Chapter 5 – More Pane: That’s the Way the Ball Bounces

The window Charlie and me had riddled with slingshot fire was on the second floor of the house across the alley, due west of ours. A couple years later, me and my little brother unwittingly (half-wittedly?) turned our attention to the south, across 58^th street, to the two-story apartment building with lots of unbroken windows. The building was owned by an unforgettable, first-generation immigrant from Poland, Czechoslovakia, Germany, the Ukraine or Russia, whose name escapes me.

One night Charlie and me started up a game of “Three Outs” with Tommy Scanlon, who lived nearby on 56^th and Maplewood. Tommy was a year younger than me and a year older than Charlie. Even though Tommy was younger than me and smaller than my little brother, I was certain he could kick my ass. Not because Tommy was known as being particularly tough, but I do recall being fairly confident that pretty much everybody in the neighborhood could kick my ass. You know, if they could catch me.

For some reason, we started up our game of Three Outs after dark – that reason being that our parents were out for the evening. In Three Outs the “hitter” bounces a 79¢ hard-rubber baseball off of a brick wall, while one or more fielders try to make plays on the “batted” ball. I had played Three Outs for years, but oddly enough had never heard of a game being played against a wall with so many windows – or at night. Anyway, I guess we should have realized we were being a little reckless before we ever started that game, but believe you me, it is so much easier to see reckless in retrospect.

Here’s how Three Outs works: The “batter” throws the ball high off the wall. • If a fielder catches the rebounding ball on a fly – batter is out. • If a fielder cleanly fields a ground ball, throws the ball at the wall and catches it on a fly – batter is out. • A ground ball gets beyond the reach of a fielder or is muffed by a fielder – batter runs to first. • A ball “hit” over every fielder’s head – home run. • Ball sails through second-floor, hallway window of neighbor’s apartment building – everybody runs for their respective home.

Now if you know me, when it comes to taking responsibility for one’s actions, I’m a big believer in doing whatever is necessary to avoid taking the rap. But I must admit it was most likely me who done the deed, because we had a pretty substantial area of window-free, brick wall to work with (and decent visibility thanks to the corner streetlight), and Charlie and Tommy both had much better arms than me. My throws tended to sail high and to the right. Oddly enough, my extraordinarily weak throwing arm actually used to help out my teammates by giving them more time to react to my errant throws. Every cloud …

It doesn’t matter who launched it. The fact is that said rubber ball sailed through that second floor hallway window, and unlike the slingshot incident, made a considerably louder, more audible racket. In fact, we were so aware of the clatter that the three of us managed to run the eighth-of-a-mile to the alley and were peering around the corner of our garage, heads stacked totem-pole style, by the time the glass hit the pavement.

We held our breaths, waiting for a torrent of witnesses to appear and for all hell to break loose. But not a single, solitary witness appeared. And not the slightest trace of hell broke loose. What had sounded to the three of us like Armageddon had gone unnoticed by the entire neighborhood, including every tenant in the apartment building.

It was as if God had hit the mute button for everybody in the world except us, perhaps to protect us from the long arm of the law and keep us on the relatively straight and narrow, or maybe it was just so loud to us because of our increased adrenaline flow. But our luck was holding strong! Our parents were still out and it appeared as if no one had heard a thing. (If a window breaks in the forest and no one hears it …)

If the ball had returned to the street, I wonder if we’d have been tempted to resume the game in spite of the broken glass. But the ball was inside the apartment building, and we knew we had to do the right thing. Or at least we knew who to go to to find out what the right thing to do was – our sister Marietta. And when you think about it, the whole thing was really her fault because she was supposed to be watching us that night, but it’s probably too late for her to learn anything from that lesson at this late date.

Mar told us that since obviously no one was home, to go ahead and leave a note for the building’s landlord and then just wait for his response. So I suggested: “Dear Mr. Landlord Guy, We broke your window. Ha, ha, ha. Signed, Anonymous.” So even though Mar surely must have recognized how appropriately ironic it would be to balance such a tragic event with a comedic resolution, she simply reminded us that we just so happened to know the building’s landlord, and he just so happened to be a pretty nice guy.

So we swept up the glass and left a note explaining what had happened, made an offer of restitution, and signed our names. Then we rewrote the note and signed our real names. And the next day Mr. Landlord Guy was so cool about the whole thing we just couldn’t believe it. No yelling. No threats. He didn’t even look annoyed. Instead of asking for the cash to replace the window, he replaced it himself and just asked us to shovel his walk one time when the first big snow came.

Now his building was on a corner, which meant he had four-times as much sidewalk as non-corner dwellers. Even so, for the longest time I though we got off so easy. But then one morning I woke up and realized we hadn’t gotten off so easy after all.

Mr. No Yelling No Threats Not-Even-Annoyed Landlord Guy never gave us our ball back!