There was a kid I became friends with at Miami Shores Elementary at the beginning of 5th grade. His name was Cody Alexander. My Mom used to let me spend the night over his house after she met his Mother Nell, and gave me her seal of approval.
Nell was a single Mother, raising Cody and and his 5 brothers on her own in a 1930's style Mansion off of Biscayne Blvd. The clan, Roy, Boyd, Glen, Perry, and An older brother who's name I forget, were all tall, long haired six-foot, skateboarder types. They all sold pot, had cute girls around them constantly, and seemed cool to me, kinda like a home-grown gang. If they played instruments, they could have had one of those bands where everybodys related and called it "The Alexander Family".
When I first started hanging out at Cody's place, various combinations of the brothers would locate us and torture the fuck out of us. We suffered random "flash beatings" where a couple of them would burst into Cody's room while we were staging battles with clay soldiers we had created after school. They would hold us back while a third would walk through the door (usually Roy) and torment us with slow destructions of the clay men. Roy would always take on the vocal mannerism's of a high ranking German commandant, and decapitate the soldiers before crushing them under his bare foot. The Alexanders always ran around without footwear. One time Roy and his buddy Derell, strung us up twenty feet over the basketball court in their backyard, and left us hanging there while they went to 7-11 to buy some rolling papers.
When I would spend the night at the Alexander mansion, Cody and I would pretend to go to sleep at around 10:00pm and wait for Nell to retire for the evening. At around eleven or so, we would sneak out and roam the streets of North Miami. One night we came up with the idea of wearing all black, putting stockings over our heads, and climbing up on the roof of the nearby strip-mall to throw rocks at cars. We geared up, grabbed a couple of paper bags, and picked-up every servicable stone we could find along the way. Loaded up with ammo, we climbed up the five and dime store roof and took position. We tossed rocks at every car we could for the next half hour. Bravely throwing, then ducking like cowards until the next lob. After 30 minutes of this we grew bored, and decided to go across the street to the 24 hour Howard Johnsons for some ice cream. We came out to the parking lot, cones in hand, and were immediately surrounded by 4 cruisers with their lights flashing. The cops exited the cars with guns drawn, and made us hit the ground as we threw down our cones. It turns out the bank on the corner of the strip-mall was installing a new safe "after hours", and they were alarmed by the two figures with stocking masks up on the roof of the building. They cuffed us and jammed us into two separate cars. We were on our way to the station.
After a small amount of grilling, they saw that we were just a couple of punk kids playing bad guys after our bedtime. They called Nell up and she came down to the station to get us. I was ratted out by her to my own Mother, and grounded for the rest of the month. It sucked being punished, but it saved me a few beatings at the hands of the Alexander boys.
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