We stood there before the entrance to the underground rock quarry. The chain-link fence had a gap in it where some unknown kids had cut through it to go exploring in that black gloom. The “No Trespassing,” sign above the cavern’s entrance was riddled with bullet holes and hung there by a single nail, like a bad joke that had no effect on its audience.

There were seven of us there that day standing before the dark gap of the quarry entrance. Five were friends I had known most of my life, and we had dared to go where no man had gone before on a number of occasions in the past. All five of them were eager to travel into that huge tunnel before us. In fact, despite the threat of trespassing citations, they all quickly slipped through the hole in the fence and entered the mine shaft.

Their hushed voices drifted back to me as their flashlight beams flickered through the darkness like light sabers. The only reason why I hesitated to follow them was the kid standing there beside me. My foster kid, Chad, and I had ventured off into the “unknown” several times in the past, but this was different. Someone had put that sign there for a reason. Someone did not want us to go into those underground tunnels.

I stood there, remembering our last misadventure, when Chad and I rode our canoe down the rain-swollen waters of Wilderness Park. We capsized at the Horse Crossing on that particular trip, both of us going into the madly churning water. Our canoe was washed downstream, along with our cooler and my favorite jean jacket. The jacket was never found again, but we did manage to eventually find the canoe wedged up against a log jam downstream the next day.

A second disastrous adventure came to mind then. Chad and I and my friend, Ben, had spent a snowy winter day out having a fire in the bluffs of South Bend. On the way home, Chad had asked to drive. He was 15 and had his learner’s permit, and though the roads were icy, I decided to let him drive. He did a good job, too, until we came to the incredibly steep hill between South Bend and I-80.

And then we hit a patch of ice, and down that hill we sailed. Chad frantically cranked the steering wheel back and forth, fish-tailing crazily, shooting directly toward the left hand ditch, then careening back toward the right. Any second my Datsun truck was about to go nose-diving into the deep ditch or flying off the narrow bridge at the bottom of that God-awful steep hill. That wild ride lasted forever. When we finally skidded to a stop at the bottom of the hill, we all three laughed at those panic-filled moments we had shared, quickly forgetting we’d all had a “Come to Jesus” moment as we flew down that icy hill.

One more misadventure came to mind as Chad and I stood there, undecided about following my friends into that underground rock quarry. It took place just a mile down river from where we then stood. Chad, Ben, and I asked a local rancher if we could camp out on his land situated above Horse Shoe Lake. The rancher said, “Sure. But be careful of the Yak.”

“A Yak?” I asked, not wanting to sound ignorant, but Chad asked, “What is a Yak?”

The rancher said, “An Asian Water Buffalo. He’s a mean one, too. Just be sure if you see him out there in those hills, you are close to a good tree to climb!”

We set off down into the ravine between the rolling bluffs, cautiously keeping an eye out for the Yak. Ben even made a witty comment about having a “Yak Attack,” which he and Chad thought was hilarious. I, however, kept my eyes on the trees, wondering if we indeed were going to have to climb one before our trip was over. But near night fall as we made camp out there in the wild lands along the Platte River, we hadn’t seen hide nor hoof of the menacing Yak.

However, upon waking up the next morning, an entire herd of cows stood before us, wanting to get past us to drink from the stream we had pitched our camp before. We hurriedly scrambled out of our sleeping bags, all the while watching for the Yak to emerge from the herd and perform a full-fledged Yak attack. But still no Yak. To this day, I still have no idea what a Yak even looks like.

“So,” Chad said as we stood there, watching the flashlights of my friends getting fainter as they traveled down the dark tunnel, “we going to do this or not?”

I simply started down into the tunnel. Chad flicked on his flashlight and followed me. We first came upon a frozen pathway. Six inches beneath the crystal clear ice there were little railroad tracks. They wound all the way through the underground quarry, once used for mine carts to roll along. Chad said, “Looks like the Seven Dwarfs have been here!”

We then came upon huge stalagmites and standing six feet high on the cavern floor before us. We passed through this immense chamber and the in next hallway stalactites hung from the ceiling. Chad and I followed the hushed voices of the rest of our little band, finding ourselves passing between the opening of what appeared to be another whole section of cave. We saw the lights flickering up ahead of us and soon discovered my friends shining their lights at a dark wall thirty feet in front of them.

“Cow crap!” Chad said as we all looked at the wall, which indeed looked like it was covered with the stuff the cows left behind. And then the wall began to undulate like the black waters of a moonlit river. “Bats!” I said, watching the whole mass of winged furry creatures moving as they clung to the wall. They then began to fly toward our lights.

Gary swatted one out of the air with his glove. He picked up the stunned creature and Ben used his flashlight to shine its light through the tiny bat’s thin wing. We were all examining the veins running through it, when the bat let out a nasty hiss and showed us it’s wicked fangs. Gary let out a shout and dropped it at once, and we all fled the chamber, thinking we were about to be bat-swarmed.

We explored those dark depths for quite some time for they wound back into the hills for at least a mile or more. When we finally came within sight of the white light of the quarry opening in the distance, we all breathed a sigh of relief. Ben made the comment, “Hey, Gary, you sure dropped that bat in a hurry. Have you checked your boxers lately?”

Everyone laughed, except Gary who responded, “I wasn’t scared. I just didn’t want to get bit. Bats carry rabies, you know.”

Ben chided him, saying, “You weren’t scared? How come you screamed like a little girl then?”

We all laughed again, and Gary replied, “Hey, who knocked it out of the air in the first place? Who picked it up?”

At that point, Chad and I were bringing up the rear of our little party when I spotted a metal pipe sticking out of the wall beside us. I whispered, “Watch this.”

Thinking just to startle them all, I swung my walking stick at the pipe, and the Whack! exploded all around us, echoing off the cold stone walls, sounding like the entire cavern was caving in. They all broke into a run and hightailed it to the white dot marking the entrance in the distance. Gary was the first one to make it there in record time.

Two weeks after this excursion into the underground rock quarry, we all read in the papers where four boys were camping in a similar quarry two miles down river. They had lit a fire in the center of the cavern floor, and sometime during the night, the ice melted above them and sent a car-sized boulder down on top of three of those boys. The fourth woke up to find his three friends dead from the impact.

It was a tragic camping trip gone horribly wrong. We were all thinking the same thing could have happened to us. We all considered ourselves lucky that we made it out of that rock quarry alive and well. One month later, we discovered that someone had dynamited the opening to the quarry we had explored and sealed it off with a ton of rock. We figured it was just as well. Why tempt fate when those three boys had died just two miles down river?

Of all the adventures we took after that, we remembered there are consequences to all actions. And no, I probably shouldn’t have trespassed into that quarry, and yes, I am lucky we came out of there alive and well. But would I do it all over again?

What do you think?

One morning while working as a Gifted Mentor at Irving Middle school, one of my students asked, “Hey, Tom, did you ever visit the Ville when you were a kid?”

I looked at Drew curiously. “The Ville? What in the world is that?”

Drew said, “Hobbitsville. Me and my friend are sneaking in there tomorrow night. Do you want to meet us there?”

I laughed and said, “Just what I need, a trespassing ticket for sneaking into Hobbitsville. But no, I have never been in there. When I was a kid my friends said they had visited Hobbitsville. They said it was a huge mansion surrounded by a large stone fence. They also told me the enormous yard had a moat running through it with two stone bridges. They claimed that giant gold fish swam in the moat and that a small castle turret overlooked the yard. They claimed it was a place where Hobbits might live.”

Drew said, “Well, it’s now owned by the Abel family and they used to hold wedding ceremonies inside the yard. The swimming pool is said to be haunted by the ghost of a girl who died there when she dove off the board and cracked her head open. Kids claim she is buried there. Back in the 60’s, UNL students hung a manikin from the top of the castle and snapped off a photo of it. It appeared in the Daily Nebraskan. But other than that prank, no other vandalism ever took place there. The thousands of kids who sneak in there never leave behind graffiti nor do they destroy any property. Just think, kids have been going in there since the late 50’s, and no kids ever left evidence that they had been in there.”

I said, “They knew they were walking on sacred ground. However, most recently, I had heard that a group of boys snuck in there to skate in the moat, and some guy named Juan the Gardener chased them out by shooting salt loads at them with his shotgun.”

Despite this fact, Drew called me later that night to ask me to join him on his adventure. When I shared with my foster kid, Josh, that Drew wanted us to sneak into Hobbitsville, he started pleading with me to go along. I finally called Josh’s mom and asked her if she had ever been there when she was a kid. Deb told me it sounded interesting. So she said, “Why not just go up to the door and ask permission to go in there?”

I told her about Juan the Gardener and warned her that the owners might outright refuse her request, saying, “I guess Juan is a little hostile, though I have never heard of any kid getting shot for skating in there.”

The next afternoon, Deb drove over to the Abel mansion and rang the doorbell, intent on getting permission to venture into the Ville. A lady with a long, black dress came to the door and invited her in to have tea in the den. While seated there, 15 cats wandered in and out of the den and Deb kept hearing someone in the kitchen rummaging around in drawers. When the mysterious person in the kitchen began to mutter and curse, the lady shouted, “Juan? Would you quiet down in there? We’re trying to hold a decent conversation out here!”

Deb immediately froze. Juan the Gardener! she thought. Oh my God, the man who shoots at skaters with salt loads is here in the kitchen!

After they finished their tea, Deb asked, “My son and I would like to know if we could visit your backyard.”

“No one goes in the back yard,” the lady cryptically said, and it became strangely quiet after that, no more Juan rummaging in the kitchen, the cats stopped pacing, and the lady asked, “Why do children call my yard Hobbitsville?”

Deb explained to her who Hobbits were from the Lord of the Rings, but the lady didn’t seem to understand. She then looked up and said, “It would be nice of you to leave now.”

Deb called me to tell me about her visit. The one thing she tried to impress upon me was that Juan the Gardener was a real person, and quite possibly he had a shotgun.

Drew called a little later. “Well? Are you going to meet me at the Ville tonight? We will be at the north wall at ten o’clock. Come on, it will be a great adventure!”

Josh needled me for the next two hours, asking, “What’s the worst that can happen to us?”

I said, “Trespassing citations. My name in the paper. Salt loads stinging my butt as I fly back over the wall. Those are just a few of the things that come to mind.”

But at 9:30, I decided we would chance it. All we would do is climb over the fence, take a look around, and be out of there swift as the wind, right?

I scaled the wall, Josh clambering up beside me. We hurtled over the top of the high stone wall and landed in amongst the trees along a garden path. We explored the moat, walked over both bridges, searched for ghosts around the swimming pool, and climbed to the top of the castle turret to survey the yard from on high. It was a nice spring night. Cool breeze. Silver moonlight drizzling down through the overhead leaves. A great night for such an adventurous quest.

“What’s that?” Josh whispered, sidling up next to me and pointing down the trail.

I peered down the trail and spotted two brightly glowing embers of the cherries on two cigarettes. We were not alone in Hobbitsville. Two kids were walking down the dark trail, totally unaware that they were not alone either.

Thinking it was Drew and his friend, Josh and I both moved over beside a large tree and waited for the two kids to reach us. When they were about ten feet away, I very casually slipped out behind the tree and stood facing them.

The bright red glow of their cherries went swirling through the air like fireflies as those cigarettes went flying from their wide-open mouths, and then both of those boys let out high-pitched screams!!

As they wheeled around to run, I couldn’t help but laugh as the one kid yelled, “You aren’t crazy, are you?”

I guess he wanted to make certain that I wasn’t an axe-murderer or worse . . . Juan the Gardener.

And then the other kid stopped in mid-stride and said, “I know you, dude! You once spoke about your book at our school!”

They both came back down the trail then and shook my hand. The one kid said, “So you are the guy who wrote that 8-Ball book, huh? My mom told me she went with you in high school.”

I asked for her name, and winced when he said it. I knew it was just too good to pass up telling her exactly where he’d run into me at. The other kid said, “You work at my school.”

Oh, no, I groaned inwardly. The news that the author of 8-Ball was caught by two kids sneaking into Hobbitsville is going to run rampant through the halls of Irving Middle School Monday morning! And I will probably get a call from my old girl friend who will rib me about meeting her son in this unlikely location. This is going to be worse than a trespassing citation!

Josh and I left the Ville, listening to the relieved laughter of those two boys as they faded away into the shadows of the night. When we got home, I received a call from my student, Drew. He said, “Me and my friend were sneaking up to the north wall of the Ville when we heard these girls screaming from inside the yard! It scared us so badly, we took off running, too freaked out to climb over the wall. I think those poor girls had a run-in with Juan the Gardener!”

I laughed and told him the “girls” were actually two boys, Bobby Kingston and his friend. Drew thought the whole thing was hilarious as Bobby was known to be a major tough guy in the halls of Irving School.

The following Monday as I walked down the crowded halls of Irving, students slapped me high-fives for scaring Bobby Kingston. I simply smiled and said, “I have no idea what you are talking about.”

I still think of that magical night and how cool that yard was. I smile when I think of those two screaming boys, and then shake my head in wonder that I didn’t come away from that venture with a trespassing ticket or worse, that I didn’t have a run-in that night with Juan the Gardener.

It is rumored that his ghost still patrols the yard, but whether this is true or not, I will never know.

Only Juan and the Hobbits know if he is there, keeping his vigil on the sacred grounds of Hobbitsville.

From the Red Faced Man to Bloody Mary Partington, I have had connections that have found their way into my stories over the years.

The window peeper known as the Red Faced Man of my childhood found his way into The Kid, the Cop and the Con as the bad guy who stands before the Ballard tunnels, smoking a cigarette with its bright cherry illuminating his face in the darkness. The memory of the Red Faced Man following me home from the Joyo when I was ten years old, has haunted me for years.

The day Bloody Mary Partington paid me to chase her horses into her barn with my motorcycle, I never imagined I would write an entire book about her in the future. But back when I was 14 and I had accomplished my task of rounding up her three horses, she waved and smiled at me from her front porch, and a seed of an idea was planted in my head.

The misfits of Havelock walk through the pages of my book, as well. Franco, the old Italian man who was exiled to America for killing his wife and the man she was found sleeping with, lived with the Blazek family a block from where I live to this day. Old Franco once chased the Blazek kids down the street brandishing a butcher knife because they foolishly teased him by shouting, “Heil Hitler!” Poor Franco ran behind them, shouting, “Mussolini! Mussolini!”

I used to buy Franco bread and chicken, and old Franco would say in his broken English, “Ah, Gotta Blessa You! Holy Mary, Mother of Gawd!” Franco’s favorite saying was, “You gotta any mawney?” And when I would say, “No, no money, Franco,” he would say, “No mawney, no fun! No mawney, no fun!”

Newt, who wore seven wrist watches and sounded exactly like a train from the Burlington yards, lived in Havelock from the early 50’s until the year 2000. He would start out at 70^th and Havelock each morning, take a bus down to Kuhl’s in downtown Lincoln, then venture to the Goodwill store (where he often bought his fancy hats, over 50 of them), then end up back at Burger King in Havelock by 5 each evening. I met Newt (Barry) one day down at Ballard Ball park when he swore he saw me singing on the Johnny Cash show the night before. I could never figure out if he thought I was Willie Nelson or Travis Tritt, but he was certain I was a famous Country Western singer.

George and Louie (Opey and Dopey) the two midgets (small people) used to stand on the corner by the Salvage Warehouse each day just watching cars pass by them on Have Ave. Louie, the smaller of the two, was always friendly and asked me for money, but I never gave him any handouts as I figured my money would go straight to Castle’s for a bottle of their finest.

Aaron the Hulk walked home each day from his work out at Reimer’s cement company with actual cement dust trailing off of him. His face and hair were always covered in a fine dusting of the white powder, as well. Aaron once took on five cops down at Arnold’s tavern and it was rumored that one of those cops went flying out through the tavern’s front window, and that two more followed him out onto the sidewalk, thrown there by the Incredible Hulk. Aaron, though, was a gentle giant most of the time, and the late Skip Kaluza, who lived directly behind him, swore the big guy did not have a mean bone in his body, except when he drank.

And then there were the misfit kids who wandered in and out of my stories.

There was Steve, who broke into the Joyo theater one night with three friends. Steve and the other boys were my first assignment as a Volunteer in Probation when I was 17. I failed Steve, as one night he was getting high by huffing from an aerosol deodorant can, and he suffocated and died because the aerosol he’d inhaled had closed off his lungs. Steve’s story was later depicted in my 8-Ball book.

The other three kids involved in the Joyo break-in, sobered by Steve’s unexpected, tragic death, straightened out. One of those kids, now an adult, showed up at my 8-Ball play just last year, and he sat there holding his breath as I shared with the audience my first role as a youth worker back in the day. As I re-told the Joyo break-in, he thought for sure I was going to mention his name as I stood there recounting the tale on stage. But I didn’t, and he came up and thanked me later for omitting his name from that particular story.

Kevin’s incident with four different drugs became a major part of my 8-Ball book. He had burglarized the Havelock Vet Clinic one night and therefore had obtained a supply of horse tranquilizers (namely PCP). He washed one down with Tequila, smoked a joint, and dropped a hit of acid all in the space of two hours. He then climbed on top of the Havelock train overpass and shouted at the world that he was Birdman. When the police were called to take him in, Kevin began biting chunks of flesh from his hand. He had to be handcuffed and when the cops were escorting him to the ER, Kevin said, “Get Father Frye! I need to talk to Father Frye!”

In those days, the name “Father Frye” was meant to be an insult to me, for I often sat down at Havelock Park, talking and “preaching” to the kids with anti-drug messages. But that night, it turned out to be quite funny as the cop drove Kevin over to Saint Patrick’s church seeking this so-called Father Frye. Poor Father Witt told the cop they didn’t have a priest there named Frye, but when the officer explained they had a drunken youth in his car, Father Witt figured out it was me this kid was asking to speak to. So the cop finally got a hold of me, and I ended up at the hospital for 5 hours in crisis intervention with Kevin.

The visions he saw that night also made it into my story. The seven-headed dragon from the Book of Revelation. Satan, mocking him and laughing at him. Demons swarming all around his hospital room. Jesus weeping in one corner of his room. Yes, it was quite a show Kevin was seeing in his head.

Later, that next morning, is when I started writing Scratchin’ on the Eight Ball. I was simply so frustrated with all the recent tragedies involving Havelock kids:

13-year-old Terri hanging herself.

15-year-old John shooting himself.

11-year-old Tommy hanging himself.

17-year-old Dan placing an M-80 in his mouth and lighting the fuse.

15-year-old Steve huffing the deodorant and suffocating.

18-year-old Joe trying to outrun a train and getting struck by said train and killed.

17-year-old Kim smoking a joint laced with PCP, and forever after swearing he worked for the FBI and that Led Zeppelin owed him a “Ka-trillion” dollars for stealing the lead rift of Stairway to Heaven from him.

14-year-old Greg who skipped school one day, stole a car, and flipped it out on I-80 overpass, and was crushed in the impact.

And then there were all the kids who passed beneath the pines of Havelock Park at all hours of the night, seeking to get high. And there were hundreds with the mind-set that life was one big party and their only goal was to go from one high to the next. Unfortunately, I was involved in so many crisis interventions with so many of these kids that I lost count of most of those situations. Perhaps they still remember them to this day, but those early connections in the first days of my youth work all had an impact on me and the books I would write later.

Reason Nelson. People still wonder if there was a real Reason. And in truth, some of my own life got dumped on that character, but also little long-haired John and scruffy, scrawny Eric, also were incorporated into the memorable Reason Nelson, the main character in four of my Havelock series books.

Boone Nelson. The other “Kevin,” the older brother of the late Phil Hildebrand who shot himself on accident one night, became Boone, Reason’s older brother.

George. The real George knew “every one” and any time I wanted to sell something, two trucks, two guitars and two of my old motorcycles, I would put in a word to George. He would in turn have my items sold within a week. I still regret to this day that he sold my old Alvarez 12-string to Kevin who smashed it a drunken rage one night.

Jack. Jack and I had an exciting adventure two years after Kevin’s Birdman incident, when Kevin left his parents a suicide note. Jack and I actually found Kevin that night partying with a bunch of bikers down at Linoma Beach, and I had to threaten Kevin with bodily harm if he didn’t just get in my van and ride back to Havelock with Jack and I.

Al Simants. Al wouldn’t allow me to go alone with Roy Stobbs the night I was hunting for Tom Wolfe who had falsely given police my name one night when he was arrested. Because of Tom Wolfe’s lies, I had to go to the police and to explain they had a warrant out for the wrong guy. Luckily, I knew Detective Duane Bullock and Captain Jake, and they both gave me unofficial permission to go out on the streets and hunt down Tom Wolfe. Roy Stobbs claimed he knew where to find him, but Al Simants and Randy Rockenbach wouldn’t let me go alone with Roy as they suspected he was setting me up. Al and Roy rode shotgun that night with Roy and I, both Havelock brawlers armed with baseball bats in case Roy was leading us into a trap. We never did find Tom Wolfe that night. Which was probably a good thing for him.

Collin Young, the drug-free voice of wisdom in my books, was based on little, shaggy-haired Rusty Thomsen, who was very unlike Collin in the story. Collin was also based on Phil Hildedrand who followed me around Havelock like a shadow, as Collin follows Johnny Mason in my book.

Bummer the German Shepherd was based on my first dog Sandy. But later, became the name of my Dobie/Shepherd mix that I adopted and rescued years after the book was published.

In my Stag-Heart books, Donice Reeves, became my central characters of both Dawn Red Feather and Carly Raven, both Lakotas from a reservation in North Dakota. Donice was my first girlfriend from 6^th grade through 9^th, and I sent her several excerpts from these books to show her how she found her way into my stories.

So there you have a break-down of what influences me and inspires me to incorporate real-life people into many of my books. I change most names, last or first, to keep things confidential, but those who read my books know exactly who they are in the story.

I did, however, have a negative side to this crop up one day during Havelock Days where I was selling books in front of Wolfe’s Hardware. An old Havelock boy, Mark, walked up to me and said he should sue me for using him in my book as a drug dealer.

Astounded that Mark even thought I had suspected him of using drugs, let alone selling them, I said, “Exactly which character do you think you are, Mark? Because I never once thought you did drugs, but hey, if the shoe fits, wear it out.”

Over the years, I have had several kids come up and tell me their moms were once my girlfriends back in the day. Often when I asked the names of these moms, I would draw a blank and have no recollection of that particular mom being part of my life. But I would go along with these kids, never letting on that I had no idea who their moms actually were.

And then there was the time I was speaking for one hundred boys at the Wahoo Youth Center. This kid in the front row raised his hand at the end of my speaking engagement, and when I called on him, he said, “My mom was your girlfriend in high school.”

I looked at him and said, “What was your mom’s name?”

The kid said, “Kathy Jones.”

Without missing a beat, I held out my arms and gasped in surprise, “Son!!”

It brought the house down.