VHS Tapes

One lazy summer day the trailer park gang, of which I was one, decided to – no, were compelled to by unseen faces, unheard voices, to happen to check if the back of that tractor trailer was maybe unlocked. By chance it was unlocked and the decision was made to wait for night and hope the trailer was still there, on the sandy pull off just off Corinth Rd onto Van Dusen. There was a house across the street, but we knew it was a girl and her family and they wouldn’t get involved. They weren’t the kind of people to get involved…in fact, nobody in the neighborhood got involved, unless there was a way to gain. That night a select few of our best men, Levi and Paul, got the nerve and made the attempt. The back of the trailer was still unlocked.  The latch is a heavy rusty steel contraption designed to confuse morons for a precious few minutes, but the guys lived around trucks long enough that to two 12 year old boys, it was less of a challenge than a dog giving you his paw for a treat. The rust presented more of an auditory challenge squeeking into the darkness. I think it was the sound of the door more than anything else that shook them enough to grab the first two boxes they could reach and to run for hell.  The boxes were not small, but they were too light…something maybe was wrong.  Nothing of value could weigh this little inside this volume of corrugated. From the trailer to the pole-lines, to Pinello Rd and back through my own back yard onto Ogden Rd and from there one of any number of trails and tracks took them to their final resting home in the woods just past Division Rd. Paul lived directly across the street.  Once safe in the woods a mile from the TT, the guys finally tore into the cardboard and found Julia Roberts gigantic fucking mouth smiling at them over and over again from the 20 copies of Pretty Woman contained in Box 1. Box 2 was Macaulay Culkin slapping his cute little cheeks on the bubble plastic box after box after box of Home Alone.  Every kid in that neighborhood owned at least two copies of each of those movies, the rest were buried.  They might, probably not but maybe, still be there. Julia and Macaulay stuck side by side like unhappy married couples buried in Rhode Island style, Side by Each. Nobody was ever caught. The other VHS tapes started arriving at the West Mountain Pizza Deli for rent the next week.  I don’t recall ever seeing Pretty Woman or Home Alone available in the area rentals.