Cruising the Renton loop with a keg of nails

This must have happened in about 1969. On weekends, you drove to Renton, Wash., and cruised the loop. It was a scene straight from American Graffiti with beer, Vietnam, protests, drugs, and birth control and the "SEXUAL REVOLUTION" thrown into the mix--not that we were often able to avail ourselves of the opportunities birth control might afford.

As we often did on weekends, when we didn't go into Seattle to eat at the Outrageous Burrito Company or wander around Seattle Center, we went to Renton to cruise the loop, a/k/a drag the gut, along with hundreds of other kids in cars. You drove around and around a two mile loop, and pulled in various parking lots to meet various people, preferably girls.

This particular weekend our vehicle was an aqua 1968 Dodge 3/4 ton pickup, piloted by Les Teichert. The truck had OTTO'S ROOFING emblazoned on the side. Three of us sat in the cab, and three more sat in the bed of the pickup, amidst the roofing felt, blocks of tar, and tools. The Beatles' White Album or Chicago Transit Authority or Led Zeppelin played on the 8 track stereo. . .probably with another tune in the background (if the azimuth of the head became mis-adjusted, there was a faint audio bleed of adjacent tracks into the currently playing track).

We drove around a few times, stopped at Herfy's for burgers and got back on The Loop. In the pickup bed we discovered, among the tools and tarpaper, a 100 pound keg of 1 1/2 inch roofing nails.

Three of us began merrily flinging double-handfuls over the tailgate as we tooled along the loop. We even brazenly began to huck out pounds of nails in front of the cars right behind us.

As we approached the point we first began deploying the nails, someone thought we should tell Les. "You gotta get off the loop. . .we've been tossing the nails."

"The roofing nails! What am I going to say--someone stole them!?'

Why not? Indeed. By the time we decided to warn Les about trouble ahead, we had tossed the entire 100 pounds of nails out in a continuous circle, all along the loop. It was time to get out of Renton.
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