[Taltarzac725]

A Christmas story. We were sitting in the movie theater in downtown Reno, Nevada waiting for the latest Clint Eastwood "Dirty Harry" movie to open and the two twenty somethings about forty feet away from us suddenly have quite an impact on us by letting out probably the loudest fart I have ever heard. This was probably at the Majestic or maybe the Granada in early 1974. Of course, this sonic boom of sorts had us rolling on the floor laughing.

Unfortunately this Dirty Harry movie was not fittingly "Sudden Impact" but "Magnum Force". And I was there with one of my friends from Home Gardens a rather rustic area in Reno in that time and kind of under the path of many jets landing and taking off.

We spent the night at a trailer in a park for these vehicles near Virginia Lake and decided to go for a walk around the lake. My friend gets the idea that we should provide breakfast for his Uncle who owns the trailer. The Uncle's wife is off somewhere else. The most likely candidate for breakfast is a duck swimming under a tree. I volunteer to climb up a tree and throw a rock on the swimming fowl. As my friend is looking for a rock for me to drop on the potential breakfast, up walks the cop who just got out of his squad car and looking like he is going to do a pretty good imitation of Dirty Harry on us. We did not feel very lucky and my friend quickly blamed the whole thing on me.

Well we get into the police cruiser and I have my second ride in a cop car after the first one when I ran away from home on my tricycle around 1962 after my parents brought home my new younger brother Charles. I managed to trike about 1.5 miles. This trip in a paddy wagon of sorts was about that far to some satellite station of the Reno Police Department somewhere around Moana Lane.

The cops seemed to be snickering under their breath about our plan for getting some extra meat on the breakfast table but still locked us up for a few hours. Of course, I was worried sick about how all this would work out with my parents. Would I lose all my Christmas presents because of this? Be grounded for life?

My father came and got me in the afternoon and it seemed like nothing much happened after that. The cops had made some noise but never had me fill out any papers that I can recall. I guess either they had no grounds to arrest or just had the Holiday Spirit. All they had so far at that point was that I had climbed a tree.

That part of my 1983-1984 Christmas vacation had started with a gas and ended with a whimper. I did get to keep my Christmas presents but was kind of upset with my friend for blaming me for the whole thing and the cop had believed him because I was a lot bigger than my Home Garden's friend.

[Taltarzac725]

Magnum Force - Wikipedia

Kind of remember this one a little bit. Will have to see it again soon. Except I almost always remember what happened at the Granada or Majestic Theater back in Reno, Nevada in late December 1973 or early January 1974. I was 14 at this time with a birthday of 2-24-1959. These two movie theaters were close together in downtown Reno. One of them closed in 1975. Majestic Theater in Reno, NV - Cinema Treasures Granada 4 in Reno, NV - Cinema Treasures