Mike Byers: Sand Lake Boys

It was 1978 and the summer between the 10th and 11th grades. We were living in the Sand Lake area of Anchorage, just down from “four corners” and off of Raspberry Road. A bunch of us guys who went to Dimond High School had taken to calling ourselves the “Sand Lake Boys”: myself, Greg Ebbert, Mike Ebbert, Tracy Ebbert, Danny Scarpella, and sometimes Jim Ross. We roamed the streets of Sand Lake looking for mischief to get into. We always felt sorry for the kids who lived in Brentwood, like David Ziemer. Their parents kept them in the neighborhood. (I guess so they wouldn’t get dirty.)

That summer I was working for my father, who was a builder, hanging sheetrock so I could buy a car. It was a hard job, but after a while he trusted me with the taping, bedding, and texturing, so it got a little easier. I worked my butt off 12 hours a day, six days a week, and got off at 5:00 on Saturday afternoon. The first thing I would do was head over to the Ebberts’ house, where we would figure out how to spend the rest of the weekend.

I had bought a Yamaha 175 Enduro—my first venture into motorized transportation; however, I lacked some of the essentials, namely a driver’s license, insurance, a fully working exhaust system, and a license plate. But the guy who lived two houses down from us claimed he flew his floatplane without a license, so I figured I didn’t need a license either, especially when I was only riding a motorcycle. Besides, I was 15. What was the most they could do to me?

Although I had bought the Yamaha with my own money, my Dad insisted on two rules. First rule: if I ever got arrested, I was to just stay there. I was not to call home or ask anyone to come and get me. If I had gotten myself into jail, I could figure out how to get myself out of jail. Second rule: if I got a ticket, he was going to take the motorcycle up to the mine and leave it there, and he really didn’t care who paid for it. (I think he was just looking forward to having my motorcycle himself.)

Once we all hooked up, we would hang out playing poker with homemade chocolate chip cookies instead of money, listening to music. (The big bands at that time were The Cars, Queen, The Electric Light Orchestra, Fleetwood Mac, and Led Zeppelin.) After eating dinner (Greg’s Mom made the best lasagna ever), we would all head outside and walk around the neighborhood, bored as any teenager could be. Sometimes, around 11:00 p.m., we would go “tin canning”—a practical joke we pulled on people driving through our neighborhood.

You need about six pop cans and some monofilament line. Take one end of the fishing line, tie three cans together, then go to the other end of the line and tie the other three cans to that end. You need a lot of excess line to wrap loosely around the cans. Go out into the street and find two mailboxes directly across from each other on opposite sides of the road. Place one set of cans in one mailbox, run the line across the street, and put the other pop cans in that mailbox. The string between the two mailboxes should be about 12 inches above the asphalt at its lowest point in the middle of the road. Then you hide and wait. Sooner or later a car will come along and hit the monofilament line, pulling the cans out of the mailboxes and entangling the fishing line in the wheels, the bumpers, and the undercarriage. As the drivers were going down the road, the tin cans made it sound as if they'd just gotten married. When they stopped to see what had just happened to them, we would all jump out of the bushes, screaming and laughing at the top of our lungs, before running in different directions. That was pretty much the extent of the nighttime shenanigans of our bunch of hooligans.

One Sunday afternoon when we were hanging out, Mike Ebbert said he wanted to go to the Quick Stop up at “four corners” to buy some cokes and potato chips. He asked if I could give him a ride to the store on my motorcycle. I said sure, so we hopped on my bike and headed off. After getting our stuff, we headed down Raspberry Road, with Jewel Lake behind us and Cranberry Road in front. We were riding beside the road on the trail used by snow machines in winter; in summer it was pretty much reserved for three-wheelers and dirt bikes like mine.

As we were cruising along about halfway down Raspberry Road, I heard over a loudspeaker, “You on the bike . . . stop the bike and get off.” I looked over my left shoulder and saw two things: a police officer in an Anchorage Police Department cruiser with his microphone to his mouth and Mike flipping off the police officer. I knew immediately this was not going to be a “stop and talk.” Mike’s gesture meant our parents were going to have to pick us up at the 5th Avenue jail. In my case, I would have to stay there until my mother came and got me, and Dad would have a reason to take my motorcycle up to the mine and leave it there for his own personal use.

Mike slapped me on the right shoulder, and, turning that way, I saw he was pointing across the potato field beside us, jabbing at the air with his finger pointed. We took off across the field as fast as we could go, knowing there was no way for the police officer to follow us in his car. The ditch between the dirt bike trail and the road was too deep. Even if he tried, the car would sink in the soft soil of the potato field. We headed towards two houses with just enough room between them for a motorcycle to easily pass, but no way could a police car make it. Now I could see my out!

We sped across the potato field, bouncing all the way, and flew between the two houses, my knobby tires tearing up the grass as we went. The police officer had turned on his lights and was racing to try to get to us before we came out the other side. This was impossible as it meant he had to go down Raspberry, turn right on Cranberry, and turn right again on West 69. There was one more element to our plan of escape. When I left home I had left the garage door open; hopefully my mother had not closed it. We came around the corner and saw that the garage door was still up. I killed the engine and flew quietly up the drive into the garage, put the kickstand down, and nearly knocked Mike off the back as I threw my leg over, trying to get off the bike as quickly as possible. I hit the button, and the garage door started to close slowly. We had made it. Now it was down to a race between the garage door and the police car.

We hid below the windows of the garage door until we thought enough time had passed for the police officer to be gone. As we slowly peeked out the glass, we could see him sitting in the middle of the road with his car turned off and his window rolled down . . . just sitting there. He then got out of his car and turned in a slow circle, hand cupped up to his ear. What in the hell was he doing? Then it dawned on me he was listening for my jacked-up exhaust system, which is about three times as loud as it should be. (I made a mental note to myself to get that fixed.) After a few more minutes the officer got back into his car and drove away. It took another ten minutes before Mike and I started to breathe again. Then the dull boredom of a summer Sunday afternoon returned.

My Dad did eventually take my motorcycle up to the mine, but not because of anything I had done wrong. I had acquired my first car, a 1966 MG Midget. He was so impressed with how hard I worked all summer he agreed to pay half the car—a really big deal for him. I never ran from a police officer again and would never recommend it to anyone else.

Mike Byers is a sixth-generation Alaskan whose family came over the Chilkoot Trail in 1896. Born in Fairbanks in 1962, Byers grew up in Anchorage and graduated from Dimond High School in the 1980s.