{"id":1966,"date":"2021-08-31T12:23:50","date_gmt":"2021-08-31T17:23:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/?p=1966"},"modified":"2021-08-31T12:23:50","modified_gmt":"2021-08-31T17:23:50","slug":"teen-curfews-can-be-comical","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/?p=1966","title":{"rendered":"Teen Curfews Can Be Comical"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>A recent blog<\/a> was focused on how us Vail, Iowa, kids got our exercise during the day.\u00a0 We didn\u2019t stop there; we also exercised at night.\u00a0 Nighttime exercise was more vigorous than daytime exercise.<\/p>\n

The town of Vail hired nightwatchmen for years.\u00a0 My grandfather, John Ryan, was a nightwatchman for Vail.\u00a0 I\u2019ve heard stories about him, but I never knew him.\u00a0 Supposedly, he had a blackjack sap<\/a>, a bludgeoning weapon, and he wasn\u2019t afraid to use it.\u00a0 But things were more peaceful as I was growing up.<\/p>\n

Nightwatchmen\u2019s principal duties were to make sure doors were locked, and to keep municipal ordinances from being violated.\u00a0 One of the ordinances in Vail was a curfew for minors.\u00a0 Every kid under 18-years of age was to be off the streets at 9:00 pm.<\/p>\n

Curfew \u201ccomes from the Anglo-French \u2018coverfeu<\/em>,\u2019 made from the words \u2018coverir\u2019<\/em> (\u201cto cover\u201d) and \u2018feu\u2019 (\u201cfire\u201d).\u201d\u00a0 In other words, put out the fires and go home.<\/p>\n

Vail had some reasonable nightwatchmen that knew kids could do anything at 10:00 am as well as 10:00 pm.\u00a0 They ignored the curfew and chatted with some of us boys.\u00a0 One nightwatchman shared his dirty books with us.\u00a0 He was a little on the pervert side, but he never touched a kid.\u00a0 There were no problems while he was there.\u00a0 Another nightwatchman was supplied with a car and had a uniform.\u00a0 He would drive you home if you were too drunk to drive.\u00a0 Vail was a quiet place in those days.<\/p>\n

However, there was one nightwatchman who was intent on upholding the curfew ordinance.\u00a0 J.C. McCullough was a retired heavy equipment operator.\u00a0 He had a faded-blue Ford pickup with a topper.\u00a0 He was the nightwatchman during the height of my early teens, and he provided a great source of entertainment and exercise for those of us who loved excitement.<\/p>\n

On a good clear night, about 9:30 or 10:00 pm, some Vail kids would sneak out of the house and get together at a meeting point.\u00a0 We had several.\u00a0 We would head downtown where J.C. would have his pickup parked in front of the firehall\/city hall.\u00a0 Depending upon whether he was in the pickup or on his rounds would determine what our action was going to be.<\/p>\n

If J.C. was on the rounds, one of us would run across the street close to where he was checking doors.\u00a0 He would move fast (not run) to his pickup, get in it, start it up, and begin driving to where the kid crossed the street.\u00a0 By that time, the kid was back on the other side.<\/p>\n

We kept poking up like a whack-a-mole in certain places all over town, waiting for him to spot one of us and drive his pickup in that direction.\u00a0 We knew where every clothesline and hole in a yard were situated.\u00a0 He never caught any of us.\u00a0 However, one night he was homing in on me.\u00a0 I laid down in a shallow ditch near a few rows of sweet corn someone had planted behind the hardware store.\u00a0 He drove his pickup within a couple feet of where I was lying.\u00a0 You would think an incident like that would have adrenaline pumping.\u00a0 No, I couldn\u2019t keep from laughing.\u00a0 I\u2019m surprised he didn\u2019t hear me.<\/p>\n

On more than one occasion, J.C. would be in his pickup.\u00a0 Often, he would be sleeping.\u00a0 Once, while he was sleeping, one of us (not me) let the air out of two of his tires and tapped on his window.\u00a0 If he wasn\u2019t sleeping, you could count on one kid or more running past the front of his pickup and scattering up between buildings.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t remember what occurred first.\u00a0 Either J.C. quit or we stopped having fun with him.<\/p>\n

The last nightwatchman Vail had long after my childhood was a real prick.\u00a0 The town had furnished him with a cruiser that belonged to a real police force at one time.\u00a0 I came into town one evening after working the night shift and saw the cruiser parked on the side of the road next to the park.\u00a0 The front door was open, and no one was around.\u00a0 I heard the next morning that someone had taken a shot at him with a shotgun.\u00a0 After that, Vail entered into a contract with the county sheriff to patrol the streets of Vail.<\/p>\n

I have often wondered what J.C. would have done to one of us kids if he actually caught one.\u00a0 On the other hand, I can\u2019t imagine that he would have stepped out of his pickup to actually chase one of us.\u00a0 We would have had to jump into the passenger side of the pickup if the door was unlocked.<\/p>\n

Someday, I will write about why I think someone fired a shotgun at the police cruiser, but that story is too painful to tell \u2013 even after all of these years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A recent blog was focused on how us Vail, Iowa, kids got our exercise during the day.\u00a0 We didn\u2019t stop there; we also exercised at night.\u00a0 Nighttime exercise was more vigorous than daytime exercise. The town of Vail hired nightwatchmen … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[882,424,883,881,423],"class_list":["post-1966","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-curfew","tag-ia","tag-j-c-mccullough","tag-nightwatchman","tag-vail"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1966","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1966"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1966\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1967,"href":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1966\/revisions\/1967"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}