at the University, and thus the next 33 years of my life was put into motion.

From courier I learned the job of remote computer operator, then tape librarian, and eventually becoming a mainframe computer operator.

 From there, I became a Production Support Analyst. With that job I left the University (twice), eventually finding myself working Production Support for a small Airline.  I eventually moved into Application Development, and now I am a Senior Manager for Application Development at one of the largest Airlines in the world.

I say that term, Senior Manager...fully knowing that my roots are very humble and rest on one lucky, fortunate decision I made primarily to meet the needs of my young family.  My job has since become an obsession for me, the need to succeed and to demonstrate my long honed skills. My poor spouse has received the brunt of this obsession as I have been beeped while she was in labor, during baptisms and funerals. She has been alone while I have been working long nights, away out of town, and over install weekends.  She has been punished by my beeper going off at all time so the night and over weekends.

That I know and understand my humble beginnings is an understatement.  I think about it often. There but for a Cushman cart and a rude non-call to the microfiche company I would not have gotten to where I am today.  But even more importantly, but for  my young daughters needing a roof over their head and good insurance, I may still be the living the nomad existence of my youth.

My career is my career, for better or worse. Had I been better prepared when my spouse first became pregnant, much of what I have done since may have been very different. Who knows how different, or what different paths the five of us may have taken.  Often, I feel defined by my career, when in truth I am more defined by the very basic need to be supportive of my wife and young daughters during a very trying time. Yet, the career is hovering large out there, like the Hindenburg ready to explode and bring my whole life crashing down.  What lifted my career to the current lofty altitude in the first place was the needs of my family, but now...looking back...I may have given that career too much dangerous gas.

Observations. A life "lived".









Cheers, nca

Election 2016

I am going to go out on a limb and make a Presidential Election prediction prior to the actual election. This is taking a risk, of course, that I will be publicly wrong.  Which is no big deal for anyone but myself. I'm sure you can find other wrongs on this blog.

Anyway, I am predicting Hillary to come out on top. It is true that I voted for her, so picking her as the winner is not that much of a stretch. I mean, why would I vote for someone who I don't think can win?  However, it you consider my history for voting....I can't remember the last time I voted for the winner in a Presidential Election. My track record is dismal.

But so it goes, 2016. Let's see if I can line up right this time. Hillary in a landslide. The Senate and the House stay the same.