Well, Boys and Girls, it’s time for an update on the life of me. Don’t panic, this will not be a report on what I had for breakfast or that I finally found that special dress for the prom. I haven’t been that busy. My partner in this escapade, the magnificent Ulva, and I have been working on the website however, updating it with new information and adding another book or two, as well as changing the cover on DEER RUN TRAIL. This website has consumed so much of our time we haven’t been able to play Rugby for weeks. (God, she’s tough in a scrum) 

Anyway...The second in the TRAIL series of books, THE NODAWAY TRAIL, will be out soon. I invite you to visit the website and look things over. I’d invite you for lunch, but I’ve been so busy I haven’t vacuumed in days. 

Yours in literary literariness,

David

CHARGES DISMISSED

           An attorney I know once said to me, and I’ll paraphrase, “It’s good to know the law. It’s better to know the judge.” When I was a rookie police officer, I had the rather idealistic belief that the law was fair… and I was, for the most part, correct. Those who are trusted with the administration of the law can be, at best, as stupid as the rest of us. At worst? Oh my.

            One summer evening in the late 1960’s a man named Elazier Adkins took it upon himself to beat his wife and four-year-old daughter with an automobile radio antenna. Hearing the curses and screams, a neighbor phoned the police. Alone in my squad car, and only a block or two from the scene, I was assigned the call, another two-man unit was dispatched as back-up. When I arrived in front of the house, I could hear the screams and shouting from my position in the street. Deciding not to wait for assistance, I entered the open front door, stepped over the form of a four-year-old child where she lay sobbing on the floor, and moved across the room to where Mr. Adkins was striking his wife as she writhed on the couch. As he drew back his arm to continue the beating, I advised him that he was under arrest and attempted to disarm him. A large man, he then attempted to strike me, and the battle was joined. My back-up arrived as Mr. Adkins and I fell out his front door, rolled across the narrow porch, down three steps, and into his small front yard.

            As is all too usual in domestic violence cases, Mrs. Adkins, screaming for help only moments before, declined to sign a complaint against her husband. I did not. I charged Mister Adkins with disorderly conduct, (his shouting and cursing could be heard all over the street) public intoxication, (he was drunk when we battled our way to the sidewalk, a public place) resisting arrest, aggravated battery, (he got a lick or two on me with the antenna) and interfering with the lawful execution of duties by a sworn officer of the court. I would have charged him with shoplifting and cattle rustling if I could have. He was beating a woman and a child. Shortly thereafter I was summoned to testify at his preliminary hearing. My case was sound. I had witnesses to the screams for help and the subsequent struggle, photos of my injuries, a breathalizer to confirm intoxication, Mr. Adkins statement admitting guilt, and a signed Miranda rights waiver. More than enough to warrant him being held for trial.

            There was a heavy rainstorm in progress outside the courtroom that day as the evidence was presented to the judge, sheets of water sluicing down the windows on a dark and blustery morning. The judge, regal in his long black robes, distinguished in stately spectacles and graying sideburns, his stern visage dominating the courtroom as he weighed all the statements, charges, and depositions carefully. He questioned Mr. Adkins and my back-up officers thoroughly, then turned to me.

            “Officer Lewis,” he said, “you suffered injury at the hands of Mr. Adkins, did you not?”

            “Yes, your Honor.”

            “And you suffered these injuries as he fought with you while resisting arrest, correct?”

            “That’s correct, your Honor.”

            “You entered his residence as a response to seeing Mr. Adkins in the process of beating one LaVina Adkins, his wife, with an automobile radio antenna?”

            “Yessir, I did.”

            “You heard his curses and her screams while outside the home?”

            “Yessir.”

            “And the door was open, was it not?”

            “The front door was standing open, your Honor.”

            “Officer, were you invited into the home?”

            “Nossir.”

            “Did you hear Mrs. Adkins calling for help?”

            “I heard Mrs. Adkins screaming for help, your Honor.”

             He leaned back in his chair and carefully deliberated as he watched the heavy rainfall through the large windows behind the bench, his templed fingers against his chin, obviously in deep contemplation. At some length he turned again to me.

            “Officer Lewis,” he said, “I have just one more question.”

            “Yessir,” I replied.

            “Officer,” he said, indicating the view through the windows, “how much rain do you suppose falls on a city this size, during an hour in a rainstorm of such magnitude?”

            A bit confused by the question, I replied: “I don’t have any idea, your Honor.”

            “Neither do I,” he said. “Complaints are dismissed.” He then stood up and walked out of the courtroom.

            In retrospect, I wish I had said 8million, 792 thousand, 431 gallons. Perhaps then Elazier Adkins would have been tried, convicted, and sentenced to jail time. Perhaps he would not have returned to his home very early the next morning. Perhaps his wife would still be alive. Perhaps his daughter would have seen her fifth birthday.

Perhaps.

One never knows, do one?

LUNCH AT THE LODGE

  You Want Bear?

            He is a Cherokee Indian, a kind, quiet man, and he and I are friends. I’ll call him John, for if I were to use his real name, he would be embarrassed. Over the years, Laura and I have attended sweat lodges with him, participated in pipe ceremonies, and come to appreciate his humble dedication to his belief system. We enjoy our differences and our sameness a great deal.

            A few years ago, my wife and I traveled to northern Arkansas to attend a black powder Rendezvous. A Rendezvous is a gathering of Buckskinners, modern day Mountain Men, practitioners of primitive arts. In many ways, these men and women are a step apart from the rest of us, spending some of their time amid the trappings and values of the early nineteenth century. At Rendezvous, competitions are held in marksmanship, knife, axe, and tomahawk throwing, fire starting, and other disciplines necessary to life in the wilderness from times long past. Much is as it was, the camp ground full of Baker tents, lean-to’s, and the occasional tipi. Traders hawk their wares of Green River knives and Hudson’s Bay blankets, skins and weapons are bought and sold, beadwork is bartered, and marvelous costumes and authentic clothing abound. It is a slice of the past, with different social rules and regulations than our current society, an etiquette and ambience that presents the visitor with a sense of history surpassing what may be gleaned from books. Many Rendezvous are closed to the general public for a few days of their duration, so the participants can practice their lifestyle and skills in peace from gawkers and tourists.

            On this particular day the grounds were open to all comers, and it was crowded, Reeboks more common than moccasins, shorts outnumbering breechclouts. We strolled through the camp, watching the visitors watch us, and enjoying their gaping. After searching for a short time, we found John and his wife sitting on bear skin robes in front of their lodge. John’s lodge is a sixteen-foot tipi of Sioux/Cherokee design, one of the most versatile shelters ever created by man, a true pine and canvass cathedral. We joined them in front of the lodge, as John surreptitiously ignited a fire with a carefully concealed Bic lighter. Feeding the blaze carefully, he soon had a small cooking fire ready. His wife entered the tipi and returned with an iron pot containing two cans of Dinty Moore Beef Stew. We sat back, jawing, and watched the parade of tourists peer at us. John and his wife were in buckskins and Indian garb, Laura and I in kettle-cloth clothing appropriate to the period, and we were all armed with knife, tomahawk, or both. Picturesque we were, fascinating to passers-by.

            Rules of etiquette demand a cooking fire not be approached by strangers without permission. It is no more acceptable than an outsider entering your kitchen. The rules of etiquette also state that anyone at your fire, or “in the kitchen” must be offered something to eat, if food is ready. Soon after the Dinty Moore stew had begun to bubble, a couple stopped and stared at us. They appeared to be in their early forties, were excessively white, and dressed in matching outfits of madras shorts, sport shirts, and jogging shoes. Fresh from Rotary and the Junior League, with a Taurus wagon in the dusty parking lot, they seemed fascinated that real Native Americans and Mountain Persons were available for easy inspection. They watched us from a distance for a while, then gathered their courage and walked directly to the fire.

            “What’s in the pot?” the man asked, smiling at us. John put on his best impression of Jay Silverheels’ Tonto, and replied.

            “Bear.”

            “Bear?”  the man squeaked.

            “Huh!” John replied. “Bear. You want to eat?” This was unanticipated, and the visitor hesitated a bit. To his credit, he plunged ahead.

            “Ah…sure! Thanks. I’d love to try some bear.”

            John’s wife produced a wooden bowl and iron spoon from inside the lodge and ladled some stew into the vessel. She passed it to our guest. The fellow took a small bite of the Dinty Moore, chewed, swallowed, and grinned.

            “This is good!” he beamed, then shoveled in a big spoonful, and continued. “Bear…wow! C’mon, this is really bear?”

            “Huh!” replied John, never cracking a smile. “That his name when we kill him. That Bear…him one good dog.”

            The visitor regarded John for a moment as this new bit of information soaked in, then shot Dinty Moore Beef Stew all over the fire and my moccasins. He scurried away, wheezing and coughing, as his wife skittered along beside him, attempting to wipe the stew off his shirt and shorts. The four of us collapsed in mild hysterics.

            Was our treatment of this obviously nice man wrong? Probably, but certainly small enough revenge. I think Jay Silverheels would have been proud.

           

The Poodle on the Parkway

When I was a young man, I attended official cop school, otherwise known as The University of Illinois Police Training Institute. Week after week, after week, after week, a select number of young valiants such as I were sequestered from the world, the victims of excessive indoctrination and instruction into the art and function of becoming police officers. A huge amount of subjects were covered, from how to deliver a baby, to public relations, to crime scene investigation, to choosing the correct donut. The amount of subject matter was immense.


The instruction that remains most vivid in my mind after all these years was from an FBI instructor named Kip McLaughlin, who told me two things. Number one: be courteous to all, officer, kind to those who deserve your kindness and, even though you serve the public, remember that you are nobody’s servant. And two: Always remember that if somebody wants to kill you, they have a 90% chance of getting it done. Make your 10% as fat as you can. Those statements were easily worth as much as the endless theoretical facts that were pounded into us because theory is just theory. Practical education can only come on the street. That’s why veteran officers give rookies a hard time. It’s fun, and the rooks, for the most part, can’t find their way out of a crowd of three. Stuff almost never happened in the real world the way we’d read about in all those books.


Eventually, after nearly a year of instruction and study, it was determined by the powers that be that Officer Lewis was fit to be removed from the 7am to 3 pm shift and sentenced to life on the three to eleven shift, or PM watch, the busiest shift of the day. It was late March of 1969, a lovely spring afternoon, and I was spending my last few hours on the day watch with a 20 year veteran officer named George Hyde. George loved running radar, a function of policedom that I personally despised, as was doing so in an older residential area, when the radar alerted us of an oncoming vehicle coming on in excess of sixty miles an hour in a thirty mile per hour zone. When the 1968 Mustang flashed by our position, George fired up the red lights, I kicked on the siren, and we gave chase, more or less.


Our squad car was a two-year-old Chevy with nearly a hundred thousand miles on the odometer, and countless hours of idle time on the exhausted motor. It had roughly the same acceleration capabilities as a school bus. It was nearly four blocks before we closed on the little yellow mustang. Its driver, a blond-haired lady, deep in thought with her radio blasting, remained blissfully unaware of our presence when we finally crept up behind her at sixty-three MPH. As we changed lanes to possibly move up beside the woman and get her attention, we noticed her dog. A gray poodle it was, the mid-sized variety, a miniature as opposed to a toy, hanging dangerously out of the open passenger-side window, its ears wafting and tongue lolling in the breeze.


“George,” I said, “that dog is gonna fall outa that car.”


No sooner had the words left my lips, than the dog left the Mustang. Headfirst, the poor pooch, no doubt enraptured by the passage of wind and scent, fell over the door and onto the street, its small body whirling and bouncing down the pavement like a demented furry dervish. George slammed on the brakes to keep from running over the ill-fated creature and, when he came to a halt, I jumped from the car to see to the dog as he accelerated away to again catch the mustang, whose driver was not only oblivious to us, but unaware her doggie was no longer in her company. The pup, its eyes fixed and glazed, its tongue dangling loosely out of its mouth, hung in my hands like a dishrag. I carried the poor lifeless body to the side of the road and tenderly laid it on the parkway between the street and the sidewalk. Several pedestrians who had witnessed the event approached and stood around me and the dog, silently observing the tableau before them. One lady was even sniffing back tears. It was sad and it was awkward. There was nothing for any of us to do but look at each other and wait for George to return with the lady and her Mustang. For long minutes we stood there, the small crowd growing a bit with curious onlookers. When boredom overtook sympathy, the group began to break up. At that point in time, as Lazarus from the grave, the dead dog resurrected, fixed its manic eyes on me, bared its teeth, and charged.


I had been bitten by dogs. I didn’t like it. I whipped out my trusty nightstick. While I had no intention of bludgeoning a twelve-pound poodle to death, especially in front of ten or fifteen onlookers, it was also not my intent to allow the crazed canine fanged access to my fetlock. Instantly realizing its worthlessness, I pushed all of my police training aside, called upon the hours spent in my youth watching Walt Disney’s Zorro episodes, and began to fence with the perturbed pooch. It thrusted. I parried. It pounced. I retreated. It snarled, I yelled. The crowd, once more fully involved in the incident, began to oooh and aaah, some shouting encouragement to me, others to the dog. The battle raged for what seemed an endless time, and I, because of a now perforated pantleg, was on the verge of shifting my response from Zorro’s technique to something more along the format of Arnold Palmer, when George and the blond lady arrived.


She bolted from her Mustang and, taking sides with the recently dead poodle, joined in the fray. She got in a lick or two, a diamond ring that cost more than my house doing some damage to my right ear, before George managed to lift her off her feet and throw her a short distance away. She was an attractive woman, well dressed and groomed, with a barrage of vocal talent that zoomed from obscene to unintelligible in only a few sentences and, when she charged me the second time, good ‘ol George put her face down in the grass and handcuffed her. The dog, meanwhile, collapsed again.


I returned the dog to the parkway and sat beside it, talking quietly and stroking its head. A tow-truck was summoned for the Mustang, a sergeant arrived and took George and the lady to the station, and I was left with the pup and the squad car. Presently the pooch again opened its eyes, crawled into my lap and began to shiver. I wrapped the dog in a blanket from the squad car’s trunk took it to a veterinarian, then went to headquarters. By the time I arrived, the lady had some control of herself. Her verbiage had reduced to just swearing and abuse, and she was no longer attacking anyone. I advised her of the situation and the fact that the dog was conscious and that I had taken it to a vet.


Her reply, liberally interspersed with negative assessments of my mother’s sexual habits, my family lineage, and my own proclivities, basically indicated that she had been unjustly used, she most certainly had not been speeding, I had effected attempted murder on her pooch, and that I should be glad I took the canine to a veterinarian because I was a public servant, and she was the blankety-blank public! If I had a problem with that, her attorney would make things even more clear to me. We were fortunate that she was not suing us for the way she’d been so badly mistreated. Meanwhile, she was leaving to go pick up her car, which we had unlawfully impounded! George and I looked at each other.


Speeding, disturbing the peace, battery on a police officer, resisting arrest, and wanton endangerment of a domestic animal.


Servant? I don’t think so.


By the way…the dog recovered nicely, and much sooner that its mistress.

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MY TWO WIVES

Double Indemnity

            As it happens sometimes in my narrow life, a friend started me thinking. It was when she spoke of her husband in his rented tux and she in her linen suit with dyed to match heels, setting out on their road of life together many years ago…and some of the rocks that litter that very road. It brought to mind weddings, two of them to be exact, both of them mine.

            When I was young, too young most probably, the drummer in the band I was playing with at the time had a girlfriend. That girlfriend had a female cousin who lived about 150 miles away who she invited to visit. I was conscripted to join in their company as a blind date for the visiting cousin. Her name was Sharon. An attractive dark-haired lass of startling pulchritude, Sharon dressed conservatively, was demure, rather shy, and quite proper. Over the next few months we saw each other as frequently as the distance between us would allow. A relationship blossomed. After seven or eight months when it seemed we were in love, she relocated to my hometown so that we might be closer together, got a job, and a roommate named Janice.

            Sharon was a rather conservative young woman and quite religious. After taking a year or so off from church, I began to attend regularly again in her company. Everybody liked Sharon and, after nearly a year, I popped the question. She said yes, and the wedding date, four months away, was set. It was a proper wedding.

The ceremony was held in a Baptist church, complete with organist, flower girls, best man and maid of iron, the entire gaggle of ugly dresses and ill-fitting tuxedos, and the rest of the traditional foofarah. The service went quite well with the exception of some misbehavior in the back row by the members of the band I was with. It created enough of a stir when five males with long hair came tripping in with their girlfriends, but when I kissed the bride and that same back row broke into applause and shouts of encouragement, I do believe Mildred Hyde, Minnie Parnell and their ilk felt scandalized. I can understand their feelings. After searching the bible carefully, I can find not a passage where the words “Suffer the long-haired musicians to come onto me” were written. Sharon and I attended church there every Sunday, and I attended choir practice every Wednesday. When the longhaired, hippie freaks did not show up again, I was forgiven and welcomed back into the fold.

After our wedding, I discovered that someone had painted various phrases on my 1964 black Pontiac LeMans convertible with what appeared to be white shoe polish. I did not concern myself with the disfigurement of my auto at that time. It was, after all, my wedding night. We went to our hotel and I watched my new wife drink champagne for the first time in her life. She got hopelessly blasted and passed out on the floor. With little else to do, I checked on my car and found out the white shoe polish appeared to be permanent. With my automobile irrevocably inscribed, and my bride irreparably sloshed, long before the days of cable TV, I spent the night musing on better things to come.

Sharon was somewhat less than chipper the next morning, especially when she found out my car was going to look like that for at least the entire five-day honeymoon, but it was a beautiful day. We put the top down and set off for Indianapolis with hope in our hearts. Shortly after we crossed the Indiana State line, on a 55 miles-per-hour limited access highway, we encountered a U.S. Army convoy of six by six trucks, canvas rolled up, each carrying the maximum load of testosterone-ridden, sexually frustrated young warriors. The convoy was nearly two miles long, and installed with enough troops to take Stalingrad in a short afternoon. Army convoys run 45 miles per hour. We were driving at 55 miles per hour. It takes a long time to pass a two-mile convoy at that speed differential. It takes even longer when your black convertible has things like “hot springs tonite” and “nookeymoblie” written on it in white paint. By the time we actually left the column of soldiers behind and could no longer hear the shouts of encouragement and appraisal the young men offered, my wife was in the fetal position, drooling on the floor mat. Sharon and I were married for two years, three months and two days, and I don’t regret one day of it. I just can’t remember which day that was.

Laura, my second, current, and last wife, moved in with me after our first date. After living in sin for six months, we were married in the county courthouse by Judge Skillman, a man who once asked me in open court, “Officer Lewis, why didn’t you shoot the bastard?” We spent our wedding night at her parent’s home, a consideration we were forced into when we told her mother, who wanted to organize the wedding of the century, there would be no ceremony. When we walked in the front door, Laura’s mom demanded to view the marriage license. She grasped it from out of Laura’s delicate fingers, and neither one of us has seen it since. We have never attended church together, we have been separated twice, and the first time I ever saw my wife, she was so hung over, that had she opened her eyes all the way, she would have bled to death. It has been very challenging, it has been very difficult, it has been very loving, and it has been over forty years since we got married. Having had two wives, I can truly say, the first was small price to pay for the second.

           

SIXTEEN SUCKED

Debbie, Marsha, Twyla, and Other Disasters

 

            Her name was Debbie Halloway, the younger sister of one of my high school pals. She was a goofy fourteen-year-old. I was a suave sixteen-year-old. I’d never looked at her twice until she and her brother returned from a yearlong visit with their grandparents in sunny California. When she arrived at school that fall, Debbie had, well...grown up. The goofy fourteen-year-old had become a sultry, exciting woman. I homed in. And not with the typical five dollar (a buck each for the movie, a buck each for food, and a buck for gas) date. For the rendezvous with Debbie, now called Debra, I went all out. I made dinner reservations for steak and lobster, followed by a concert from the University of Illinois Jazz Band. It was a twenty-dollar evening. Some big money for a small town hopeful in 1963. I picked the lady up at her parent’s farm, and she was lovely. I escorted her to my grandfather’s 1957 Plymouth, and we were off, she sitting way over there on her side of the front seat. But, the night was young and hope springs eternal.

            Before heading for the city, I had one stop to make. The next day was Sunday, and I needed to drop by my church and open up some massive, roll-up connecting doors. We went into the darkened building, I turned on minimal lights, and started off through the dim, creaky structure. Debra, lovely in pale blue chiffon and white heels, claimed the joint was too spooky. She clutched my arm tenderly and asked to go with me. Swollen with manly pride and testosterone, I slipped my arm around her waist. She snuggled appropriately, and off we went.

            The short route to our destination was through the baptistery, a six-hundred-gallon tank with steps leading down into both ends and a large mural on the back wall of what we were told was the River Jordan, complete with rapids. The shadows were thick as we started down the steps on our way through the tank. Accidentally, I managed to hook her foot and we fell the three feet to the bottom of the baptistery. It should have been empty. It was full. Baptists practice total immersion. To the best of my knowledge, Debra did not speak to me for a full year.

            Then there was Marcia Pasley. Marcia was a rowdy redhead, also sixteen, whose family had moved to our small community that fall. She was a strapping lass of startling endowment with bright blue eyes and a bawdy laugh that captured my complete attention. I was spun. I pursued. I cajoled. I persisted. I may have even begged. I acquired a date with the magnificent Marcia for homecoming. Full formals were in order and she was outstanding, even wearing an ankle bracelet. WOOF!

            She gushed hello, planted herself firmly next to me in the front seat, said she didn’t have to be home until two a.m., and whatever were we going to do for the three hours after the dance? Visions of sugarplums were cavorting behind my fevered eyelids, and Marcia was munching on my earlobe, as I pulled into the school parking lot. Aware of Marcia and little else, I didn’t notice the black-painted concrete blocks a disgruntled freshman had placed in some of the parking spaces. When I hit the obstruction, Marcia was just leaning over to adjust her ankle bracelet. She broke her nose on the dashboard. White poofy gowns and bleeding broken noses are not a good combination. After the trip to the hospital, she stopped speaking to me, too.

            Rejecting a life of celibacy, I decided my hometown was not the place to continue my search for victims and went looking for companionship in a small city a few miles away. A friend’s girlfriend gave me a number to call which belonged to a young lovely named Twyla Hefner. We conversed at length via landline and, two nights later, I collected her at home. Twyla’s parents were nice, and she was wonderful: petite, pretty, with long black hair, fast brown eyes, and an off-center grin from full lips. We giggled our way through the comedy at the Rialto Theatre, chatted and laughed all through dinner at the Steak n’ Shake as we fed each other fries, bumped shoulders and thighs, and raised our collective body temperature by several degrees. At around eleven p.m. we returned to her house and planted ourselves on the playroom couch. A few moments later, her mother shouted down to us to have fun. She and Twyla’s dad were going to bed.

            I was in heaven. This young woman was bright, funny, cute, lovely and aggressive. So far, I had done her no physical or emotional damage, and she seemed to think highly of me. What could possibly be better? Unfulfilled, but full of expectations, we parted, panting, at her front door an hour later. As I floated toward the Plymouth, a large figure loomed in front of me, grasped my shoulders, and slammed me across the hood of the car. It then stood me upright, shook me, and informed me that it was Twyla’s brother. Resenting his attempts at intimidation, and being a big husky, I swung on him and landed a shot to his forehead that nearly broke my hand, and didn’t even make him blink. Telling me, in vivid detail, what he would do to me if I ever touched his sister again, he slowly folded me up like a taco and deposited me in the front seat of my car. By the time he returned to college and out of our way, Twyla’s father was transferred and her family moved. I never saw her again.

            So went my sixteenth year, disaster after disaster. The following summer, ten days after my seventeenth birthday, I went off for two weeks of music camp at a college about fifty miles from my hometown. One of the counselors there was a nineteen-year-old university sophomore named Mary Sue Hack. She was a tall willowy blonde of outstanding appearance, generous attitude, and amazing endurance who pounced on yours truly like a duck on a Junebug, beginning an educational experience that lasted until I went off to college.

            Sixteen sucked. However, to quote Francis, when I was seventeen, it was a very good year.