Years ago I was an aircraft mechanic, stationed at Blytheville Air Force base, in Arkansas. I was young and wild, fresh out of the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas and thought I knew it all. My younger brother Billy had come out to visit for a few days since we hadn’t seen each other in a while. We decided to call up a few of my buddies from the air base and go out to eat pizza.
It was dark when we pulled up to the Pizza Hut in my buddy’s hot rodded 1973 Trans Am. We had already had a few beers before leaving the house, so it was an easy decision to order a few pitchers of beer with our pizza; remember drinking age was 18 then, which in most places meant if ya had money and could reach the bar, you drank.
As we ate our pizza the beer started to kick in a little and before you knew it, it had gone from a pizza dinner, to some locals and their wives saying we ought not be throwing pizza into the ceiling fans. Well, where we were raised up, we fought for something to do. So it was not a big stretch for us to get into a scuffle with these fine locals.
About that time one of the Pizza Hut employees came over and said “We called the Cops”. Now this was not our first rodeo, so we knew that was our que to get moving along. I tossed a twenty at the pizza dude and grabbed two pitchers of beer on the way out. We could hear sirens coming in the distance as we all jumped into the car.
Well, you see, this is where things got a little worse. We didn’t notice the Pizza delivery dude park right behind us as we were getting in the car, and he darned sure didn’t see us out laws run out of the Pizza Hut with a pan pizza and two pitchers of beer. As I shut the passenger side door my buddy slammed it in reverse and punched it for our great get-a-way.
I wouldn’t have thought that a Pizza delivery car could be pushed sideways that far with a Trans Am; but it is possible. When my buddy realized what we had hit, he looked at me as if saying “what do we do now?” I laughed at him and said lets go! Punch it buddy! We came out of the parking lot sideways just as the police cars slid into the parking lot side ways. They were on their toes, because they were able to pick us out as we slid down the road, tires smoking, with the help of all the Pizza Hut patrons in the parking lot yelling “There they go!”
Well, that Trans Am was fast and we were able to completely run off and leave the police after a short high speed chase through town. We got on an open stretch of highway and were able to get on some old farm roads with out being seen. My poor buddy was a city boy from Illinois and new to this whole tear up the town and out run the cop’s thing, so he was wigging out about it pretty badly.
My brother and I were fine with the situation, right up until we ran out of beer. We sat there in the dark and talked my buddy into heading back into town to get some more beer. Believe me it took some to talking get him to leave that soy bean field; but a couple of times saying “Hell, they couldn’t of got a plate number on us” and “come on, don’t be a candy prettythang” got us rolling to the liquor store.
We had gone a few miles closer to town when we noticed a road block up ahead that covered four lanes. That’s when we figured we’d better turn around, but before we could three police cars come up behind us and hit their lights; we were caught. Well, I can tell ya folks, don’t get frisked by the same cops that you just out ran an hour ago……..they tend to be a little fired up still.
Now, I’m not proud of it, but I’ve been arrested in upwards to a half a dozen states and even detained in a few foreign countries for some of my escapades, but that was the only time I was picked up by the balls and body slammed by a “peace” officer. To make matters worse, they decided to do some felony arrest training on us, so we were laying in the middle of the four lane highway with about 20 spot lights on us as our wives pulled up to the scene.
As I was laying there I waved to my wife, and as the cop stepped on my hand and said don’t move again, I asked him to tell my wife I’d be a little late tonight. He said something along the lines of “F*** you S*** head”. Well, after they got tired of taking turns slamming us onto the hoods of police cars, they loaded me and my buddy into one squad car and my brother and my other buddy in another car.
As we pulled out to head into the police station, the cops started trying to get us to admit to every crime committed in the past six months. I forgot to mention my father was a police officer for 20 years, so I knew all of the routines the cops use. Then they asked us “whose dope was that we found in the car?
Well, I started laughing because, I knew the routine they were trying on us now. The officer got really mad and asked me what was so funny. I said “we’re drunks not druggies” and started laughing again. That’s when the driver slammed on the brakes and caged us pretty good; that’s also about the same time my buddy told me to shut up before they take us out and kill us.
Needless to say we spent the weekend in jail, but they got the nicest judge out of an old folks home on Monday morning, to tell us what a bunch of deviants we were then put us back in jail for a few days. By no means do I condone this type of behavior, at least not now that I’m grown and have kids of my own, who have kids. You have to remember things were a lot different then than they are now. I sometimes think cops are there to keep us in line until we are mature enough to do it on our own. I'm lucky to have lived through all my memories............
