My first brush with the police came when I was about six years old, A boy I used to play with talked me into thinking that it was a good idea to throw rocks at the cars on White Street. Since it was the busiest cross street to our neighborhood, there were lots of targets. All I remember is that a policeman came to our door and was talking to my mother. Boy, would I love to know how that conversation went, but I don’t.
Then a few years later another boy talked me into stealing a carton of cokes from a delivery truck. The driver had probably stopped at home to have lunch. We were caught. That did not go well.
A number of years later, a number of girls in the neighborhood formed a Polly Pigtails Club. The police showed up at our door again and said that a number of girls from our neighborhood had been stealing doll stuff from the Five and Dime down the street. I knew nothing about it, but I do remember wondering where all the stuff came from. Anyway, my mother believed me but I got another lecture about being led astray.
Years later when teaching at the local high school, I was with some friends taking Hula dancing lessons after school from another teacher. She worked during the summers at a Hawaiian restaurant in Miami. After the lesson, I backed into a car full of Naval officers on the way home from work. They were not happy with me. The police came, I was charged and got a court summons. I called my father. I was living at home at the time. My father came with me to court a few weeks later. I was scared. Other than the fact that I was convicted, and paid a fine all went fairly well.
When I was twenty and home for the summer, most of my friends were 21 and going places I couldn’t go. Since my birthday was 10/5/45 on my driver’s license, I got the bright idea that I would just erase the 0 on the month. I told my father thinking that would make it all OK. He informed me then that a criminal record was not a good thing to have. He said that what I was about to do was illegal and that if I got caught, I would spend the night in the clink with the rest of the ne’er-do-wells because he wasn’t going to come get me until morning. I leave you to guess how the rest of the summer went.
After I was married, I backed into a police car parked on the other side of the street from my driveway. I went to the house and told them what I had done. I thought that the policeman had probably stopped home for lunch. The policeman came and knocked on my door and told me not to worry about it and since there was no damage to my car, the department would take care of the damage to the police car. I don’t know what all that was about, skullduggery, I suspect. But for some reason I was home free.
One Christmas Eve, we had just been to church and were singing Jingle Bells at the top of our lungs on our way home when we got stopped by a policeman for speeding. Peter told him we were singing Christmas carols and got a little carried away. He chuckled, told us to slow down and sent us on our way, sleigh bells and all.