Above is my youngest sister Vicki Presco, standing in front of three story home located on the borderline of Piedmont in the Oakland Hills.
Below is the account of our launch of mice into Piedmont. I was fifteen. This might be an early case of Cultural Warfare launched by ‘Bohunks’ as our mother would sometimes cynically call her four children after the divorce from a man whose ancestors came from Bohemia in 1854. Vincent Van Gough’s ‘The potato Eaters’ came to mind every time I heard that ugly word. We were a brutal uncultured race, our brains turned to mush due to all those potatoes we were forced to eat by Victor ‘The Spud King’. For sure we were not going to ammount to anything. So why not share our misfortune with the fortunate?
Jon Presco
Rick Young, Mark, and myself, walked calmly into Glenview Cleaners
on Park Beulvard and asked if we could have half a dozen plastic
laundry bag. We had found a way to trap the mice that had come to
infest the pantry, and now wanted to share them with the wealthier
folk who lived up higher on the hill. Though we were on the
borderline of Oakland and Piedmont, just two block up is where the
real money lived, in very fine mansions. Piedmont has been for years
one of the wealthiest districts in America. The Sharon family made
their home here.
Getting what we wanted, we having a reputation in these here parts,
we went down to the lower basement and began to fill these bags with
natural gas from a line Mr. Petty put in for his Bunsen burner when
he lived here. We now attached the capsule to it that was my design,
consisting of one used toilet paper roll with tissue taped over one
end. Tilting the jug we had captured a little mouse in, we watched
his tiny feet try to get traction as our little Commmmunist
Cosmonaught slid tail-first into the tube. Snugly in, we taped some
more tissue on the end, sealing our little voyager inside.
Last but not least, we attached this message;
“Dear Rich People; You don’t know us, but we are poor people
living in the flatlands of Oakland, and we are infested with mice.
Why us, we asked one day. And then we decided to share our
infestation with you. Today we launched our first mouse into
Piedmont. We put tissue over the toilet paper tube so the mouse
could gnaw its way through and run into your home or basement.
Enjoy!”
We now marched up tree flights of stairs and crawled out
onto the roof. From atop our House on San Sebastian one could see
most of the San Francisco Bay, from Richmond to San Jose. We licked
our finger to be sure the wind direction was right, and
“Bon Voyage!”
Rosamond Press 