Grateful American: A Journey from Self to Service(9)

For a couple of years, I went crazy. When we lived in Glen Ellyn, this buddy of mine told me how his dad drove his car to the train station, parked, and rode the train to work. My buddy knew his dad kept a spare key inside the engine compartment. So I hiked over to the train station, lifted the hood, found the key, and took the car. I didn’t have any particular place to go. Like an idiot, I made a left turn next to a sign that said, “No Left Turn,” with a cop right behind me. Red lights flashed in the rearview mirror and I pulled over. The cop came to my window and said in a low voice: “Driver’s license.”

“Oh, yes sir,” I said, my voice as proper as a lieutenant’s, and I handed him my license. A fake. The name on the license was Carlos Huizinga. Age twenty. I was fourteen, looking twelve.

“Well, Carlos,” the cop said. “This driver’s license has expired.”

“What? That can’t be right.” My heart pounded.

“Let’s leave the car right here.” He opened my door. “We’ll go down to the police station and figure out what’s wrong.”

He took me down to the station, put me in a room, and stared straight through me. Clearly he knew I was full of crap.

“Carlos. Is your name really Carlos?”

“Oh yes, Officer. I had no idea my license was expired.”

“Carlos. Can we call your mom and dad?”

“Um. I don’t think they’re home.”

“Carlos. What’s their number?”

I broke, and my words tumbled out in a rush—“Officer, I’m so sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. That’s not my name. It’s Gary. Gary Sinise. And that’s not my license. It’s not even my car. It’s my friend’s dad’s.” I was wailing now, my voice cracked and pleading. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I’m sorry . . .”

They called my dad. Dad came to the police station. Dad drove me home. Dad wasn’t happy. I was grounded for a long, long time.

I mean, c’mon. What was I thinking? Did I look like a twenty-year-old Carlos?



Not all my shenanigans contained even an element of humor. Dad had a big Buick Electra, and when I was fourteen I regularly lifted the keys, crawled out my window at night, and drove the Electra around town. One time a buddy said, “Hey, my dad owns a music store. We could use some speakers for our band.” So one night I sneaked out and picked up my buddy in the Electra. We drove over to his dad’s store. My buddy opened it with a key. We stole some big column speakers and put them in the Electra. I dropped him off and took the equipment back to my house. It was five in the morning when I unloaded the speakers into our garage. I’d just closed the trunk of the Electra and was walking into the garage for the last time when my dad came out.

“Gary. What are you doing?” His voice boomed.

“Uh. Oh, good morning, Dad. Um, my buddy was moving. We needed to get the equipment out of his house.” I talked fast, caught in a web of deceit.

Dad took one long look around his garage. He didn’t ask how I got the speakers from my buddy’s house over to our house. He just shook his head and walked back inside.

Eventually I carried the speakers up to my room, hooked them up to my record player, and blasted music through the house. I’d become a thief and a liar and a near-failing student—and as a fourteen-year-old I couldn’t care less about any of it.

Today, I know I was heading down a dark path. My mom had her hands full, and my dad was often gone, so I usually had to figure things out on my own. Sometimes my conclusions weren’t so great.

At my best, I developed initiative as a kid. I don’t mean by stealing stuff. I mean by forming my own bands, by drawing people together. I was often the neighborhood organizer, and if I wanted to play baseball, football, or hockey, I simply gathered some kids together and we’d play. I developed a mind-set that if something needed to get done, then I needed to do it; otherwise, it might not happen. It’s a mind-set that’s carried me a long way. If you can think it up, if you can dream it up, then get off your butt and make it happen. Good things come from focus and effort.

At my worst, I learned lessons the hard way. When I look back, I see how I did stupid and even dangerous things like sniffing oven spray and stealing cars (well, borrowing cars, just without asking to use them), and I wonder how that stupid kid doing stupid kid stuff ever survived. It’s no excuse, but the country itself was going crazy in those years. In the late 1960’s climate, if all the tie-dyed rock stars I knew were blowing weed and doing drugs, then it felt easy as a kid to conclude that I’d better do drugs too. That’s what was going on in America in those days, and even though for a time I went back and forth trying to avoid it, like a lot of teenagers, I got caught up in all that craziness.

Later in life, I would grow to realize that I’d been born into a land of opportunity, just like Vito Sinise envisioned when he came through Ellis Island and arrived at America’s sea-washed, sunset gates. The true freedom I eventually discovered in my later youth wasn’t a license to do whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted. The true freedom acted as a force beckoning me to do something meaningful with my life. All I needed to start on that path was a push in the right direction.

But all that would come later. Midway through high school I was still caught. Thankfully, I would begin to channel my energies differently during my junior and senior years. I’d find a new road thanks to an incredible teacher named Barbara Greener Patterson—and thanks to a moment I’ll never forget with Bernardo, leader of the Sharks.