It was 1978. Or 1979. I was 10 or 11 years old. I’m a little vague on the exact year, but I was definitely aware of the fact I was too old to be riding my Big Wheel around the block. 

Catching myself in the reflection of the windows of Speedway Drugs, as I scooted by, I realized I looked slightly ridiculous. But I didn’t care. I liked riding that Big Wheel.

One weekend, I rode it to the corner of Ocean Parkway and Brighton Beach Avenue and ran into the neighborhood drug dealer and his kids. That description makes him sound so ominous: “drug dealer.” And he definitely was a drug dealer and a bookie. But he wasn’t any kind of big deal; just a poor and kinda’ sketchy guy, doing what he did to get by.

Anyway, when his two kids saw me on my Big Wheel, they cornered me right near the subway entrance. They wanted to ride it.  At first I said, “No.” But after a few back and forth rounds of their pleading, I caved and said “Yes.” They were both smaller and younger than me, so I didn’t feel like I was being bullied or anything like that.

I stood up and got out of the seat, and one of them immediately sat down to pedal and the other jumped on the back and stood up right behind him. They rode my beat-up Big Wheel down the block, past my apartment building and the others, and then all the way to where the private homes were, before they made a right down a driveway.

“Don’t worry,” their dad said, “They’ll bring it back.” So, I walked back to the front of my building and played around with whatever kids were around.

After about an hour, the sun was setting, and church bells were ringing. I was getting concerned, so I walked down the block to take a look down the alley where the two kids had gone with my Big Wheel.

As I was walking, I ran into Howie and told him what happened. “Sounds like they stole it,” he said matter-of-factly. When I heard those words said out loud, I began to accept it as the truth. 

“What can I do?” I asked Howie. He shrugged and said he didn’t know.  I suggested we just walk to the house where their driveway was and think it out.

The house had a haunted and semi-abandoned look. I knew that the right half of it was either owned by or rented out to an Orthodox Jewish family because occasionally my mom would go there, and I would tag along. The Orthodox kids who lived there were pasty skinned and reacted strangely to some of my toys and the things I would talk about.

But it was the other side of the house that was the weird part of the equation.

The front yard was wildly overgrown, but beautiful with lots of lilacs and other flowers. You’d hear sparrows chirping and see bees buzzing around the yard on any spring day. But all we knew about that side of the house was that there was an old lady on the top floor who would flip out and start shouting gibberish, sprinkled with curses, if any kids played near the driveway facing her windows. And if her crazy babbling nonsense wasn’t enough to scare the kids away, she always seemed to have a bucket of water ready — at least we all hoped it was water — to toss on the kids to get them to leave.

Knowing this, Howie and I approached that driveway as quietly as we could. The old lady’s corner window was open, but she was nowhere to be seen. Still, she was a risk. 

A friend of Howie’s showed up as we were thinking. “What are you doing?” he asked, and we explained the whole situation to him. 

After a while I devised a brilliant plan. The drug dealer and his kids lived in some kind of shack — or modified garage — that was behind the house. One of us would run down the driveway, head to the shack, grab the Big Wheel and run back out.

“I’ll stay out here,” said Howie. “Me too,” said his friend, which meant that I was the one who was going to run down the driveway.

“Well, you guys have to distract the old lady when I run down there,” I said. They nodded in agreement. When we looked up, the old lady woman suddenly appeared at the window and started shouting at us.

Seeing this, I shrugged at my friends and ran straight down the driveway. She noticed me and panicked. I heard her scream, “What!?!” as Howie and his friend tried to distract her.

I was more than halfway down the alley in no time. I could hear the old lady and Howie and his friend shouting and screaming behind me, but that wasn’t my concern at that moment. As I moved closer to the back of the driveway, I slowed to a walk, and I saw it. The Big Wheel!

It was sitting just outside of the open wooden door of the shack where the drug dealer and his kids lived. Nobody — except the old lady — had seen me yet. But to get it, I would need to walk right in front of the shack’s open door.

I took a few deep breaths, headed towards the Big Wheel, grabbed it by the handles, and quickly peeked into the shack. As I pushed it towards the driveway, I could see the kids and what looked like a sheet draped over a bed or couch. The kids hadn’t noticed me at first, but after a couple of seconds they turned around and saw me and started shouting. I stopped rolling the Big Wheel and picked it up by the front fork and started running back down the alley.

I could hear the kids yelling as they chased after me, but I was more worried about what was in front of me–that screaming old lady. Howie and his friend were shouting at me, “Come on!” 

The old lady turned her head and saw me running down her driveway, and I heard her exclaim, “Oh!?!” Then she ducked away from the window, and I realized that her bucket full of water, or whatever the hell she had, was going to come flying out that window at any moment.

Knowing that, I ran harder. The drug dealer’s kids were chasing me and trying to catch up. Just as I got past the area beneath the old lady’s window, I heard the splat of liquid from the emptied bucket smacking straight onto the ground behind me. It missed me, but, thankfully, the splash stopped those kids right in their tracks.

Once I got to the sidewalk, I high-fived Howie and his friend, and we made a beeline down the block. By then a few old people and other miscellaneous adults had come around to see what the commotion was about.

With the coast clear, I got onto the Big Wheel, waved back to Howie and his friend and rode it straight back home.

My dad was in front of the building sitting in a folding chair and he asked me, “What happened?”  I looked at him and said “Nothing,” as I got off the Big Wheel, rolled it into the lobby of the building and got my mom to buzz me in.

***

Jack Szwergold is a skilled web developer who has worked for Artforum and the Guggenheim Museum. He founded the Onion’s website in 1996 and currently works for the New School.