Origins of Big Fin's childhood book

[Irrelevant]

I want to hear the details on this, how old were you?! Chopped off bad or just a casual nick? My buddy's son just got a hatchet from his grandpa for Xmas, I wouldn't be surprised if a digit or two gets scalped soon...

5th grade I think so either 10 or 11. It was cold out but not snowy, my fingers were numb, and mostly just a flesh wound, but enough that there were chunks left on the other side of the hatchet on the chopping block. My fingers were numb enough it didn't hurt nor bleed much until I was at about the back door, then holy hell did I start screaming...

 

[Pucky Freak]

It is 1991 and the long summer days following the first grade contained plenty of idle time for young boys in Minneapolis suburbia. The house across the street and the two houses catty-corner each had a boy a year older than me. The four of us kids were allowed to roam each other’s yards freely and be gone sunup to sundown, which we gleefully took advantage of. I’m sure that our parents appreciated us being out of their hair, well except on the uncommon occasion when we got into mischief.

The dad across the street, Jon, was a stern Vietnam vet who never smiled, and could bore a hole through your head with his eyes for the few moments before he exploded in scathing rebuke of whatever childhood transgression you had just committed. Whenever his kid was around and sensed the other three of us youths were on the cusp of drawing his dad’s ire, he would quickly dissuade us from whatever we were about to do, knowing dad’s wrath was not worth the little bit of fun we might have.

So, by kid logic whenever we wanted to test the boundaries of potential punishment, especially while on Jon’s property, we found a way to do so when his kid wasn’t around to stop us.

Jon had 5 enormous Norway pines on the bottom of his yard along a hairpin curve in the road. Being MN, some neighborhoods, like ours, were a jumble of twisting, winding streets that skirted marshes, lakes, and surrounding hills. Anyways, one summer day I and another neighbor boy (not Jon’s son) climbed up the pines, as we often did, to heights well-exceeding 100’ off the ground. We were of course prohibited from climbing these trees by our parents, but the needles are so dense no one could see us anyways.

So as the kid and I are on our treetop perch that day we got the ingenious idea to pelt cars on the road below with pinecones. We deduced that any vehicle being struck would figure that the pinecone had just fallen from the tree on its own, and no one would expect someone had actually thrown it. We were safe.

There were several holes in our logic though, that our seven-year-old brains failed to consider. First, Norway pines have smooth, soft, sticky pinecones that are about the size of a bratwurst, and they do fall from the trees, but not in June. Second, the pinecones fall straight down and are not launched horizontally into the road. Third, dozens of pinecones littering a small patch of the road would draw suspicion.

Anyhow…with none of these facts in our minds and eager and achieve our goal we proceeded to try and pelt cars as they slowed down to navigate the tight, blind curve in the road. We soon discovered that our raining projectiles were actually quite difficult to time correctly to the vehicles in motion. After a couple hours had passed we still hadn’t hit a car, and the curve in the road was littered with about a hundred conspicuous immature pinecones.

Undeterred from our goal, we were gradually becoming more adept at taking turns tossing the pinecones with enough advance to where they hit closer and closer to the targets, and it was only a matter of time before we connected.

A convertible soon came down the road and we gleefully chattered about how we could get one “in the basket”, that is, get the cone inside the open cab. Then, at the last moment, we decided we might even hit the driver in the head! This was it, our best chance of the afternoon.

My friend carefully timed his chucked pinecone, releasing it and watching it descend the 120 ft or whatever it was as the convertible slowed to navigate the turn. THWACK. Direct hit!

What happened next we never could have imagined. The incensed driver immediately parked in the middle of the road, jumped out, and yelled at the conifer for the kid to climb down immediately. How did he know?!?!

I told my friend he had better get down there ASAP, because he was the one who threw it, and the driver did not yet know there were two of us. In just a few moments he had deteriorated into a bawling mess of tears and panic, but he did start to climb down. I commanded him in a harsh whisper not to betray me.

He cried the whole way down as I sat there frozen like a statue. To my dismay, as soon as he reached the ground he jogged over to the driver and pointed back up the tree, “He did it!”

The driver, whom we later learned was an off-duty police officer, did NOT believe him, because my friend was the one crying, and more importantly, the cop couldn’t ever spot me. The cop decided enough was enough, and commanded my friend to march home as he drove right behind him.

When the wailing got far enough away and I could hear muffled, but animated conversation between the cop and my friend’s mom, and climbed down myself and ran home, haha.