North Point

The following story is an except from Frank Satullo's new book, Here I Thought I Was Normal: Micro Memoirs of Mischief, chronicling his exploits in Avon Lake. 

North Point

A teenager from the neighborhood died cliff jumping. Rumor was that he was night jumping with friends and never came up. So, the police cracked down on this pastime of ours. Still, it was hard to stop doing something we’d always done.

North Point was our favorite place to cliff jump. There was a little road snaking the edge of a cliff along the Lake Erie shoreline. The road had been closed at times to reinforce a retaining wall used to stop the street from caving in due to erosion. The retaining wall was made of a wavy metal allowing Eddie – it was always Eddie – to scale down to the lake, swim out to our landing area, which was further out on the point, and test the depth of the water. He determined if it was deep enough that we wouldn’t be crippled when we plunged forcefully to the lake floor. This took a while.

When he returned, he gave the thumbs up. Then, he said he needed to take a leak. There was a vacant overgrown lot across the way so he went behind some brush. When he finished, he was headed back when an older lady appeared on a nearby porch, yelling at him. Eddie looked back at her, pretended to be flustered and ran straight off the cliff waving his hands in the air, screaming. I looked at the older woman and could read shock in her body even at that distance. I don’t know if she even noticed the rest of us. When she sat down on her front step the way she did, I knew Eddie had scrambled her brain but good. She grasped the railing, pulled up and scampered inside.

We figured enough time had passed for Eddie to get up against the cliff so we could jump. We spread out and all went at once before the lady came back.

Something about that jump never got old. You always anticipated hitting the water before you actually got there. Sometimes you experienced the anticipation twice before hitting, but that was usually in the dark. Plus, in the dark, you were subject to whiplash because you had no bearings at all. I suspected that’s how that teenager died. He must have been knocked unconscious.

At the bottom, we all whooped it up giving Eddie a play-by-play of what just happened with the older lady, expressions and all. He ate it up.

Some scaled the retaining wall to see if the coast was clear to jump again. Others, myself included, decided to swim and float on rafts. When we first arrived, we had tossed our water toys over the edge of the cliff.

By the time the climbers reached the top, breathless from the ascent, two squad cars greeted them. I was in a raft with one of the girls. She wanted to flee the scene, but a policeman was calling to us through a megaphone. So, I paddled in and we climbed up, only to get cited for criminal trespassing.

It was close to my 18th birthday so I was tried as an adult. It was also close to my reporting date to begin basic training in the U. S. Army.

The prosecutor scared the shit out of me. He was definitely a man on a mission and that mission was to hang me out to dry. I was the first to be tried for this particular offense so my case would set a critical precedent. 

“We have to send a strong message so nobody does this again!” declared the prosecutor.

Loaded for bear, he meant business and lambasted me. I just stood before the judge – silent.

 Then, I got a turn to talk. I had no representation. I had a court date to show up, so that’s what I did, alone.

“I’m going into the Army in a couple of weeks. We were just swimming where we had our whole lives.”

With that, the judge dismissed the case and I was free to go.

The prosecutor lost his mind.

I didn’t know what to do from there so I did what came natural and approached the bench with a humbled manner and voice, “Thank you, sir.”

The judge just stared at me so I walked away thinking I should have said, your honor. The whole time, the prosecutor continued ranting and raving.

I bolted out the courthouse doors and entered adulthood.