Cops and Hippies
I’ve said a lot of dumb things over the years, but perhaps the dumbest came as the big finish to an oration I gave in speech class my freshman year of high school, in 1978. I concluded a speech about the police department with this Nixonian challenge: “So, if you ever need help in an emergency, try calling a hippie and see what happens.”
The incident is made doubly pitiful because the line wasn’t even mine to begin with. I had lifted it from the dictatorial Monsignor who reigned over my parish grade school. He was also the city’s police chaplain, and he spoke of cops more highly and more often than he spoke of Christ. A hundred times I heard the silvery Monsignor say this: “If I’m going thirty and I see a cop, I drop down to twenty-five. If I’m going twenty and see a cop, I drop down to fifteen. And if I’m going fifteen and see a cop, I wave him over and buy some tickets to the police circus.”
The first time I heard it, I said to myself, “Monsignor, I’m with you on the Trinity, and I’m with you on the Transubstantiation, and I’m with you on the Virgin Birth, but with this one you’ve gone too far.”
I was fifteen when I delivered to my class that encomium on the valor of police officers, but in truth I’ve always had mixed feelings about law enforcement. It seems that whenever I’m feeling somewhat positive about the thin blue line, an ugly incident shakes things up—say, Deputy Fife incarcerates a 90-year-old Burt Mustin for the crime of upsetting a board of checkers in public.
There was even a time when I considered becoming a policeman. I think what held me back was my fear of mean dogs. No doubt there’d be occasions when I’d have to run through the kinds of dark back yards where mean dogs lurk.
But I did take part in the ride-along program. It was in December of 1982 when I rode shotgun (almost literally) for an evening shift in the city’s East Zone.
The tour was eventful, at least compared to how I usually spent my nights. The highlight was a Hollywood-styled chase through hilly sidestreets. It lasted for five thrilling minutes and had everything but the sensational upsetting of a fruit stand.
The owner of the pursued vehicle had been implicated in a recent homicide. The boxy van contained a teen-aged driver who resembled the garden-variety white kids you see on “COPS,” except that he wore a shirt. His companion, though, was an anomaly: an auburn-haired pixie in a pony tail and a black sweater. Handcuffed and shivering, she stood isolated in the middle of the street for the longest time, often engaging me in eye contact, as if I had the power to free her. I certainly had the will to free her.
I was happy to see the police escort the scraggly driver into a paddy wagon; later, though, I was equally unhappy to see them escort the pretty girl into the back seat of a patrol car.
Even in the face of such ambivalent feelings about the law and its offenders, I’m never hesitant to call the police, and have done so about twenty times.
My first such call was placed while I was a grad student in another town, in 1987. I lived one floor below a most despicable fellow who happened to look just like Howie Mandel—the ridiculous 1987 version, not the ridiculous 2007 issue. Thanks to Google, I’ve since determined this ersatz Mandel was from a “connected” family back east, and therefore I’ll disclose no other details about him or his sporty red car or his Brit-model girlfriend.
This upstairs neighbor sold marijuana, but his real offenses were blasting heavy metal music at all hours and reading the Riot Act to the Brit-model—the Riot Act being the only thing this college student ever read.
After a few months of misery, I phoned the TIPS hotline and ratted him out. But it was not the weed that forced my hand; it was the noise. I say “live and let live,” as long as you don’t live too loudly near my doorstep.
I’ve been on the other end of such phone calls, so I know what it’s like to be hassled by The Man. One summer evening in the middle 1970s, my youthful buddy Tiger and I were treating whiffle-ball bats like guns, much the way today’s kids treat guns like guns. When we got tired of shooting each other, we trained these colorful cudgels at passing cars. Soon a Plymouth Fury sped our way. It was the fuzz. Someone had narked on us. Someone had mistaken our plastic bats—the type with the skinny handles and the ends that flared like Popeye’s forearms—for munitions.
The cops got to the bottom of things in just ten seconds and then departed; it was an emergency that even a hippie could have handled.
Speaking of hippies, ever since I delivered that unfortunate speech in 1978, I’ve felt the need to apologize to our shaggy friends. So, here it is: I am sorry for impugning you in front of twenty uninterested freshmen.
And, dear hippies, while I have your ear, I’d like to thank you for getting on the nerves of Spiro Agnew, John Wayne, and football’s Earl Morrall. Really, other than enabling Charles Manson and bumming too many smokes and “crashing” wherever you’d like, you’ve done humanity no harm. It’s my firm belief the world is large enough for you. But please know that my living room floor is not.
The incident is made doubly pitiful because the line wasn’t even mine to begin with. I had lifted it from the dictatorial Monsignor who reigned over my parish grade school. He was also the city’s police chaplain, and he spoke of cops more highly and more often than he spoke of Christ. A hundred times I heard the silvery Monsignor say this: “If I’m going thirty and I see a cop, I drop down to twenty-five. If I’m going twenty and see a cop, I drop down to fifteen. And if I’m going fifteen and see a cop, I wave him over and buy some tickets to the police circus.”
The first time I heard it, I said to myself, “Monsignor, I’m with you on the Trinity, and I’m with you on the Transubstantiation, and I’m with you on the Virgin Birth, but with this one you’ve gone too far.”
I was fifteen when I delivered to my class that encomium on the valor of police officers, but in truth I’ve always had mixed feelings about law enforcement. It seems that whenever I’m feeling somewhat positive about the thin blue line, an ugly incident shakes things up—say, Deputy Fife incarcerates a 90-year-old Burt Mustin for the crime of upsetting a board of checkers in public.
There was even a time when I considered becoming a policeman. I think what held me back was my fear of mean dogs. No doubt there’d be occasions when I’d have to run through the kinds of dark back yards where mean dogs lurk.
But I did take part in the ride-along program. It was in December of 1982 when I rode shotgun (almost literally) for an evening shift in the city’s East Zone.
The tour was eventful, at least compared to how I usually spent my nights. The highlight was a Hollywood-styled chase through hilly sidestreets. It lasted for five thrilling minutes and had everything but the sensational upsetting of a fruit stand.
The owner of the pursued vehicle had been implicated in a recent homicide. The boxy van contained a teen-aged driver who resembled the garden-variety white kids you see on “COPS,” except that he wore a shirt. His companion, though, was an anomaly: an auburn-haired pixie in a pony tail and a black sweater. Handcuffed and shivering, she stood isolated in the middle of the street for the longest time, often engaging me in eye contact, as if I had the power to free her. I certainly had the will to free her.
I was happy to see the police escort the scraggly driver into a paddy wagon; later, though, I was equally unhappy to see them escort the pretty girl into the back seat of a patrol car.
Even in the face of such ambivalent feelings about the law and its offenders, I’m never hesitant to call the police, and have done so about twenty times.
My first such call was placed while I was a grad student in another town, in 1987. I lived one floor below a most despicable fellow who happened to look just like Howie Mandel—the ridiculous 1987 version, not the ridiculous 2007 issue. Thanks to Google, I’ve since determined this ersatz Mandel was from a “connected” family back east, and therefore I’ll disclose no other details about him or his sporty red car or his Brit-model girlfriend.
This upstairs neighbor sold marijuana, but his real offenses were blasting heavy metal music at all hours and reading the Riot Act to the Brit-model—the Riot Act being the only thing this college student ever read.
After a few months of misery, I phoned the TIPS hotline and ratted him out. But it was not the weed that forced my hand; it was the noise. I say “live and let live,” as long as you don’t live too loudly near my doorstep.
I’ve been on the other end of such phone calls, so I know what it’s like to be hassled by The Man. One summer evening in the middle 1970s, my youthful buddy Tiger and I were treating whiffle-ball bats like guns, much the way today’s kids treat guns like guns. When we got tired of shooting each other, we trained these colorful cudgels at passing cars. Soon a Plymouth Fury sped our way. It was the fuzz. Someone had narked on us. Someone had mistaken our plastic bats—the type with the skinny handles and the ends that flared like Popeye’s forearms—for munitions.
The cops got to the bottom of things in just ten seconds and then departed; it was an emergency that even a hippie could have handled.
Speaking of hippies, ever since I delivered that unfortunate speech in 1978, I’ve felt the need to apologize to our shaggy friends. So, here it is: I am sorry for impugning you in front of twenty uninterested freshmen.
And, dear hippies, while I have your ear, I’d like to thank you for getting on the nerves of Spiro Agnew, John Wayne, and football’s Earl Morrall. Really, other than enabling Charles Manson and bumming too many smokes and “crashing” wherever you’d like, you’ve done humanity no harm. It’s my firm belief the world is large enough for you. But please know that my living room floor is not.
posted by JW at jwopks@gmail.com at 10:54 AM
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