The scariest/most remarkable thing that occurred during my trip to parkersburg was what happened on the way back……I’m sure you realize by now that 99.9% of the coffees that I’ve drank over the last 25 years has been spiked with irish cream, yeah?.....well, I had 3 xl large spiked dunkin donuts coffees in the hotel before I left along with whatever mushroom stems were left over from the night before (not enough for me to see demons, but enough for a minor body buzz for the 9.5 hour drive back to iowa)……i was driving a tiny rental car (either because I’m growing more conservative in my old age or because I didn’t want to listen to my mom scream about “wear n’ tear” on my pathfinder) and had heard horror stories about the police in southern ohio (a crossroads of drug activity for the northeast)……it was a random tuesday morning, but I passed roughly 30 cops checking for “speeders” as I drove on interstate 70 from columbus to dayton…..i was going 68 mph in a 65 mph zone when a cop whipped out from the median and hit his lights…..i knew I hadn’t been speeding, but there are dozens of cryptic stickers on my car and I assumed the pigs were targeting rental cars…..officer ward (roughly 28-years-old with a crew cut) came over to the passenger side and asked for my license and registration……then he started asking me a series of questions like “where are you headed?” and “why didn’t you fly?”…..i was fairly nervous (because the fucker has a gun and a license-to-kill), but I also knew my car was completely clean----I never carry a bowl in 2017 and if I had had anything else, it would have been in my shirt pocket and ready-to-be-eaten like in a cheech n’ chong movie……officer ward said the reason that he pulled me over was that I had made an “improper pass”---I know what that means on a country road with a solid line, but I have no idea what the fuck that means on an interstate…..i spent an hour looking the statute up when I got home and I still don’t know what the fuck I did-----I wasn’t driving erratically and I wasn’t speeding, in fact, I was being super-careful because I was driving a strange rental car…..ultimately, I knew it was a BULLSHIT CHARGE, but again, he had a gun and I knew that I was completely innocent (except, of course, for the mushrooms already at work in my brain)…..after about 3 minutes of loaded questions (ie “I don’t know if you smoke marijuana or not?”), the pig asked me to get out of the car and frisked me because he claimed that I was “acting nervous”…..and less than 2 minutes later, another pig pulled up with a drug dog….the fucker walked the dog around my rental car and my main reaction to what the dog did was that he appeared happy to be outside----the dog didn’t bark, scratch, jump up or do anything out of the ordinary for-a-dog who had just been let outside…..i wanted to google “what a drug dog does when he smells drugs” when I got home, but I didn’t necessarily want that search to be on my home computer….anyway, THE PIG STARTS READING ME MY RIGHTS AND PLACES ME IN THE BACKSEAT OF HIS SQUAD CAR (and believe it or not, that was the first time in my life that I had ever been put in the back of a police car----the other times I walked into the police station on my own power)….the prick then asked for permission to search my car and since I knew that I was completely clean, I told him to go ahead (although at this rate, I HALF-EXPECTED THE FUCKERS TO PULL A BRICK OF HEROIN OUT OF THE GLOVE COMPARTMENT)……closer-to-the-truth, I knew that I had taken mushrooms that morning (along with the 3 spiked coffees) and I didn’t necessarily want to take a blood test (nor was I familiar with the rules for refusing a blood test)…..the cop seemed to think that I was a space cadet and in real time, I thought letting him think that might be the best scenario for getting out of it…..again, I knew that I was (fairly) innocent, but if I’m telling the truth: my legs were shaking and I was sweating-like-a-legitimate-pig…..at one point, one of the officers put the drug dog in the police car with me and the dog started whining----I considered that anything I said out loud in the police car was being recorded, but I dropped my one-and-only zinger of the day when I told that bitch: THERE AINT NO POLICE CATS……after about 10 minutes, officer ward came over with the water bottle full of almond milk that had been in my cooler and asked what it was----I said “almond milk” and he wanted to know why I put it in a water bottle….i explained that I had had a half gallon of almond the night before and that was all that was left…..i didn’t explain that 24 hours earlier the bottle had been full of irish crème that I had used to spike my morning coffees 2 hours earlier…..after another 5 minutes or so, officer ward sat down in the front seat of his cruiser and informed me that I was free-to-go…..the best he could do by-way-of-an-apology was to say: “I see that you’re a professor and you’re so smart that you started imagining a bunch of different scenarios and that’s why you appeared nervous to me”----in other words, his rationale was that: “PROFESSORS ARE SO SMART THAT THEY’RE STUPID” and that was it for his apology…..i shook his hand and he said something along the lines of: “I hope you don’t think less of police officers because of what just happened”----I said that I wouldn’t and that I prolly “wouldn’t tell my police officer/friends at the gym what happened”….the thing is, I can’t really think less of police officers than I already do…..in retrospect, THE ENTIRE EXPERIENCE HAD BEEN A SCAM: 1) I DIDN’T MAKE AN “ILLEGAL PASS,” 2) “BEING NERVOUS” IN FRONT OF A PIG-WITH-A-GUN IN RELATIVE AND 3) THE FUCKING DRUG DOG WAS JUST HAPPY TO BE OUTSIDE----HE DIDN’T HIT ON ANYTHING AND IT WAS JUST A TRICK TO SEE HOW I WOULD REACT…..it made me think that cops do this kind of sting all the time and it just happened to be my day to get pulled over (either that or southern ohio is such a shithole that they assume 6-out-of-10 rental cars are loaded with heroin)----the cop was completely confident that I was a criminal right up until the moment that he let me go----the fucker never broke character and he was the babyface to my heel…..i do kinda wonder if the drug dog got a whiff of my 1995 backpack though---again, I was completely clean on that particular day, but zeus only knows how many severed heads have been in that backpack over the last 25 years…..brer backpack could tell some stories, but something tells me that he won’t be making the trip when I finally make my escape from cashpoint….i won’t simply throw him in the garbage though---I promise…..old “stoners” need to be filled to the zipper with broken beer bottles and then dropped on the spot where pigs wait to feast on passing meat
The Midnight Rider prefers to remain mysterious. You could visit his
website, but he won't say where it is. You could read his books, but
he won't say what they are. You could email him, but I'm pretty sure
spam@gofuckyourself.gov is not a real email address. In a world where
everyone is repping their Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, sex
tapes, line of clothing, new microbrew, and overall brand, I find that
refreshing. I am happy to have the Rider ride on drinkdrankdrunk.
#3 Jefferson
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CLICK TO ENLARGEThe #3 bus starts its southbound run near the boring corner
of Bellevue Avenue and Bellevue Place. It's a rather random place for a bus
sto...
20 hours ago
Ahhhh... what a great read the writing is so good it seemed that it was my paranoia that had a calming effect on my literal impulsive irony and not just... nevermind, you know what I mean. Hah!
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