Stealing the Pontiac.

Maxes father was a lawyer and worked in NYC. He took the train to work and left his car at the station. Like my father he left around 7am and got home about 7 in the evening. He always parked on the same street and if possible in the same spot. Habit. But, enough variation so that minor discrepancies went unnoticed. When school was out for the day, a bunch of us would walk to the station, find the car and drive around for an hour or 2. Usually the parking place was still there because the street was used for train parking and no one was going into the city in the afternoon. It was easy and we never got caught. Sometimes we would have to park in a different place, and occasionally we put something in the space like a garbage can or movable sign to hold it. His father never noticed.

There was another way we stole his car. Much more labor intensive and we always, read that ALWAYS got caught.

The garage where the car lived faced the backyard with a long sloping downhill driveway to the road. We would wait until well after supper for his father to settle down to TV or a book, and then push the car out of the garage, maneuver it around the parking area in the back, down the driveway and down the street. Then we would start it and drive around the neighborhood for a while. When we came back, we reversed the action. Turned it off down the block, pushed it to the driveway, pushed it UP the driveway to the back, rolled it around to get it in the garage, and there was his father, waiting in the garage. We caught hell, Max got grounded for a few days and we did it again. Got caught every time. His father must have been clairvoyant. Or could he possibly have heard the loud crunching of the tires and our shoes on the gravel driveway as we pushed the Pontiac? Must be that because he never figured out the other theft. And we never figured out how he knew exactly when we were coming up the driveway. Not until we were much older.

Photo: jfpoe.com/51pontiac.htm