Thorofare

This is the story of the best prank I ever pulled. And Liza? This one's for you.

Like most teenagers, my friends and I were constantly bored. There was never much to do on a Friday or Saturday night besides sit in a basement somewhere and watch SNL, and so we were forced to get... creative (of course, we did do our fair share of house TPing and it's possible that we may have stolen more than a few election signs and then placed them all on one lawn. But that is a rumor that has absolutely no substance).

We went to Denny's often, screwed around at Meijer, and hit up coffee houses, but it was when we drove to the surrounding cities that things finally got exciting.

Like most areas, I assume, the suburbs of Detroit had their share of urban legends. At this point, I'm not sure which ones we heard and which ones we concocted on our own.

There was the "Reflector House" in Romulus, where some nutjob had placed reflectors of all sizes on his house, trees, and garage. He lived at the end of a dead end street, and trapped us there once when one moron in our group attempted to steal one of his beloved reflectors. He had a shotgun, and I honestly thought that we were going to end up in jail.

There was the "Pink Castle," located on a winding drive in New Boston. Pink bricked and ivy-covered, it was placed far from the road and surrounded by a stone wall. The driveway was blocked by a chained wrought-iron gate, and across the top letters spelled out "BUENOS..." something. I think that the legend had something to do with kids being killed in the field between the house and the stone wall, but I can't really remember. We used to dare people to touch the gate, and the driver would pretend to take off.

God, we were stupid.

And then there was the "Red Driveway House" in Wyandotte. The story: a father accidentally ran over his daughter in the driveway, and painted it red to cover up the bloodstains. They posed a child-sized doll in the front window and changed her clothes daily. Who knows if the story was true, but the driveway was red brick, and there was a ridiculously creepy doll posed in the window.

Finally, there was Grosse Ile, a small island in the Detroit River. Its residents are wealthy and their houses rival those on Lake Shore Drive. Traveling to Grosse Ile was almost like going to another world. There were no McDonald's and no Best Buys - standard fare for those of us accustomed to strip malls and fast food. Instead, there were small grocery stores and mom and pop restaurants.

The road dissecting the north side of the island from the south is called Thorofare Road. And this is where our story begins.

We had heard/concocted a story about Thorofare - namely that someone had been hung from a low branch at a fork in the road. With the headlights turned off, we used to slowly drive by that spot, waiting for something to happen. Someone always claimed to have seen something in the woods, but even on a winter night, with snow blanketing everything, there was just nothing to see. It was creepy as hell, of course, but nothing more.

I really don't know how it got started, but we devised a plan, sitting in Kelly's boyfriend's kitchen, thinking that we were going to scare the pee out of our friends. Chad would be hidden in the very back of my mom's minivan, behind the bench seat. When we got to Thorofare, I would stop the car with the excuse that the back hatch door was ajar. When I opened it, he would drop out of the back of the car and hide on the side of the road.

This all happened seamlessly.

I closed the hatch, got back in the driver's seat, and slowly started to drive. Chad, dressed all in black, waited on the side of the road. Kelly, sitting by the sliding door, called for me to stop the car. Chad had been throwing firecrackers for the past few minutes, and even though everyone in the car was predictably freaked at this point, I stopped the car. Kelly got out, and after a few tense seconds, was promptly snatched by Chad. And I? Drove away.

Looking back, I'm not sure why I drove away, but it seemed like a good move at the time. Liza and Rita were freaking out, and wouldn't listen when I tried to explain the prank. Even when I turned around and found Kelly and Chad by the fork on the side of the road, they were still slightly hysterical. I don't think that Rita talked to either of us for a few days.

For what it's worth, it was a pretty rotten trick, and I'm sorry about that. I'm pretty sure that our friends forgave us, but the closest I ever got to pulling any sort of prank again was in college when I helped stuff popcorn between someone's door and newspaper taped across the door frame. Lame, I know.

But we did have fun together - me, Kelly, Rita, Liza, and Julianne. Remind me to tell you about camping at Pontiac Lake sometime...