Into the Mud, Scum Queen

 S.E. Schaible

On a Friday night in March of 1981, spring break officially began with a party in Morristown, New Jersey. It was my junior year at Newark Academy, the private school into which I would have little (read: zero) chance of being accepted today – because in the decades since, the word “elite” has fittingly preceded any mention of the school’s name. I had already been removed from school at the end of sophomore year, ostensibly because I refused to narc on the boys who decided it was a good idea to defecate on a car belonging to a teacher. It was a convoluted story, but I happened to be on campus late one day just as these pre-Jackass fools decided to go full retard. I was lucky to be enrolled there, and then suddenly I was out.

I registered back at my public school, Livingston High School, for my junior year, which at the time seemed okay because that was the school my girlfriend attended. But by the time August arrived, Maria was no longer my girlfriend. I worked on a farm every summer and a scratch or bite on my leg had festered into a painful staph infection that required cutting and draining to relieve the pressure, a specialist telling me to keep it clean and dry while a lengthy cycle of antibiotics salvaged my calf muscle and the surrounding tissue. Translation, no soccer that season. One muddy slide-tackle could have led to a hospital stay, my mother was sternly warned. I knew a lot of kids at LHS. The 25-minute walk to school each morning with my old pal Gerry was like old times again. That summer I picked up with former bandmates in need of a drummer after their guy went away for the summer, and we booked several paying gigs. I handled percussion; Bob Blender on keyboards; Barry Wasserman on guitar, and Danny Zuker, with whom I’d been jamming since 5th grade, played bass and provided endless comedy (you know Danny – not as a musician, but as the head writer and producer of Modern Family and other hit shows).

It was all new and exciting during September, reconnecting with friends after I vanished following 8th grade, catching up on two years of crazy teen tour stories, breakup gossip and noticing so many changes in both the boys and girls I grew up with. But a potential extinction-event meteor was about to make a fiery entry into my atmosphere. Over sesame chicken and egg rolls from Lam’s, my parents casually announced that we were moving into a new house nearly an hour away – meaning, my remaining days in Livingston numbered fewer than 50. The local high school where we were moving was half the size of LHS, but it was 1,000 students and I didn’t know one. My older brother was immune to any such trauma, already driving a truck for my father; years earlier he had been expelled from a boarding school and ultimately dropped out of LHS following an altercation with a teacher that turned physical. Say what you will about the guy, but calling him a loser to his face back then would produce bruises in the head and neck area. My younger brother was in 6th grade and didn’t seem too concerned about moving, once assured that we would still have cable and Atari 2600 at the new house. My head swirled with this conundrum: the only logical option seemed to be to return to Newark and commute, but I had no idea how that might transpire. Plenty of Newark Academy kids drove 25 miles or more to school each morning, from towns as far east as Nutley and as far west as Boonton. I never lacked confidence, but I felt anxious – physically nauseous – about starting in a new school with no girlfriend, no band, no nothing. I tried to keep up with schoolwork and during study hall I went in to ask my English teacher for help with an assignment on Beowulf. More than a month into the semester she looked up from her desk and barked, “Who are you?”

“Scott Schaible. Fourth period. I sit right there,” I said. Jesus Christ, she had no idea who I was, and no office time for me that week. I was in a fragile state and that exchange was my breaking point with Livingston. I stacked my schoolbooks in my locker, tossed my notebooks and personal items in the hallway trash can, and fast-walked three miles to Newark Academy on a mission. The only thing I kept was my dog-eared copy of No One Here Gets Out Alive. I found my former Spanish teacher and advisor, Mr. Abney, at his desk and he immediately knew I was troubled. Five minutes later he was walking me into the headmaster’s office, where a kind southern gentleman decided I had paid a sufficient toll. “Well Mr. Schaible, we will have a schedule ready for you on Monday. Tell your father we’ll send an invoice promptly. Please stay out of trouble, son.”

Within two weeks of returning to NA, I had a new girlfriend, I could write in my schoolbooks again without being scolded, and my leg healed well enough to get cleared to play soccer again. I scored a goal from nearly mid field in my first game back. My recent troubles felt like a distant echo. Back to spring break Friday, 1981: I arrived home from that party just after midnight, the low fuel light illuminated on the dash of my Ford F-150 for the last several miles. I wasn’t in bed for more than a minute when my “teen line” phone rang. I answered and it was three classmates calling from a payphone outside the Livingston Mall – right across the street from NA. They were agitated and talking over each other, an incomprehensible shitshow. It sounded like some middle schoolers were prank calling me. I finally sorted out the voices and in between them gasping for air and being terrified, I heard about how they left the party and had the brilliant idea to turf the JV lacrosse fields – and got a Volvo station wagon stuck in the muddy ballfield. They abandoned the car and made their way to the mall. They began pleading with me to tow them out of the ooze; In a few hours the sun would begin to rise, and Mr. Ziegler would make his rounds and call the police. Mr. Z, as we called him, was an affable elderly caretaker who resided in a windowless converted janitorial closet with a cot and a microwave upstairs near the biology classrooms. Luca would surely be expelled, since it was his mother’s car. She, in turn, would surely stab him to death, to hear his prediction. “Guys, listen, I barely made it home. I am out of gas; there is no way I can make it back there. Take your chances with a tow truck and be prepared to pay cash,” I said.

The Samurai grabbed the phone away from Luca. “Schaible? Listen. I will never get into Cornell if this goes down. Never mind medical school. If Luca gets busted, you know he will take us down with him. I need you to do this,” he said. I was made to understand that his parents would similarly disown or maim him. The two of them were arguing about who had it worse: the son of first-generation Italians or the son of stoic Asian parents. The only one not overly concerned was Otter. He was more worried that someone in the dark expanse of the mall parking lot was following them. I told them I would see if the gas station in Mendham was open – you aren’t allowed to pump your own gas in New Jersey, so if the station was closed there was no pay-at-the-pump option. I searched the garage and found some gas in the can for the lawnmower and poured it into the truck. That would buy me a dozen miles if I was lucky. I also remembered my father had a siphoning device – a length of plastic tubing with a coil near one end to prime the flow. I threw it into the bed of the truck and took off into the night. As an early birthday present my father had just that week purchased me a set of 33-inch BF Goodrich tires to replace the worn set of Firestones the truck had come with from the previous owner. The hum from the new tires was hypnotic as I rolled along Roxiticus Road, on the alert for crossing deer.

The Sunoco station in town was closed. I parked in the lot next to a car that was in for servicing and nervously watched to see if any headlights were coming over the rise. I hopped out, quickly opened the gas caps, and placed the ends of the tube into both – the longer part into the depths of the donor car’s tank. I squeezed the priming bulb and heard it grabbing at the liquid, but it wasn’t bringing it forth – so I sucked on the short end and came dangerously close to getting some in my mouth. Now flowing, I pumped what I guessed to be a couple of gallons and set off to rescue my idiot friends. Half an hour later I slowly idled along the mall entrance facing the school, and out of the darkness they raced after me. We sat four abreast in my big Ford pickup and headed toward the entrance of the school. They were still arguing, obsessing about how screwed they were. Otter was just laughing, which I was thankful for. I decided to kill the lights as we entered the long driveway to the school and dropped it into 4-High just before hopping the curb. Ahead in the moonlight I saw the sunken car – it looked more like a beached Boston Whaler, the wheels not visible. I could begin to see the extent of the donuts they had made – ribbons of cut turf, a colossal mess – as I slowly pulled up against the rear bumper. Then I announced some ground rules.

“First thing is, if we get busted, you all swear to God to agree that I had nothing to do with all this damage. I just came to help you out. Fucking swear,” I said. They did. “Next, you guys are filling my tank in Morristown, and you’re buying me pancakes at the diner.” Yes, yes, let’s go! The last thing I said to Luca was the most important, because he was the wild card of the group: “My push bar will dent your mom’s trunk when I push you out. You tell her whatever story you want about how someone backed into you at the party and took off – but if you implicate me under cross-examination, or you ask for my insurance information next week, this will get ugly.” He swore on his grandmother’s eyes – whatever that was about. I kept Otter with me, and Samurai went with Luca. In a matter of seconds, after the crumpling sound of the car yielding to my rig, I extracted the wagon from of the mud, and both vehicles were barreling down Route 24 toward the Gulf station and Morristown Diner. Mud flew from his car in fist-sized chunks. The nervous energy didn’t subside for hours – probably days for them. We laughed over pancakes and lemon meringue pie, refilled our Cokes and I was home again around 4:00am. I put the siphon tube back and turned the hose to my wheel wells to get rid of most of the splatter. That Sunday I was on a flight to Ft. Lauderdale to spend days on the beach, and early evenings escorting my proud grandmother to the early sitting at The Elks Club.

Following the week off, there was minimal talk about the significant damage someone had done to the athletic fields, and virtually no gossip about who or why. The dam seemed to be holding. One afternoon a week later, one of the school janitors, Hector, approached me near the gymnasium. “Hey Homes, you are the one with the truck, Sí? The black Ford?” Yeah, why do you ask? “The police are out there taking pictures and measurements of your tires, I thought you should know,” he said. What had become a story to laugh about at reunions returned with a jolt of adrenaline. It turned out that all of Luca’s wild drift-car circles on the turf had left nothing discernible, but what remained was one clear set of tracks where I slowly pushed him out of the hole, left baking in the sun for a week. That night I came clean to my father and told him the truth – every detail – and he had no admonition for my decision to help those guys out. He didn’t even care about stealing a few dollars’ worth of gasoline. He focused on the fact that the new tires were installed just 24 hours before the incident, March 12th. He said the owner of the tire shop was a longtime customer of his and with one phone call the next morning it was decided that the receipt for the work would show they were installed on March 22nd – an easy fix with a piece of carbon paper on a document already messy with brake grease and wrinkles. In that part of New Jersey, a guy like this tire store owner could care less to know why such a request was being made – it would just be handled. That’s what friends did.

It never amounted to anything – I was questioned about my whereabouts on the night of March 13th, and I said I was sure I left for Florida early the next day so I must have been home. The only thing that I could guess was there wasn’t enough evidence to haul me in front of the disciplinary committee. My father was a straight shooter, but he was also from Essex County, New Jersey and he knew a thing or two about taking care of problems. He wasn’t about to let his son get rolled for something the connected kids would have gotten out of. He was the best, so humble and sweet, always there for me and his family and friends. All you had to do was ask.

Read my last story- Taking the Train