> When I was a kid, there were lots of forests around the
> neighbourhood. Nobody seemed to own them and you could
> just grab a hammer and a few nails and go into the bush
> to make fort.
One of my first acts as a bona fide juvenile delinquent was
vandalism of a construction site. Of course I didn't see it
that way then, and I don't see it that way now. It was a noble
act of civil disobediance. I came home from school one day and
saw that the woods where we had our bike race track and our tree
houses were about to become another housing development. In just
one day, several acres had been scraped and surveyed. Well, this
just couldn't be tolerated.
I got a couple of my friends together, and late that night we
hotwired a Caterpiller D7 bulldozer. Sure it made a little noise,
but we knew we could run away through the woods. They'd never
catch us. Well, they had piled up the dirt in some spots, and
levelled patches for foundations. There were survey stakes all
over the place. After a few minutes of trial and error with the
'dozer, I figured out how to drive it around. Then we got the
blade into position and mowed down every survey stake. The piles
of dirt were relocated back to where we figured they belonged.
We took turns driving the dozer for the next hour or two. When
we were done, we drove it as far as could without waking up any
neighbors, then hid it under some brush. Then we removed a bunch
of parts that looked important.
Never did get caught, but we probably only set the developers
back by a day or two.
Save the trees... |
