BRAINPAN LEAKAGE

Part 1 of 2

We don’t have an Alice’s Restaurant here in town. I wish we did… Then I could write a song about my little story here and be famous like Arlo Guthrie. But alas, we don’t, so no Thanksgiving Dinner that can’t be beat for me… Well, that’s not actually true, but the person who generally prepares it is named Liz… Or, every other year, me… Just not Alice… I did actually know an Alice once, but she never cooked for me, so I don’t think she counts…

Either way, once upon a time we had a place called Charlie’s. Served the best biscuits and gravy this side of the Mississippi, outside of homemade of course. But, unfortunately, Charlie’s is long gone. I think a plumbing outfit is in that spot now (see footnote)…

But, I’m getting off the subject, as usual…

If you’ve been following me on Twitter, or happen to be a Facebook friend, you’ve more than likely noticed my recent tweets / status updates lamenting the fact that I recently had to deal with a bogus traffic ticket.

And, that’s the subject I am going to focus on here…

You see, this blog entry is all about Adventures In Night Court… Not the old Night Court with Harry Anderson… After all, Anderson and Larroquette were a riot, and Markie Post… Well… Let’s just say she made the screen a whole lot of fun to look at in addition to being funny.

No, the Night Court I’m talking about wasn’t funny. It was an annoying waste of 3 hours for me. Of course, it probably will be funny once I get done writing about it, because I am going to endeavor to tell you about the weird that went on during my 180 minutes in close proximity to Hell. But, as usual, that remains to be seen. Guess I’ll just have to start writing and see what happens…

Now, to properly grasp the reason I visited Hell’s waiting room – also know as the City of Saint Ann Municipal Court – we have to start at the beginning. Wouldn’t you know it, the beginning involves Hell House… Please note, that the name of the city has NOT been changed, because very simply the citation is a matter of public record… And, in that public record is the City of Saint Ann Missouri’s side of the story. Not mine. Therefore, here you have my side, being made a matter of public record as well. I did, however, change the names of individuals involved just because I’m a nice guy. The real names are a matter of public record too, but I really doubt any of you will go look them up.

And, also for that record I’m sure you will note that my story is flip and punctuated with observational satire.  Otherwise this would just be me griping about getting a ticket… However, since the officer involved elected to try his hand at writing fiction I thought I’d try my hand at writing reality. I just figure I’ll make it funny so it’s worth reading…

To make a long story short, back in early October Scuba and I ventured off to “The Depot,” better known as “Home Depot,” in order to obtain some materials necessary to the completion of a project or two over at Hell House.  One of these items was a long section of wire rack shelving for a closet. We put it into the bed of my truck, along with the other materials, then secured it firmly in the center, jutting out at an upward angle so as to not present a hazard to other motorists. It was long, and it hung over the rear of the vehicle, as one would expect. We looked around for flag material, but found none (I forgot that I had a plastic, orange emergency flag under the seat in the cab, but we’ll get to that in a bit…)

So, we couldn’t find a flag, however, in the state of Missouri, per Missouri Vehicle Regulations, revised statutes (August 28, 2009) section 307.170 item 5 – Projections on vehicles:

All vehicles carrying poles or other objects, which project more than five feet from the rear of such vehicle, shall, during the period when lights are required by this chapter, carry a red light at or near the rear end of the pole or other object so projecting. At other times a red flag or cloth, not less than sixteen inches square, shall be displayed at the end of such projection.

The piece of shelving projected 4 feet 10 1/2 inches from the back of the truck. We knew it would be prudent to have a flag, however, we also knew full well that we were still perfectly legal, not to mention the oblique positioning of the item rendered it harmless to all around us (except perhaps extremely low flying aircraft… and I mean EXTREMELY LOW.) Furthermore, if one employed the Pythagorean Theorem, the actual end of the item was only projecting 4 feet 7 inches from the rear of the vehicle as measured parallel to the cargo box.  The point here being that while we were close to the limit, we were still legal, so off we went.

Just over two miles down the road – and oddly enough, just over two miles from our destination – flashy red lights appeared in my rear view mirror. The thing is, I had seen the police car traveling alongside us. I had watched him drift back and slide in behind us. I even told Scuba, “This cop is getting ready to pull us over.”

Officer JellyDonut, though I didn’t know his name at that particular moment, proceeded to follow along behind for several blocks. I began to wonder if perhaps I was wrong, because if he was going to pull me over he had plenty of opportunities to do so safely and with room for us to pull off the road. But alas, no, he elected to make the traffic stop. But, for some unknown reason he waited until I entered an intersection. He stopped at the white line, because as I entered the intersection the green light flipped over to yellow. In my rear view I saw him come to a halt. Then, as the light was going from yellow to red, he lit up his light bar and sped into the intersection to chase me down – what with me being a hardened criminal trying to make an escape and such.

Doing as one should do, I pulled over, immediately turning onto a side street so as to be out of traffic. I parked, shut off my vehicle, removed the keys from the ignition and placed them on the dash. I then extracted my license from my wallet, as well as my registration and insurance card, placing them on the dash as well. Then rolled down my window, and waited patiently with my hands in plain sight.

Officer JellyDonut extracted himself from his cruiser. And kept extracting himself from his cruiser… And kept extracting himself from his cruiser…

Eventually, when he had gathered himself and hitched his belt up underneath a belly that Santa Claus would have endeavored to reduce, he lumbered the 35 feet or so from his vehicle to mine. This took a good minute and a half if not longer. When he arrived at my window he was huffing and puffing as if he had just chased us on foot. To be honest, I wasn’t feeling particularly confident in his ability to protect and serve should the need truly arise.

I was immediately given the impression that he was angry with me for making him get out of his car, because the first words from his mouth (once he caught his breath) were, “Where’s your flag!”

“We don’t have one,” I replied.

“Why not?” he barked.

Scuba piped up. “We don’t actually need one, and we’re just going up the road.”

“That’s more than two feet!” the officer announced in a very agitated voice. “You have to have a flag on anything more than two feet.”

Now we knew we were screwed. Number one, we had ourselves a cop who either didn’t know the law or was making it up on the fly because he figured he could. Number two, we had a pissed off cop – probably because we interrupted his lunch, but that’s just speculation on my part – and when you have a pissed off cop you can’t even reason with them. Even my cop friends will tell you that. My only hope at this point would have been to distract him with a dozen donuts, but I didn’t have any on hand.

Besides, I was taught that you don’t argue with a police officer. Enough said.

At this point, although I had been more than cooperative as well as appropriately respectful and polite, Officer JellyDonut proceeded to announce in no uncertain terms, “I’m writing you a ticket! Give me your license and insurance card!”

By the way, the exclamation points punctuating the officer’s dialogue aren’t just there to end the sentences. Everything with him was an angry declaration.

Knowing that discussion was out of the question and that arguing would only serve to get me a pair of bracelets of the type I am only good with if E K is the one applying them, I kept my mouth shut other than to say, “Yes, sir,” which is pretty much what I had been doing all along except when other words were necessary due to a direct question. Each of those sentences, however, always ended with, “sir.”

After the arduous huffing and puffing 35 foot trek back to his vehicle, the officer piddled about calling in my license to make sure I wasn’t a hardened criminal who had gone around putting envelopes underneath piles of garbage. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining about that. It’s part of the job and necessary – remember, I write books about cops and portray them as the good guys. I know what they are up against. I like cops. Some of my best friends are cops (hey, I couldn’t resist that last one)… However, there’s a bad apple in every bunch, whether it be rotten to the core or simply bruised and mushy. It seemed to me that what we had happened upon on this particular day was an entire barrel in and of itself that wasn’t even good enough for making cider.

So, on with the story. Unfortunately for Officer JellyDonut, he had not captured the Kowalski* of Saint Louis. I say unfortunately because this seemed to agitate him even more. He got out of his car, and got out of his car, and got out of his car (you get the idea) then rummaged about for several minutes in his trunk. Eventually he came to the back of my truck with a tape measure the size one might find in my wife’s purse – i.e. pretty small (make all the jokes you want she doesn’t use it for measuring that.)

Officer JellyDonut then proceeded to huff and puff around the back of my truck, bending the measuring tape, slapping it around, dropping it, wrapping it around things, and generally re-enacting a scene from a Three Stooges short.  With Curly or Shemp. Not Joe, although Joe had is good points.

But, moving right along…

Scuba and I watched the officer as he measured from several inches inside the cargo bed of my truck (as opposed to the actual rear of the vehicle  from whence the measurement was supposed to be made) to the far end of the piece of shelving, all while a nice, arcing droop fell along the middle of the tape. At one point Scuba even remarked, “Do you think I should go out there and offer to hold the stupid end for him?” (the stupid end, in case you haven’t already figured it out, is the start of the tape, as in end that doesn’t require reading.)

After several more minutes of huffing and puffing I was finally presented with a traffic citation to sign, which stated I was being charged with – “Reckless driving due to not having a flag on a load that extended more than 2 feet beyond the rear of the vehicle.” It also included the wholly inaccurate measurement of 5 feet 3 inches. Please make note – Per Officer JellyDonut himself, I wasn’t operating the vehicle in a reckless fashion other than the whole not having a flag thing, which legally I was not required to have in the first place.

Officer JellyDonut informed me that I had a court date of December 1st, but that if I wished to plead guilty I could just go by the City Hall any time before that and pay the fine. He then started the long trek back to his vehicle, whereupon I annoyed him even more by calling after him and asking for a copy of the citation, to which he replied – after staring at me for several seconds as if I was some sort of alien with three heads – “Yeah, I guess.”

Yeah, I guess? I can’t be positive about this but I’m pretty sure they are supposed to give you a copy of the ticket… But, I digress yet again…

It was about this time I remembered the emergency flag underneath my seat. I asked him if that would suffice to which he replied, “Maybe.” We won’t even go into his strongly implied threat that I might very well be pulled over again because the flag was safety orange instead of red.

Scuba and I attached the orange plastic to the load and climbed back into the truck to head on our way. I watched in the rear view as  Officer JellyDonut made a swift turn into the Burger King across from which we had been parked.

I guess with all that hiking and measuring he had worked up an appetite, and it was time for something that didn’t involve jelly, icing, or glaze…

More to come…

Murv

To be continued in Part 2: The Group W Bench…

Footnote: A little bit of trivia, just for the hell of it: Charlie’s, the Eat-Rite Diner (another Saint Louis institution), and a little mother-daughter run place in small town Michigan called “The Spot” were the combined inspiration for “Charlie’s Eats,” the diner frequented by Ben and Rowan in the RGI novels.

* Kowalski is the name of the main character in a cult classic movie titled, Vanishing Point. The character drives cars for a company and… well, either follow the link in the body above for a full synopsis, or watch the movie. I highly recommend option 2, but watch the 1971 original, not the remake.

If you’ve been reading this blog for any period of time whatsoever, you already know that I’ve made no secret of the fact that E K and I were married on Halloween, way back in nineteen-hundred and eighty-sevum…

For several years afterward, in addition to treating ourselves to a night out with dinner and all the trimmings, we would either attend – or on a number of occasions hold ourselves – a costume party. Sort of a combination Halloween Costume/Anniversary bash. There was even a stretch where the parties had “themes” to coincide with the number of years we had been married. Of course, life can tend to get in the way, as we all know, and those parties have gone by the wayside. We’re seriously considering resurrecting them, but not this year.

Still, I thought it might be fun to dig through the archives and see what we had in the way of pictures of our costumes back in the day. Of course, nothing will be able to top our 1987 Bride and Groom costumes pictured above.

Unfortunately, as I began digging I discovered that many of our costumes over the years were never photographed with our own cameras, therefore we have no pictures of them. Someone out there does, I’m sure, but that doesn’t help me much as far as this blog is concerned (LOL). So, I will see if I can rattle off the costumes I can remember, and post the scant few pictures I was able to find.

I’ll tell you up front, a not so surprising theme starts to develop…

1986 – Shortly after moving in together we attended a costume party at the apartment of a couple we knew. Being on a tight budget we used whatever we had on hand – E K was a Dominatrix and I was her Slave. I somehow doubt it surprises anyone that The Evil Redhead already had the necessary clothing and props to pull this off…

1987 – The wedding, pictured above. E K reprised her 1986 costume by attending as a “Dominatrix in White.” Me? Well, I officially became her Property in the eyes of the law. Trust me, she has a piece of paper from the State of Missouri to prove it.

1988 – We attended a MAJOR costume party at the home of a friend of one of  E Kay’s co-workers. This was one of those legendary, long-running, gi-hugic bashes with overflowing attendance, plenty of booze, and a costume contest that required knowing the right people in order to wrangle an invite. Fortunately, we did.  E K was a Dominatrix Cop and I was her Prisoner/Punching Bag.

We weren’t flush with cash at this point in our lives, however we both had good jobs with steady paychecks, and we were keeping the bills paid – and had a little extra. Given that, we used some things that we had on-hand, but also invested in some props and other accouterments to really jazz up the costumes. This involved some trips to surplus stores, toy stores (back when plastic toy guns actually looked like the real thing), and even some sewing. Of course, E K already had the leather skirt and stiletto heels on hand, go figure.

The Evil Redhead spent the entire evening dragging me around the party by my shirt collar or by the handcuffs she had slapped on me (and didn’t take off for several hours). To the delight of the other party goers – and her own as well, I suspect – she kicked, stomped, slapped, beat, and threatened me the whole night as well.

Some of the attendees, while realizing we were in costume, actually thought E K was a real cop, albeit a very mean and nasty one. By remaining in character we were nominated as finalists for the costume contest, which in and of itself was a major accomplishment. When it came time for the vote and the nominees were brought into the center of the party, E K played it up like a pro by slapping me around some more, yelling at me, then tripping me and holding me to the floor with her foot on my chest while posing for countless pictures taken by the applauding crowd. (Not the picture shown here. That one was taken pre-party.)

In the end it paid off. We tied for the win. Actually, the host had previously had a single winner at the parties so he only had one prize, but this particular year he created a single and couple category. We won the couple category hands down. The prize? The winners (single and couple) split a case of Budweiser longnecks. Hey, a 12 pack is a 12 pack, and it’s even better when you don’t have to pay for it.

1989 – 1993 – Costume parties were sporadic during this period. When we did happen to attend one, we resurrected the Cop/Convict, Dominatrix/Slave outfits because we had them on hand. Although, there was one particular party where E K donned a long, frizzy wig and some sixtiesish garb and went as a flower child. For some long forgotten reason I was costumeless at that particular shindig.

1994 – The themes start taking shape. Our costumes that year were simple, but effective. It was our 7th anniversary so we held a huge party. We both wore gray sweatshirts done up like jerseys with a huge number 7 front & back and our names across the shoulders. Of course, our names that night were Itchy and Scratchy. We rented the classic movie “The 7 Year Itch” and played it in an endless loop during the shindig.

1995 – In keeping with the “numeric” theme idea we needed to find something that worked with 8. Being Halloween and all, spiders seemed to fit the bill.

We went with a Bride & Groom sort of idea, but turned it into a creepy “Black Widow” and her bitten, corpsified prey sort of thing. E K looked smoking hot in her long, black lace gown, of course. She also added the red hourglass marking for effect. I did a tux shirt and tie, then she covered me with the fake cobweb stuff and little plastic spiders. As an accessory decoration – one that freaked out many of our guests – we had a huge, twine spiderweb strung up in the exposed rafters of our living room, and in the center was a gigantic, 3 foot wide rubber spider hanging over everyone’s heads. We added to the ambiance of the Addams Family/Muenster Household decor with strategically hidden coolers filled with dry ice to generate a misty fog.

1996 – Anniversary number 9. I have searched high and low for pictures from this party and can find none at all, which is a total bummer. E K focused in on the whole 9 = 9 Lives sort of thing, so our costumes that year were “The Cool Cats.”

The evil redhead did the black turtleneck and leggings thing, with a black cat tail and cat ears sticking up around a beret. I was in similar beatnick garb with an orange tail and ears. I had a toy saxophone hanging around my neck, and we both had our faces painted with whiskers and were wearing cheap sunglasses.

1997 – The big 10th anniversary, and to be honest it snuck up on us. The only quickly doable theme we could come up with was the children’s song, “10 Little Indians.” Not exactly P C, but we were in a rush. We picked up a bag of tiny little “Indian” dolls at a party supply store and sewed 10 each to the front of our shirts. I know, not exactly inspired, but like I said, we were in a rush.

1998 – 11 years and going strong. We had absolutely NO clue what to do with the number 11, so it turned into a free for all. Any guesses on our costumes? Yeah, Dominatrix and Slave. See, I told you there was a definite pattern developing…

That was the last costume party we hosted, and the last one we have attended to my recollection. As I said, we are considering a revival, perhaps next year.

Any bets on what our costumes will end up being?

Hey, I’m not complaining. E K would REALLY hurt me if I did…

Happy Halloween – Samhain – Great Pumpkin Night to all!

More to come…

Murv