As the weather has gained importance across the country I will go right to our forecast, only I will just give you the quick highlights for the next 10 days.
Every day until Sunday the 8th will be sunny, with temps in the low 90's, light winds from the West and no precipitation. As we will be in Reno I will add that the temperature there will be about 5 degrees cooler, otherwise the same forecast.
We have a lot to get done before we can depart for the AG and increasingly less time to do it. Somewhere in this madness we need to remember to pack clothes and meds!
Today is our day to take Mr S. to lunch and shopping and make sure that all is in readiness for his care while we are gone. You would think that his living in an assisted living facility would make it all a snap, but we are called frequently to solve problems. We can only hope that it will be a quiet 10 days.
Sgt Mikki of the Highland Regiment of the Border Guard will have her own sitter coming to stay at the house with her. Of course the young lady will also be watching the house and bringing in the mail, etc.
Since I have mountains of message traffic to deal with and less than enough time to do it, I had better get to the story. A quick note, there will not be an entry for July 6th as I will be running the AG and won't have time to write or post.
The year 1968 was famous for so many things across the country that it is hard to remember that life was still going on as usual, and kids were still acting like the teenage goofballs that they are. Enjoy this short tale of hormonally charged mischief and remember; your kids (or grandkids) could do this too!
The Great Smoke Out of 1968
Every guy that has attended high school knows someone who has a "secret peephole" or knows of a "room" that the janitor has a key to, (but no one else) that allows you an unobstructed view of the girls locker room. Of course it's all BS, generated by hormone driven fantasies and wishful thinking, or I would have found it myself! In 1968 it was a fact of life that all of the guys wondered about who was "real" and who had "help" in the body shape department, if you know what I mean, and the girls certainly weren't going to tell.
So after a lot of hot air going back and forth in the guys locker room one afternoon, we decided that we were going to find out for ourselves and have proof to boot.
One of the fellows had a smoke bomb from some army surplus stuff that his dad collected and two others had Polaroid cameras that could take pictures that we wouldn't have to have developed, and get caught with pictures that would get us expelled!
But none of these guys were willing to plant the "BOMB" and that's where I came in. In retrospect, the courage that my friends claimed for me, was most decidedly just a lack of good sense. Saying "No", never occurred to me.
The highest concentration of really hot looking girls was on the cheerleading squads and they had PE last hour. That time when it was hot and you got really sweaty and HAD to shower. Our opportunity!
I went in after school hours the day before the big event and unscrewed the frame that held the louvered windows in place along the bottom of a back wall and then exited quickly so that I wouldn't give away the plan; it was going to work!
After the girls coaches and PE teachers had all gone home for the night, a couple of us went back to the school and pushed the frame in, listening for any sounds that might indicate someone inside; it was all clear!
We entered the building and started searching around for a good location for the smoke bomb; the idea being to conceal it, but give us good coverage of smoke too. This was a lot harder than we thought and it was really dark in there; the plan was getting a little shaky. But wait! There was an air vent at the top of a wall near an entrance to the shower room; that would work!
We frantically unscrewed the vent cover and secured the smoke bomb to a bracket inside the duct with electrical tape and then ran some clear fishing line from the ring on the pin through the vent cover and down the wall behind some stand up lockers and out a lower window. This way we could yank the line and pull the pin from outside the locker room, free and clear. We fastened the vent cover and I let the other guy go through the window opening. I screwed the frame back in place and went out through a door that was locked, but could be opened from the inside without unlocking it. We made good our escape! Whew!
The next day the word was out all through our group and spread to others that we didn't really even know. The last hour of the school day came around and the guys started to gather. Such was their excitement that they skipped their last hour classes to get a good seat for "The big and small review". This was getting completely out of hand; there were guys sitting in lawn chairs on the concrete area behind the girls locker room with their cameras in their hands and dreams in their eyes. They just "knew" that they were going to see this one naked, or that one naked, and have pictures to fuel their teenage fantasies forever!
My own survival instinct kicked in; I didn't like the way things were developing and moved far away from the girls locker room entrance. I noticed that a few of the other guys who were in on the plan from the start were also fading back; trouble was coming, too many people knew about the gag.
The guy who volunteered to yank the pin didn't notice that we had faded away from the place where we figured to have the best shot at catching the girls running out, and at the appointed time he yanked the fishing line and pulled it completely out of the building, as planned. Amazingly, there was no ring on the end of the line; and we didn't hear any screaming or see any smoke.
All at once the screaming started; almost as if it was on cue. The smoke started to billow out of the lower louvered windows like it was driven, and then the door opened and some girls came running out wearing; raincoats? What the devil were they doing wearing raincoats? Was that all they had on? They were barefoot too, something was definitely wrong with this picture!
We didn't have to wait long for the answer. The girls in raincoats were decoys to draw the guys in close, hoping for a picture. A few seconds after them, came the "Hose Brigade" with several girls on each fire hose and they were drowning those boys! The guys sitting in lawn chairs got blasted right over backwards!
We learned later on that one of the guys in our group, (who was going steady with a cheerleader) didn't want all of us seeing her in all of her glory, so to speak. So he told her what was up and told her to find some excuse to go to the office or something, just don't be in the locker room 10 minutes after the girls came in off of the fields! The idiot! That girl was loyal to her fellow cheerleaders and wasn't about to let them be compromised, especially with pictures!
She was on the telephone within seconds of his departure. He left thinking that he was going to have it both ways; he gets to check out all the other girls, and nobody eyeballs his steady. The chump!
Every cheerleader in both squads knew within minutes and they were plotting their revenge before they even went to bed the night before. We were to get paid back for something that wasn't even going to happen!
The girls clued the cheerleader coach first thing and they located the fishing line and bomb instantly. The bright boy had told his girl right where it was and they moved it to the back wall and fastened it to the window frame. The coach was creative and had electric fans standing by in the office to blow the smoke right out the windows; at us!
They had girls waiting inside the door with charged hoses, and the decoy idea was a last minute stroke of genius by one of the girls. It worked great too! When they felt the tug on the line they all squealed on cue, I thought it sounded too "even", as they all screamed at the same time. And then they pulled the pin on the smoke bomb and fired up the fans, feeding us the smoke and keeping the locker room clear.
Those girls laid down a barrage of water that would make a fire company Captain proud! It certainly put out the fires in the jeans of all those guys hoping to catch some uncensored views of their favorite cheerleaders!
Their victory was so complete and their revenge so perfect that no one even tried to find out who was behind "the Great Smoke Out of 1968 ". No mention of this episode ever came from the office or coaches, or any staff, it was nerve racking! We anticipated incrimination every minute for weeks, it was brutal!
And we never tried anything like that again. We considered ourselves fortunate that we had escaped with our hides intact, it was best not push our luck.
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