DB makes it seem like it’s such an easy story to tell. Maybe
it is. All I know for sure is that it was the closest call we shared there in our early dope smoking days.
The facts were simple and clear: I had a car, my buddy and I had time to
kill, and well, boys being boys, we had a hard core
case of the munchies to deal with from smoking just a bit too much of Mexican brick weed. I was driving my old Galaxie 500 at the time, something that I
bought off of DB’s folks the summer of ’75. Right before I bought it from them
we took it out for an evenings worth of fun, the trunk packed with beers, the car
filled with girls and pals and thanks to our local drive in movie theater, proceeded to put a
dent in the fender, thanks on a large part to a stray speaker pole. No matter,
I loved that car, dent and all, and it became an accessory to many a good time over
the course of our senior year.
That night we were parked in the lot of a local Italian
restaurant waiting for my gal, hostess for the evening, to get off of work.
Well, we sat as long as we could and decided to hit up a convenience store
around the corner for snacks. We got out of the car, crossed the lot, walked
down the block, grabbed some chips and cokes and then came back the same way we
left, across the lot and then, after a bowl or two, settled back into the car,
buzz, snacks and all.
I am not sure what made me do it but after we got back from our walk I decided to put all our mota, papers and paraphernalia into the glove box and lock it up. We didn’t think it was a worry, but hey, no sense sitting around stoned in a car with dope in your pockets. As we sat there in the parking lot, KMET blasting away with some album rock song or another, we got this sense that something was amiss.
Before we could even straighten up or think to get the
Visine out the car was surrounded by three or four cars filled with SAPD’s
finest. They brought their bumpers right up to the door, headlights beaming,
search lights square in our eyes. It took only a moment for flashlights and
handguns to be thrust in our faces, for commands to be called out, to put our hands on the dash,
on the steering wheel. We were dumbfounded. What the hell was
happening here? What kind of wrong could two high school students high on weed
be doing to warrant this kind of fire power?
Needless to say my gal got a bit hysterical there in lobby
of the restaurant seeing her boyfriend and his pal on the other side of a veritable
shooting range. Little did she know that her boss called for the cops. It seems
that a week or two before a few cars had been burgled in the parking lot and he
thought, watching us walk back and forth across the lot in search of snacks,
that we were the perps who had made a mess of things. Well, of course, we weren’t
but that didn’t stop Santa Ana PD from dragging us out of the car, patting us
down and giving my car the once over.
There was one moment and one moment only where our fates hung in the balance. It had nothing to do with us being high. The moment those cop cars pulled up and hit their lights that buzz we shared was long gone. No, it was watching one of those cops hit the glove box. It had only been by chance and by sheer luck that I locked it. I watched, shocked into silence, legs quaking, while he fumbled around with the lock. They didn’t have a search warrant but had he asked me to open it I am sure that I would have stupid enough to have complied. But he left good enough alone and went on to other things.
In the end the cops didn’t find anything. No stolen loot in
the car, no burgled cars in the lot. They went inside, talked to the owner, found
out we were waiting for my date to get off of work, which was confirmed by my sobbing
girlfriend. I don’t remember if we ever got an apology from the cops or the
owner of the restaurant but what would of it mattered if we did? We came close,
just by the virtue of having the munchies, to being hauled off for possession
of marijuana. All’s well that ends well, I suppose.
All young stoners need tales of daring do to share with
their buddies, tales that tell of near scrapes with the law, of lucky, dumb
escapes. Fortunately for us that tale was the closest we got to being busted
the rest of our chaotic senior year. We both went on to join the Navy to see
the world, my pal doing it underwater, me on a surface ship overseas. The dodges
and scrapes of that evening seem quaint now in retrospect, as life wasn’t
always as kind to us as it was that night. We’ve both come a long way since
then and things, well, they are what they are. We’re both successful, happy, healthy
and lucky, something that doesn’t always come to those who love their mota. We
live far apart these days, him in California, me in Colorado, but one thing
that we both still share is our affection and appreciation for cannabis. What’s
funny is that whenever we get together on the phone we tend to get around to
telling that old tale of daring do again. These days we can laugh about it, but man, it's wild to think how
close we were to our lives taking a serious course change that night.
And to think we owe all our good fortune to a locked glove box!
Salud!
Here's the car in toto:
http://www.curbsideclassic.com/blog/cc-capsule-1967-ford-galaxie-500-2-door-hardtop-the-big-sporty-hardtops-last-hurrah/
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