During my junior high years, I had a neighborhood friend named Chad who lived two blocks from us on Madison Street in Green Bay. I never understood why we were friends since we were nothing alike. He was a quiet guy on the outside, but he had a wild streak when you got him off by himself.

He believed his father, who had died when Chad was a young boy, was almost a mythical figure. I was impressed as a boy when Chad told me his dad could predict exactly when a red light was going to change. (It was not until I began driving myself that I realized that this trick was accomplished by watching for the yellow light going the other way.) Anyway, he was convinced his dad was special.

I think the internal anger of his dad’s death made him a little crazy. One summer, just after he got his driver’s license, he took me on a road trip to Door County in his Volkswagen. (Volkswagen Beetles in that day were very susceptible to overturning, so I am lucky that I am still here.) He drove that Volkswagen like it was a race car. He made more two wheel turns than I care to remember. I held onto anything I could find with a death grip. After a wild ride, returning from Door County near our cottage, he turned onto a corn field making figure eights knocking down corn like falling dominoes. It had recently rained and we got stuck in the mud with wheels spinning. A very angry farmer came over and somehow notified Dad at the cottage of our predicament. Dad arrived with the farmer holding onto two very scared kids. The farmer told Dad that he wanted $1000 for the damage to his field. Dad offered him what he had with him, but the farmer was not going to take anything less. He then left to call the sheriff. Dad got into the car and told us to push as hard as we could. With mud to our knees and adrenaline giving us superhuman strength, we almost picked up the whole car, pushed it out of the mud and made our escape.

Looking back, I suspect that Dad was more embarrassed by our unacceptable behavior than really angry, but he acted mad giving us an appropriate lecture. We never heard from the farmer or the sheriff again.

I lost track of Chad soon after when he went to a private school. The last I heard he was a military guard in the Air Force, somewhere in North Dakota. I hope he did not drive a jeep.

My brother John is not the only son that caused dad grief growing up.

Moral of the story: Greed does not always pay.