Over at Authonomy.com, a group of writers from both sides of the Atlantic have contributed true Christmas stories for a compilation called Talking Turkey. As part of the effort, I recall one memorable Christmas in San Diego with this story.
My office phone rang. On the other
end, my future wife was in tears.
“Somebody broke into the house. They
stole our Christmas presents.”
* * *
When asked, the typical
person-on-the-street probably would not list Baltimore,
Maryland among his or her ultimate dream U.S. vacation
destinations. On the contrary, they are likely to put San Diego, California
in at least the top 10.
Baltimore boasts multitudinous crab cakes and
an obscenely high homicide rate. San
Diego offers fish tacos and miles of sun-kissed beaches.
Perhaps it should come as no
surprise that, one summer in the late 1980s, my future wife and I decided to
visit Baltimore.
It should be even less surprising that, at the time, we lived in San Diego.
The primary reason for our trip was
sports. In particular, baseball. Since I was a kid, I’ve been a loyal Baltimore
Orioles fan. From the glory days of Brooks Robinson and Jim Palmer to more
recent lean times with players whose names I cannot remember, I have rooted for
my Beloved Birds with varying degrees of frustration and delight.
Such was the nature of our trek to Charm City
that summer in the waning days of the Reagan administration. Our goal was
simple: Go to old Memorial Stadium and watch baseball, then avoid becoming a
homicide statistic long enough to visit the city’s sparkly-clean downtown tourist
trap known as the Inner Harbor.
In all fairness, the Inner Harbor exemplifies
what an infusion of taxpayer dollars and ridiculously generous tax breaks for
the private sector can to do transform a waterfront from a, well, waterfront,
into a collection of clubs, restaurants, shops, cultural venues and other
places for yuppies to spend their money. During our visit there, we partook of especially
delicious Greek fare and so much seafood that we are likely the reason why the
feds have listed a number of game fish species as endangered. Not to mention many
crabs, for whose deaths I accept full responsibility.
We also shopped. My future wife,
Donna, being a pragmatist, loved to do her Christmas shopping in the summer. To
her, nothing said “Yuletide spirit” more than spending a few hours of a sweltering
July day perusing sales racks in search of a treasure that one family member or
another will find under the tree come December.
The family member she focused on in
Baltimore was
her teenage son, Joe. At the time, he was not yet my stepson as she and I were
living in sin and wouldn’t be married for a couple more years. He also lived
with us. I always viewed that as a test of my fortitude, as if she were saying,
“Okay, mister, if you think you want to marry me, let’s see if you can handle
this kid without running away screaming.”
Truth was, he was a typical teen
back then. If you couldn’t find trouble, Joe would more than make up for your
shortcomings. Yet he has since grown into a good man and a wonderful father in
his own right. However, back then, he was the living embodiment of every
imaginable teen stereotype. But since I was in love, and as Donna shared my
passion for baseball, I would simply grit my teeth and hold on for the ride. I
knew full well that one day, he would exchange that roller coaster ride he took
us on for one piloted by his own kids. (To prove that God does indeed have a
sense of humor, he has three children of his own. All girls. And one is about
to become a teenager.)
But I digress. Back to Baltimore.
As we meandered through the stores
in Harborplace, we came across a shop that sold surf T-shirts. As out of place
as this establishment may have seemed at a landlubber tourist haven in Baltimore, it nonetheless
was a fortuitous discovery for us because, in those days, Joe was an avid
surfer.
It was in this store that we found the
Aussie T-shirt.
As I recall, I was the first to
spot it hanging on a rack. It was yellow, not garish but somewhat muted. Tasteful,
I suppose. The design featured a print on the left breast of a kangaroo holding
a surfboard; I don’t fully recall what was on the back, although the Australian
flag may have played a role in the design.
I had never seen anything like it
before, not even in a surfing burg like San
Diego. I brought the shirt to Donna’s attention and
wondered aloud if Joe might like it.
“Perfect!” she said. “We’ll get it
for him for Christmas.”
Little did we know that we were
buying an item that not only would exemplify the spirit of Christmas giving,
but also would blow the lid off the criminal careers of two unrepentant idiots.
* * *
In those days, we lived in an area
of San Diego
called Tierrasanta. Dubbed by locals as “The Island in the Hills,” it was
nowhere near a beach, much less the Pacific Ocean,
which was a good fifteen 
minutes away. Still, Tierrasanta—Spanish for “holy
land”—was a nice suburban area, filled with typical stucco homes topped by red
tile roofs. (I once heard a pair of popular Los Angeles deejays refer to such regional architectural
delights as “houses that look like Taco Bells”). Perhaps the community’s primary
claim to fame is that skateboarding legend Tony Hawk grew up there. You can
look it up.
What also grew up nearby was the sprawling
Navy housing complex called Murphy
Canyon. If Tierrasanta
was San Diego’s Holy Land, then Murphy Canyon
was its Purgatory.
In the interest of full disclosure,
I served in the Navy during the time of this narrative. Having said that, I
want it made clear that I was not responsible in any way, shape or form for the
Navy housing complex at Murphy
Canyon, its outward
appearance, residents or its negative image among our snooty neighbors in
Tierrasanta.
In 21st century
vernacular, Murphy
Canyon was “ghetto.”
Perhaps in some ways it was a ghetto.
The place teemed with the wives and kids of sailors off on deployment aboard
ships that were based in San Diego.
While it’s nice that they had an inexpensive place to live while their loved
ones were serving our country, they could have at least made that place a
little less hillbilly-esque. To drive through Murphy Canyon
was an exercise in dodging little kids on Big Wheels and bicycles, many of
which were ditched in the streets when their riders were called inside for
dinner. Murphy Canyon
residents seemed resigned to trading in lawn and patio furniture for plastic
sliding boards and other toys left to fade in the Southern
California sun for days on end. Proper landscape care also seemed
to be of a low priority.
At the risk of sounding too
high-falutin’ and downright snobby, I dare say that in some ways, Murphy Canyon
was too trashy for even the trashiest of San Diego County residents. After all,
everyone has their standards.
I soon became aware of the caliber
of Murphy Canyon resident when Joe befriended a
pair of young men who lived there. I don’t recall their names so for sake of
this narrative I’ll call them Butch and Sundance.
Butch was 15 years old and Sundance
was 14. Butch’s father was in the Navy but Sundance’s civilian parents had
kicked him out of their non-Navy home and he was living—in violation of regulations—with
Butch and his family in Murphy
Canyon. Beyond that,
neither of them left even the slightest impression on me.
Although, at Christmas, I would
learn what complete and utter morons they truly were.
* * *
As a second class Navy petty
officer, I worked in downtown San
Diego in the public affairs office of Commander, Naval
Base San Diego. The title sounds grandiose. When I told friends and
acquaintances that I worked for “Commander, Naval Base San Diego,” they assumed
that I reported to an admiral who exercised authority over every sailor, ship
and aircraft in San Diego,
and could mobilize these forces against the looming Soviet menace with a single
phone call.
Too bad the reality was far less
glamorous. In truth, the admiral oversaw a staff of about a couple dozen
military and civilian personnel who did not venture boldly into harm’s way, but
instead worked eight-to-five chained to their haze-gray desks. Even though he
and his staff were headquartered at the old Naval
Supply Center
on Harbor Drive,
the admiral’s role as ComNavBase was “Navy Mayor” of San Diego. His was a sort of ceremonial
liaison position that served to put a happy face on all things Navy in America’s Finest City.
Essentially, the only forces he had
authority to dispatch were paperclips he attached to memos. “Walk softly, but
carry a big Rolodex.”
It was there one December day that
my phone rang. Donna had just returned home from work to discover that someone
had broken into our house in the Holy Land and
pilfered most of our Christmas presents. She was beside herself. I told my
boss, a commander who also was one of the nicest senior officers I ever served
under during my time in the Navy, about the situation. He ordered me to go
home.
There, I found her sobbing amid
half-unwrapped presents that the thieves decided were too crappy to take. Things
like small appliances and such. We inventoried from memory what was stolen as
best we could, a list that included clothing and jewelry. What maddened me more
was that not only did the burglars take these items from under our tree, but they
also ruined our Christmas day surprises.
We tried to figure out how the
burglars entered the house. There was no evidence that they broke in. Upstairs,
I noticed that Joe had removed the screen from his window. Maybe that came in
that way? We were baffled.
Shortly afterward, Joe arrived
home. This is probably a good time to note that if something pushes Joe over
the edge, he tends to have a short fuse. Sufficiently angered, he’s ready to “throw
down” with anybody who dares cross his path. In this case, someone committed
the ultimate flagrant foul by upsetting his mother. In his own inimitable fashion,
he was prepared to hunt down the perps and engage in a little Tierrasanta-style
vigilante justice.
To avoid potential manslaughter
charges, I managed to calm him down. Then he started to put things together. He
reminded us that Butch and Sundance had been in the house the previous evening.
He remembered that as they were leaving, Sundance went back to the living room
to retrieve something before they all exited through the back door. We began to
think that maybe he unlocked the front door from the inside; when we went to bed,
we probably did not check it, assuming as we always did that it had been locked
since we never used it. We only entered and exited the house through the back
door. Yes, that was our own fault, which I admit makes us look like idiots. But
hey, who knew?
Then, in a deft move that would do
any detective proud, Joe called a couple of his other, less sketchy friends who
then launched their own ad hoc investigation.
In short order, they learned through a variety of sources (he didn’t tell, we
didn’t ask) that Butch and Sundance had bragged to some of their friends that
they had stolen some Christmas gifts and were offering them for sale.
Now we knew who had done it. The
next question was, how could we nail them and get our stuff back?
The answer came in the form of an
outright lie.
* * *
Sometimes, genius comes in the
simplest of guises. Including blatant deceit.
Joe pulled us aside and explained
it this way:
“I’m going to tell them that you
and Mom are going out. I told them that when you do, we’ll get some beer and
have a party.”
Joe and his friends sat in the
living room and waited for Butch and Sundance to arrive. When they did, Donna
and I both felt awkward irony as we welcomed them into our house through the
back door. The duo walked past the half-opened and discarded presents like they
didn’t exist. Not even a hint of curiosity about what might have happened in
our house earlier in the day, as they instead focused their attention on the
party that would commence when we were off the premises.
But their demeanor meant nothing to
solving the case of the purloined Christmas presents. What did help, however,
was Sundance’s choice of attire: a yellow T-shirt with an image of a kangaroo
holding a surfboard.
Yes, the 14-year old criminal
mastermind, a stowaway in Navy housing, walked into our house wearing the same
T-shirt we had purchased in Baltimore
and which he had stolen that very afternoon.
I looked at Donna. She looked at
me. We almost burst out laughing.
As the assembled teens waited
patiently for us to “go out,” someone knocked on the front door. Joe opened it.
In the doorway stood a pair of San Diego police officers.
Jaws dropped. Palms got clammy.
Pores opened and sweat dripped.
I grinned and bit my tongue in an
attempt to stifle a laugh.
Then the questioning started.
What was stolen? “Well, some
jewelry, clothes, and that Australia
surf T-shirt he’s wearing, for starters.”
Where did you get that shirt? “I
got it from some black guy in front of the Vons store. This and a Coca-Cola
sweatshirt.”
“Funny, somebody also stole a
Coca-Cola sweatshirt from under our tree.”
The cops made Sundance remove the
Aussie T-shirt on the spot. Joe immediately put it on.
And we cancelled the beer party.
* * *
I can’t recall Butch and Sundance’s
fate, beyond seeing them in handcuffs at the local police station. I do
remember that the cops recovered almost everything that the pair stole from our
house, including a gold bracelet I bought for Donna and which Butch had given
to his girlfriend.
Sorry, Butch.
A few items went missing and were
never seen again. But the bulk of our Christmas presents—now unwrapped, the
element of surprise compromised—came home with us.
Donna insisted on re-wrapping all
the gifts, which we did. We re-opened them on Christmas day. And even though
the dimwit young thieves had sullied all our presents with their fingerprints
and DNA, we nonetheless made the most of the holiday.
Within a year, we moved to another community
in San Diego
called Mira Mesa. (As far as I know, “Mira Mesa” isn’t Spanish for anything,
although it was once home to Chris Chelios of the National Hockey League and
Kellen Winslow Jr. of the National Football League.) We lived there for more
than seven years without being burgled. Then we made our way to Las Vegas, Spanish for “The Meadows,” an island in the Mojave Desert where former Major League Baseball star
Greg Maddux grew up.
Since we’ve lived in Vegas, we’ve
had an alarm system installed in our home.
After all, Butch and Sundance may
have kids of their own by now.
Yet during one Christmas in the
late 1980s, despite Butch and Sundance’s best—albeit completely inept—efforts, we
relished the joy of giving more than we ever had before, or since.
And every night since but
especially at Christmas, before we go to bed, we make sure our doors are
locked.
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