The Arcade

44

Starsky and Hutch spend a day off at an arcade and Hutch demonstrates a skill that Starsky had forgotten about.

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July 1968, in between the Summers of Love.

David Starsky. Twenty five years old. Street cop in Bay City. Curly haired, simmering with sexual energy. Full of juice.  

Partnered with Kenneth ‘Hutch’ Hutchinson. Another street cop in Bay City. Twenty five years old. Face of a debauched angel. 

 

The Palisades Park Arcade in Santa Monica, California.

Both young men were ambling down the boardwalk. No work today. Painted on jeans. Tee shirts fighting the biceps straining to burst through. Money in their pockets.

Feelin’ groovy.

Although Starsky insisted that no place—NO place—could compare with Brooklyn’s Coney Island, he’d concede that this arcade promenade had its own charms.

The place was loaded with games of chance.  

A concessionaire, poised in front of milk bottle pyramids,  yelled at them. “Three balls for a quarter, guys? How ‘bout it? Three balls for only a quarter!”

Starsky laughed. “Oh, the memories! Nancy Jo Lipson.”

“Not Nancy Jo Lipson again,” Hutch groaned. “I don’t believe she even existed.”

“Oh, she existed, Blondie.” Starsky licked his lips extravagantly. “Coney Island. The 1950s. The greatest place and time  in the world to be a teenager.”

“Was she the one who lived in an apartment above the best Italian restaurant in the world?”

“No, you doofus. That was my grandmother.”

“So? I’ve lost track of this entire conversation, if one can be so generous as to label it a conversation.”

“We were talking about Nancy Jo Lipson. When the hawkers yelled at her, ‘Three balls for a dime, doll?’ Nancy Jo would  yell back, “Forget it, I know where I can get two balls for nothing!”

“Oh, she did not,” said Hutch. “I don’t believe it.”

“Scout’s honor.”

“I don’t even believe you were a Scout, much less than I believe Nancy Whoever and anything she said. Except for maybe ‘get those disgusting chocolate-y hands off me.’

“Don’t happen to recall that you were there. Well, she did say it. Right between the cotton candy machine and the taffy apple stand.”

“Oh yeah, the taffy apple stand. Wasn’t Nancy Jo the one you told me loved that disgusting candy—what was it?”

“Sugar Daddies. Oh man. Did I tell you what she used to say about those?”

“Sadly, you did.”

Starsky told Hutch again, anyway. “She said that Sugar Daddies were the greatest because they were so hard when you first put them in your mouth, but they were best when they went all soft and you could roll and pull them around any way you wanted—”

“STARSKY!  You are a P-I-G hog.”

“Whoo boy, that hurt!” Starsky clutched his side. “Is that what passed for cursing in Duluth, Minnesota when you were younger? You led a rough street life, huh?”

“I don’t even listen to you anymore. Half the time, anyway.”

“Aw, c’mon, you love it.” Then Starsky peered around.

“Isn’t this where the 12 inch hot dog stand is?” he asked.

“Yeah, I don’t believe that either. 12 inch hot dogs? Baloney. And I don’t mean the hot dogs.”

“Are you insinuating that I’m not good at measurements?”

“I’m saying those franks were 8 inches long at the max—the MAX—and that’s allowing for sauerkraut.”

“Wanna go into the alleyway and discuss inches, like a man?”

“I’m not comparing any type of weenies with you, on a roll or elsewhere. Ewwwww.”

“You’re no fun.” Starsky halted before the milk pyramid kiosk.

“Wanna try your luck?” he asked, fishing into his jeans pocket. “Lend me a quarter.”

“Don’t you have your wallet?”

“A wallet, Grandpa? Who the hell has carried a wallet for the last twenty years? The only thing I’ve ever had in a  wallet,” confessed Starsky, “was a petrified condom from the days when dinosaurs ruled the earth.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. I can guess. The condom packet said ‘Reserved for Nancy Jo Lipson.’

“You’ll have to lend me a quarter.”

“You really want to do this?” Hutch eyeballed Starsky like a weasel staking out a itty bitty bunny rabbit. “Are you serious?” he questioned, realizing with delight that Starsky had forgotten a certain fact about Hutch’s high school sports career.

“Sure I’m serious,” huffed Starsky. Then he reconsidered. “Not for money.”

“For what then? Not for a Sugar Daddy, a hotdog of any length, or a petrified condom.”

“For pride of the precinct.”

“Any way you slice it, you are totally screwed.” Hutch slid a quarter to the guy behind the counter and was handed three balls. Took aim with one,  and flung.

The first pyramid of milk bottles collapsed spectacularly.

“Lucky shot. Lucky shot,” mumbled Starsky.

“Do you happen to remember me telling you what I got my college letter jacket for?” asked Hutch nonchalantly,  

“Uh…..debating?”  

“Guess again, Einstein.”

Crash! Another pyramid fell. A couple of passers-by stopped to watch.

Hutch was handed a small Kewpie doll. “Here.” He tossed it to his partner.

“That’s the ugliest thing I ever saw,” growled Starsky.

“I arranged a date for you with her sister later on.”

“You’re all heart, ain’t ya?” Starsky swiveled his hips.

“Well, I still have one ball left,” said Hutch. He eyed his friend. “Starsk, don’t even say it.”  

WHAM! The third pyramid of bottles cascaded.  

The concessionaire fretfully handed Hutch a bag with the words ‘Hi, Mr. Policeman’ printed on it. In the bag were a set of welded-together handcuffs, a tin badge that said ‘Happy Town Squad,’ and a big red police whistle.

Hutch looked around and presented the bag, with a deep bow, to a little girl who squealed with delight.

“Hey!” yelped Starsky. “Why didn’t you give that to me?”  

He looked longingly at the bag in the little girl’s hands, and then leaned in towards her. “Wanna trade?” he asked hopefully.

She glanced at the hideous Kewpie doll and then at Starsky. “That’s a really ugly doll.”

“C’mon,” coaxed Starsky.

“Give me a dollar too.”

Starsky spun to Hutch. “Lend me a dollar.”

Hutch, who was absolutely  doubled up with laughter, pulled a wrinkled dollar from his pocket.

Starsky ceremoniously handed it, along with the Kewpie doll, to the little girl, and clutched his treasure bag to his chest.

“You should have given it to me in the first place,” he said to Hutch. “But the good cops always win, and it’s mine.”

Hutch gestured to the kiosk. “Your turn?” he drawled to Starsky.  

“Well, I’m already faint from excitement. How about I buy you a funnel cake instead?”

“As long as you don’t wipe your greasy hands on my shirt afterwards.” Pause. “As Nancy Whoever would have said.”

Starsky pulled the police whistle out of the bag and blew it piercingly into Hutch’s ear. “I now have the definitive response to any of your insults, wiseacre.”

“‘Wiseacre’? Where the hell do you think you are? Coney Island in the 1950s?” 

“Only if Nancy Jo Lipson is around.”

THE END