An Unnamed Cave

Several caves in the Málaga vicinity (if you define “vicinity” broadly) are noted tourist attractions, or should be, with natural wonders or prehistoric paintings. But other caves have no claim to fame. They have no prehistoric paintings. They are not remarked in tourist guides. Fodors has nothing to say about them. They are tubes in the ground, unlit, unmarked, and fit only for teenagers to explore. Those are the good ones.

Our son, Eric, and his friend, Victor deGroot, decided to camp overnight in one such hole in the ground near Torremolinos. The boys hitchhiked to their chosen cave with cans of food and bedrolls, prepared for a great adventure. It was cloudy and threatening rain. All the better. More adventure.

Night fell darkly. Rain fell heavily. The cave leaked wetly. The boys decided that their adventure was uncomfortable and they would be better off home. But it was harder to hitchhike on a dark, rainy night and the boys met with no success. Finally some policemen pulled up in a car and made the boys stand in the rain while they played Twenty Questions. At last the police told the boys to go home. The boys asked for a ride but met with a resounding, “Nope.”

Teenage years are hard. And sometimes wet.

The Haircut

The Haircut

The time was late 1974 or early 1975. Our son, Eric, and his good buddy, Victor Degroote, together ruffled far more feathers than either could have hoped to have done individually. Wherever they went, the boys brought with them a whole
new level of meaning to the word “synergy.”

The biggest problem I had with Eric and Victor was keeping a straight face. Once the two boys invaded (they never quietly entered anywhere) my “office” where I was working on some travel articles. They were outraged.

It seems they had been riding double on a motor scooter. Nothing wrong with that, actually. It's done all the time wherever I've lived. But they had been going the wrong way on a one-way street. They might have thought they could see traffic better that way. But I suspect they just didn't think.

Surprise, surprise, the Spanish traffic cops picked them up. The boys were fearless and defiant. “Go ahead, issue your tickets.”

I don't remember which boy issued the challenge. Maybe I never knew. But the cop's response was great, I thought. “No, we're not going to write you tickets. Your rich American fathers will just pay them. Instead, we'll cut your hair.”

That got their attention. At that time long hair was “in,” and every teenage boy with any idea of style wore his hair as long as or longer than the girls did. Tickets? No problem. Daddy fix. But the loss of their hair would have been an unsustainable outrage. “Dad, can they do that, just cut your hair like that?” demanded Eric.

“Do it? I'll help 'em. I'll sharpen their scissors.”

Well, no nurturing parent there. They left muttering to each other about life's basic unfairness and Eric's bad luck in having a father who actually sided with the law. Actually, I would have liked to see him wearing short hair. I used to tell him that the reason he did such strange things was because his hair sucked all the blood away from his brains.

Copyright Ken Harris 2009