“We used to skate down this hill called Robert Avenue,” Waits remembered. “It was a great curve and you dug up a lot of speed. It went by our neighbor Mr. Sticha. He lived in the beauty of the curve, where all the momentum culminated in a beautiful slough of cement. It took you right past his house but as close as you could get to his porch.” Namechecked years later in “What’s He Building?,” Mr. Sticha would become so apoplectic at the skateboarders that his wife warned them they’d give him a heart attack. When eventually he did have a heart attack—on Halloween night, on his front porch—Mrs.
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