9/9/22 - Friday Forget-Me-Nots by Jim Silcott

Photo Caption: 4th grade is settling in!

Dear Our Lady of Peace Family,

It was the first weekend after Labor Day in 1965 when I was arrested for the first time in my life. I was days away from my 9th birthday.

The scene of the crime was Highland Ave. in Northport, New York on the north shore of Long Island in Suffolk County. There were four of us: Tommy Gianetta, Bob Scanlon, Dennis Penders and me. Little did we know when we got together to play on that Saturday morning, that by the early afternoon we would be cell mates.



The area around Highland Ave. had lots of woods on a hill that overlooked downtown at Main Street which dead ended into Northport Harbor. The woods, the park next to the harbor, even Main Street itself with its five and dime store, cigar store, diner, and movie theater, were all great places to explore. We owned the town and went freely wherever we wanted by foot or by bike. Sometimes we would travel a bit more down to the beach or out to Ashroken Strip which, at its end, formed the mouth of the harbor. After a week of school, we had Saturday to ourselves, and we were determined to make the most of it.

We had brought along our toy guns and rifles to aid us in our play. We liked to play army. Our Dads were all veterans of World War II or Korea. We played at beating the Germans in the Second World War. We saw Germans behind the trees, and German spies walking down Main Street. One or more of us morphed into a German and were shot where we stood.

We got to the Greenhouse on Highland Ave just after lunch time. It was a small property. We started throwing rocks up on the roof of the structure, listening and watching them roll down. Someone, I don’t think it was me, but it could have been, missed the roof and hit one of the glass panes, which shattered it. There was a pause, there was a moment where we contemplated if we should leave the scene. But another one of us, again, I don’t remember it being me, hurled another stone, purposely, into a different pane of glass. We watched the shards come streaming out onto the grass below.

They say that mob mentality has a powerful hold on people. After that second break, we all felt that we had no choice but to break as many of those panes of glass as we could. War was hell, wasn’t it and we were mixing up our battle fantasy with the very reality of damaging real property.

This went on for some minutes. I was reaching down to grab another rock when I saw a pair of women’s shoes, attached to a woman’s legs, standing in front of me. Tommy, Dennis and Bob were gone. It was the woman from the greenhouse and, rightly so, she started hollering at me and demanding that I get the rest of my gang and bring them back. It didn’t take long for me to find them. I actually talked them into walking back with me to the scene of the crime. They did. That’s when the policeman showed up.

Northport was a small village back then and the police office was, of course, on Main Street. The police officer didn’t handcuff us, but we all piled into his cruiser for the very short ride downtown. Once there we were placed in a little cell, reminiscent of the one on the Any Griffith show. But this wasn’t a show. It was real.

As the fates would have it, shortly after I was confined behind bars, my mother called the police department to report that my sister, Cynthia (many of our students know her as Mrs. Mayo) had been bitten by a dog in front of the library, also on Main Street. When she gave the last name, Silcott, the policeman said, “Any relation to Jimmy Silcott?” “Why yes,” said my mother. “Why do you ask?” “Because he is here in the station,” the policeman replied.

Of course, both of my parents were down to the police office in minutes, followed shortly by the other boys’ parents. I don’t know if justice was ever served in regard to the dog and my sister. My crime had become the issue of the day.

We were told that we had to work at the greenhouse on weekends until we had paid for the price of glass replacement. We were also told, in no uncertain terms, that we now had a record, and if we ever committed another crime they would know about our criminal past and things would go that much worse for us. I remembered that very clearly when I caused the Great East Coast Blackout at Halloween that same year. But that, and my second arrest, are stories for another day!

Jim Silcott