The neighborhood I grew up in is now full of million dollar homes. When I was a young kid though most of the homes were in the 30-40 thousand dollar range and every block had one or two abandoned houses and most of those were completely trashed. No doors, holes in the ceilings and walls crumbling down etc.
At the end of my street was a wooded area and there were a few old abandoned houses scattered about these woods. I think these old houses were built by gold miners in the 1800’s. Anyway, they were abandoned wrecks which I would poke around in all the time. I wasn’t the only one who would poke around in them. Others did too and they all seemed to have cans of spray paint. I saw more giant penises and humungous breasts painted on these walls than you can imagine. I also found an ample amount of porn magazines.
Across the creek was an abandoned psychiatric ward (I shit you not). Like every other abandoned building it was ransacked from top to bottom. No locked doors, no unbroken windows, glass everywhere. Furniture, mostly desks and chairs were broken and scattered every where.
One time while poking around in this defunct looney bin I went in to one of the rooms, probably an old office, and there was a cable hanging down through a broken out sky light. It wasn’t actually a cable, it was a bundle of these old plastic coated TV antenna cables and it conveniently had knots spaced evenly on up. Not being one to pass up on the opportunity I ninja’d up the cable, through the hatch and onto the roof.
Once on the roof I found a random broken piece of tile and chucked it into the open field behind the hospital and watched it corkscrew thru the air. That was cool and I knew exactly what I needed to do. I jumped back down the hatch and started peeling up ceramic tiles off the floor of the hospital, went outside chucked them onto the roof then ninja’d back up through the hatch.
Once back on the roof I gathered up my loot and snapped each tile into nice little quarters perfect for chucking. I actually used the edge of the hatch to snap each tile.
I was in heaven spinning these tiles trough the air, out into the open field but eventually even that great fun became tiresome. Especially considering it had been going on over the course of many days and many more tile excavation efforts.
My sights turned to an unbroken window on another abandoned building that was on the left side of the open field. Amazingly this abandoned building had never been breached by the hoodlums such as myself. I really wanted to breach it too. Anyway, I started trying to hit the unbroken window which was nearly an impossible tasks considering the crazy movement I would get out of my custom throwing tiles. Some of which would go sailing over the roof.
Unbeknownst to me (but I soon became one of the first to find out), the city police department was being evicted from its location and they were, at the very moment I was chucking tiles at it, looking over my target building as a possible relocation site.
With my errant tiles flying over the roof they thought they were under attack! My field was surrounded by an old chain link fence that had ivy growing on in but it wasn’t so dense that I couldn’t see figures running behind it. I didn’t realize how funny it was until years later. The fence was 8 feet high and these cops were running behind it crouched down like it was fucking dessert storm. I saw the foot cops but unfortunately did not see the cruiser coming around the other way.
I bolted, hopped down the hatch and went the other direction from where I saw the men. I couldn’t tell they were cops at the time. When I got out of the old hospital I had two choices. I could go straight across the road and down toward the creek or I could turn left and take the old road which was an easier route. The safer route was to go straight down toward the creek. With enough of a lead no one could ever catch me in those wood, that was my turf, but I hated going down at that section. It was steep with no path, heavy ivy and when you got to the creek, no good place to jump across. It was doable though, I’d done it before.
Since I didn’t see the cruiser coming down the other side I thought I was in the clear so I decided to take the easy route and turned left down the road. When I saw the cop car turn the corner, rather than bolting I decided play it cool and just walk. After all, how would he know it was me on the roof? I was just a kid walking along an old road. When he pulled up I’m not even sure he looked at me. He just said “get in the car”.
That was my first arrest. I was 10 years old.