12 Days of Mugger - Day11

Telephone Cords & The Birthday Wish Mugging

This photo is interesting for a couple reasons. It’s typical of a lot of weekends growing up in Wilkes-Barre & Mountaintop. Guessing by the candle count, I’m gonna say it’s my sisters 6^th birthday and like any one of these birthdays you could see Mugger starting to jockey into position... shoulder-to-shoulder with the intended celebratee’. . The reason his eyes are closed is because he’s at that very moment filling his lungs with air to hit those birthday candles and get a piece of those birthday wishes. He was a notorious sharpshooter when it came to trying to blow out someone else’s candles.

The other reason this picture is significant is because you can see the dangling telephone cord just behind them. A lot of people don’t know that Mugger, at this early age, gave my parents the first portable phone on their block. ‘Bout ten years before anyone else had one in fact. It was around this age when he found a scissors and severed the telephone cord in a couple different places. With the sheers sitting at his side he watched TV in the next room. A dangling limp phone cord was in the kitchen but he denied the act till the end. I think he would still deny it to this day... You were able to take that phone anywhere in the house after that.