Well, I guess it wasn’t really Hopalong’s fault. But when you are 10-years-old and are used to watching the exciting adventures of the famous cowboy Hopalong Cassidy every Saturday morning, it hurts when you can’t watch it one Saturday. My problem was that we didn’t have a TV set. In fact, hardly anyone in Deerfield Beach had a TV set.

The first person in Deerfield to get a TV set was Doctor Higgins. He was a very tall man, kind of bald, and the only doctor in town. He practiced his medicine initially in the same house where he lived with his wife and daughter, Betsy, who was my age. Their house and office was on Hillsboro Boulevard, across from the U.S. Post Office, in the same house that the Kraeer Funeral Home is in today. Betsy was tall and skinny, had long blonde hair and wore glasses. We were friends, but not too good of friends. She was taller than me by two or three inches, and one of my biggest competitors for getting the best grades in our class at school. When the Higgins first got a TV set, we were all invited to come over and watch on Saturday. But after the second or third week, Betsy told us we couldn’t come anymore because her father had said that he had patients coming and we might disturb them.

We children were heartbroken. No TV? No Hopalong Cassidy on Saturday?

But it didn’t take long for one of our fathers to step up and pay the price to buy “all” of us kids a TV set. Well maybe it wasn’t really for “all” of us, but it seemed like it at the time. Mr. Allan Ballard (the father of Johnny Ballard, who recently retired as the longtime chief of police in Hillsboro Beach) stepped up to the plate and bought the second TV set in Deerfield Beach. Not only that, but he and his wife, Miriam, let it be known that all the children in the neighborhood were welcome to come to their house on Saturday morning and watch it with Johnny and their daughter, Susie. Their house was located on property which is now part of Deerfield’s City Hall east side parking lot.

Everything was going along fine with our TV watching for months until one Saturday morning we got to their house and no one was home. One of the kids said that he heard they had gone up to Georgia on a vacation or something. I remember thinking, “They must have left us a key or something so we could get in to watch Hopalong.” We looked under the front door mat. No key! We looked under all the flower pots. No key! We started to panic, because Hopalong was going to start in a few minutes. Maybe they forgot to leave us a key!

Suddenly I got a great idea. I told the kids I’d be right back. I ran as fast as I could the 100 yards or so to my Dad’s shop. I ran in to where I knew there was a crow bar. I grabbed it and ran as fast as I could back to the Ballard’s house. Someone scooted an old chair from their backyard up to a side window.

I stood up on the chair and used the crow bar to pop open the wood frame window. Pushing it up as far as it would go, I pulled myself up to the window sill and scrambled inside their house. I ran to the TV and turned it on, and then came back to help the other kids get into the house. We all made it inside and sat down on the floor to watch just as Hopalong Cassidy came on. “Whew,” I thought. “Barely made it!”

We hadn’t been watching Hopalong five minutes, when suddenly a deep voice came through the open window: “What do you kids think you’re doing breaking into Ballard’s house?” I looked over and recognized the policeman. Everyone else kind of froze, so I got up to explain to him that we always come over on Saturday morning to watch TV at the Ballard house. He responded by asking, “Do you always come in through the window?” I said, “No, but I’m sure it is all right. Mr. Ballard just forgot to leave us the key!”

I could tell he was trying to keep a straight face. He asked who brought the crow bar. I raised my hand. He told everyone else to go home, but ordered me and Tommy into his car. He drove us the 100 yards or so to my father’s machine shop. We got out and went in. Dad was running a lathe. The policeman told Dad where he’d found us. Dad stopped the lathe, looked around real serious-like, and said “Guess you’ll have to put ‘em in jail!”

I couldn’t believe it. I started to cry. As we turned to get back in the car, Dad hollered out and told the policeman, “Be sure to get their fingerprints too!”

It seemed like a long ride back to the police station,” even though it was only two blocks. We went in and the policeman had us dip our thumbs in an ink pad and put them on a pad of paper. Deerfield had its own jail at the time and most of the prisoners were local drunks. I could hear them laughing and making fun of us; and I was really scared. About that time, Dad walked in. He said something to the effect, “Do you think he’s had enough?” The policemen nodded, and then he and Dad started laughing. The policeman then said to us: “Let this be a warning. The next time we might have to put you in there with those guys,” as he pointed toward the drunks in their cells.

It was a lesson I never forgot.

David Eller, Publisher

4-17-08