Glendale Cherry Creek Chronicle

Attention evildoers everywhere. For Gawdsake, whatever you do, don’t do your crimes in Arapahoe County because as sure as Gawd made little green apples you’ll do hard times.
As Rod Sterling from the 1960s television show Twilight Zone always said, “Consider if you would: Sheriff Pat Sullivan and the hammer of justice falling on his head swung at by the Nordic God of Justice Thor, ‘They sure showed him.’”
Let me take you back in time. The office of the Attorney General Iron John “Move That Pot Store Because We Must Protect The Children” Suthers and his hard prosecution of “Pedophile Pat” the kiddes’ pal, one-time head of security for Cherry Creek Schools and longtime sheriff of Arapahoe County. They showed Pat. By the time you read this Pat will probably be on the beach somewhere in the Caribbean making up for all the bad things he did to people. Remember OJ Simpson was going to spend the rest of his life hunting for the true killers of Ron and Nicole Goldman. Pat is also going to make it right to everyone he harmed.
Sure, Pat. (Winky winky). Suthers took over the prosecution and investigation of Sullivan following a January 18, 2012, executive order from your Governor Silent John Hickenlooper and that crack crime fighter then went to work.
Consider if you would 22 full-time law enforcement officers — the Elite Investigative team that included officers from the Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Office, the Aurora Police Department, the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, the Denver Police Department, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office and the South Metro Drug Task Force. All we needed to make this a full-time party would be those fun-seekers from the Secret Service and funding from those thrill-seeking GSA employees.

We’re told its 22 full-timers and as many other LEOs that they needed to investigate Pat and his fun-filled days and nights. I don’t know how many hundreds of thousands of dollars in salaries, manpower hours and effort went into that 30-day sentence that Pat received but I can guarantee you this: Put that many bloodhounds on anybody with unlimited resources and they could get Mother Teresa a double nickel.

Can you smell what John Suthers is cooking?

Now here comes the best part. Eyewitnesses talked about Suthers’ office being represented by another crime fighter Mike Dougherty and Pat’s legal team going into the chambers of Hanging Judge William Sylvester only to emerge some 20 minutes later — everyone smiling. The judge then said, “Remember Mr. Sullivan, you don’t have to take this deal.”

Not take this deal? That’s like saying to me, “Boyles, remember, you don’t have to cash in that Mega Million Dollar lottery ticket.”

At that point the former Sheriff of the Year and Head of Security at Cherry Creek Schools was taken away for his 30-day vacation into the jail facility that bears his name. Just as an aside — Tim Faase, who sold the meth to Pat the Rat, got three years at Canon City. And to further make your day, in two recent sentencings, the former VP of Quality Paving in Brighton got 13 years in the joint for a scandal for bilking tax payers for $1.7 million. The prosecutors on that case wanted 25 years for Dennis “The Menace” Cohen. And dateline Castle Rock — Richard Heeringa was sentenced to 576 years for sexually abusing a girl for three years starting when she was 12. As we used to say in undergrad written tests — compare and contrast those two sentences to how the legal system dealt with Pat Sullivan.

Pat’s final words in the courtroom were that he accepted the court’s decision followed by, “I just want to move forward with my life.” Can I get a big WTF?!

Now common sense tells you that some old creep like Pat could not have been doing everything he was doing, involved with everything he was involved with, without powerful people involved with him as well and getting him a sweetheart deal. I said on my award-winning radio show two days after Pat was apprehended that he would never take the stand. Arapahoe County’s J. Edgar Hoover, Pat Sullivan, I can guarantee you had files and stories on a lot of people.

As I said, by the time you read this, Pat will be sipping margaritas and watching kiddie porn on his handheld mobile device while talking television, movie and book deals. And the Batman and Robin of drug enforcement in Colorado, John Walsh and John Suthers, will be having the feds go after medical marijuana stores. Sullivan will suffer no charges for bringing drug dealers into a school system as security agents. A note to Suthers: What about the children?

Sullivan is a child-molesting, drug and power-abusing monster and he gets 30 days in jail? This is a joke. Remember all of these things when Election Day rolls around.

So have a nice day and thanks for playing.

Peter

Peter Boyles is a nationally acclaimed radio host who can be heard Monday through Friday on 630 KHOW 5 to 9 a.m. He has a monthly column in the Glendale Cherry Creek Chronicle. Visit Peter’s blog and comment on his column, or let him know anything else that’s on your mind, by going to the Chronicle Web site at www.glendalecherrycreek.com.

So the story goes something like this: My son Morgan and his girlfriend Val called me about a month and a half ago to notify me that I was about to become a grandfather. I always thought that was the old guy living in the Swiss Alps with Shirley Temple in the classic film Heidi. He could hardly walk — all he could do was take care of goats and chop wood.

I’m really amazed at how I feel about becoming a grandfather. I guess there are changes in everybody’s life. I think becoming a father was one of the most amazing moments in my life and now all I can say to my son is, “Now you will know how I felt about you.” So if a grandfather is the parent of somebody else’s parent, as frightening as that sounds, I guess here we go.

All I ever knew about grandparents was my father’s mother Rachel who lived with us in a really tiny rental in Pittsburgh, when I was a little guy. I think she taught my sister and me how to read. I later found out that she and my mother were not fond of each other. But then again, with my Uncle Gene home from the war, my mother, my dad, his mother and my sister and I all in four rooms wasn’t the easiest way to live. Rachel apparently had no place to live — a lot of her boys were in the military and a couple of them had run away from home to California. So my old man — the milk of human kindness — took in my grandma. She passed away when I was pretty young so the only grandma I really have any true memory of was my mother’s mother, the lovely and talented Mabel.

Mabel could give a cobra the first two bites and still win the fight. My father was once asked what was Mabel doing and he said she had gone to the Middle East to teach them how to fight dirty. She ruled the roost and lived with my uncle in a little rented apartment with my other aunt and uncle. A real thrilling time for me as a kid was to go over to where grandma lived and watch the guys who married her daughters drink themselves into some form of oblivion.

In fact, I never knew my Uncle Walter drank until I was 11-years-old and saw him sober. Grandma had that effect on men. For my mother’s father, the original grandfather, his life ended early by alcoholism. And my father’s father, the original “Mick” — Big Gene — died in some county home — I guess because as we say today, lifestyle choices.

So that’s kinda what I know about grandparents. However, I saw other kids’ grandparents. In and around Pittsburgh, they were known by ethnic names like “Nonno,” “Pepe,” “Pap-Pap” or Grandpa (insert first or last name here). Short of that, I knew nothing at all about how to be a grandparent. So I guess here we go.

On Valentine’s Day, Val and Morgan were married in a courtroom by Judge Andre Rudolph (what a good man). If I ever pull the pin your Honor, you’ll be the man to do the job. Thank you for what you did for my son and his wife.

I guess what we’re really talking about is three generations of Boyles men all living at the same time. Me, Morgan and this wonderful young gift that’s headed my way. We were talking about what I was going to teach him. I figured skiing and motorcycles would be more than enough to have Val despise me. But hopefully one of my early gifts could be teaching him, as my grandma did, how to read.

I’ve gotten over the fear that becoming a granddad makes me old — hell, I am old. I already have underwear older than my son and his wife. I truly believe that my son, who is a very compassionate man, will be a better father than his father. As a young boy Morgan always went to pro wrestling with me when I was working the ring and TV. In fact one of my son’s early claims to fame was that he had dinner with the Road Warriors — Animal and Hawk. Now his major request is that I never tell his son about or take him to pro wrestling. Ouch. I think pro wrestling is the only real sport left that isn’t fixed.

So the road continues. As the Bible calls it “the begats.” I begat Morgan and Morgan begat the new guy. It’s been said, I believe by Mark Twain, that the reason that grandparents and grandchildren like each other so much is that they share the common enemy. This kid will have a great uncle, my brother Jeff, who again Morgan has asked me to keep away from the new kid. I think it’s because of the things my brother did in wanting to toughen up Morgan at a very young age. I think that stuff becomes embedded. He’s also asked me not to get him a black leather motorcycle jacket that says “Mama Tried” before his third birthday.

What’s interesting is that so far, every grandparent I speak to is helplessly in love with his or her grandchildren. People are just in love with these little guys.

So I end with this: Val and Morgan — welcome to marriage and to parenthood. For me this is just another step into what life brings us.

In an Asian culture the highest moral values are dictated by grandparents. According to some historians they would hold authority over the matters of family such as child-raising and values. I’m really glad that Val and Morgan will not be influenced by Confucianism.

See ya in June little guy.

Peter

He wore a hat that made him look like a Mountie. He was the Sheriff of Arapahoe County.

I think by now everyone in the known universe is beginning to understand the sickness that was a chief law enforcement agent in Arapahoe County. Sixty-eight-year-old Pat Sullivan. Pat’s charges are: possession of methamphetamine, distribution of the same, soliciting prostitutes and one of my all-time favorite charges, attempting to influence a public servant.

So what did the erstwhile Arapahoe County Commissioners do in the face of all these sleazy, unmentionable, reptilian, rat-like events? They are “thinking about” having a “study session” to “consider” renaming the Arapahoe County Jail.

Let me refer you to Commissioner Rod “Hot Rod” Bockenfeld who told your Denver Post that they had heard an outcry from their constituents about the jail being named after the greatest sleaze ball in modern history, Pat Sullivan. How hard-hitting is it going to be when Hot Rod calls a study session next month?

Wow. Acting in laser-like speed. Forget about the corruption; forget about the prostitutes sucking on the meth pipe; forget about the alleged molestation of a 14-year-old boy at a skating rink; forget about it reintroducing recovered persons to meth itself; forget about possibly infecting his wife with HIV along with a couple of runaways; forget about him taking people out of jail (seemingly at will); and forget about him flashing an honorary badge at people in order to intimidate them. The Arapahoe County Commissioners are going to forget all of that and instead have a study session about renaming the jail.

Now, maybe it’s just me but this somehow rivals last month’s column when we realized that the major media in the city themselves have more important things to focus on than high-priced prostitution and gambling rings — namely the “Mile High Messiah” Tim Tebow. Don’t get me wrong — I like Tebow as much as the next guy, maybe not as much as Pat Sullivan, but nevertheless Tebow is wonderful and I enjoy cheering him on.

I would like to help the study group by offering names for the new joint:

1) The Detention Center For Pat Sullivan (it won’t cost any money to make that change)
2) The Naughty Nottingham Home For Wayward Girls
3) The Denver Post/Channel 9 Institution For The Blind
4) The Scottie Ewing/Brenda Stewart “You Mean This Is All The Time I Have To Do” Penitentiary
5) Ritterworth
6) The Chuck Lepley/Mitch Morrissey FBI Crime Center
7) Joanne Ostrow’s Dirty Work Academy
Boys Town (He ain’t heavy, Pat)
9) The Douglas Bruce Bastion Of Republican Interests
10) The Dan Maes/Scott McInnis Center of Political Studies/Plagiarism
11) The Michael Hancock Heritage Center
12) The Wellington Webb….oops! That’s already been done
13) The Federico Pena…wait, I think he already has a street
14) Ward Churchill’s Native American Cultural Studies Institute
15) The Jared Polis School For Boys
16) The Jeff Springer/Harvey Steinberg Study Group For Professional Athletes
17) The Home For Bill Clinton’s National Task Force On Crime (which Pat was part of)
18) National Headquarters For Sheriff Of The Year
19) Here’s one you’ll never see: The Silent Governor John Hickenlooper Colorado Crime Commission To Oversee Sex Scandals In The Mile High City
And last but not least:
20) The Arapahoe County Center For Disease Control And STD Prevention
Any bets on whether Pat will ever have his day in court?

Happy New Year.

Peter

Peter Boyles is a nationally acclaimed radio host who can be heard Monday through Friday on 630 KHOW 5 to 9 a.m. He has a monthly column in the Glendale Cherry Creek Chronicle. Visit Peter’s blog and comment on his column, or let him know anything else that’s on your mind, by going to the Chronicle Web site at www.glendalecherrycreek.com.

The whole world is watching, we’re not violent and we have the right to stay in Veterans Park. Adventures of an old man and the Occupiers.

I think most people know that America is now being Occupied. From Wall Street to Los Angeles, from Florida to Chicago, America is being Occupied. In fact, last weekend I was driving through Empire, Colorado, coming back from Winter Park, and I saw a sign that said, “Occupy Empire.”

Generally when I leave Empire on my way to Winter Park, I always look for the sign that says “Welcome to Grand County, You’re Leaving Planet Earth.”

Occupy Denver began Occupying what’s known as Veterans Park in September. I started making some stops there and made friends with a lot of young people that I have really come to respect and like. For those of you who read Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, recall when the Joad family got to the government camp and there were committees inside the camp. Committees for policing the camp, medical supplies, guard duty, sanitation and of course the entertainment committee — all of which led to the night where the fight breaks out on the dance floor which would eventually lead to Tommy leaving Ma.

Occupy Denver seemed to be working really well with their committees — in fact I got to be very friendly with two of their media committee members. I’m sure they don’t want their names in this column in case anyone would ever use it against them in a future job app. When the end was coming and pressure was brought about by the mayor and the governor, like all good things Occupy Denver had to come to an end.

Note to self: By ordering the State Patrol and the Denver Police into potential harm’s way on the Thursday night/Friday morning when the Occupy removal began, conspicuous by their absence were the accidental mayor and the boy king John Hickenlooper.

Note to mayor and governor: If you’re sending your guys in to what could be a very precarious situation, be manly enough to go with them.

On the final night and into the final day, the Occupiers knew that the police were coming to remove them. During the day there were over 70 tents but when I got back at midnight it was down to about 35 tents. But apparently the people with good tents packed up and pulled out. One of the things I did see change was an element of people I’d never seen there before. I do believe they were outside agitators who called themselves anarchists. When the first of the law enforcement showed up at around 3:10 a.m., this crowd of people pulled on hoods, looking like street ninjas, and wrapped their heads, making themselves look like Colfax Bedouins.

It was clear, at least to me, that this wasn’t their first rodeo. They looked like they had come to fight. That night and that morning Colorado State Patrol and Denver Police were at their finest. A lot has been said recently about Denver Police getting out of hand; believe me, none of that happened that night.

State Patrol moved into the park from the southeast corner, swept through, and as they promised, tore down the tents. Behind them would come big, orange Colorado state dump trucks and I think, like the Trojan horse, the maintenance workers were all inside the trucks. They immediately got out of the trucks and started throwing the collapsed tents in the back of them. Protest signs went, blankets, sleeping bags — they all went into the truck. Then they stopped. Once given a moment to rest, they began again. They did this three times and in 45 minutes the whole park was clear except the kitchen that had been dubbed “The Thunder Dome,” the medical supply tent and the headquarters tent. These were built out of sturdy 2×4s and anchored on the sidewalk — therein property of the City of Denver.
Then moving in from the southwest side was the Denver Police. Everyone was in riot gear, no one spoke and they put up a wall that contained Occupiers on Broadway. They incrementally moved in. To the credit of law enforcement, by that morning, they allowed the Occupiers to remove all the food stuffs that had been either purchased or donated, and all the medical supplies, to be containerized and placed on the sidewalk. The Occupation was rapidly coming to an end and then it began. These are people who don’t seem to realize that the police don’t lose fights and have the right to go home safely when their shifts are over.

The element that mouthed off and tried to act tough were not the people I had become friends with during the time leading up to when everyone had to leave. And so, about 25 people assumed the boneless chicken position and got hauled off only to be released later that afternoon — law enforcement’s version of “catch and release.” And so it ended.

Here’s the lesson: In my lifetime, political change has come from the streets. The Civil Rights demonstrations from the ’50s became mass demonstrations in the early ’60s and the law in the middle ’60s. Ending the war in the ’70s had its roots in demonstrations in the early part of the ’60s. The same can be said for the struggle for women’s rights and eventually gay rights. So pay attention to the Occupy Movement. As more people lose their jobs, insurance and homes, and in essence their futures, the real question here is will middle class America join the Occupy Movement. It’s happened four or five times in my life already and history would teach us to pay attention to these people — this Movement could potentially have wings.

I’d like to leave you all with a quote from one of my favorite women from American fiction, Ma Joad:

“Did they make you mean in there Tommy? They made Pretty Boy Floyd mean.”

Right on. Power to the people.

Peter

Peter Boyles is a nationally acclaimed radio host who can be heard Monday through Friday on 630 KHOW 5 to 9 a.m. He has a monthly column in the Glendale Cherry Creek Chronicle. Visit Peter’s blog and comment on his column, or let him know anything else that’s on your mind, by going to the Chronicle Web site at www.glendalecherrycreek.com.

I can die happy, the return of the native, the dark at the top of the stairs, look homeward angel and/or you can go home again if only momentarily.

Fifty years went by like lightning. The banner class of Penn High School held its 50th class reunion during the first part of September this year. I’d never attended a reunion before but one of the really good guys I went to high school with, Mort Stanfield, contacted me and asked me if I would conduct an “after the dinner talk and conversation.” I had to think about it for a couple of days and then I thought, “This would be great.” And just like The Lion King, it was the Circle of Life.

So riding back from Sturgis by myself I worked on what I thought I would say. Remember, we’re not the hippies, we’re not the beatniks, we were not a protest generation; we were simply children of the ’40s and our boyhoods/manhoods were spent in the ’50s. I was out of high school almost two years before Jack Kennedy was killed. (Now I sound like my mother talking about Pearl Harbor).

So into the Hamar House restaurant in Harmarville, Pennsylvania, on a Friday night I strode with my close personal friend Dena Pastorini with a lump in my throat and a brick where my stomach was. I had had breakfast that morning with Mort and a man from my neighborhood, Mike Laus, who had managed to get himself a PhD from the University of Alabama. We had breakfast in a café close to the steel mill I worked in as a kid that has now been torn down and the scrap metal I think got shipped to Japan.
One of the women we went to high school with now owns the café, and after being with Mike and Mort for breakfast, I really could have gotten on the airplane and gone home. They had been in touch with a lot of people and knew the outcomes of many of our classmates’ lives. Mort, after returning from Vietnam, spent his professional life helping young people in Pittsburgh. Mission accomplished.

But that night it took about 15 minutes for all the walls to drop, all the stories to begin, all the tears to flow and all the hugs and embraces to start.

Everybody wore a picture of who they were in 1961 — their high school yearbook picture with their name attached. Two old guys would look at each other — not at their faces but at each other’s chests where the pictures were, and then exclaim: “Jesus Christ I thought you were dead!” or “Did you marry her?” or in one of my dearest friends Sam Miglioretti’s words, “WTF have you been doing for the last 50 years?!”

Now Sam, whose real name is Savaro, brought his award-winning homemade wine for our table. Note to self: Sam and I talked about being 12 and 13 years of age and drinking his father’s homemade wine after school and me stumbling home to my parents’ house with the heat on in 1958. Some things just don’t change. (The idea of being in recovery from alcohol seems to have skipped a lot of folks in Western Pennsylvania).

I bought drinks for a lot of guys at the bar that night — now remember where I grew up a mixed drink is a shot and a beer or as they say, “An imp (imperial whiskey) and an iron (Iron City beer).” Now as my uncle would always say, they sent a sample of Iron City beer to a chemist whose return report said, “Your horse is really sick.”

One of the local old DJ legends by the name of Charlie Apple spun the tunes. You forget how wonderful late ’50s and early ’60s doo wop music really is.

Over the course of the evening one of the fellows, whose name I won’t use in this column, had recently come home from over 35 years in the state penitentiary. The beef was murder. Between 1959 and 1961 he was one of the finest athletes in Western Pennsylvania, now reduced to a seemingly frail old fellow in a white shirt, a stingy brim hat and eyeglasses. His sports were track and field, basketball and football. I introduced him that night without mentioning everything that had happened after 1961, and the room gave him a standing ovation. It was definitely a highlight for all of us. And later in the evening my girlfriend Dena went over and asked him to dance.

So what have we learned? Things don’t change, but the more they do change the more they really remain the same. Included in the night’s program was a list of our classmates who had passed away. The series of events were the Vietnam War, accidents, sickness and lifestyle choices. I found out that one of my dearest friends from the first grade on, a kid named Johnny Gest, was gone. That one hurt.
A local physician friend of mine had said, “Well Peter, not everyone gets to live to 70.”
I hate that.

Returning to Pittsburgh was like Neil Diamond said, “L.A.’s home but it ain’t mine and New York’s mine but it ain’t mine no more.” And without the help of my nephew Pad, I couldn’t have found my way around. Thank God Dena understood how to use the GPS. I drove by my Dad’s house and somebody had put aluminum siding on it. I can’t believe six people shared only one bathroom in a place that little. I went to the cemetery to visit and discover my Uncle Gene and Aunt Helen’s graves were there as well. Gene, who had gone all the way to Anzio across North Africa before it was time to go home, drank hard the rest of his life and was always terrific to me. Went up to his grave, put my hand on the stone and said, “Thanks Gene. You were great to me as a kid.”

And so with that we say, I don’t think there are many reasons to return to Pittsburgh. But to see the Allegheny River, that went past the steel mill I worked in after high school, knowing that river is going to be there when everyone from the Class of 1961 is gone, or as they said with the Wiffen Poofs, past and forgotten with the rest.

Thanks,
Peter

If you know the history of Islam every devout Muslim is mandated at least once in their lifetime to make the trip (The Hajj) to Mecca and throw stones at the Devil. I’ve always believed the Devil was extremely frightened of a bunch of Muslims throwing pebbles at him.

So people want to know where the Devil goes when the Muslim people are throwing rocks at him. In other words, when Satan goes on vacation to escape crazy rock-chucking Muslims, where does he take five? My contention is: Sturgis, South Dakota.

Like everybody else, the Devil takes his vacation in August and in fact, in the first full week of August, the Devil seems to be out of town and firmly planted in America’s heartland. Somewhere between Deadwood and Rapid City.

The locals always call it the Rally. It was actually held for the first time on August 14, 1938, by the legendary Jackpine Gypsies Motorcycle Club. (The little pine trees up there are called Jackpines, hence the name). The Gypsies, by the way, still own and operate the dirt tracks, the hill climbs and a lot of the field areas that the Rally is concentrated around. The first Rally only lasted two days and was mainly focused on racing and motorcycle stunts.

The stunts have survived but now it really is Ft. Lauderdale, Spring Break, Mardi Gras, the Kentucky Derby, the Super Bowl, Miss America, the World Series and any and all heavyweight championships all rolled into one. The first year at Sturgis there were 19 participants. This year it’s been estimated between 500,000 and 600,000 of my closest friends.

The Sturgis rally has been held every year since 1938 with the exception of WWII.

The founder is considered to be Clarence Pappy Hoyle who, remember this, bought an Indian motorcycle franchise in 1936. The original Sturgis was a promotion when Pappy challenged the Rapid City Harley Davidson dealer to races and hill climbs.

And that’s about where the tradition begins. Now there are people who claim that Lot’s wife has looked back on Sturgis from the Spearfish Canyon and turned into a pillar of salt. None of that is really true. I’ve been going to Sturgis for 10 years and all except one year I’ve ridden my motorcycle up and back. I’ve never so much as seen a fight or a bad word but there are several exceptions.

One is a bar in downtown Sturgis called The Knuckle. You can fight anybody you want in there every afternoon at 4 p.m. The place is packed and there are always plenty of men and women who seem to want to duke it out with somebody else. Everyone is in agreement, everybody shakes hands and whoever wins the fight gets money thrown at them by the audience. Think Gladiator if you would, only with leathers, ink and heavy duty sunburns.

Part of The Hajj is doing what’s known as going out to see the heads. Make the trip to Mt. Rushmore and it never fails to give me the chills. On the way back there are guys doing the same thing, carving Native American fighting legend Crazy Horse. I always go by and salute the Horse.

I’ve always heard stories of people unloading their motorcycles outside of town and pretending they rode in. This time, crossing out of Wyoming and into South Dakota, I actually did see people unloading motorcycles out of trailers to ride into Sturgis. The Barney badass bikers call that “bringing your motorcycle to trailer week.”

The true people that this Rally is about I don’t think I could ever be. I come as a tourist and they live here. The place where they live shares a total love of motorcycles and motorcycle lifestyles, and I’d be willing to bet a large percentage of them are American veterans and hardworking men and women who once a year go off the leash and have a great time.

These people are the backbone of this country: they work, they pay their taxes and they love their country. In the minds of the progressives in their little reptilian brains, they always seem to make fun of who these people are. Believe me, I would much rather have any one of these people getting off an ultra full dressed out Harley Davidson with their wife on the back than any one of the uptight, sanctimonious, Cherry Hills Republicans or Beamer driving, chardonnay sipping, city dwelling, Obama backing, power elites.

Live long and ride free, God rides a Harley.

My favorite shirt this year: “When you went to Sturgis I slept with your wife.” Although it didn’t say “slept with”….

Live to ride, ride to Sturgis. You’ll see America in a whole different way.

Peter

Peter Boyles is a nationally acclaimed radio host who can be heard Monday through Friday on 630 KHOW 5 to 9 a.m. He has a monthly column in the Glendale Cherry Creek Chronicle. Visit Peter’s blog and comment on his column, or let him know anything else that’s on your mind, by going to the Chronicle Web site at www.glendalecherrycreek.com.

I’ve written before about two of my favorite uncles — my Uncle Barney who was a SeaBee in WWII and my Uncle Gene who went through North Africa and got as far as Anzio. They were spiritual guides and mentors to me as a boy in Pittsburgh. Today they’d probably both be doing time in any prison in Pennsylvania for the things they gave me and taught me as a boy.

As you know today we must have three varieties (i.e. skin colors) of baby dolls in any day care center. And girls are being urged to wear little nursing harnesses so they can emulate Mommy when she nurses the new baby. Note to others: Do you ever get the sense that your daughter will be telling her therapist in 20 years that you bought her a toy that performs mock breastfeeds?

We’ve been over it time and time again — why little boys can’t have toy guns. So let me get this straight: In America today it’s politically correct to have imitation breasts and breastfeed GI Joe as opposed to running around the backyard playing GI Joe? Note to self: Realizing of course that you can’t say anything bad about Muslims, who is GI Joe’s enemy today?

As a boy in Pittsburgh we could always fight Nazis or Japs (realizing that “Japs” is also a politically incorrect term) but many times we’d sit up in a tree with half a red brick dropping them on toy army men and playing bombs over Tokyo.

I’m sure you all remember rubber knives. Who hasn’t stabbed their brother with a rubber knife wishing it was real? I actually had a plastic knife that had a blade that disappeared into the handle, giving the impression that you actually stabbed someone. Now that was a good time. I wonder where in the Front Range a young boy could go today to buy a pea shooter without being followed home by the Jefferson County District Attorney’s office.

How about this one nostalgia fans: slingshots! I always saw ads in outdoor magazines that pictured a guy shooting a deer or rabbit with a sling shot and I always thought I could survive in the wilderness of Pittsburgh armed only with a slingshot. Of course today the slingshot police would put your father in a penitentiary for two years for letting you possess one.

In the spring a young man’s fancy doesn’t turn to baseball, it turns to squirt guns. How you could sit across from a guy in a schoolroom cafeteria during lunch and surreptitiously soak his crotch with a squirt gun, one squirt at a time. When he got up to leave after lunch it looked like he wet his pants. Come on — who doesn’t know a good time when they see it.

Okay say you never did this: a bow and arrow with suction cup rubber tips on the arrows always named after some fake Indian like Tonto or Little Beaver. How long did it take you to remove the suction cups and sharpen the arrow point with your pocket knife (Oops! A pocket knife. You can’t even get on an airplane with one of those nowadays). The lesson to that is what good is a suction cup? It’s not a deadly weapon and you can’t threaten your brother with it but we could play a game called “The Run of the Arrow” with it. You shot the arrow as far as you could and your little brother was given a head start to pick up the arrow, throw it down and run. It’s a game that’s now banned — along with Dodge Ball and anything else that has a first place trophy involved with it.

Sometimes I think, like in Ray Bradbury’s science fiction masterpiece Fahrenheit 451, there’s a place on the other side of the wall where kids still play Mumblety-peg, Dodge Ball, Hangman, Smear the Queer, burning ants with magnifying glasses, hooking rides on the back of the bus, Capture the Flag, Steal the Bacon, who can punch the hardest, saying things about each other’s mothers, playing baseball without an adult present, reading Playboy, learning to smoke cigarettes, bug squishing, spitting contests and of course, where else is a kid supposed to learn about sex? Except from an older kid who is 13 or 14-years-old after which you would walk home saying to yourself, “My mother and father never did that.”
So in closing, the age of political correctness is upon us and I really do think there is something to the theory that the progressives are trying to pound masculinity out of little boys. They want everyone to share and to care and be sensitive of another boy’s emotions. Never to draw airplanes diving down on Japanese soldiers with their heads blowing off flying in the air. (I wonder if any kid today would dare draw a Warthog plane shooting up a mosque full of Hajjis). Instead they want them to draw butterflies, unicorns and flowers. God would that suck!

Hey, enjoy your summer. And in the words of my sainted mother with a Tarrington cigarette in her mouth, “Don’t go near that Gawdamm river” (aka the Allegheny River) which of course was the first place my brothers and I headed.

Thanks,
Peter

Peter Boyles is a nationally acclaimed radio host who can be heard Monday through Friday on 630 KHOW 5 to 9 a.m. He has a monthly column in the Glendale Cherry Creek Chronicle. Visit Peter’s blog and comment on his column, or let him know anything else that’s on your mind, by going to the Chronicle Web site at www.glendalecherrycreek.com.

The great playwright Noel Coward called this “Private Lives.” The history of our country or in fact, the history of the world, is replete on how private lives change history, manners and destinies.

In my lifetime, although no one knew it at the time, Franklin Roosevelt had a series of great loves and in fact died in the arms of his “substitute” first lady. The American people didn’t know it and of course his wife Eleanor Roosevelt, who put the bomp in the bomp-she-bomp, with her own lesbian lover by the name of Lorena Hickok, known as a woman with a husky voice, preemptive manners and baggy clothes.

Of course FDR dies in the arms of Lucy Mercer Rutherford in Warm Springs, Georgia (only Bill Clinton could be born in a better place, Hot Springs) while his portrait is being painted in the summer of 1945.
The American Press Corps, who were covering the president, were sitting in a train siding playing poker, drinking whiskey and smoking cigarettes. They covered up for FDR, and it wasn’t until much later in American history that his affair was revealed. In fact, it’s only been in recent history that we’ve discovered the bisexual tendencies of Eleanor Roosevelt.

Jack Kennedy laid more pipe than Standard Oil. The difference between Kennedy and Clinton were the women involved. One obviously made love to Marilyn Monroe, the other to Monica Lewinsky.

One of America’s great villains was none other than J. Edgar Hoover, the founding father of the FBI. Hoover’s anxiety was about his own sexuality; turns out America’s number one crime fighter was also America’s number one chief cook and bottle washer. In Anthony Summers’ biography “Official and Confidential: The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover,” he claims Susan Rosenthal told him that she attended a party in 1957 hosted by Roy Cohn in a Plaza Hotel suite where she met Hoover wearing a fluffy black dress. He was also wearing a little short garter belt. You gotta love it!

Now of course locally all you have to do is ask Gary Hart what sitting behind the desk in the Oval Office is like and as we know he could never tell you. As Chuck Berry sang, “Too much monkey business.” Then of course there is America’s sweetheart Bill Clinton. I don’t even have to complete this paragraph… A guy using a cigar as a sexual aid in the Oval Office? Even I’m not that sick!
Larry Flynt and David Eisenbach, a Columbia University PhD, have done a great new book titled “One Nation Under Sex” that is for your further research.

Now comes Denver Players, Denver Sugar and the infamous Denver Club. Founded in 1880, the Denver Club is the oldest private men’s club in Denver — now that should give you a clue about our city. The sex lives of Denver’s most powerful leaders have been amazingly whitewashed by The Denver Post, many police departments including the feds and any and all other media outlets. Seemingly the only guy left holding the bag is Judge Edward Nottingham aka “Naughty.” I wonder how Naughty feels today — I guess kinda like Gary Hart felt when Clinton got sworn in.

You gotta believe this is what’s going on in Denver right now. There have been a lot of calls to Murray Motors from the social elite wanting to get that Beamer convertible ready for the Mrs. in case The List drops.

Also you gotta believe that they’re calling Tom Shane and saying, “Tom, this time it’s for the old lady so don’t give me one of those fugazis.”

So as we write this, myself and Ms. Laura Lieff my ghost, everyone is wondering when the next shoe will drop. You’ll know when Joanne Davidson can only write about Denver’s Archbishop and Denver’s socially prominent are suddenly taking Baltic cruises with the family and asking for a little privacy from the press.

So I guess that’s it folks — maybe by now we are heading toward a special election. Note to Chris Romer: Don’t burn those yard signs just yet.

When are these people ever going to learn: Billy Sol Estes, Teddy Kennedy, Walter Jenkins, Wilbur Mills, Sherman Adams, Larry Craig, Roy Romer, Bill Owens, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Eliot Spitzer and last but not least, Anthony Weiner. Geez…. when you’re caught, confess! It kills the story. But then again when Michael Hancock was asked if it was true he said that everyone is taking the word of a pimp. I say, “Pimp, Politician — what’s the difference?”

Happy Fourth of July.

Peter

Now I have friends who claim with pride that they never read a book and they all seem to have more money than me. Can you explain this? I can’t. Ideas are dangerous things and the pen is allegedly mightier than the sword. But don’t tell that to an 11-year-old wiseass who is smarter than the bigger kid — his sword can kick your pen’s ass on the best day you live.

I can’t remember not being able to read. My sister and I learned to read by sitting on our grandmother’s lap when she read the morning paper. We lived in a three floor rental — my father rented the bottom floor with my grandma and at all times at least one WWII returning vet uncle lived with us. We had two bedrooms, a kitchen and I guess a living room but I think different people slept on the couch when I was a kid. We had radio serial shows like Gene Autry, the Lone Ranger, the Green Hornet and Sgt. Preston that we would listen to as little kids. Believe it or not that’s what I think gave me the imagination to read and see the stories that the books were about. So when I entered kindergarten at Liberty School where the snow cone man outside was a bookie, I was already fully equipped to read and was, like I am today, a mouthy kid.

I often tell people that what I get paid a lot of money for today, I used to get my ass kicked for being a know-it-all and a smart ass. And folks, that’s because I read. When other kids in the neighborhood thought they knew something about something I had already read about it. If you’re bigger than the kid that’s the smartass you can always prove that he’s wrong by smacking him in the head. My brother Jeff has a running joke that I should have a dent in the back of my head from getting cracked.
My parents were not, by any stretch of the imagination, people with means. But one of the great things that my mother did was in the summertime when she would take us to the Carnegie Library. (Andrew Carnegie screwed more people than all the whore houses in the history of the world and at the end of his life he felt bad so he tried to make up for it by building libraries in Pennsylvania for little white trash kids like me). My mother and father believed that if I could read it I could check out the book. There weren’t any constraints on what I was able to read or not read — or maybe they had no idea what I was capable of reading.

In the fourth grade class at William McKinley School there was the dreaded Mrs. Trager. One of her features during the week was having her students bring a book from home to class to read silently. (I think during that time Mrs. Trager was stepping outside for a smoke). I was reading a WWII adventure book called Away All Boats. Mrs. Trager has a rule that if you didn’t understand a word you put up your hand and she would come to you and you would read her the word and she would tell you what it meant. I was stumped on a word and asked her with my hand in the air to come over. It was a vignette in the book about one of the crewmen who was the “pimp” of the boat. Of course I had no idea what a pimp was but apparently Mrs. Trager did and she called my mother to ask what kind of trash she was allowing me to read. After that I took other stupid books to her silent reading class to avoid getting another crack in the back of the head. But it wasn’t till much later in life that I really found out what a pimp was — oh happy day!

Being able to read, I used to hold little reading sessions for the people I grew up with. I had a paperback of Lady Chatterley’s Lover which was a book condemned by Holy Mother Church. I can still see the scene now — a circle of guys sitting around me, bikes leaning against trees, while I’m reading to them about the game keeper. Hot stuff. Even then I was running my own mini talk show. Also that summer, I decided that I was going to attempt to read War and Peace because I had seen something on TV or in a magazine about the “difficult” novel. By about the fifth page I decided I was never going to figure out who these Russian characters were so instead of their Russian names I gave them the names of kids I grew up with. I don’t think anyone ever quite read War and Peace like that but by high school I could discuss it with anyone even though I had failing grades and took shop classes.
One Christmas I bought my brother a copy of 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea and read it before I gave it to him as a wrapped gift. When he reads this it may be the first time he finds out I really bought it for me. By the time I was in the 10th grade I was introduced to pulp magazines by my Uncle Barney who had been a Seabee in the Pacific in the Second World War and was a tough guy. He was also a dredge operator on the Allegheny River. Barney was a man who read pulp magazines or pulp fiction — named after the pulp paper that they were printed on that was probably the coarsest, cheapest paper ever manufactured. They were always detective and cowboy stories and what could pass for risqué novels. It was my Uncle Barney that introduced me to Mickey Spillane — I can still do the great opening line from any of Mickey’s novels: “Two bullets ripped into my groin and I was off on the greatest adventure of my life.” Also Mickey’s classic — “I, the Jury.” Boy could Mickey Spillane write. phemistically called dirty books. I remember that you could throw those on the bed and they would open to the good parts. I became familiar with such terms as “the torpedo of love” and “the harbor of desire.”

Armed with those skills and getting myself through college and part way though grad school, I got into the radio business where people actually give you free books. It’s a dream come true.
So boys and girls — learn to read. Forget those video games and those iPads and cable television. In the words of American industrial giant Walter Chrysler, who when asked who he would hire responded, “Send me readers.”

Happy May Day.

Peter

It’s springtime and a young man’s fancy turns to women, rock and roll music, cigarettes, beer, fast cars and baseball. So what’s changed since 1955-1956?

I thought the entire world revolved around the Pittsburgh Pirates and my hatred for the Cincinnati Reds, although by mid-season I became a New York Yankees fan. (Even back then I was the world’s biggest front-runner).

Baseball was a radio game. The sounds of summer to me still remain Bob Prince on KDKA radio doing play by play and color (along with the occasional sidekicks) for me and for America’s team, the Pittsburgh Pirates.

If you notice I never said they were “mine” or “your” Pittsburgh Pirates. My father was the consummate Pirates fan and I can’t recall one time when my father talked about “us” or “we” when he spoke about the beloved Bucs.

I began my career playing for the Cubs of the Northern league outside of Verona, Pennsylvania. I don’t think I could catch a cold or bat my weight but I had the innate ability of being able to throw hard as a little kid. So inevitably, I was a relief pitcher or, on a very good day, the right fielder.

Back then not everyone played baseball because some kids got cut and were sent home. My mom took a safety pin and pinned a number on my back and off I went to William McKinley School’s baseball field for baseball tryouts, along with about 250 other would-be Ralph Kiners. I thought this was my first step on the way to the big show.

The first coach I played for was Mr. Frecker — he let the kids smoke and winning was everything. His son Jimmy was a pretty good ballplayer — the coach and his wife let Jimmy smoke in the house.
When Memorial Day rolled around and the parade went down Allegheny Boulevard, we got to put our uniforms on and march with the other teams in the parade and then we played the second half of a four-team double header. We played six-inning games and I was brought in at the bottom of the sixth to try to hold ’em as my team, the Cubs, was ahead by two.

I walked a kid, I struck out the next two kids and the next kid popped out to short. I think it was the only time up until then that my father, who was watching the game, came out, put his arm around me and hugged me. And I thought for sure I was the next Bob Friend or Bob Feller.

Needless to say, two games later I got shelled by another competitive team, the dreaded Northern League Reds and I fell in love with baseball.

In 1959 the all-star game was played at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Even though we didn’t have tickets we hitchhiked down to watch the players arrive. My idol was Whitey Ford who was a left-hander and the pride of the Yankees. Whitey walked with his left-hand turned the other way, a result of throwing so many curve balls. So I walked that way that whole summer as well. In the brim of my hat I had Whitey’s baseball card. When Whitey got out of the cab in front of Forbes Field I rushed him for an autograph. I can’t say here what Whitey said to us — I guess some people call that a coming-of-age moment. I know it was heartbreak for me.

Later I moved up and played for the next of our teams called the Rams and for whatever reason, during my second year with the Rams, I was chosen for an all-star team as a relief pitcher. Our coach, whom I’ve written about before, was a guy named Wago Anthony. I’ve told this story many times: Wago was semi-tough and when I came in to relief pitch in the sixth inning we were playing a team from Plum Borough and their stick was at the plate. Wago walked to the mound, looked me in the eye and said, “Hey kid, stick it in his ear.” For those who don’t understand baseball vernacular — Wago wanted me to hit the batter with the ball. So I reared back, hit him as hard as I could in the thigh and he went to first base, glaring at me the whole way. I learned a lot of things about my mother that evening.
We won the game and Wago came out to the mound and said, “Stick with me kid — until we get to the car.” That’s still a golden moment in my life.

I guess all is well now — Bob Prince is gone and the other night on TV in front of a live audience they showed a movie of the entire seventh game of the 1960 World Series found in Bing Crosby’s attic. (Crosby was a part owner of the Pirates in 1960). I watched as they showed Bill Mazeroski, the Pirates second baseman, jack one into the ivy. After the movie, TV cameras panned the audience which included the still-living members of the 1960 Pirates. My boys of summer were now old men. The old Pirates sitting there who, in that wonderful moment, once again became world champions. I sat on the couch and cried.

And maybe that’s what baseball is all about. Bob Prince on the radio, my dad with an Iron City beer in his hand and my hatred for the Cincinnati Reds. It will never be the same.

Thank you. Play ball.

Peter

Peter Boyles is a nationally acclaimed radio host who can be heard Monday through Friday on 630 KHOW 5 to 9 a.m. He has a monthly column in the Glendale Cherry Creek Chronicle. Visit Peter’s blog and comment on his column, or let him know anything else that’s on your mind, by going to the Chronicle Web site at www. glendalecherrycreek.com.