When I first laid eyes on Billy Pearrow, he was stripped to the waist, wearing boxing gloves on his skinny pale arms. Taking on all comers, he waited impatiently for them to strap on their gloves, then attacked with a manic glee best described as “Loony Toons” with a side of amphetamines.
I watched opponent after opponent surrender and flee in terror before Billy turned to me expectantly. The crazed glint in his eye convinced me it was not yet time to check “boxing with deranged dervish” off my bucket list.
I got to know Billy at Cloverdale Junior High School in seventh grade. After his family moved away for eighth grade, then back for ninth grade, we became good friends.
Ours was an unlikely friendship. I was sedate whereas Billy was wild. I meekly followed rules whereas Billy was a Rebel with an Insanity Clause.
With Billy, anything could blossom into an adventure that you dare not tell your mother about for fear of being grounded until your fortieth birthday.
In a conveniently unmonitored store aisle, we encountered condoms temptingly sold in single packets. Convenient also that they would make hardly a bulge when slipped into your jeans pocket. We shoplifted a handful, hoping that we would get a chance to use one before it turned to powder.
We tried smoking pipes and sniffing snuff, which made me sneeze so hard I popped open the zipper of my corduroy hip-huggers. What I would not have given to be able to do that on command!
We got kicked out of The Funky Candle for accidentally flinging a lit cigarette lighter across the store. Although we neither melted any candles nor set afire their ample stock of rolling papers, the owners were very uncool. They banned us from the store, never again to gawk at the erotic and hippy-inspired candles!
Loitering at the mall one afternoon, we passed a mannequin with an astonishingly awful wig perched atop its plastic head. A down-over-the-ear job with long sideburns, it resembled a hedgehog having a particularly bad day.
Billy seized the wig and plopped it over his curly red mop, pulling a serious face that doubled me over with laughter. A hand snaked out from behind Billy and roughly yanked the wig from his noggin. Billy mock-pouted, I wiped tears from my eyes, and the Woolco salesman gave us an evil glare as we wandered off in search of more rubbers we would never use.
Billy, ever the budding capitalist, made a little cash flipping burgers at McDonald’s. When I expressed admiration at his initiative, he procured a similar job for me. It was my first job that did not involve lawnmowers or selling useless Boy Scout shit to unsuspecting neighbors.
McDonald’s operated a bit differently back then than it does nowadays. Burgers were prepared in advance, all dressed for success and wrapped up awaiting purchase. They would sit a few minutes, then get dumped in the trash if they did not sell quickly.
Everything was timed. Performances were routinely measured by stopwatch. Speed was the order of the day.
After a couple of hours at work, you were awarded a coupon for a discount on a burger, fries and drink (nothing was free!) and granted 15 leisurely minutes to gobble them up.
One evening, I was counting the seconds until I could shovel something down my gullet. Hunger in those teenage years was ferocious and urgent, red in tooth and maw.
Billy noticed the way I was ogling the fried pies, faint lines of drool running down my chin. “Looks like it is time to take out the trash,” he said as he snatched up a cheeseburger and shoved it into the nearly full trash barrel, waggling his eyebrows and looking suggestively at the door.
Slightly taken aback by this generous act of petty larceny, I pushed the wheeled container out the side door into the parking lot, glancing left and right in hopes of remaining unnoticed.
The trash bin was the size and shape of a railroad car. Trash had to be carried up rungs on the side to the top of the bin and dumped.
McDonald’s, then as now, has their way of making a cheeseburger. Fry the 1/10th pound patty with a thimbleful of grated onions on top. Slap it on a bun. Two thwacks of ketchup, one thwack of mustard, one slice of pickle. Wrap it in a piece of yellow wax paper.
I never did like the McDonald’s way, mind you. I wanted my cheeseburgers plain. No onion, mustard, ketchup or pickle. I found that combination disgusting, and so I always ordered my cheeseburgers as “a grill,” the McDonald’s term for a pain-in-the-ass special order.
I dragged the trash can up the side of the enormous bin, climbed in, and made myself comfortable. I fished out the cheeseburger, wishing I could have asked Billy to purloin comestibles more to my liking.
Sitting in the sun atop a thousand pounds of garbage so pungent that my nostrils burned and my eyes watered, I ate the cheeseburger with all the offending goop on it.
It was by far the most delicious, satisfying, and life-affirming cheeseburger that I have ever eaten.
