Crime Fighting in a Velvet Housecoat

I have mentioned before that I have powerful detective skills.  Actually, I got an early start with those skills.  My very own mother helped my practice my super-sleuthing skills one summer evening in the early 1980s.

I was raised in a small town in Illinois.  We lived in a very safe community.  No one locked their doors- house doors or car doors.  But this particular summer, there had been a number of cars broken into during the night in our neighborhood.  I had overheard all of the grown-ups talking about the neighborhood teenagers being up to no good again.  I was really quite afraid of running into this group of thugs known as the “neighborhood teenagers.”  They were blamed for absolutely everything that went wrong in the neighborhood.  Trash cans knocked over?  Teenagers.  Cat missing?  Teenagers.  Holiday decor askew? Teenagers.  Newspaper not on the porch?  Teenagers.  In all honesty, I never saw any teenagers in the neighborhood.  Even when I was a teenager, none of my friends lived in the neighborhood.  I’m not sure who these teenagers were, but they were delinquents, that much was certain.  And this summer, they were breaking into cars and stealing loose change and anything else that they could find.  Now, I have to use the term “breaking in,” loosely here.  The car doors were not locked, remember?  No one locked their car doors.  And they did not want to start.  They wanted to leave their cars unlocked and they wanted that to be okay.  Particularly since most people also left their keys inside their cars.

Well, one summer night, my mom and my neighbor (who was like my second mom), Mary Ann, decided that they had had enough of the petty crime.  They were going to apprehend the criminals that very evening.  My sister and I were eager to help.  My dad and Mary Ann’s husband decided to bow out of this escapade.  My dad called it a night and went to bed.  Bill popped us a big shopping bag full of popcorn and stayed at home to enjoy the TV by himself.  We all went in to dress in dark clothing to avoid detection.  This was an easy task for everyone except my mom.  For some reason, when we all came out to our meeting spot, my mom had chosen a very inappropriate criminal hunting ensemble.  The rest of us had on dark shirts and dark pants.  My mom had put on (and I am dying laughing as I type this) a long, velvet housecoat that zipped up the front with a white lace collar.  It was dark green.  And she had on socks.  No shoes.  She looked like she was ready to open presents on Christmas morning- not chase teenage thieves down the street!  We did question her, but she was stubborn and she refused to change, so that was her crime-fighting OOTD.

Next, we set up our station.  We positioned ourselves at the side of our house, but toward the back.  We had a direct view of the driveway and the cars, but we were not in the streetlight.  We had brought a sleeping bag to sit on and wait for the criminals to appear.  We were not real campers.  I don’t believe the sleeping bag was meant for outdoor use.  It was a very slick material.  It probably had Smurfs on it.  You had to hold it down for people to sit on it, or it would just slide out from under them.  It posed a real problem for my mom and her velvet housecoat.  When we finally situated ourselves, we assigned jobs.  As my mom and Mary Ann were the adults, they were going to run up and confront the teenagers as soon as they opened the car doors and began to rummage through the car.  My sister had a cordless phone from the house.  She was going to call the police.  This was not a cell phone.  Those were not invented yet.  This was a cordless phone at the very edge of its range.  We were hoping it would hold out.  I can’t even remember if we had 911, or if she had to dial the actual police phone number.  I think it might have been the whole number.  It was an important job.  She was stressed out.  She had that antenna pulled all the way out.  My job was to take photographs, in the rare possibility that the criminals escaped  the deathgrip of my mom and Mary Ann.  I had a 35 mm camera.  So, the film would have to be sent off for development. It was a sound plan.

We decided we should have a run through of the plan.  We all took off running toward the driveway.  I snapped pictures, my sister pretended to push the phone buttons, and then we ran back.  We did great until we got to the running back part.  It was that darn velvet housecoat.  My mom tripped on it, then slid on the slippery sleeping bag and wiped out.  She slid a good ten feet, face flat on the ground.  But, she was on the sleeping bag, so she was okay.  We salvaged some of the popcorn and pulled it all back together.

Waiting for the criminals was more boring than we had anticipated.  We had to use the phone to call Bill and ask for more popcorn.  (We had lost quite a bit in the sleeping bag fiasco.)  Then we watched the neighbor in the house on the other side as he took his teeth out to soak for the night.  Turned out that his bathroom window was right there level with our hiding spot.  Then we sat and sat.  We did have a few close calls.  It was only people walking their dogs one last time for the night.  We eventually gave up and called it a night.

I can’t remember what happened with the car bandits that summer.  I’m pretty sure no one ever got caught, and I’m sure no one ever started locking their cars.  They might have stopped leaving money in them though.  I can’t imagine leaving my car or house unlocked now. And I certainly cannot imagine trying to tackle someone who was breaking into a car, especially in a velvet housecoat!  Those were very different times.  And very special memories.

 

 

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