The Time We, Uh, Robbed a Church

Sorry, mom! This perhaps isn’t *quite* as horrific as the title suggests, but it’s definitely not my most wholesome story. And do I have any wholesome stories, really?

We were uncontrollable little metalhead ruffians, running  fairly wild in the ghettos and deserts of Las Vegas. We ran wild because we rarely got caught. So our families never knew what was going on.

The primary culprits were me, Terry, A.J., and my little brother. We caused some serious chaos.

Terry did bring the heat down on us early on by painting three-foot high Van Halen and Black Sabbath logos on our own apartment building, of course. Lucky for me, I had nothing to do with that one.

A.J. and I used to ditch school with a kid named Duncan, to smoke weed, listen to Angry Samoans and stuff, and play Risk. We all used to run the mile every week for gym wearing combat boots.

Literal maniacs, like a junior version of A Clockwork Orange: American Edition. Terry and I were riding our bikes in both lanes of a boulevard one day. A car came up behind us and honked. We flipped them off without looking. It was a Metro cop car.

 Another time we were egging cars and houses, and got chased. Don't try and run with all of your pockets full of eggs.

Video Game Junkies

But before we started smoking weed, arcades were the thing. There wasn’t much to do in Vegas except get in trouble, if you were a kid there in the 80s. Video games and BMX were some of the only legit hobbies to have at the time.

Early on, we collected cans to turn in to Safeway for arcade money. This grew into a serious hustle.

We would put rocks in the cans before we crushed them, adding to their weight considerably. Once we forced a spark plug into one. Five dollars’ worth of cans quickly started to grow into ten and twenty dollars.

In one incident, we had turned in a huge bag, collected our money, and then continued to stand there after the clerk left. Another came by, and paid us a second time. Every bit of it went into arcade games.

There was a little pizza place that had three cocktail games, Moon Cresta and two others I can’t recall. Before we began our aluminum can enterprise, we had learned to put pennies against the back wall of the coin return and flip them upward for credits.

One day, another kid from school stood up and said, “Fuck this, I’m going to the arcade.”

The what?

In another building within the same damn strip mall was a new place, Fantasy World. It probably had forty machines and was literally heaven. It hit on every 80s arcade cliché you can imagine. They sold ice cream, made t-shirts, and was occupied by the full gamut of stereotypes.

Needless to say, we became obsessed.

It became quicker and easier to just find a bum who had collected a huge cart full of cans and wait until he entered a dumpster. Then we would just run up and take the whole thing as he yelled at us, laughing all the way. We also started just knocking on doors and asking people for cans. Oftentimes, retired people would give us all the returnable bottles they were saving, too.

I was at another kid Dennis’s apartment, and he silently showed me a ten-dollar bill. We lit out for the arcade immediately.

Thirty minutes later, his mom was tapping him on the shoulder. He had stolen it from his sister’s purse, and it was likely the only money she had.

I kept playing as they drug hm away by his ear.

Fantasy World gave away a shirt for each high score of the week on every machine. One day an older kid racked up a huge score on Scramble, one of my favorites at the time. I watched him play with admiration, and was in awe as he finally lost and just walked away. I entered my own initials, WIZ, and collected my shirt several days later.

Robbing bums was the gateway into shoplifting.

Den of Thieves

Terry and I walked into a drug store next to the Safeway one day, and without coordinating, each stole something. I don’t remember what he got, but I had taken a Penny Racer, a little car that had a slot in the back for a coin.

After we left and started walking home, sitting on a wall like the devil himself, was an older kid and his friend.

"Take this bag", he said, "go into the Safeway, and fill it with beer. Then just walk out. Bring me the beer and I’ll pay you."

I don’t remember if it was weed or money he offered. But like utter fools, we did it.

Successfully.

Except when we handed them the beer, they just took off.

Naturally, we chased them for blocks. Eventually, they ran into an apartment in a walled-in complex.

It might not have even been the right apartment, but we banged on the door. And interrupted some adult who was apparently having sex at the time, because some huge dude opened the door angry, in his underwear, with a fucking boner.

Doh! That shut down that escapade. We ran.

Once we saw how easy it was, stealing became a daily thing. We started taking a six-pack of Mickey’s beer (in the barrel bottles), and chugging them in the bathroom. We stole a lot of candy, of course, and some magazines, but my specialty was paperback books. Once I got not one, but two Jimi Hendrix biographies, and gave one to Terry.

I never got caught, but it was so commonplace for us, one winter I had a pack of unsweetened baker’s chocolate in my coat (!), and an employee walked up behind me and said, “Alright, what do you have today?”

I pulled it out of my sleeve without him seeing me. “Just this,” I said and handed it to him before leaving.

 

School Daze

Our reign of terror expanded as we got older.

One weekend night, we had a twelve pack of beer, and a Japanese police baton. We drank all the beer in a laundry room, and hit the streets, drunk as hell.

First, Terry smashed in the window of a parked truck. This was hilarious to us. So we jumped the wall into a trailer park, and started throwing rocks at cars.

They were slamming on their brakes, screeching, turning around. Then we started throwing rocks at trailers.

This led to the manager driving up on his van.  Terry played it off, walked up to the guy’s window…and spit in his face.

We ended up getting chased on three-wheelers and splitting up. I ended up tripping over some low wire fence or something, but we both got away. We were each sure the other had been caught.

When I made it to my apartment, my mom said, “Terry showed up and said he had to go back home…”

The first day of sixth grade is when we started smoking pot on our own.

Sixth grade centers are a Vegas thing. K-5 is a school, and then 6^th grade is an entirely separate one. You usually get bused way into North Las Vegas. At least we did.

It would travel down the Strip, and we would flip off tourists, spit on them, etc.

But on the very first day of sixth grade, at the bus stop, Terry said, “I stole a half a joint from my brother. Wanna smoke it?”

Fire that shit up, bro.

On the bus, we were all going apeshit. In the back, flipping people off, mooning them. I think a kid threw a sandwich on someone’s windshield.  The primary target was this little old lady who was following behind us.

She was the superintendent of the LV school busing system.

She pulled the damn bus over. I crawled forward under the seats, and popped up elsewhere, But she recognized me, and put the three of us into the back of her car, and drove us to school.

We were so baked. We attended a class or two, and then they called me to the office. They used these little wooden paddles as hall passes.

As I stepped out into the corridor, Terry and A.J. were walking in unison, saying “Bus-ted, bus-ted”, and slapping their palms with the passes. I joined in without us missing a beat.

At the principle’s office, I tried to play it off like I was bored and cool.

“Are you on medication, son?”

I don’t think anything really came of it. The trick to doing stuff at school and getting away with it is intercepting the mail before your parents checked the mailbox.

 

Metal Up Your Ass

One night, Dark Angel was playing at an all-ages club. Dark Angel was a bit of a Slayer rip-off band that later grew into their own. But at the time, first album, they were pale imitations of Slayer. Singer Don Doty did the same high-pitched yell, and even took an album photo that looked exactly like Tom Araya.

We loved them all the same. Terry made arrangements to meet us there, and A.J. and I walked to the show through the desert. On acid.

As we were talking, he accidentally spit his hit out. We actually looked in the sand at night using lighters to try and find it, to no avail.

It was an all-ages show, but they were searching people at the door. Thinking I was slick, I put my pipe in my inside pocket of my leather jacket. The old man at the door slid his hand inside without hesitation, felt it was a pipe, and waved us in.

Terry arrived shortly thereafter.

The line-up was actually two bands we had never heard of playing first. Voluntary Manslaughter was a local act, I think. Cool, punky hardcore stuff. They had their own eponymous theme song. The second act was also pretty wild hardcore/punk. A little band named PapSmear.

Unbeknownst to us, this was Jeff Hanneman of Slayer’s side project. (UPDATE: No, it wasn't. This was the Vegas band Pap Smear...) It might have been Dave Lombardo on drums, too. (IT WASN'T.) We had no idea that we were seeing an extremely rare performance that few would ever witness. (WE DIDN'T.)

There was a little plywood barricade between us and the stage, and at some point, we made the agreement to tear it down when Dark Angel came out.

We did, and it was a pretty chaotic opening. But the club owners were pissed, of course, and made us put it back up before they would let the show continue.

To our right, was this big dude with a bottle of Budweiser, leaning over the barricade trying to grab the singer, and screaming “Fuck you!”. Terry said, “I think that’s Kerry King!” and it was.

Later we got into a mosh put with this big skinhead in a bandana. We did the Milano Mosh with Billy Milano of Stormtroopers of Death.

There’s no telling how much metal royalty was in attendance that night. Some terrible footage of the show exists, we’re centerstage in the front row.

So that was fun.

At some point a few months after that, Terry and I stole some wood and a can of gas out of the back of some trucks. In broad daylight, I think.

We took them to the desert and built a big cross. It was probably twelve feet high. Then we soaked it in gas, stood it up, and lit it on fire when it got dark.

You could see it blazing from two highways. We got out of there when the LVPD helicopters started showing up. Once a helicopter gets you in the spotlight, you’re done.

And now we come to the climax of this tale.

 

Haunting the Chapel

Tim was a kid who lived in one of these massive Las Vegas trailer parks. If you’ve ever flown into Vegas, you’ve probably seen them. An absolutely massive sea of shimmering trailer homes, walled in. This one, the same one we had vandalized earlier, even had its own convenience store inside.

When I first met Tim, he had short hair. That was seriously not a thing in the Vegas metal scene. He told me he got tired of it, and shaved it off.

Later I found out a few older kids had held him down and shaved his head. He was that kid. A compulsive liar who annoyed everyone he met. And his parents were old. Like, well past retirement old.

I watched him get off the school bus one day, and this little blonde punk girl cold-cocked him. Just punched him in the face and knocked him down.

I used to deliver weed to him when he was punished, bringing it to his window. I kept half of every order.

The same girl ate a whole pack of Dramamine one night while we were drinking Black Velvet in the desert. One kid, Duncan the Hawaiian Punk, passed out. We left him.

A day or two later, he showed up at school. “Bruh, thanks for calling my dad. He came and saved me.”

No, I didn’t call your dad.

“Dude, you don’t have to say it. I know you did, and I really appreciate it.”

So one day Tim and I ate a pack or two of Dramamine each. It didn’t do anything to me.

He started talking to people who weren’t there. I got freaked out and left. His mom called mine soon after.

“My son is talking to an empty room. He says he can’t shower because people are in there. And that there are people under his bed. What is he on?”

For whatever reason, I said acid.

Another phone call. “This is not acid!”

His mom was pretty damn hip. I told them to look behind his speaker for the empty Dramamine packs. I really don’t recommend ever trying this.

One day we were smoking a joint in his room, it was sticking out of an empty pen, for whatever reason.

His old-ass mom walked in and said, “I’ve never understood what you kids see in that shit.” Then she grabbed it and took a huge hit. She left the room coughing as we died laughing.

Tim was an altar boy at some church by my apartments, forced to attend by his parents.

“Hey, man. Come to church with me. I’ll steal some collection money and we’ll buy a sack.”

Say no more. I’m there, dude.

So, we did it. But while there, I noticed the crucifixes the altar boys all wore. They were thin, square, and pretty big. Just very cool. A plan developed.

The next day, me, Terry, my little brother, and A.J. went back during a service.

Wearing Slayer shirts. Which we had turned inside out so as to not appear conspicuous. Which made us look even more bizarre.

But the crosses were all being worn during church. We stood in the back, arms crossed, the entire time. I’m sure people were nervous.

When church was over, we all went outside.

Then Terry and I, the masterminds, sent A.J. and my little brother back in.

They both came running out with two handfuls each. Chased by a hundred Koreans. The adrenaline was high that day.

We got away, of course, because we always did, being little desert hoodrats.

I moved to Louisiana, and took mine with me. I think we each got two of them.

I traded one to a kid named Craig, who later died in a car wreck in front of a Catholic church. The other, I left hanging on a fence by a pool the day I met my first wife.

Terry, on the other hand, drilled his and hung them upside down. A few years later, he met Tom Araya of Slayer and gave him one.

So if you ever see a photo of Tom wearing a long, thin, square crucifix, that was ours. An upside-down cross stolen from a church. I don’t think you can get more metal than that.