“Send Lawyers, Guns, and Money, for the shit has hit the fan.”

-the late, great songwriter Warren Zevon

When I was 14, I robbed a train. Don’t look for it in the storied annals of Chicago Crime. You won’t find it in the dusty files of some long-gone police station or in the basement of the old City News Bureau. It never made any newspapers;  the story exists only in my memory, the memories of my two accomplices, and maybe some really old 15th District coppers who were once young 15th District coppers on that long ago day.

It was in the spring of 1964, I was a freshman at Quigley South, a preparatory seminary for adolescent boys who thought they wanted to be priests. I was fourteen, and I’m not sure how fourteen year olds could have had a life plan that went much beyond their next meal, let alone a whole career plan, but that’s the way it was back then. We arrived at Quigley as celibate virgins and the priests that ran the seminary system wanted us to stay that way, not that there was much chance of losing either status at that age. They wanted to minimize our contact with the opposite sex, so they gave us Thursdays off and had us come to school on Saturdays. In this way, they would sabotage Friday night and minimize our exposure to makeup, curves, eyes and those “near occasions of sin” known as girls.

We loved it. We weren’t interested in girls yet anyway and besides, as we would find out in a few years when the hormones fired up, there were girls for whom Wednesday night worked out just fine for the right guy. And we enjoyed unfettered access to everything each Thursday while the rest of the world worked or was being schooled: empty bowling alleys, gym floors at nearby parishes, movie houses, wide open golf courses and Wednesday night poker games. Because it was only the Quigley guys, it was natural that you made your plans on Wednesday, as those magical teenage communication tools known as cell phones and texting were then still the stuff of science fiction.

My plan on that nice spring day was to bike it over to Danny’s house and then a group of us would bike to Saint Francis of Rome’s gym in Berwyn, where the gym was open to us all day. When I got there, his mother told me he had left and wasn’t sure where he had gone.  I 7knew where he was. Danny lived a block from a wide train switchyard that ran east to west, south of the great ditch now known as the Eisenhower Expressway, but then as the Congress Expressway.  We had spent hours there among the slow moving boxcars and tank cars of the big switching yard, placing pennies on the tracks and letting rail car wheels flatten them out into razor thin copper wafers as large as silver dollars. There were few railroad workers on foot to chase us away, and most of the others were not inclined to get down from their locomotive perches.

Our other pastimes included hitching short rides by jumping on the train handler’s ladders on the slower moving box cars and throwing stones against the tank cars to create a “bonging” sound. Rocket scientists we were not.  Our parents had all warned us to stay out of the train yard, that a boy had lost a leg there and that it was no place for kids. In fact, in this time before “Safety” was invented, it was a perfect place for kids, and besides, no one could quite remember who that unlucky boy was and when it had happened.

I spotted Danny and another Quigley guy, Patrick, both walking down a line of stalled boxcars on one of the many sidings. They had dropped their bikes by the side of the fencing and were about a block away. Every so often they would stop, work some little piece of bright silver off the boxcar door lock, then grab the big door handle and swing it outwards from the car. With a push, they would slide open the boxcar cargo door and expose the cargo inside. Curious, and sensing some new form of rail yard hilarity, I decided to give it a try.  I stayed on my bike, having had one stolen not long before that, and circled around to another opening in the fence, then shackled my bike to the fencepost and joined the fun. We were about fifty yards apart, and I yelled over to them asking if they had found anything interesting. They hadn’t and told me so.

So I picked out a big brown boxcar for myself, eyeballed the little tin strip that secured the door lock in the hasp, and began twisting the metal strip. After a few twists, it broke, and I opened up the big car. It was filled top to bottom, nose to tail with Diamond matches, the well-known brand printed in red on the cases.  I had no use for matches, certainly not tens of thousands of them. I turned to the next car and started to perform the same operation. This time I noticed the word “Federal” printed on the little tin strip. I didn’t give it much thought.

Two gunshots rang out. I don’t think I knew they were gunshots at first, but then I saw a man in a suit standing behind my friends, a still-smoking silver handgun pointed in the air. I started to back away, thinking my friends were in deep trouble. That’s when I felt a hand on my shoulder. Another man in a suit, also holding a gun, yelled ”I’ve got the lookout!”

Me, a lookout? Obviously not a very good one. The suit who had me in tow was a serious Italian looking guy, black hair, five o’clock shadow and an expensive looking leather jacket. He smelled like too much cologne. He held me while the other suit, also Italian looking, brought my friends over to me. Patrick was shaking and staring to cry. Danny was trying to hold it together and looking at his feet. The suit who fired his gun, Detective Smug, just exuded self-confidence; he informed us that we were in huge trouble and would most likely be going to jail. Danny lost it and joined Patrick in tearing up. For some reason, maybe because I hadn’t yet processed it, or maybe because they were the ones he was near when he fired his gun, I didn’t. My suit, Detective Serious, said nothing.

They marched us to where their car was parked and placed handcuffs on Patrick and Danny. Patrick was so skinny the cuffs slid off. Pissed, Detective Smug placed them on him again and told him he had better not let them slide off again. Patrick held his arms out straight.  I thought the next set of cuffs would be for me, but they only had two sets. “Don’t try to run or we’ll have to shoot you”, Detective Smug warned me. Detective Serious turned away, so I couldn’t see him smile, but I caught it. They drove us to Chicago Avenue’s 15th District Police station, hauled us out of the car, Patrick still holding his arms out straight as if sleepwalking. They paraded us up the front steps, coppers glancing at us curiously as they came in and out. I guess we didn’t fit the profile of true regular thugs. They sat us on a wooden bench in a hallway and Detective Smug went in to make his report. Detective Serious lit up a cigarette and kept his eye on us. It began to sink in, and I started shaking, too. I could see the Angel of Death hovering high above me, looking for me. He was a large black bird-like thing, but he also resembled one of the countless WW II model warplanes my brothers and I had assembled in our coalbin-turned-hobby room in the basement on Monroe St.

Detective Smug came out and told us we could use a phone in the office he had just come from to call our parents. The Angel of Death turned, starting down on his bomb run, wings flared and teeth bared. I got my mom on the first try, tearlfully telling her that I was in a police station. She was shocked, I could tell, but asked if I was OK and told me to wait. Patrick and Danny made their calls. Here is what I didn’t know. My mom made three calls, one to my father, and one to each of her brothers, my uncles Tommy and Jimmy. Tommy was a fireman who lived close to the station. Jimmy was a police sergeant, and not just any old police sergeant, but the desk sergeant at the 15th District, my current location and my first stop on the way to a life of imprisonment. My father was a fireman, too, but he worked as the Chaplain’s driver and, not being tied to an engine or truck, had a greater degree of freedom than most others in his firehouse. I later learned that he stopped home, probably to calm my mother down, and when asked by one of my siblings where he was going, famously told them, “I have to go spring Capone.”

Tommy arrived first, within minutes, it seemed. Tommy, God love him, went straight  at Detective Smug, got right in his face and began to ask him questions. Detective Smug rattled off all of the charges he was planning to file. I didn’t really understand what he was saying, but it sounded like he was charging us with every crime going back to the Chicago Fire. Tommy cranked it up a bit and Detective Smug got louder and rattled off more charges. I think he now wanted to include us as accomplices in the Fort Dearborn Massacre. The argument began to draw a crowd of young coppers getting ready for a shift change. The Angel of Death was screaming down now, his ragged finger on the release button.

Here’s something else I didn’t know: not all coppers are created equal. Detective Smug and Detective Serious were known as “Railroad Dicks”, an inferior life form among the Chicago Police. The fact that they were in the private employ of the railroads meant somehow they weren’t good enough to be CPD, or maybe they just got paid better.  And they were Italian to boot, awash in a sea of Irish faces. The crowd parted as Uncle Jimmy arrived, not in uniform as it was his day off. This 15th District office was his domain. He was the desk sergeant and his primary job was to keep order and make sure nothing bothered the Watch Commander in his office. He looked over the Detectives and looked over us. He asked me if we were OK. I choked out a yes. The crowd of young coppers was drawing closer now, growing in number, perhaps anticipating that this was the main event.

Uncle Jimmy asked which one was in charge. Detective Smug assured him that he was, smugly. He told him to start at the beginning and tell him what happened.   Smug began to tell his tale, warming to the task as he went on, but when he got to the gunshots, Uncle Jimmy stopped him. He asked, very slowly, to repeat what he had just said. Smug was a little thrown by that. His face inched closer to Smug and there was something different in Uncle Jimmy’s tone, as if somewhere a fuse was lit.

A few seconds later, the fuse had run its short course. “You mean to say that you fired your weapons over the heads of these unarmed, underage kids?” he fairly shouted and snarled. I think we all jumped a bit on our bench. Detective Smug felt the ground shift under his feet. He stammered that these were only warning shots, fired harmlessly into the air. The Angel of Death suddenly veered off the bomb run, unsure of his target.

“How do I know you didn’t just shoot at them and miss, you dumb son of a bitch”? Jimmy yelled in his face, his own face a bright red. Detective Smug was near panic now, and the crowd of young coppers began to grin, sensing where this was going. Detective Serious glanced around, looking for an escape path. None appeared. Some of the coppers were inching forward, hands on the butts of their revolvers. Jimmy had heard enough. “Lock these two assholes up”, Jimmy said with a tone of total disgust to his more-than-willing minions. As one, the coppers moved on the Detectives, who by now had completely surrendered.

Serious put his hand up and spoke for the first time. He said this was a big misunderstanding and that he was sure something could be worked out. Smug was devastated, beyond the point where he could even look up or speak. “In my office”, said Uncle Jimmy.

The door slammed, I could hear more shouting, mostly Jimmy, and some mumbled comments from them. Ten minutes later, the Detectives emerged, broken, with eyes downcast. A smirking patrolman returned their handcuffs to them and they had to leave via the front stairs, past two rows of Chicago’s finest, who shook their heads sadly and muttered comments about railroad dicks. The Angel of Death appeared to be returning to base. “Your Dad’s on his way”, Jimmy told me. The Angel of Death veered back onto his bomb run.

Patrick’s and Danny’s parents had arrived, taking their wayward and now suspect seminarian sons home. I looked out the window and saw Uncle Jimmy talking with my Dad. I dreaded having to meet him like this. My Dad came into the station, looked at me, hooked his thumb over his shoulder and said, “Get in the car, goofy.” Goofy, by the way, was a mostly firehouse term used by my father and his fellow firefighters and maybe some coppers to describe crazy people, politicians, criminals, people who took unnecessary risks, and imbecile children.  I am sure Walt Disney never saw a penny in royalties.

And that was it. He didn’t say a word about it in the car, that night, nor ever again in the four years he had yet to live. I wondered what awaited me at home, and when I got there, my siblings sort of backed away from me as if they might be accidentally struck by some parental disciplinary shrapnel, or maybe suffer collateral damage from what was soon to be my certain destruction. But it never happened. My mother looked me over, told me I had certainly had a big day, and went back to cooking dinner. Confused, and certain that the Angel of Death must still be about, I served early mass the next morning and the pastor,

Monsignor Doyle, told me to come by the Rectory after mass. This explained it. My family was just being kind to me, knowing that my doom would come from a different, and much higher quarter.  I sat in the Pastor’s office and he came in with a cup of coffee and sat at his desk. “What happened yesterday?” he asked. I told him of the prank that had gone bad…really bad. I told him no one was charged. I told him we were all real sorry. He sipped his coffee and listened. The Angel of Death was loud in my ears now, moments away from releasing his ordnance. ”Don’t do anything like that ever again”, he said. “Now go on to school”. He dismissed me and went back to his coffee; the Angel of Death exploded in mid-air, pieces and parts raining down all around me, but none hitting me.

I’m guessing that night that the story of the Great Train Robbery got a good laugh out of the priests in the rectory, sitting around sipping their twelve year-old scotch. My father probably told it to a few buddies at Wallace’s Tavern, and maybe his buddies shared stories of the capers of their own idiot children.

———————

What a wonderful thing it is to have a big family, and to have them close around you and ready to take up your defense. My uncles, responding to their big sister’s phone call, dropped what they were doing and were there to take my part, to see to it that adolescent stunts don’t need to be taken somewhere they shouldn’t go. How much was I loved when people like my uncles got so worked up on my behalf?

There was one other thing I didn’t know or appreciate that day: I had witnessed firsthand the art of parenting. People who had been through Great Depressions and wars could distinguish between Trouble and Real Trouble, decide which one it was, and give it only the attention it deserved. I have tried to remember that lesson in my time as a parent, when my children made their mistakes, but it was usually only my wife’s good heart that could gentle my anger and force me to remember that I was far, far from the perfect child.

The difficult business of being a parent to children is a very complex series of tasks. It’s all about providing, nurturing, planning, coaching, enforcing, guiding, encouraging, commiserating, and creating the stable base of a home. And in most homes you only get two people to share all of that work.Only when you get into trouble do you get the chance to see parenting at its best.  The art, the true of art of parenting, like all art, will always live more in the heart than in the mind.

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