The year? Sometime in the 1980s. The time? Summer. The mischief? Sneaking into an unsneakable place, because us kids in Gladstone didn't think it was fair to wall off ANYTHING in Gladstone.
A security guard almost grabbed me. A car chased us. We were in deep doo-doo.
As a kid, life was an adventure. Every day. That was because of where I lived. Leave my driveway, take a left, walk half a block, and you're in a forest. We called it The Woods. Nothing more.
One bike path cut through the woods to a street on the other side, and that's how you got from my house to lower Gladstone. And let me tell you, that bike path was an adventure. It crossed a creek and wound between boulders and trees, and if you fell, well, that sucked, because you were bleeding. There was no room for one group of bikers going one way and another group coming the other. Whatever earlier generation carved that path out with their bikes, they must have had some daredevil in them, because that path was... hard and fun and nuts, sometimes.
Walking, you'd be fine. But what's the fun in walking? On bikes, not so much.
And if my friends and I were heading down that path, and the grade right above us was coming from the other way? We got nervous. That grade HATED us. We didn't know why. Okay, we knew why. Our grade was a bunch of smart-mouthed, sarcastic rebels. We made fun of everybody, we treated rules like suggestions, and we had a comeback for everything. To us, that upper grade was a pack of bullies. We weren't right about that. But as a kid, you make up the strangest things.
I digress...
Okay, back to the story, because you gotta read this one.
You see, Gladstone had three parts. Lower Gladstone had the older homes and, the way we saw it as kids, the poorer families. Middle Gladstone, where I lived, was middle-class families who did okay. Not too rich, not too poor. And upper Gladstone was where the rich kids and rich parents lived, in the nice homes in the nice neighborhoods. None of that was really true. But we believed it.
We got into a lot of mischief. We never planned it that way, but when you adventure around like we did, you find yourself chased out of places from time to time. Case in point: Gladstone's Adventist "Area." I found out later it's called Gladstone Park.
My friends and I rode past it on our bikes almost every day. It was a big chunk of Gladstone, walled off, and frankly, it ticked us off. It was full of forest, with real bike paths, the kind you'd find at a resort like Black Butte, Sunriver, or the Inn of the Seventh Mountain. If you don't know those places, go to Bend, Oregon. You'll find 'em, and you'll see what I mean.
Back to the story.
So we came up with a plan to get into the Seventh-day Adventist camp-thingy, or rather, Gladstone Park. It was tricky. We'd have to get ourselves and our bikes over the fence, ride around as fast as we could, and figure out the rest. Whatever happened, happened. We knew we weren't wanted. But this was Gladstone, and nobody walls off a park with the best view in all of Gladstone. Did it even have a view? We had no idea. It was just our excuse. We needed to see it, no matter the danger and peril and hellfire and brimstone waiting for us once we got caught.
So, around 2 p.m. on a sunny afternoon, plan made, we sat on our bikes across the street from the target, and... and... and... wait. Is that gate open?
It's open! Why was the gate open?
The accomplices: Schlit, Jones, Sals, Pino, and me, Los. (Yes, those are all nicknames.)
Why Los? Because in 5th grade, I needed a nickname. Lobey-Wan Kenobi didn't stick, on account of my earlobes weren't THAT long, and it was way too long to yell. So they called me Ellis, my last name, for a while. Then during a basketball tourney, Evans (another Brandon, go figure) started calling me Dolph Schayes, because apparently I looked like the old NBA player. That didn't stick either. So Evans somehow mashed Dolph and Ellis together and came up with Ellos. We still don't know how. Then they cut it in half. Los. That one stuck. It's been my name since 5th grade. Some people from those old groups don't even know my real name. To them, I'm Los, to this day.
So. Schlit, Jones, Sals, Pino, and Los, all on our bikes. We ride up to the gate like we're going to cruise right on by.
Nope.
Sals: "Go!"
We crank our wheels and burst through that open gate. We ride hard and fast, and... holy crap. This place is amazing. It's like a campground with nice wooden buildings and perfect paved paths for cars, for golf carts, for bikes, for walking. We fly down one of about a million bike lanes, trees all around, green grass, bushes, everything trimmed perfect, and we're like...
"No one's here!" That was Jones.
I look around, thinking the same thing. It's a ghost town. "Maybe it's always like this?"
"Yeah, I bet it is!" Pino said. "Dudes, we can totally hang out here. Our place. No one else's!"
We're loud, too. Riding fast, yelling over our shoulders at each other, and I keep thinking, maybe we shouldn't be so loud?
"Woohoo!" That was Schlit, hitting a jump. He landed awkward, because he's Schlit. Me? I was the bike racer. Best BMXer of the bunch, a ton of trophies, usually #1. So I start showing them how to hit the jumps right, and we're making so, so much noise.
Jones was the smart one, keeping an eye out. "Guys. Guys! GUYS!"
"What?"
Jones points. "Look!"
People in dark-blue security uniforms, headed our way. Fast. "Hey! You kids aren't supposed to be in here!" Maybe not those exact words. But you know the words.
"Go, go, go!" Sals yells.
We take off deeper into the camp. Heads down, standing on the pedals, legs pumping so hard they burned. Down a hill, up a hill, looking back over our shoulders, the guards getting smaller and smaller.
We find the thickest part of the forest, up on a hill, and from there we can look down on all the grown-ups searching for us, with no clue where we went. We hide there, and hide, scared out of our minds, breathing hard, and...
"Uh, guys?" Jones said. "How are we gonna get out of here?"
I shake my head. "I don't know."
"My dad's gonna kill me if he finds out." Schlit shook his head next. "He can't find out."
Pino's smiling, because that's Pino. "He won't find out." He looks around for a way out. Then the smile fades. A new plan is forming. "You guys see that lake?"
We did. It wasn't big. Pretty small, actually. Chautauqua Lake.
So... Gladstone used to be a big deal. Starting in 1894, those very grounds held the Chautauqua, a giant summer camp for grown-ups. People came from all over for lectures, concerts, plays, and ball games. It was the biggest one west of the Rockies. They called Gladstone the "Mother Chautauqua of the West." In 1896, thousands and thousands of people packed in there to hear William Jennings Bryan give a speech. Folks rode the trolley in from all over. Even the street names were fancy, named after East Coast schools like Dartmouth, Columbia, and Cornell. And that lake was part of it all.
What had happened was an earthquake drained the lake to a much, much smaller lake. The history books blame radio, movies, and cars, but others blame the lake draining for the reason everyone stopped visiting and the games stopping and the music stopping. By the late 1920s, the Chautauqua went broke, and the Adventists bought the grounds. What's left of the glory days is a small festival every year, somewhere else in town, called the Chautauqua Festival.
So here we are, trying to escape, people hunting for us, we can hear them, and there's that lake. A lake, that at the time, we didn't even know Gladstone had. And it's right there. We have to get to it. We have to go through danger and security guards and risk it all... just to see that lake.
So we go. Fast. Down the hill, around the trees, hiding, dodging, slowing down sometimes because the guards are still out there, and they know we haven't gotten out yet.
And there we are, rolling up on the lake, and I say, "We can't stop! We can't."
Everyone agrees. By now we figure they've shut the gate, so how are we getting out? We need a new escape plan. Scout the area. Find a fence or a wall to climb, or a way to sneak through the forest that dumps us out in Timbuktu. Who knows?
Then the most beautiful thing happened. It nearly knocked us over.
This big, ugly, what-is-THAT rat comes up out of the lake. Half rat, half beaver. We stop dead. Sals points. "What the heck is that thing?"
My mouth falls open. I'd never seen such a majestic creature. Later we learned they were nutria, and they bite, and they carry weird diseases. But right then, they were our unicorns. The sacred beasts of Chautauqua Lake, and we were the chosen ones who got to see them. This was our quest now. No guard in dark blue was taking that from us.
So, danger or not, we lay our bikes down, mouths hanging open, staring at these majestic creatures and this lake that should be ours. A place we should be able to visit without security breathing down our necks. We actually sit down. There was a spot between two giant grassy shrubs where we hid, listening to the guards coming, talking to each other on their walkie-talkies. And we watched these creatures of paradise, these rats that didn't belong in the rat family, dive in, pop up, dive in, pop up. They'd look right at us with those ugly, rusty orange teeth, noses twitching, whiskers wiggling like they were trying to sniff out who we were.
And then...
"HEY! YOU! Come here!"
We turn.
"Oh no. Oh no," Jones said. "Guys."
Sals runs for his bike. "Get on your bikes! Split up!"
We grab our bikes, and I see a dang police car. A POLICE car! Driving toward us. It can't drive off the road and across the grass... but it does!
We're all on our bikes now. I'm the fastest. A guard steps out in front of me, and I cut right past him. He's right there, reaching, his hand almost on my shirt... and I'm by him. I'm thinking my friends are toast. But we're splitting up, every man for himself, guards yelling, a cop car rolling across the grass, and I'm racing.
I fly past the wooden cabins and cut across a parking lot, then drop down the paved road, legs on fire, not daring to look back.
And there it is, in the nick of time. The gate.
Still open. Why is it still open? Nobody's guarding it!
Boom. I burst through, hang a hard turn down a side street, and I'm gone.
But what about my friends?
Well... that night, we all called each other and traded stories about how we got out. Not one of us got caught. Pino said one of the guards got close enough to tell him never to come back in there, it's private property, all that.
And that was yet another Gladstone adventure from when I was a kid.
So, where'd you sneak into as a kid?
Photo: John and Karen Hollingsworth, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
