This would have been 1987, I think, back when cruising Forest Lane was about the coolest thing you could do on a Friday night. We were juniors in high school. At the intersection of Forest and Marsh, there was a Kip’s Big Boy restaurant, and one night, we stole the Big Boy. It was a well-planned, surgical strike. A kid named Moondog was our wheelman. Moondog drove an old pickup, and three of us rode in back. He pulled up to the front door of the restaurant, and we leaped out of the truck, grabbed the surprisingly light Big Boy, and threw it in the back of the truck. We executed our raid sometime before curfew, so the restaurant and the parking lot were packed. Stunned onlookers watched as we sped away, doing our best to cover the Big Boy with a tarp. Lying on his back in the bed of the pickup, Big Boy’s arm remained visible, holding aloft a hamburger on a plate.
We stashed the Big Boy in a wooded area near Moondog’s house, not far from Medallion Center. Our plans for it at that point were not set, but there was talk of hauling the thing up to school and placing it on the football field. The next day, though, Moondog went to check on our Big Boy, and it was gone.
Well, I have a message for Moondog and the other members of our team: our Big Boy may have surfaced. The Lakewood Advocate reports that a Big Boy is now standing in a front yard less than a mile away from where we stashed ours those many years ago.
Regulators, mount up!
