Hi, gang!
Happy Thanksgiving Eve.
Hope everybody is sufficiently psyched to cook and eat, then cook and eat some more, maybe catch a little holiday football and just spend time with family and friends. (In my case, I hope to do all those things + man the dishwashing carousel!)
As for today, when we last gathered, some sorry ass dude who thought he was staying in a five-star New York City hotel, didn’t get the memo.
Now where were we?…
PART II
After I put in a call into my brother, Chris (yep on the hotel’s land line, no cell phones back in the day), to laugh over my bizarre circumstances, I started to get a little sleepy.
Desperate to keep warm, I covered myself with a sound blanket. The thing is, calling it a “blanket” would be a pretty liberal stretching of the truth. In fact, it felt a lot more like you were covering yourself with a burlap bag or maybe a welcome mat.
Somewhere between midnight and 2AM, I must have fallen asleep – suddenly hitting the panic button, not knowing exactly where I was.
“Don’t sweat it, Fischer. This is actually a nightmare you’re living live,” I remember thinking. And then, of course, it sealed the deal once I looked out the bathroom window. (That’s right, the very same window that remained nailed open to make it easier to power back up from the main equipment truck the next morning!) You just can’t make it up.
At that point, I didn’t see much use in trying to go back to sleep, so I headed back downstairs to the hotel lobby before heading back out to the snow-making site. There was a coffee setup from earlier in the night, so I grabbed a few waters and some snacks to bring to the guys. (Yeah, I thought about bringing coffee, too, but it pretty much tasted like paint thinner – or, at least, how I thought paint thinner might taste. And just for esses and gees, it was also ice cold.)
Before I got ready to move out again, I shoved all the makeshift supplies into a plastic bag and headed for the door. To this day, I still remember looking down at my watch – 325AM.
I walked outside (instantly feeling colder than I had at any point up in what I later decided should have been called the “Hovel Suite”), throwing the surprisingly heavy supply bag over my shoulder.
I could see the lights from the snow-making site, and then suddenly, I was flat on my back.
The waters and the sodas and the assortment of snack cakes and yogurt raisins were now all over the ground, and for an instant I couldn’t figure out why I wasn’t lying in the snow. The wind had been entirely knocked out of me.
As I struggled to get my air back, I could hear the sound of laughter. And when I tried to get up, somebody pushed me right back down again.
After what seemed like a long time, I looked up and saw three men. Check that, they were a lot more like three teenage punks. The thing is, though, one of them had a knife.
You can tell yourself what you think you’d do in a moment of crisis – maybe what you hope you’d do – but when the critical moment comes, all bets are simply off.
I thought about jumping up and trying to take a poke at the one in the middle (one of the guys without the knife), but then I somehow reminded myself that except for a boxing class I had to take when I was in the army, I hadn’t thrown a punch in anger since I was 13 years old.
There was a kid in my junior high school who always carried around a briefcase. It was a nice one, probably a gift from his grandfather or something. (Hell, it was so old looking, his grandfather may have actually used it.)
Anyway, carrying that thing around made him an easy target to get bullied – and bullied a lot.
I was anything but a tough kid back then, but one day, I just couldn’t watch it any longer.
I was out in the front of the school, waiting for the bus, and the briefcase kid came running past me. And when it became clear that he was being chased, I guess I just sort of lost it.
Somehow, I managed to trip one of his pursuers, knocking him to the ground. He slammed hard onto the pavement, badly cutting up his hands and tearing apart his pants at his left knee.
His buddy, though, continued after the briefcase kid, taking his prized possession from him and threatening to damage it.
Again, and just to reiterate, I was never a tough kid; I just wasn’t. But that day I snapped, tackling the other boy and punching him in the face twice. And when blood started coming out of his mouth, I hit him again. I couldn’t stop.
I was thinking of that then-forever-ago moment when I readied my next move. And much like one of my favorite Shakespearean charcters, Sir John Falstaff, who said “Discretion is the better part of valor,” I jumped up and ran like hell.
I could hear those three little bastards laughing at me, as I tore towards the lights of the snow-making setup. I guess I could always run pretty well, but I was cold and half asleep and scared shitless. And they were gaining.
I continued running along, the ground beneath my feet suddenly crunchy and firm, as I reached the first patches of the newly made snow.
That’s when he stepped out, brandishing a small caliber handgun, aiming it right at one of the boys.
And that voice…Jesus, that quiet, almost soothing voice. “Get the fuck out of here,” he said. He didn’t yell it. He just said it, almost like he knew he was more than menacing enough.
All three of my pursuers were gone instantly. I could hear them swearing and taunting me, no doubt running away like three scared little wet-ass boys.
Deville put the handgun back in his jacket pocket.
When I asked him how he knew to come out of the car when he did, he said something I’ll never forget. “You just didn’t seem like the type of dude who would let us stay out here freezing all night long, but the other guys asked me to make sure.”
Epilogue
The next few days went by without incident. It remained cold enough for the man-made snow to stick to the ground, and the film, Home Alone II, wrapped four
days later.
I eventually learned that the little handgun Deville had was a Walther .32 caliber. (Think Ian Fleming’s James Bond.) He told me that, as I wouldn’t have known that on my own. He also told me that he had a permit for it, and that I shouldn’t worry about anything.
Clearly, Deville never said a word to the other three guys. As far as they were concerned, he had just run out to check on me when we’d met back near the snow-making machines.
The following Friday I went back to the production office to get my paycheck. Curious, I asked one of the staff accountants if she had an address for Deville. Just wanted to thank him.
After checking, she told me that not only was there no check for a Deville, there was no record of anyone on the crew by that name.
Enjoy the turkey and ‘fixins tomorrow, my friends.
We’re 20% there.
JFish
@Copyright 2025 by John L. Fischer