You Ain't Nothing But A Hound Dog/Jailhouse Rock

Let's see, how long is the statute of limitations good for? Well anyways, one of my favorite stories of adventure and bad decisions takes place in the summer of '77. I was 16 years old. I had spent a couple of weeks in Illinois at my sisters Carol’s house. My niece Sherry, who was also 16 drove a cranberry 1969 Mach 1 with a 390 cubic inch motor. The roads out there were pretty flat and straight compared to New England and we spent a few nights running that Mustang pretty hard down those roads along the corn fields.

When I got back home it was the same old dull summer days stuck without a car and it seemed there wasn't much to do here. I needed a new Carter Thermo Quad carb for my 1972 Dodge Challenger and lacked the cash to get it so I was pretty much Island bound. One night we all got some beers and I had a 6 pack of 16 oz Haffenraffer malt liquor. Everyone else had gone home around 11 o'clock and I was sitting there by myself on top of one of the boulders that were behind home base at the old ball field. Somewhere in the middle of the 5th beer I decided I was going back to Illinois, right then! Since my car was down I took my Dad's '63 Impala 4 door with the 6 cylinder. I left a note at my friend Stacey's house, it was cryptically written in crayon on a piece of a brown paper bag, that's all I could find in the Chevy. The note said that I was going to Illinois by myself Long with the note was 3 cigarettes. Her mother found the note in the morning and gave it to her.

So I was off with my dog Presley, no he wasn't a hound dog, part German Shepard and pit bull but he didn’t look like either. The gas tank was low so I filled it up at a station at the highway on ramp and since I spend my last bucks on the beer I drove off without paying. I only made it about 15 miles down the highway when some state troopers spooked me and thinking they were after me for stealing gas I started for the back roads. Only about 1200 miles to go! Well I soon got lost with it being dark, not knowing the area and me being drunk. I was going down a road when a stop sign appeared and I stopped kind of late and slid a little on some sand at the intersection. There happened to be a local police car going by and he yelled something simple to me.

Keep in mind this was shortly after me seeing Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry and Vanishing Point! Well that was all I needed and off I went! Where I was going wasn't clear but I wound that ole Chevy up and found out it only did 65 mph! What the hell? Damn that old boat didn't turn like my Dodge either. Talk about under steer and body roll! Presley could have told you about that as he was being thrown all around the car's interior. I soon realized through the malt liquor haze that there was no way I was going to out run these guys so I made some turns and suddenly ended up on a dead end road that was literally boxed in with chain link fence.

Nowhere to run to, baby
Nowhere to hide
Got nowhere to run to, baby
Nowhere to hide
by Martha and the Vandellas wasn’t playing on that old AM radio, but it should have been. I didn't try to run, I was feeling pretty stupid about then, or maybe it was fear. Fear mainly what my Dad was gonna do when he got ahold of me.

The cops got me out and made me lay on the trunk of the car while they searched me for weapons like a machine gun or a bazooka. They were also trying to figure what the hell I was trying to get away from. When I started spouting off how I would of got away if I had my Challenger and all they would of seen were taillights because the top end on that car...
Ow!!! Suddenly I found out those big black flashlights could shed light in more ways than one. Yes, I did see the light now. They were twinkling all over inside my head. The lump forming on the back of my noggin must have held a rear projection tv that was showing the opening credits from Star Wars because I could see alot of stars. As Ron "Tater Salad" White from Blue Collar Comedy say, "I had the right to remain silent, but I didn't have the means."

So away we all went to the Swansea police station for the night. One of the eagle-eyed cops noticed my leather belt had pot leaves tooled into it and it it didn't take long before he noticed my belt buckle was made from a pot pipe. In the morning I was arraigned and released to my parents, minus my belt buckle. Judge Stack, who was presiding over the bench in Taunton District court happened to live at the end of Cottonwood street. The one and same judge who’s front yard I had previously ripped up with my dirt bike one day. Talk about stupidity AND bad luck!

We were about half way home riding in thick silence and I blurted out "What about Presley?" My Mom asked "What do you mean?" I explained he was with me when I got arrested and he got arrested too, I guess, because when they took me to court in the morning he was in the next cell sitting on a bed of straw and looking pretty much ashamed for both of us. Well that ended the silence, let me tell you. They brought me home with STRICT instructions not to leave my room while they went to bail out Presley.

My bed was feeling pretty good at that time anyways, what with the hangover and the "life's lesson" throbbing on the back of my head. I managed to get out of the house a couple of days later, but had to be home by dark though! Quite a deal I thought from the original grounded for life. I got to tell the story to Stacey and my friends. Since I was about the only one with a dirt bike on the island I already had a reputation as being a little south of sane. Think about it, blood red Challenger, Hodaka Wombat (that's a 125 cc dirt bike, they had the stainless steel tanks), not the guy parents wanted their daughter hanging out with. Since I wasn’t allowed to leave the yard for a couple of days my friends thought I had made it to Illinois.

Myself, Presley and Luke Skywalker were talked about quite a bit among the kids that summer. The dog had a rep now, too. I don't know how my parents didn't make me sell the Challenger after pulling that stunt. I had to go to a defensive driver class for a few weeks and got the whole record sealed. My niece thought the whole thing was pretty funny and Stacey's Mom always looked at me real funny after.

This is a true story and I've told it many times over the years. There's a version where I did donuts around the police station flagpole to initiate the chase, but that never really happened. I think that version came after 5 more Haffenraffers one night.

Presley died in 1988 after becoming very well known and liked in the neighborhood and sharing many adventures with me. Another judge eventually opened my sealed court record, but that's another story for another day.

Peace.