My family never owned a house. My dad was against credit and owing money. He called it paying on time. Both my folks were children of the great depression so money mattered to them greatly. So we always rented the houses we lived in. Consequently we moved about four times in my junior and senior high school career. We always stayed in Santa Monica though.
One such move got us across town to Kansas Avenue just north of Pico blvd. A nice neighborhood just east of Cloverfield Blvd.
On the property there was a duplex in the front and a two story single apartment building in the back. The duplex had one dwelling in the front and a second attached behind it. The small apartment building was above the garages and laundry room.We lived in the first (front) unit and my friend Terry Berg lived in the second. I don't remember who lived in the apartment. I guess they just kept to themselves.
Now on Pico Blvd. directly behind us was a large tree nursery. Separating the two properties was wooden fence. This wooden fence had a gate in it that opened into the tree nursery. There was a very cheap, very small padlock with a chain locking the gate.
The nursery had five or six large trucks used to haul, trim and remove trees. Each night before the end of business the trucks were filled up with gasoline.
First off the lock was easy to pick. All you needed was a key from the same kind of lock and a file to remove the teeth from the shaft of the key leaving only the teeth on either side at the end of the key. Because cheap locks used only the tumblers closest to the place where the lock snaps into the body. The other teeth were just to make the keys seem unique. Obviously we were fairly adept a picking padlocks.
I got through that gate in a heartbeat. There before me was my own private gas station. This meant no more scraping up gas money on Friday or Saturday night. And best of allÖ no California surf spot was beyond my reach.
Now a find like this was to good not to share, but share carefully. So I turned my two close friends Gil Morales and Ray Cole on to my "Midnight Gas Station."
As crazy as we were in high school we were pretty smart actually. You see we never took more than five gallons of gas from any one truck so the nursery never missed it. We did this for years, at least the three years of high school. Really the only worry we had was my dad fining out and have him beat the shit out of me. We were very stealthy and he never found out.
The way we worked was we bought two five gallon army surplus, "Jerry Cans," and Gil and I each had a one gallon regular gas cans. So we would only take twelve gallons of gas when ever we gassed up. We had two four foot lengths of garden hose that we had liberated from somebody's lawn.
You would stick the hose into the gas tank then blow into the hose. You would hear the air bubble in the gasoline and you knew you were into the gas. Then came the tricky part. You would put your mouth over the end and suck the gasoline up the hose. When you guessed the gas was near your mouth you would jam the hose into the gas can and the fourteen point seven psi. weight of the atmosphere would start to siphon the gas out of the trucks gas tank and into the gas can. Sometimes we would take only half a can from one truck then fill the can from another truck. We knew this was a good thing as long as nobody missed the gas. As time went on we got very good at siphoning the gas. I bragged that, "all I had to do was kiss the end of the hose and it would start to siphon."
One summer night Gil and I were getting gas for a surf trip up to Rincon (a legendary surf spot located up the coast on the border of Ventura and Santa Barbara counties). As we went through the gate a very light rain, almost a mist started to fall. We got to our targets for the evening. We always separated one guy to one end of the nursery the other guy to the other end. We figured that if we were discovered at least one of us would get away and it was smarter not to hit trucks next to one another.
I for some reason this time I was having trouble getting the gas to siphon. Like I say I was very good at it and this was pissing me off. The mist turned into a very light rain. I would suck and suck on the hose and stuff the end into the can and the gas would just trickle out an stop. By now I was really pissed off so I just started sucking really hard.
Just then there was a very bright flash of light. Which really startled me and I sucked even harder on the hose. I thought, "Shit! That was a flash bulb, I'm busted, the cops took my picture!" At the same instant the gasoline game rushing out of the hose some got into my mouth and I inhaled some and swallowed a whole bunch more. Ok, gasoline tastes really bad, take my word for it. Because I had inhaled some of it I started to choke and gag. The gas was now pouring out of the end of the hose and I was drenched in it.
Within the next few seconds I heard the rumble of thunder. I had the presents of mind to stuff the hose end into the gas can. I thought, "Woo what a relief it's only a thunderstorm not the cops." Then it hit me. Here I was standing drenched in gasoline, surrounded by trees, in the middle of a lightening storm. I had a vision of me looking like a burned out wooden match with a little trail of black smoke rising up off of the match head.
I finished filling the jerry can and the one gallon gas can ( all from the same truck) and split as fast as I could.
When Gil and I got back to the car he took one look at me turned up his nose and said, "What the fuck happened to you, you reek?"
I said, "Don't ask, manÖ don't ask."