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How do you make something like that up? -- I reminded him of the day in 1972 he got out of jail for stealing a piano from Sutton Place. This was another of his misadventures that had been blown out of proportion and he wanted it told like it happened. I was in the maintenance office when Bob got back to Rochdale after he got out of the stir and he stopped by. Yes, that day he looked fairly rough and had been living in his clothes since he had been arrested. There was a story he wanted to pass on and he decided I should hear it. His winning streak was over, and his winnings were lost. Our adventurer had decided it was time to tie one on. This meant being uproariously drunk in public to get things started. These moments involved creating scenes in his mind that he had to attempt. That particular night, he decided to steal a piano out of Sutton Place, a big hotel in downtown Toronto. In 2019 he told me it was because it had a full 88 keyboard. He was a powerhouse physically when drunk and showed no fear or doubt. Boldly he got the piano out of a first-floor banquet room, pushed it across the hotel lobby, out of the rotating front doors, and down the front steps. He dragged it across the hotel entrance driveway and got it to the street curb. Hailed a taxi and talked the driver into helping him get the piano into the cab. They were trying to load the instrument into the back seat when the police showed up. Bobby sat in the drunk tank in his clothes for a day or two, until he could sober up enough to let somebody know where he was and arrange bail. He had surrendered peaceably, without resistance so he was not damaged by the police. He might have got away with it if the cab had been a Checker. Somebody had tried to turn this simple tale into a whopper of him sitting in the trunk of the cab playing the piano as they were chased by the cops. Culminating in a duke out with the police. That did not happen. I‘m glad he shared his memories of the taxi and piano incident so many years later. Perhaps that is why he had stopped by 47 years earlier. Interesting time-capsule format, leaving a message as an earworm. 1986; I was a building contractor in the process of handing a job over to Ricky Warren, another contractor. Bob was his righthand man and drywall specialist between theatre gigs. Ricky and I were waiting for Bob and the owner, in front of the building to be renovated. We were a bit nervous because Bob was not usually late these days unless he had gotten into something. Shortly he showed up, apologizing for being late. He seemed to be OK, but he didn’t look right. His face had bruises and little nicks of cut skin and scabs on it, his neck also had bloody nicks. He was carrying his work boots because he could not put them on. He looked like he had been in a fight. Ricky says: “Alright Bob what happened?” The first thing out of his mouth was “I wasn’t drinking!” Bob had been living with Valerie, a Rochdale friend of ours, in her apartment on the top floor of Jay and Patty Boldizar’s house on Albany Avenue. It was early September and the house across the street had been rented to some party crazy university students. They liked to party every night and let the neighbourhood know about it with lots of noise. It was the beginning of the week and the party was going too long. Bob started going over about 12:30 am, letting them know he understood their headspace but, people that lived on the street had to get up in the morning. Everybody was polite and the stereo was turned down, then as Bob got back into bed it started to come back up. This routine of Bob going across the street and knocking on their door was repeated every half hour until about 02:30 am. This time he didn’t get dressed, but he had gotten into the habit of sleeping in his underwear, so he had his boxers on, and that was it, no shirt or shoes. He banged on the door across the street and pleaded fervently with the partyers to turn it down. He was standing, in his underwear in the front foyer vestibule; the inner portal was a decorative French door made of oak. It was a large six-pane mullioned window. They assured Bob they were going to turn it down and he started to turn to leave; then somebody made a smart remark as the foyer door shut. Something snapped; nearly naked Bob turned and exploded through the door. He found himself in the hall on the inside of the house, the oak multi-pane window was shattered behind him. Pieces of oak and glass sticking out of every part of his body from head to toe. Glass and wood mullions all over the floor, some broken pieces of glass still attached to the door frame. Everybody was in shock, silent and dumbfounded with what they had just witnessed. Bob was standing there, a specter to behold. The blood was starting to run down his forehead, and he started picking the glass and wood out of his body. Somebody said something like: “Who is going to pay for that?!”, setting him off again. Standing in his bare feet on broken glass, he snarled out: “I’ll show you who’s going to pay for it.” and he pulled a still attached piece of broken pane out of the door. He said as he put his attention to getting the glass, he heard some scuffling, and thinking they were coming after him he focused on his task without looking up. By the time he had seized his weapon of defense, the scuffling was getting louder but not closer. When he looked up, he saw the last of the crowd scrambling down the hallway in front of him in a stampede and out the back door screaming. He was in their house all alone with a piece of broken windowpane in his hand. He picked shards of glass out of himself sprouting little fountains or bubbles of red, and clearing shards from his feet, as he walked home across the street. He went back to bed without taking a shower, he ended up getting his blood all over the sheets and finding glass shards all night long. In the morning he was stuck to the sheets by his dried blood. I would lay odds he had a concussion as well as being in pain from bruising and lacerations. I’m sure I would have one if I had gone through a real door. He couldn’t wear his work boots for a couple of days. Another chapter in the saga of our legendary bare foot monk. |