Dick Cavett on his career in show business, and more.

It was one of those delicious summer nights in Nebraska when you’re blissfully wallowing in vacation. You gulp dinner in order to slip out through the screen door into the dark, into an atmosphere of rustling elm leaves and June bugs, and join up with some friends to play “kick the can” or “ditch” or to raise, if not hell, heck.

This night slipped over the line into the infernal.

My friend Tom Keene and a few more of us were out prowling. Neither Tom nor I can be certain who did what, or why. We were amusing ourselves fairly harmlessly, we thought, by picking up clods and small stones and tossing them noisily onto people’s porches, then running when the porch light went on or someone looked out to see what was up.

At most, mischief.

Then somebody (me?) picked up a pop (soda, for Easterners) bottle, or maybe it was a bigger rock. It’s funny how, even though I’m not even sure I was the heaver, I can still see the missile arching toward the porch of what turned out be an elderly couple and smashing into the five- or six-foot etched-glass panel of their front door, reducing it — with a sickening crash — to a noisy cascade of glittering shards.

Not being totally stupid, we fled — in a phrase perhaps fairly new back in the ’50s — like bats out of hell.

Apparently, we failed to run far enough. Someone had called John Law. Suddenly we were facing an approaching car that, as night prowlers, we knew (from the tell-tale extra-bright headlights) would be the fuzz. Soon we were inside it.



Using what may be some sort of police psychology, the two officers spoke no word. They just silently hauled our sorry little quartet to the station house.

Tom and I looked at each other as it struck us all at once that we were — holy mackerel! — in a police station.

It was, admittedly, somewhat romantic, but at the same time scary. Through an open door we could see a corner of an actual barred jail cell, just like in the movies.

Part of me wanted to be put in there for at least a while, to have a better story to tell, but most of me didn’t. The words “bread and water” murmured ominously in my head. So did the sound of my dad reciting Wordsworth: “Shades of the prison-house begin to close / Upon the growing Boy.”

Adding to the scariness was the fact that we were not quizzed as a group, but individually; undoubtedly the most effective technique. I don’t recall having had a chance, once picked up by the cops, to conspire to lie. It apparently just came naturally. I remember one frightened voice whispering, “What if they hook us up to a lie detector?” They didn’t.

Some primitive preservation instinct caused each of us, separately, to deny having done anything beyond being, unluckily, in the area where the crime had taken place. This seemed to have gone over well enough. But then something happened.

The third guy to go in for grilling — let’s call him Barry, for indeed that was his name — threw a chill into the rest of us.

He emerged from his questioning crying. My guts gurgle even now, remembering the moment.

He didn’t say he had ratted us out.

He didn’t need to.

Then, another surprise. They let us go.

They were apparently smarter psychologists than we thought. Or else quietly sadistic. Rather than saying that they now had the story and booking us, they released us to our consciences.

I slept horribly that night. The others reported the same.

When I read “Crime and Punishment” in later years, some of Raskolnikov’s mental tortures rang all too familiar.

What would our parents do when they found out? Would we be kicked out of school? Put in that cell for real? With drunks and child-gropers? The words “bread and water” played again.

My aching insomnia was so bad that night that I tip-toed to the medicine chest and dug out an unused pill I’d gotten from the dentist once for wisdom-tooth pain. It finally put me to sleep.

Nothing happened the next day, either. Tom said, “They’re waiting for us to crack.” A shrewd comment, as it happened.

It was now Saturday morning and I was on a local radio show produced by and for kids called “Storytime Playhouse.” I was able to lose myself in the 15-minute drama (as the director, I had awarded myself three choice roles, done in different voices) and totally forgot the whole thing. Until about three minutes after we went off the air.

I’d never experienced real gut-rending mental pain until then. We, the guilty gang, were beginning to look haggard. It was no longer mere speculation that Barry had shoved us overboard. With shame, he had admitted it, along with something about not being able to look his “mom in the eye.” (You can imagine the scorn with which this wimpiness was greeted.)

Something had to be done. That something propelled me into the corner Walgreens phone booth a block from the radio station. I had half-formed a sort of scheme.

A bit of explanation: Even before puberty I had a low voice. “He sounds like a little man!” and other nauseating comments were always made around me. My post-pubescent but still teenage vocal organ was that of an adult.

I became aware of this from time to time, as when I would ask a question of a public speaker from the back row. Everyone would turn around, dismissing diminutive me on sight as the source of the rumble.

Might this be our life-saver? A force, unassociated with reason, drove me.

Although Walgreens was “air-cooled,” I was sweating all over in my t-shirt and Lee jeans as I dialed the police station. The improbable dialogue that followed went something like this:

(Phone picked up at station.) “Police headquarters, Collins speaking.” “Officer Collins, might you be the officer who questioned a group of fractious teenage boys the other night about a broken glass door?” “Yes, that’s right.” “Well, I have the dubious honor of being the father of one of those boys. And I must congratulate you, officer, on the masterful job you did handling this matter.” “Well, thank you. We try to do our best, of course.” “Well, I can assure you your psychology worked. Those poor kids have hardly slept since. And what they’ve done is take up a collection from their allowances and savings and put together a hefty envelope of cash, which they delivered to the old folks whose door glass they smashed. The people were damn nice about it and thanked and forgave them and even gave them something to eat.” [This, happily or unhappily, but certainly expensively, was true.] “Well, I’m glad to hear that. We usually wait a few days on a situation like this. One of the boys confessed and I hoped that it might eventuate [cop-ese] this way. I generally prefer to handle cases like this in that modality [more cop-ese!] rather than spoil the kids’ ‘record’ with legal procedurism [sic]. I’m glad it seems to have culminated in a satisfactory resolution.” [My real father, an English teacher, might have advised the good officer on the desirability of using shorter words.] “Well, my hearty thanks to you, Officer Collins. You’re a master psychologist and one hell of a policeman. Thanks again and good-day to you, sir.”

I hung up, as Woody Allen has said, sweating audibly.

In fact, I had waited just a moment or two to give the voice at the other end a chance to say, “O.K., you little bastard, how dumb do you think I am? Now you’re really in trouble.” And, perhaps, adding something about that dread phrase, “reform school.”

Later, I seriously wondered what they might have charged me with. Impersonating a father?

I emerged from the booth in a mental state that combined both disbelief and a kind of foolish pride at the apparent success of my fourth acting role of the day. Then I went back in the booth and squandered another nickel, passing the good news to Tom to tell the other guys.

For a couple of days I had some doubts that this stunt had worked. But apparently it had. The sense of relief was indescribable. Guilt is not a desirable companion, and a particularly unpleasant bed-fellow. The sky was open again.

It’s unlikely that officer still lives and breathes. Something in me, over the years, wanted to call him and confess the whole charade. But I never did. I wish to hell I had.

Is it a bit hard for you to believe this youthful ruse, born of pain and desperation?

And what would an ethicist say?