How to keep your car from being robbed

The Night the Car was Robbed and How to Turn Away Thieves

It was a dark and stormy night, well, okay; it wasn’t stormy and not particularly dark with a three quarter moon and no clouds.

Strange noise wakes me during the night. The sound might be as quiet as one of the cats deciding to try out a new box as a hideout, or the slam of a tree limb against the side of the house.

Normally, I roll over after deciding that what I heard was not worth investigation, until one night in early July.

At 3:35am, I woke when I heard something odd. It had sounded like a car door closing. However, my wife was up and heading to the bathroom, so I concluded that she must’ve bumped into something, and went back to sleep.

When I got out of bed after sunrise, I went about my usual chores, which ends with letting our indoor/outdoor cat, who spends the night in, outside. After he is satisfied that no other cats or strange animals have dared to invade his territory during the previous night, he wanders off to do his daily border inspections.

At this point, I retrieve the newspaper, which is never in the driveway (free whine moment here). As I did, I felt stunned to see that the car’s trunk lid was up.

But mistakes happen, so I went over and closed it, only it didn’t close because a box in the trunk sat beneath the hinge and blocked it. That should’ve been an alert. I never leave boxes in the way of the hinge.

I moved the box, shut the trunk lid, and then as I strolled past the car, glanced inside and froze. Everything in the glove box was on the passenger seat, and all the CD’s were scattered around as were various papers and debris we left in the car.

In shock, I opened the car door and then thought about calling the police. After phoning them, I told my wife about the problem and the two of us investigated to learn what was missing.

Well, they didn’t take the insurance card, or the registration card. And, much to my utter surprise, they didn’t want any of our Cds! I was shocked and insulted that our taste in music failed the test of robbery! Why, how dare they ignore Mozart! What kind of idiots don’t want Beethoven? What in God’s name is wrong with the Lord of the Rings, or the Narna soundtracks!?! And those fools don’t listen to Norah Jones? Saywhat!?!

So here’s the lessons we learned. Prop up some classic Cds in plain sight, don’t leave any cash in the car (they did take the single quarter I left in the car, but not the four copper pennies (can you say really stupid thieves?), and never leave keys that open something.

Instead give them a thrill and leave that old key you have for a house you once rented in another state, or an old car key that doesn’t fit in the ignition.

And if you have to leave a package in the car or trunk, leave one filled with last night’s trash, neatly wrapped of course.

After all of the above, they’ll write you off the list and not return to rob you a second time. I mean, really, they didn’t get but 25 cents the first time, right? And the local cops got their prints!

Tales of Swan Lake in East Patchogue

The name Swan Lake represented both mystery and romance when I was a boy. Although the romance part was an unknown concept in my child’s mind, just the name alone evoked a picture of swans swimming and princesses drifting alone gentle currents that guided them to secret rendezvous where they would. . . Well, that was as far as an eight year old boy’s mind knew to travel, which is just as well, I guess.

The mystery was easier to frame. Along the eastern banks of the lake dark shaded alcoves hid their secrets among boulders and rotting logs, and overhanging trees shaded deep pools where any type of monster might lurk to capture and devour a boy if he swam too close, or fell out of a canoe.

The streams that fed the lake twisted off into a distance too far for a boy to fathom, but I knew that back there somewhere pirates had hid treasures, and a lost family like the Swiss Family Robinson lived in a fabulous tree house.

I watched butterflies and dragonflies in the summer, and winter ice slowly solidify and claim the lake’s life as it created a solitude that defied imagination, not unlike Superman‘s Fortress of Solitude but without a super hero, or was it?

My mother was born in a house on Main Street in Center Moriches, grew up in Mastic on Mastic Road. When she was a girl, her family used the hills along the eastern bank of the lake for sleigh riding. They skated on the lake’s thick January ice, and fished its waters after spring thaw.

So it was only logical that I took my two daughters to Swan Lake for an opportunity to share in the experiences of two previous generations. We rented a boat with oars. Since they were too young to row, I put my back into the effort and quickly discovered what I’d forgotten. Rowing a boat is serious labor.

But we had the entire day, so off we went to explore the farthest reaches of the lake’s north side. We discovered small islands, and the overhanging trees I once dreamed about, and finally when exhaustion began to claim my arms, shoulders and back, we spotted a swan family.

This is not always the safest place to be. Swan mothers and fathers are notorious for protecting their young. I had two brothers-in-law who accidentally confronted a swan family while canoeing not far from where the girls and I rowed. Angrily, the male swan flew at them, but went over their heads to warn them away. Several years earlier, a man in a boat died from a broken neck when a male swan’s wing clipped him as the huge bird defended his own.

I stopped rowing and told the girls to be very quiet so we didn’t get the mother and father angry at our intrusion. They remained quiet as we drifted within twenty feet of a line of baby swans paddling feverishly to keep up with mom. They went around the end of the small island where the nest they’d recently left sat now abandoned.

I managed to snap several good photos and then decided that it was time to head off in a different direction, with a feeling inside that told me for one brief moment the boy who once thought of Swan Lake as a mysterious and romantic place now had shared those emotions with a new generation through an experience that happened back where pirates hid treasures and a lost family lived in a fabulous tree house.

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