The Great Pumpkin

Halloween. 1995. Seems simple enough. I am 17 and all my friends are the same age so why shouldn’t we do something retarded together. Duke came by with his little brother Chuck Woast to pick me up early that evening. It was a school night and we were going to go around picking up people to take them to Chucky’s birthday party.
Chucky was older than all of us but he was in the same grade. He had been held back years ago because I guess he wasn’t bright enough to pass a grade or something. Chucky has since passed on and left this world, and that will be another story another day.
Duke was driving an old S-10 Chevy pick up truck that had all kinds of little problems. The horn would stick periodiacally and the car would die when you turned corners sharply. This is obvious foreshadowing of the events that will follow.
We went into old Pearland to pick up Mangina. Mangina is the buddy that will eventually steal my girlfriend from me with promises of Bennigans and ice skating at the galleria. How could I compete. He also drove the notorious Brown Beauty that would have gotten us better results in the events that will follow.
We then went to pick up Chucky, and his brother Bucky. Yep, they rhyme. Now John Paul was the last to be picked up. Now I am a strapping young buck of 280 pounds and Duke was about the same. John Paul and Mangina were about 6 foot 4 and 250 themselves. Chucky and Bucky were average size folks and Chuck Woast was not the 6 foot 6 giant he would become yet. Now we are all in a single cab Chevy truck. Duke, John Paul and I were in the front seat and Bucky, Chucky, Mangina and Chuck Woast were in the bed of the truck. We were pushing that little truck to its limits. Now somewhere along the way we decided that since it was getting dark that we should start stealing pumpkins and putting them in the back of the truck.
Right before we left my father stood at the edge of the driveway and cursed us with the following, “I don’t want to get a call from the police tonight.”
Now why would he say that? Up to this point he had never received a call from the police, so why now would he say that other than to jinx us.
Now we have a truck load of meaty folks and pumpkins. We pass a house with a skeleton in the front yard and I tell Duke to stop and I get out of the truck, pick up said skeleton and swing it at a gas lamp in the front yard. Before that incident I had no idea the power of natural gas. But when that skeleton hit the top of that lantern it exploded into flames like a gulf war oil well. Hilarity ensued as we screeched out of my neighborhood with a burnt skeleton.
So to one up me Chucky and the guys out back start throwing pumpkins out of the truck bed and watched them explode. Some with candles lit others just plain squashed. And then a BOOM.
Chucky screams out, “I hit a car…GOOOOOOOOOO!!!”
So Duke starts to accelerate, but that is hard with a ton of people in this little truck. Now we are screaming down the road with a Honda in hot persuit with the windshield crushed in. We are screaming down the road throwing beer out of the car knowing if we get caught with beer that we will be in some shit.
Then the first sharp turn happened.
We were out ahead of this accord by at least a quarter mile when the car stalled going around the corner. What made it worse was the horn was now stuck as well. So we are being chased down by this Honda with our horn blaring and basically screaming, “ARREST US!!!”
We are in a high speed chase through Pearland, into the county and then finally stopped in Friendswood. Now we have a Brazoria County Sherrifff, Pearland police and Friendswood Police arresting us trying to figure out where to send us.
Pearland won. But during this whole arrest thing all I could here was the whining woman with the broken Honda screaming, “ My Baby…My Baby…My Baby has glass in her eye…”
And all I could think was Chucky had a great aim. This ain’t no saltshaker. This was a pumpkin, flying 60 miles per hour at her car. And this lady had glass in her baby’s eye. And all I could do was laugh which did not go over well with the police. A simple thump with a baton to the head made me stop laughing.
SO we get to Pearland Jail. They did not know what to do with all of us. Duke was the driver, Chucky was the hurler, the rest of us were witnesses.
At that point we realized that Chucky was not going to make his surprise party. SURPRISE!!!
But we did think we would get away with it, well all of us but Duke and Chucky. We got Lee to come pick us up. And right before he showed my father walked intot he department. Now in my defense, he did not receive a call, because he had explicit directions that he did not want a call from the Police.
I held up my part.