Jaywalking with Jesus

Key to Jaywalking in order of appearance

Jack Acker = John Fuhry
Jack’s family, fake wife etc. = John Fuhry’s family etc.
Baby Center & Slag Heap Wilson = Shall remain anonymous
Gopher’s Glen = South Russell, Chagrin Falls and Maple Hill areas
Gopher’s Glen Drive = Maple Hill Drive
Wayne French = Waverly French
Craig Woodrich = Greg Goodrich
The Mud Daubers = All the kids on Maple Hill and Bell Rd.
Billy Troutwig = David Deihl & David Barry
Cousin Vinny = Ray Gallucci
Kelli Sue = Kerry Sue Knauff
Otto Pickle = Head Butcher at Fisher Fazio’s in mid 70’s
Robert Dover = Robert Dober
Miss Stonebeak = Shall remain anonymous
Duke Denhim = Any town bully
Dentist & Staff = Shall remain anonymous
Howie Spitzig = Donald Spitzig
“Bivalve Betty” = My Uncle Dick’s quasi-girlfriend, though I did make
a real-honest-to-goodness clam shell necklace for Sue French,
Wave’s wife in 2002; which she still has.
“Dinky” Don Schmelt = Combination of two friends named Dave &
Jeff
Sammy “The Mewling” Schmelt = Dave Barry
Brian “Zogman” Hart = Bryan Heartz
Jan Hart = Joan Heartz
Barry “Longneck” Lewis = Barry Goodrich
Robin “The Blind Robin” Rigatoni = Joe Paduin, Barry’s bookie who
died around 1990 or so.
Mick’s Café = A combination of Rick’s Café & Raintree Restaurant

Foreword: Though virtually all the incidents that take place in this
narrative are factual and true, some poetic license and hyperbole is
utilized in some character description and story development (but
very little). The discerning reader should keep this in mind. Though
some totally unembellished stories (like the dryer drum fiasco, the
Blue Jays and the daubers and brew) may be hard to believe, they
are word-for-word true. Put your seatbelt on and come along for the
ride.
Jaywalking with Jesus
An Odyssey into Idiocy and Ineptitude
J.J. Acker

The Early Years

Like all stories it had a beginning, though this story almost ended
before it began. Suckin' down pure 1950’s vintage oxygen like an
emphysemic running a marathon, Jack Acker, the "Miracle Baby"
weighed in at two and a half premature pounds and never gained an
ounce of maturity.

Having received the Roman Catholic "Last Rites" twice before he

was three days old, one would think he was destined for something
big. Jack was destined all right. Destined for a life of near misses,
blown chances and "what-ifs" punctuated with totaled cars, pre-
induction physicals (at the height of the Viet Nam war) broken
relationships, promises, hearts, hands and noses, he was everything
save miraculous.

But this is more than Jack’s story, its many stories about many
adventures shared by a varied collection of people no one could
possibly make up. No one knows what dreams they were chasing or
where they thought they were going, but their aimless pursuits of fun
and entertainment bordered on insanity.

Like someone said, “Sometimes you just have to jump the fence
and run with the pack.” Well, Jack jumped out of an incubator,
leaped over the fence and he and the pack never looked back.
 My Story; the Beginning of the End; Maybe

ABOVE Left: “ The Miracle Baby” after my Baptism with my

exhausted father collapsed next to me. If you look very closely you
can just make out the halo forming over my head. Nice pillows.
ABOVE Right: My “Old Man” actually “young” before I was born.
Obviously, I turned him into an exhausted shell of his former self.
You should see his pictures after my younger brothers and sisters got
to him.

Let the Games Begin

Somehow surviving the first three or four years of life in the

primordial soup of toddler-hood, I suddenly found myself thrust into a
whole new world....Miss Jan's Baby Center. Wedged in between an
upper class area and an aspiring, middle class town called Gopher's
Glen, Miss Jan's Baby Center was a rough-hewn kindergarten, baby-
sitting venue not unlike many others, and I survived those early years
physically unscathed. Over time, however, Miss Jan and the Baby
Center changed, and I didn’t realize how much and in what ways until
decades later. I’m not even talking about the changes that occurred
within myself… Why jump off a big cliff?

Today her Baby Center is an eclectic collection of corn-fed, raw-

boned “baby” bruisers as well as spoiled brats wearing designer
diapers with sterling spoons welded into their mouths like cleft palates
for the privileged. This stream of little darlin's is routinely dropped off
by a procession of gleaming SUV's driven by slim hipped, botox-
lipped, golden haired parents sporting Prada purses, fat wallets and
huge egos. They are “Human Hummers” and like the Hummer would
eventually be “discontinued”, but for now they ruled.

Due to a genetic quirk of nature and just plain "luck", Miss Jan's
school enrolled an unusually high percentage of red-headed children
making them easier to spot during the frequent melees and mini-riots
that were commonplace. On any given day, one could drive
past the Center and see Miss Jan's "Enforcer", Magnus "Slag Heap"
Wilson, slogging through the recess crowd with pistoning fists,
leaving scores of bobbing, red-headed tykes in his wake like a bull
moose in a cranberry bog. Oh, to be in New England!

To say Slag Heap was a down-to-earth fellow was an

understatement. Slag Heap was such a prodigious beer drinker that
a Budweiser truck picked up cases of empties every two weeks and,
not surprisingly, he needed a mirror to buckle his belt or look at a pair
of feet he hadn't seen in decades.

Years ago, when still a young stripling, he found himself before a

jury of his peers enmeshed in a murder trial during which his DNA
profile was introduced as evidence. Three independent labs found
Slag Heap's DNA was most closely related to that of an Eastern
European root vegetable called a rutabaga. With a plea based on
“diminished capacity” already a foregone conclusion, the Heapster
skated on what is now known as the "Vegetable-Head Defense" and
was completely exonerated from any said charges simply because a
turnip cannot premeditate, let alone plan, the most sophomoric of
murders.

Dumb and as tasteless as a hydroponic tomato with a boiler the

size of a blimp, Slag Heap bulled his way through a dismal, dirty life
like a crippled Yeti in a rotting peat bog. A truly formidable man, if he
told you he wanted ham and eggs for breakfast you’d lay an egg and
run out and butcher a hog. His bad breath and worse attitude made
him ideally suited to be Miss Jan's enforcer. Who's gonna’ argue with
a six foot root vegetable?

Like the U.S. Marine Corps, discipline was harsh at Miss Jan's
Baby Center. Looking back I realized they got their hooks into me
early and deep as they tried to tear me down and build me up, but
somewhere along the way the method wasn't in synch with the
madness. I barely remembered Slag Heap Wilson, and though the
Center endorsed “tough love”, I was still taken aback when I ran into
Miss Jan 35, 40 years later in the grocery store’s “soup aisle”.

“Jackie Acker is that you?” yelled Miss Jan. I turned and saw Miss
Jan in all her glory framed against countless Campbell’s Soup cans. I
glanced into her cart and espied a big slab of head cheese wedged
between loaves of “Day-Old” bread and “No-Name” salami that had
gobs of fat in it the size of silver dollars.

“Just pickin’ up some supplies for the Center” she said with an evil
twinkle in her cold blue eyes. “You remember the Center don’t ya’
Jackie?”

Oh, I remembered the Center all right. Though invisible to Miss

Jan, fear and regret roared from that sunset of memories, as molten,
golden tears ran down my face and through my hands to swirl down
the sewer of time. There I hung ( in the middle of a soup aisle!),
suspended from a rainbow, looking upward at beauty but feeling the
searing heat from below to where I was surely destined. Yeah, I
remembered the Center.

All I really recalled was the slogans and sayings they drilled into
our pithy heads.

“Spare the rod and spoil the child”, “Cry Babies need not apply”
and “Panty-wastes to the end of the line” were more than mottoes at
the Center. My memories of the “Center” were mired in remorse as
black and inky as the La Brea tar pits, and like the extinct Woolly
Mammoth, I struggled still to extricate myself from this suffocating
metaphysical quagmire. I pulled myself out of this drowning pool of
“fond reminisce” and somehow found my voice.

“Hey Miss Jan, how ya’ doin’” I lamely replied. “Are you still
running the school “the old way” style you used to endorse?’ I asked.
 I didn’t really want a response. My enthusiasm for continuing this
“conversation” was tempered by an incredible urge to flee or fight;
and the flee response was predominant.

“Jackie, don’t gimme any of that “Who shot John rhetorical crap. If
you recall, you know damn well how I ran that Center and you can bet
your nipples I still do.”

I, nor any of the townsfolk had to “recall” anything, it was seared

into our memories forever.

To this day, Miss Jan runs the school with an iron fist and is known
to walk softly and carry a big stick. But she trundled on, fleshing out
her “mission statement”, a female Jim Jones in the soup aisle with
Kool-Aid for brains.

"We really don't like to coddle these kids," she seethed. "A lot of
these brats are sniveling, self absorbed rich kids who need a little
attitude adjustment. I come from a long line of beer-swillin' self-
righteous, dogmatic folk that love a good fight and never swerve from
their God-given duties. If a child needs to be reprimanded you can
rest assured we're equipped to do it."

I stood still as stone, staring at a can of Cream of Mushroom soup,

praying this one-sided, maniacal conversation would end. I fear not.

Steamrollering on, Miss Jan boasted about the school's

"holding-pen" that was being enlarged to accommodate more
children, especially during the holidays when "disciplinary problems
tend to mushroom." She assuaged my fears by adding that parents
need not worry as her crack staff had completed accredited courses
in the use of Tasers and stun-guns.

She also informed me (like I didn’t know) that the Baby Center
has plenty of things to keep the little ones distracted, like a scaled-
down version of a Tyrolean castle complete with towers and (during
floods) a real moat. With seven “reportable” accidents last year, two
cases of food poisoning (peanut butter salmonella) and one
(possible) case of Legionnaires, she assured me her Baby Center is
fairly safe and working hard to improve.

I was incredulous. Unfazed by my stunned silence Miss Joan

continued her spittle-sprayed tirade and reminisces.

“Lemme tell ya’ Jackie, that thing years ago with the raw chicken
thighs was way overblown" said Miss Jan,” 'sides that, we've kinda’
gone that 'beef's for dinner' route at the Center last decade or so;
nothin' but beef corn dogs on them sticks from here on out, and if
they don't like it they can bake their own noodles."

I shuddered recalling various "upgrades" at the Center I’d

recently read about like the installation of an "Invisible Baby-Fence"
containment system. I had to ask.

“What’s this “BCS” (Baby Containment System) program I’ve

been hearing about Miss Jan?” I asked.

“Jackie, we're gonna’ fit all the kids with those electronic collars
you see on dogs and bears and other pets” she sputtered. Bears?
Who had bears as pets…?

“’Course, it’s for their own protection," she continued. "Cash

discounts for the school year will apply with each collar issued to help
pay for the “BCS” program.”

She rambled on saying, “Slag Heap’s got his hands full with these
little hellions, he’s been a little edgy lately, and it’ll take a lotta’
pressure off him once we got the got all the kids fitted with them
electronic neck-nibblers.”

As she looked up at me with a crooked con-man’s smile, I

recalled the school also boasted a "Petting Zoo" that had to be seen
to be believed. It was common knowledge parents had to sign a
waiver exonerating the Center from any and all potential disasters,
but admission was "free" with enrollment and snake-bite kits were
supplied at wholesale prices. Donkey rides, rabbit-shaving and
simulated "hayrides" were a Halloween tradition and holidays were
never complete without an annual visit from a cardboard-cutout-
talking Santa.

I recalled Miss Jan pitching my parents hard for my re-

enrollment, years ago around Christmas time, desperately extolling
the “virtues” of the Center.

"We can't splurge on a live rent-a-Santa," said Miss Jan, "but a

friend of ours said he MAY be able to get his hands on a couple 'a
midgets we can toss around the ole Yule tree or at least set 'em up
on some goats with fake antlers pullin' a sled." That year's Christmas
party featured amateur “Mime Karaoke”, a cash bar and free slices of
stale carrot cake with a valid in-state I.D. How could anyone forget
that?

I vaguely recalled other school improvements throughout the

years that included a "mud-room" complete with a flexible spray hose
for those "messy" diaper accidents, and the eventual installation of
fire alarms and smoke detectors (“imminent” as usual for the past
twelve years, as yet uninstalled).

Finally, just as I was about to melt into a pool of human gruel,

Miss Jan said, “Well Jackie, ya’ look stronger than ya’ did at the
Center. If ya’ wanna’ stop by and chew the fat a bit more I’d love it.
Fridays are good, Fridays after school we have “Spam Jam Crisco-
Kid” night,” she beamed.

“What?” I muttered.

“That’s right, you heard me” she replied. “Ya’ll bring a liter of wine
or a case of beer and the vittles are on us. Crisco fried spam and
jugged hare with squirrel sauce. Damn Jackie, how good can it get?”

“Well Jackie, again, it’s been a pleasure but I gotta’ run. I have to
pick up Slag Heap to attend a court ordered Anger Management
class. Can you believe it?”

With a squeal of the shopping cart wheels and the faint, greasy
odor of head cheese still in the air, she was gone. I was not only
stupefied but “soupefied” and stood there awash in her toxic wake,
now mesmerized by a can of “Ox Tail Soup”. Could they really fit the
tail of an ox into that little can?