(4)
Wareville
number 6 of 483 parts
Friday night and time to party for the weekend. It was summer and Keith and I were both working factory jobs at the moment. Since I got out of work first, I had the '62 Falcon all set up and ready to go when I picked him up.
The trunk was lined with black plastic hefty bags waiting for it's load of beer and ice. Our sleeping bags and tents were on the back seat floor. The tupperware bowl under the passenger seat was neatly filled with pre-rolled doobies.
"Hey, where's my beer?" Keith yelled as he crossed the gravel lot to the 'mold-mobile' as we'd affectionately dubbed the old Ford. "At the package store bro'. I figured we'd stop after we cash our checks" I replied as he climbed into the car.
After a quick stop at the bank for some cash, we swung by the liquor store and picked up a case of Bud long necks, 3 cases of Columbia beer (2.99 a case!) for after our tastebuds stopped working and 6 five pound bags of ice. Some of the people walking by chuckled when they saw us carefully placing the brews into the trunk and spreading ice over them.
After sucking down a couple of the ice cold Buds and smoking a bone, we crossed the street to the sub shop and each ordered our usual.
"I want the 36" cold cut sub with everything on it" I said and Keith said, "I'll have the same". "Having a party?" asked the pretty young girl at the counter. "You must be new baby, this is our dinner. Whichever one finishes last has to pay next week." I said with a wink.
While she made the subs that were designed to each feed 10 people, Keith and I took turns trying to convince her to let us pick her up later but she was going to take some working on.
We brought our subs out to the car and drove to a nearby city park to eat them. "I give it two weeks before I get her to go out", Keith said between monster bites. "I'll get her to the drive in next weekend", I replied.
"Got any weed?" said a longhaired guy in his 20's. Luckily, Keith's mouth was full of food so he couldn't answer. "We don't smoke that shit" I said while tapping Keith's chest with the back of my hand. As the guy wandered away, I answered Keith's questioning look with "Narc, man, all his jeans, sneakers and t-shirt were all brand new. You gotta keep your eyes open down here".
We picked up a little cash selling joints to the next few people and decided to head to the woods in the state park about 30 miles off as the sun went down.
As I drove up the road that leads into the State Forest, Keith said, "Look over there". I jacked on my brakes and backed up to where a candy apple red Chevy van was lying on it's side just on the other side of the ditch next to the road.
We both hopped out and ran over to the van. "Are you alright?", I asked the dazed longhair behind the wheel. He answered in a whisky scented cloud "Yeah, there's no time. Take this and get it out of here before the cops get here". He tossed out a big baggie full of pot. Then said, "Better take this too" and tossed out a half full fifth of Jim Beam. "Shit, I can't get out of this thing".
Keith said, "Tom, take this stuff and drive the car around the long block slow. You can pick me up around the corner after you drive by here. I'll see if I can get him out and get info to give his stuff back later".
When I drove back by, there were two cruisers and a fire truck partially blocking the road. I squeezed by them slowly and took the next turn toward the forest. Keith was just coming out of the treeline carrying yet another case of beer. He hopped in the car and we headed on down the road.
Keith explained that the guy was really trashed and the inside of the van was full of empty beer cans so he knew he was getting busted for DUI. He didn't want to get busted for weed too and figured the beer and whisky might as well go to someone that could make use of it.
He said, "Listen, the guy gave me a hundred bucks to come down to the police station and bail him out but I couldn't understand what his last name was".
By this time, we'd each downed a dozen beers and we'd smoked a half-dozen joints so we were fairly lit up. We'd also started in on the Jim Beam, passing the bottle back and forth so my good sense was failing me. I said, "Well, let's go down to the police station and bail him out. We'll just ask if we can bail the guy out that rolled his van near the park, Jim, and say we don't know his last name."
Keith's good sense had apparantly left too because he didn't try to talk me out of it. We parked about 200 yards away from the station and walked in. The cop behind the desk gave us a suspicious eye as we approached. "May I help you boys?", he asked.
I explained that we'd come upon the accident, on foot, and the guy Jim had given us money to bail him out. The cop said, "Well you're out of luck. We don't have a lock up here, we send everyone over to the Wareville station. That's a pretty long walk from here. Why don't you get someone to drive you over in the morning."
We thanked him and left. We made sure noone had followed us back to the car and drove away towards Wareville. By the time we'd gotten there, we'd finished the whisky and a couple more beers. We drove past the station looking for a place to park and walk back and about 1/2 mile down the road we found a closed gas station with a couple of old cars parked next to it. I turned off the headlights and rolled the Falcon right in between them.
"Just sit tight and make sure nobody saw us pull in. Watch the lights on that house across the street, if they go on, we're out of here." I said. After five minutes had gone by, we hopped out and hiked back to the station.
By this time, I was pretty well trashed - stumblin', mumblin' and talkin' shit. As we were about to go in, Keith, having a moment of clarity said, "Why don't we forget about it and keep the stuff and money? Nobody will ever know, hell he probably won't remember us being there."
I wasn't having it though and swung the big door open and swaggered into the cop shop with Keith right behind me. "They told me in the next town over that you'd be holding a guy named Jim that rolled his van" I slurred to the big cop at the window. "We're here to bail him out".
The cop said, "Go sleep it off, we haven't got anyone like that here".
I got insistant, "I know you've got him here and we want to bail him out". When the cop said, "He's not here, get lost kid" I replied, "This is a bunch of beurocratic bullshit!" and whacked the shelf with the palm of my hand. Keith put my arm up behind my back and said, "Sorry officer, my friend's had a few tonight. I'll walk him home and we'll find the guy tomorrow". The cop replied, "You'd better just get that asshole out of here or you'll both need someone to bail you out."
Keith pretty much dragged me out but once the night air hit me, I came to my senses a bit and said "We'd better get out of Wareville before they decide to come get us."
When we got back to the car, it looked like one of the tires was a little low so I grabbed the air hose, (it was free back then, remember?) and put a few pounds in. In the meantime, Keith spotted a pair of tires that were the right size stacked in front of one of the other cars so he tossed them in the back seat.
Getting in the car for our getaway, I was still holding the air hose and closed it in the door. When we backed out, it pulled out of the compressor which started going, ding, ding, ding. Of course, the lights in the house across the street came on and someone opened a door so I shut the lights back off and we drove past the police station at about 70 mph with them off.
Realizing this might have been a mistake, I pulled into the dirt road next to a cranberry bog and skittered over the top of the ruts and deep sand at 40 mph. We saw in our rearview mirror alternately flashing headlights pull into the same roadway after us but they stopped moving shortly afterwards. At the end of the bog, the road got rougher and went into the woods. It crossed another dirt road in similar condition and knowing the general direction of the State Forest, I took a right.
We wandered around in the dark on dirt road, (I did turn my parking lights on so we could see a little), for about an hour before getting to a paved road. I turned onto it and saw a sign that said Wearings Pond 2 miles. "I know where we are buddy, I've got a spot we can hide for a couple hours 'til the heats off then we can go out the other side of the park and be long gone before morning".
We got to the public beach at Wearings Pond a couple minutes later and I drove around the gate into the parking area, (we wouldn't have made it in a big car), and up to the back. Pulling beyond the pavement, I drove the little car right up a path between trees and into the underbrush. We pulled some branches over the end that was showing to hide it a bit and went for a swim, followed by a few more beers and a couple more joints.
It must have been 4 AM when I decided it was safe to get moving again. We'd seen several vehicles, ranger trucks and police cars, go by shortly after we got to the pond but hadn't seen any for over an hour.
We backed out of the brush, pulled around the gate back onto the road and off we went. A few miles down, I took a dirt road I knew about that lead to the entrance road to the county jail camp. I turned away from the work camp and went out the other side of the forest, about 15 miles from Wareville as the crow flies, probably closer to 25 by road. We drove all the way to New Hampshire where we spent the next night camping in the White Mountains.
We were brothers...with the good sense to stay the hell away from Wareville until the Falcon had been retired to the junkyard.
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