Log Entry-#314
Radiance
April 19, 2022
HMRodriguez
The Great Bull Heist of 1978
For the sake of the participants in this story, I considered changing their names. I was thinking about using the names of some the actor in “Ocean’s Eleven”, with George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, Don Cheadle, Andy Garcia, Bernie Mac, and Julie Roberts, but none of the players in this drama are A-listers. This band of seven misfits is better suited to seven mentally impaired dwarves. The readers and participants can decide who is who. The story can now be told because the statute of limitations has run out. I say that because the participants could have gotten into a lot of trouble. It was quite bold in a lot of ways, and the culprits are lucky they did not get caught.
The alleged events in this story involved seven diminutive but aspiring scholars from Theodore Roosevelt High School in San Antonio, Texas. The population of the school was about thirty-five hundred students strong with a particular 1978 graduating class having about eight hundred fifty ambitious young adults. It was a dark and stormy night when the plan for the heist started to take form. Some buddies were doing things high school boys would do, shooting the breeze, thinking about what the future held, sounding cool using slang and four-letter curse words. There was banter about the antics of their respective girlfriends. Leonard Skinner was playing Sweet-home Alabama in the background on a car radio. The iPhone had not been invented. Someone, probably Dopey, came up with an idea because of recent football game and high school rivalries. It was Sleepy, Doc, Bashful, and Grumpy who figured it was a cool idea. A crime was being planned, rather minor one, but nonetheless a crime.
The 1978 Roosevelt Rough Rider football team was holding its own in the district under the gritty guidance and coaching skills of Mike Crocker. Coach Crocker and his band of ex-drill sergeant-coaches were tough. They ran the team ragged. One of the rival schools was General Douglas MacArthur High School, also in the northeast district. MacArthur was a Five-A rated school with about the same student population. Each school in the district owned some sort of token totem. The Rough Rider school totem was a paper mâché “Big Stick”. A little over ten feet long, it was painted to look like a stick or rather a huge club. President Teddy Roosevelt coined the phrase “Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far” during his term in office. It was the mantra of his foreign policy. The big stick was lifted and carried about when the Rough Riders scored a touchdown or extra point. The totem for MacArthur was a large red eyed paper mâché bull. It was much bigger than a real bull but did not weight near as much because it was hollow. It was painted gray, with short white horns protruding off its head. The eyes would light up, and they configured the bull to shoot smoke out of his nostrils when the team scored points. They did this by hooking up a CO-2 fire extinguisher to a hose located in the ass end. It was an engineering work of art, but truly ugly. The plan was to steal it. A school that could not protect its mascot, was not a good school in the view of high school senior boys, I mean dwarves.
Bashful had access to a pickup truck, the get-a-way vehicle. The plan was to break into the bull pen, where they stored the hideous beast. It may have been Grumpy or Sneezy who knew exactly where it was stored. One of them managed to do a reconnaissance mission and located the prize a day or two earlier. And so, one night many years ago, in the cool darkness of a Texas night, under a cloudy sky, seven Rough Riders rebels borrowed a truck from unsuspecting parent and lit off to coral the bull.
In a show of adolescent superpowers, the testosterone and adrenalin fueled merry band of seven arrived at MacArthur High School about eleven-thirty at night. The first team went in to break the lock and transport the bull to a load out gate. They used a screwdriver to pry off the lock that secured the lock to the storage shed. The bull was mounted to a platform with caster-type wheels so it could be pushed around. The team started pushing the creature through loose gravel to the sidewalk and then to an agreed upon pickup point. They draped the huge beast in several dark colored moving blankets in a feeble attempt to hide the massive beast. Someone, probably Happy, had the great idea of using flashlights to signal when the coast was clear, and the pickup could be moved into place for a quick load out. The bull was being pushed down a walkway and the wheels were squeaking loudly and echoing off the classroom walls. From a vantage point across the street, the driver of the get-a-way pickup watched an unmarked car pull up to the front of the school near the load out gate. It was dark with minimal lighting. Someone got out of the car with a flashlight looking at the front gate and doors to the school. It was a security patrol. The crew with the bull was going to be busted. Had someone leaked the capper? The guys in the pickup were frantically clicking their flashlights in three burst increments signaling to the retrieval crew DANGER! STOP! But they did not respond. They were somewhere in the back area of the school pushing the squeaking beast along.
After few minutes, the security patrol came back, got into their car, and drove off. About that time the retrieval crew starts flashing their signal light with two bursts in succession signaling they were ready for pickup. The pickup truck driver moved cautiously across the vacant street, like a stealth M-1 tank, and backed up to the gate. The crew swiftly lifted the bull into the bed of the truck. The creature still draped in moving blankets was sitting catty-Wampus in the bed of the truck headed down Nacogdoches Road in the direction of Rough Riders home turf. The destination was a small vacant rental house on Radiance Drive near Kruger Middle school that belong to one of the dwarves’ parents. The parents never knew they were harboring ill-gotten gains and could have been considered accomplices for cattle rustling. In Texas, you can be hanged for cattle rustling. I don’t think the law specifically excludes paper mâché bulls.
The bull barely fit in the one car garage, but the dwarves managed to squeeze it in with minimal damage. The young men were elated with the heist. You would have thought they robbed a casino in Las Vegas or the gold reserves in Fort Knox. There were yips and yells of success echoing in the empty rental house. Several of the crew climbed on top of the bull and a few photos were snapped for posterity.
Then everything went quiet. The crew evidently had not thought through the whole chain of events. What in the hell were they going to do with this thing now? As the crew was filing out of the small garage early in the morning, the song “Highway to Hell” by AC/DC was playing on the truck radio. It seemed ironic given the situation. Were they all on a highway to hell?
After two days, the pressure was mounting. The police were called in. The entire MacArthur student body was ready to attack Roosevelt on their home turf with guns and light artillery. Rumors were bouncing around the halls that someone was going to be arrested and members of the crew were getting nervous. No one wanted to be charged with kidnapping or cattle rustling. A new plan was made to return the bull. To execute the plan, they needed a large box van or truck with a shell to conceal the bull. One of criminals new someone, who knew someone, who knew someone, who knew a used car dealer and asked to borrow a twenty-foot box truck. A few days after the heist, the bull was loaded up in the late evening and transport to an isolated road in the direction of Loop 1604 and the Judson Road exit in far northeast San Antonio. The creature was dropped off without incident or prying eyes. Early the next morning a phone call was made to the MacArthur high school main office line. The location of the bull totem was relayed.
As far as is known, the bull was recovered by the school officials with minimal damage the next day. BUT…there are legends about what really happened next. The dwarves vowed an oath of secrecy that exists to this day. The rumors say the head was severed from the massive body and set on fire. At the football game between the two schools that year, the MacArthur students unfurled a banner that said, “You’ve got our head, now suck on it!”. The truth remains hidden like dust in the wind in the annals of Theodore Roosevelt High School legends and lore.
NOTE: This story is based on the failing memory of a dwarf bystander. It is presented for entertainment value only. All the names are used without any association with anyone or any of the events described herein. None of the dwarves were ever charged or questioned. If you know of this event, please keep it to yourself .