Entrepreneurs
It was 1971 on a night I imagine to be crisp but not cold. A trail of cars wound through country roads to some farm or barn or empty field to what I am sure was going to be one hell of a night. The Dead blared from each automobile’s stereo, no doubt, and the darkness must have smelt like patchouli, or manure, or freedom. I can see my father, a chicken bone, anxious for what the moon would bring. He was probably fresh off the clock, not expecting a night inside metal slabs and swinging fluorescent lights. Besides, it was 1971 outside of Birmingham, and my father and his friends had business to tend to.
On their friend’s large plot of property, they didn’t think they were really disturbing any one. They rarely disturbed anyone, but kept to themselves for the most part. Well, my father and the three he had accompanied had barely been there long enough to pop the tops off their beers before blue lights came from around the bend and set the partiers into a panic. The officer was polite enough. He told them they had received a noise complaint and that it might be best that they go home now. The officer must have been a little more assertive than that, or it seems they would have just waited for him to leave. All in all, they must have seen the signs and so they gathered their things and got out of there.
There was only one way into the property and it was the same way out. The officer had been long gone in front of them by the time the trail of cars made their exit. I imagine they made plans for meeting elsewhere as soon as they got out of that mess, and I don’t imagine those carloads were of people that were sober. Like a sudden chill in the pitch-dark night crawling up from spine to neck, the crowd saw blue lights in the distance. There was no way around them and there were more than just one-there were dozens.
The pursuit ended before it even began, and before long my father and all of his friends were being individually searched as well as their vehicles. It’s hard to imagine what this would have sounded like; were he and his friends quiet and obedient or did they resist, and yell, and call them pigs? I hear the dangling of keys and handcuffs and faint swears under the breath of my father and his friends. When they came to him, sure enough (he was the designated driver that night, he assured me) someone had left their own stash of marijuana in the cracks of his backseats and he was busted.
It’s hard to imagine a scene more likely but less enjoyable than a bunch of tweaked out hippies in the back of a cop car. Turns out, they got away free. Well, not completely free-some of the boys’ freedom was traded for snitches. The boys would give leads on drug busts to the police and the police wouldn’t press charges, or at least that was the deal.
“There’s nothing quite like spending a night in jail,” my father told me, and he had told me before, only now I knew what he meant, and what he took from experience.
“And I’ve sure done a lot of things.”
On their friend’s large plot of property, they didn’t think they were really disturbing any one. They rarely disturbed anyone, but kept to themselves for the most part. Well, my father and the three he had accompanied had barely been there long enough to pop the tops off their beers before blue lights came from around the bend and set the partiers into a panic. The officer was polite enough. He told them they had received a noise complaint and that it might be best that they go home now. The officer must have been a little more assertive than that, or it seems they would have just waited for him to leave. All in all, they must have seen the signs and so they gathered their things and got out of there.
There was only one way into the property and it was the same way out. The officer had been long gone in front of them by the time the trail of cars made their exit. I imagine they made plans for meeting elsewhere as soon as they got out of that mess, and I don’t imagine those carloads were of people that were sober. Like a sudden chill in the pitch-dark night crawling up from spine to neck, the crowd saw blue lights in the distance. There was no way around them and there were more than just one-there were dozens.
The pursuit ended before it even began, and before long my father and all of his friends were being individually searched as well as their vehicles. It’s hard to imagine what this would have sounded like; were he and his friends quiet and obedient or did they resist, and yell, and call them pigs? I hear the dangling of keys and handcuffs and faint swears under the breath of my father and his friends. When they came to him, sure enough (he was the designated driver that night, he assured me) someone had left their own stash of marijuana in the cracks of his backseats and he was busted.
It’s hard to imagine a scene more likely but less enjoyable than a bunch of tweaked out hippies in the back of a cop car. Turns out, they got away free. Well, not completely free-some of the boys’ freedom was traded for snitches. The boys would give leads on drug busts to the police and the police wouldn’t press charges, or at least that was the deal.
“There’s nothing quite like spending a night in jail,” my father told me, and he had told me before, only now I knew what he meant, and what he took from experience.
“And I’ve sure done a lot of things.”