Back in the early 1990’s when we were all idiot teenagers, my friends and I somehow managed to create our very own gang… completely by accident.
Our buddy Jimmy’s folks had a decent piece of property next to the church that all we neighbor hooligans would frequent, and we dug a hole under this giant tree branch. We set up rope swings in the trees above, procured a fire barrel, etc… and would spend our evenings after school or work just hanging out at this area we affectionately referred to as “The Pit.” A good time was had by all… we’d drink cheap beer, those who were inclined might smoke a little weed, and we’d act like the idiot kids we were, swinging from trees and having a ball doing it, usually with a bonfire every night.
There was myself, Donnie, Jimmy, his brother Charlie, Lew, Mikey, Davey Portwood (Our enforcer/procurer of alcohol), Derek, Tweety, Twinkie, Dominic, J.C., J.D., Little Joe, Boyd… basically, the whole cast of characters from our neighborhood. There is no doubt that I’ve left quite a few out of the list, but they know who they are. The Pit resided right next to a hole in the fence of the main apartment complex, and that’s where most of our buddies lived. So, we’d just congregate every night with our revolving cast of characters.
Lew and I were the de facto “heads” of this organization (we each had our own groups of friends, so we all met in the middle) that was, pretty much as I just described, a bunch of idiot teenagers hanging out around a hole in the ground. Somehow, we became a gang, and even the cops knew of us, though all we did was cook hamburgers on a piece of sheet metal we’d found nearby over a flaming barrel. Dangerous creatures we were, oh yes.
Eventually, morons who hung out with us started getting tattoos of pit bulls on their shoulders, and the authorities took notice. We didn’t. We couldn’t give two craps. We just wanted to drink cheap beer and smoke pot. I heard from a cop once in my youth while I was working at a local grocery store about how “The Pit Gang was growing and they were worried.” Once I explained it to him what we actually were, he laughed his ass off and left us alone.
Ironically, “The Family”, an actual gun and drug-running gang, was afraid of “The Pit” for awhile. We did nothing to dissuade them from this belief, because other than a couple of the members of it that we knew and respected, we were not impressed. We all knew each other, but they had their thing… we were just a bunch of friends with apparently a really cool gang that we didn’t know existed.
They actually declared war on “The Pit” at one point for a couple minutes. We met up with their leaders and talked them out of it, and once two of their members hung out at our “evil clubhouse” beneath the oak tree branch (they were hiding from a party bust and cops were flying around with spotlights… but we knew how to stay out of sight of that nonsense) and realized that we were just what we claimed to be … a bunch of teenage idiots having fun, and we just happened to have a hole in the ground near us, things calmed down. Well, that and I threw a patio table at one of their more prominent members once upon a time (they hit me in the back of the head without warning, so I returned fire)… that weighed 300lbs. They really preferred liking us, and we didn’t want a gang war to interrupt our cookouts. 🙂
Since many of our friends and at least one of Lew’s ex-girlfriends were members, they left us be. It is good that they did. We’d have sic’ed Davey on them, and there aren’t enough weapons in the world to stop that man. He was a force of nature. Nowadays last I heard, he goes to church and has kids. If anyone deserved to get peace, it would be our pal Davey.
So, that is the story of how your humble narrator and his neighborhood goon buddies created a gang, got the attention of the police AND rival gangs… and never really even meant to do it.
