Shawn's story on auditions for a new reality show called Tontine brought a smile to my face. Not everyone is familiar with the concept -- I wasn't myself until I was party to one.

Ten or so years ago, I lived in a little shotgun shack on Worthington Street -- We called them "The Monopoly Houses." (They still stand at a rent quintuple what we paid.) This was just as Uptown was becoming the tony condo-ville you know today. Joel was still struggling to draw in enough business to keep TABC afloat, despite the fact that we took our mail there. The open field where we played croquet and drank beer is now a condo building and the vacant lot that was next to my house is now townhomes.

Uptown was in the last throes of the transition away from its history as the local freedmen's settlement. One of the last remaining businesses was a hair salon unlike any in Uptown today -- The Chez Pompadour. It was a place where no haircut could have been more than $5. I'm not sure that they were dealing drugs there, but I do know they did more business after dark than before. The thoroughly unconfirmed story in the neighborhood was that the cops had busted the place with a botched warrant some years back and after getting smacked down were loathe to try again.

Eventually, the price of land outstripped the price of narcotics haircuts, and the Chez closed down and was to be demolished to make way for a townhome.

I and my neighbor and best friend, whom we'll protect by calling "Jouston Hoost" had a special place in our hearts for the Chez and were nostalgic about the changes to the neighborhood. Along with another friend whom we'll call "Stoe Jultz" (and who later did a stint here at Pegasus News), we decided that history needed to be preserved and hatched a plan to swipe the Chez's large window/sign before the wrecking ball hit it.

Planning for the heist was intricate. I attribute our ultimate success to three things: First, my brainstorm of taking it in broad daylight when anyone would assume that we were authorized construction workers instead of common hooligans. Second, Jouston's nimble fingers with the tools we had just bought at the Cityplace Target to execute the job. And third, Stoe's cool nerves in pulling up the getaway station wagon at precisely the right moment.

Of course, only one of us could have the window. We considered having it cut into thirds, but discarded that idea because it involved work.

So, we formed a tontine. Betraying the mindsets of bachelor twentysomethings, we decreed that while we would not wait for death to choose the eventual winner, the Chez window would come to rest in the home of the last party to the pact to marry. It was decided that the window would be left in my house for safe keeping.

Unfortunately, I failed my brothers-in-arms. A couple of years and two moves later, another friend and I accidentally dropped the window while trying to move it to a self-store facility. It shattered into pieces. Only the parts held together by stickers touting haircare products could even be picked up and thrown away.

By rights, Jouston, as the last single man in the tontine should have the window in his Philadelphia apartment right now. Sorry, man.