CRIME SPREE
© 2004 Jeff Grimshaw. All Rights Reserved
Reprinted at the Henry County Web, by permission of the author.

Today the towns where I grew up blend seamlessly into each other—without the "You Have Just Left Cedar Grove / Little Falls Welcomes You" signs you’d think you were driving through one vast suburban megalopolis. But 40 years ago houses began to peter out several blocks from the town limits, and then there were vacant lots, warehouses, and even weird little forests replete with snapping turtles, skunks, and soggy old issues of Playboy. If you kept going, trees, reptiles, and waterlogged magazines eventually gave way to warehouses again, and soon you’d be in the middle of the next town. Of course all this undeveloped land minutes from the throbbing Route 46 / Route 3 corridor could not remain undeveloped for long, and by the time I was 11 or so, there were industrial villages springing up on these frontiers. You weren’t supposed to cut through them because they were private property, but they would build the things right between the prime snapping turtle creek and the trees where the big kids stashed their fireworks, and what were you supposed to do? Go AROUND them?

So it was that one weekend my cousin Glen and I were strolling through one of these newly constructed complexes. Glen was such a straight arrow that I’d literally had to shove him past the ‘no trespassing’ sign. "Are we going to get in trouble??" he said. "Just stick wid me," I assured him. I was pretty much of a straight arrow, too, but hanging around with Glen made me feel like James Dean in "Rebel without a Cause," which was why I hung around with Glen. It also made me talk like Leo Gorcey, but at that point in my life Leo Gorcey and James Dean seemed equally cool. A late model sedan appeared from behind one of the buildings, coasted in front of us, and cut us off. From previous experience I knew this had to be a security guard, so I quickly whispered to Glen, "He’s gonna ask us for our names. DON’T TELL HIM YOUR REAL NAME!"

"Uh uh... what should I..."

"Just make one up," I said. Glen was sweating bullets. The guard, a young man in civilian clothes, packing, as far as I could see, no heat, got out of the car with his clipboard. He seemed a little embarrassed about what he was doing. He said hello, asked us how we were doing, nodded at our answers, and finally explained that this was private property and we really weren’t supposed to be there. I said Oh geez, we had no idea, he said Well, there you go, and headed back to his car.

"He didn’t ask our names!" said Glen.

"Well, sometimes they don’t," I said with a shrug.

"I couldn’t think of one," said Glen.

At which point the guard got out of his car again, and apologetically told us that his boss said he had to write down our names, purely a formality, just in case, you know, there had been some vandalism or something...

"Sure," I said. "I’m Jerry Smith."

"I’m Jeff Grimshaw," said Glen.

The security guy wrote down our names and we walked to the woods at the edge of the property. "What did you say that for?" I hissed.

"I told you I couldn’t think of a name!"

"You thought of mine!"

"Well, you were right there!"

"All right," I said. "You go back there and you tell that guy you gave him the wrong name! Just do it! What if somebody like committed a MURDER in one of these buildings or something? The cops would call my mom and dad!"

"I can’t go back there!!"

"DO IT!" I said, and shoved him back onto the forbidden property. He hesitated. I gave him another shove. "I am not taking the rap for this!!" He trotted towards the car. I watched as the security guy rolled down his window and Glen engaged him in conversation, and then Glen returned to the woods at a dead run.

"Cheese it!" he cried as he ran past me. I caught up with him by the crayfish pond a few minutes later.

"He got really mad," said Glen, who was out of breath, but didn’t seem upset.

"Because you gave him a fake name? What did you say?"

"Well... I said, ‘do you remember my name,’ and he looked at his clipboard and said, ‘Jeff Grimshaw,’ and I said..."

What Glen said can not be printed in a family newspaper even now, 40 years later, when Dennis Franz bare butt has been a staple of prime time television for the better part of a decade. Glen had sworn a blue streak at the baffled security guy. Glen was not much of a swear-er, so his profanity was not exactly state-of-the art; some of it was downright inept. But it was still pretty foul stuff.

"He’s gonna think JEFF GRIMSHAW swore at him!" And, I realized with dismay, he was gonna think Jeff Grimshaw didn’t know how to swear!

"That’s right!" said Glen, and was off on another dead run. My head swam. I had given Glen one shove too many. I had pushed him over the edge. I trudged homeward, certain that the security guy had already contacted my parents. ‘Your son was trespassing,’ he would have told them, ‘and he called me ‘a big hell.’

But there was no mention of any high crimes and misdemeanors at dinner that evening, nor the next day, or the day after that. I thought I was home free.

Nearly a week later, my father passed me the string beans and said, "What’s going on with your cousin Glen?"

"I dunno," I said. "Why?"

"Well, the reason I ask, he’s been running around town swearing at people and yelling, ‘My name is Jeff Grimshaw!’ It seems odd."

"Yuh," I said.

"And you don’t have any idea why he’d do that."

"Not a clue," I said, but they didn’t believe me.

"You must have done SOMETHING," said my mother. "People don’t just yell ‘I’m Jeff Grimshaw!’ and swear at people for no reason at all."

"How many people has he sworn at?"

"A lot," said my father.

"Do they think I’M doing it?"

"No, of course not." My mother paused over the carrots. "Did you... MAKE him do it?"

"No! How could I MAKE him do it? Why would I want to have Glen run around yelling ‘I’m Jeff Grimshaw’ and swearing?"
"I have no idea," said my mother, "but it certainly sounds like one of your ideas."

"We don’t know what you’re up to," said my father, "but you’re going to get your cousin in trouble, so I want it to stop NOW."

I was speechless.

"Pass the mashed potatoes," said my father.

~ % ~

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