My mother acting like a mother

Sam Snead and Barry – partners in crime
I will say that my four closest friends when I was younger, at least that I hung out with outside of school, were probably Barry Elliott and Mike LeClaire in high school, John Rule and Steve Hauser in junior high. My mother knew them very well, and she probably liked Mike the best – you see, Mike and I were both navy brats and shared a lot of similarities – his father was in the U.S. Navy, and his mother was Japanese as well. Mike was in fact one of the people I was so looking forward to re-connecting with at my Madison High reunion – unfortunately he died back in 2005, an infection that was a complication after surgery, before that could happen. Mike, Barry, and I were partners in crime during high school.
Forgiving or Over-protective?
Speaking of crime, while I rarely incurred my mother’s wrath in person, later in my life I found out about a few times that she “covered up for me”. The craziest was when I evidently had a run in with the law when I was 15…yeah, I have to fess up now, I was a criminal. That was back in 1972, when I was a sophomore at Madison High. While I was sitting around one day with my friend Barry, we got this idea to create something for us to do…it involved practicing golf…we had a few old clubs, but needed some golf balls. I can’t recall which of us came up with the idea – probably myself – but we decided to grab some the golf balls that had been hit over the driving range fence at the Sam Snead Golf Course. Great idea, right? After all, these balls were now lying in Tecolote Canyon, what we thought was public property, waiting the right person to grab them…no harm, no foul. Would they ever pick them up, and would they really miss any, if we grabbed a few? So we snatched about 30-40 golf balls, and stuck them in a large plastic paint bucket in my garage.
Problem was the Hedrick family was popular in the neighborhood, particularly my father Sam, and I was a good kid that many knew…including people at the gold course. Evidently an employee saw us, and they were able to identify me. While they didn’t recognize Barry, they did send a police officer over to my house one day while I was in school asking about the golf balls. My mother paid off the golf course to not press charges, but she never told me. I didn’t find out about my mother’s cover up until Christmas 2012, spending quality time with her and talking about the good and bad things I’d done throughout our lives. Barry never found out about it, but I’m sure he’ll be as surprised as I was…that was my mother – always looking out for Jeff.
Previously I confessed that I was a “partner in crime” with my mother where gambling was concerned (a little under-age gambling); hey, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, right?LOL Trips to the casinos was one of the things that bonded our relationship for years as I from a teenager into my young adult years. Later, if I ever write a book, I have a chapter or two, several stories related to horse racing still to come…I have included this information here to relate that my mother was not simply a great cook and a great mother (which she was); she also knew how to have good time, led an exciting and entertaining lifestyle…and I will assert she was the most forgiving mother a son could ever ask for.