The Adventures of Mike and Tony Continue

One of  the adventures of Mike and Tony were recorded  in the Great Laundry Caper.  In that story, we have two teens puzzling over how competitive  Capitalism works.  How are monopolies formed and how do they succeed or fail?  As  you may recall Tony and Mike worked together and were fast friends.

In this new adventure Tony and Mike are again paired.  The story unfolds in a police  and fire station.  We had good jobs there for young men.  Weekdays we would show up at 5 pm and take over the dispatch desk until the next morning at 8 AM alternating days.  We sometimes issued and supervised things like driver's licenses and unpaid parking tickets.

The big deal was answering the phone.  That was the job we were hired for and evaluated on too.

I memorized the vision chart.  It just seeped into my memory to later leave for lack of use.  I used this to advantage because I wanted to get into the U.S. Marine Corps, but I was blind in one eye.  I passed their test easily based upon my driver's license experience.  It's all gone now  except the Big E on the chart.  They never seem to change that chart.  There must have been a million duplicates.

Tony worked in the catering business part time for a man who wanted to turn over the business to him. I drove a school bus 5 days a week.  We both had other jobs from time to time, but the Police and Fire Job was our shared gem. 

We both went to University.  I had a Fellowship in Mathematics eventually so  I got paid for that too. I needed the money, the Fellowship paid.

Tony had a business acumen.  He was good with his hands too and so he acquired, added to and built apartment buildings.

On weekends we would do 24 on and 24 off service, much like fireman do.  Tony worked one day and I the next. Weekends we alternated.  24 hours on was a pain

The Police and Fire Officers had a thing called 'Kelly' days when they would take an additional day off.  Most of them had families and also depended upon doing painting or minor chores for people.  I sometimes helped them for some more cash.  I think Tony did too.

At night we had bunks in the back of the Police Station where  the fireman or policeman would sleep awaiting some catastrophe triggered by a phone call.  Pretty good duty to sleep on the job after 10 pm.  I remember leaping out of bed to answer the phone. 

A clear head and steady writing hand were  important.   I only forgot one address in my time with the phone.   Between hearing the address and putting the phone down, I lost track of the vital number.  No harm, the woman called back.  I think it was a late night snack kitchen fire.

Fires were a great event as the boys loved to play the fire over and over again to each others pleasure.

It was usually quiet.  We stopped doing off the street business at 10 pm.  At that  time we could study and just answer calls.  But before we could doze off, we had to clean up the place by the usual methods ... soap, water and sponges.

The little town had one Chief for both Fire and Police.  He did not do much. In fact I cannot remember anything he did.   He was polite and quiet until he drank a bit.  Then he would turn into a maniac being just short of dangerous. He was terribly insulting to all he encountered..  He turned into a maniac then and was to be avoided at all costs.

A couple of the officers were mean guys, most were not.  One in particular took to destroying the doors of police cars he did not like.  The Town would ask for bids from GM, Ford and Chrysler.   Tuffy, the Dodge hater, cost the little Town a lot.  The doors would all of a sudden quit working.

The larger policeman had an easier time.  Any arrested 'thugs' were usually polite with a big policeman.   Too bad for skinny cops who were all too easy prey and had to duke it out sometimes with a big drunk.

One of the Officers was a former professional baseball player and very popular with everyone.   He, however, did a lot of grappling with arrested toughs, because they did not respect his skinny frame.  He carried a kind of sap.  It was leather and had a piece of led in it that pivoted or bent on an inner spring.  The skinny guy would sometimes revert to that bone breaker.  It would snap a collar bone in one blow.  He was good with both Sap and Bat.

For us the most dangerous nights occurred when they arrested somebody and then brought them in to book them.  We did not have a jail, so the little jail in the next town was used.  In a rush, they used the Detective's office or in daylight the dog pound.

Sometimes after an arrest, the police would leave on another call and we were alone with the person just arrested.  We managed to navigate ourselves out of that situation with guile to fit the criminal's slow looks around to see where the officers had gone.

The only Detective was a nice guy.  He was stocky and had been a former professional boxer.  He worked out with Joe Louis and had 47 professional bouts.  The bar in the next little town often needed a wholesale cleanup.  By that I mean a knock down drag out toss him out fiasco with blood flow ignored.

Dale was his name. Dale would clean out the bar without help from others.  In fact he would not allow help.  He thought it was dangerous. Someone might get hurt so he was a solo act.

I remember Dale being teased by one of the officers over a long period of time.  Dale was a friend of the Chief and one of the lieutenants was constantly needling him because of this friendship.  It was only a matter of time.  The Fire Hall was the selected venue for Dales 48th bout.  It was a one punch knockout for Dale.  Dale was our John Wayne from The Quiet Man.  He was short and fat, however.

The job of Detective really was a coveted role.  There was not much real Lethal Weapon type stuff and no organized crime.  There was some disorganized crime, however.

A highlight would be the capture of a Break and Enter man. B&E Mrn they called them. When that happened and it was rare, all the various local town Detectives gathered  to 'grill' the suspect. 

 

That way their Detective records would record another successful sleuthing job for everyone.  Each Detective got a plus 1.  This kind of skewed the crime curve, but it got promotions for those detectives who showed up for the grilling to collect their bandit confessions.  

The crooks did not object, they were cooked anyway.  A trip to Jackson Prison was the punishment.  One was as good as the next.  For spilling more beans than they actually committed, the boys got the same punishment and sometimes much less   Guns were a no-no and the rules were not the same.

One amusing part of the Police Station was a wall near the front desk on the way to the toilet.  It showed a map of the town.  Residents would come in and enroll their home by a "I'll be Away" sticker with their  map locations and times visible. 

This map showed the dates of their trips and vacations.  Of course a good B&E man could count on an empty house by coming in and reading the map.  I pointed this out more than once.  They did not listen to kid detectives. But I had seen a suspect man saunter by the map. I even thought of some setup lines on the chart ... maybe something like:  I did not get time to hide the family jewels or something like that.

An arrest of a B&E man was very rare.   I only saw one personally while I was on the crime scene.  He was exceptionally tall bandit and he had entered a house to prowl on the second floor.  He evidently did not read the 'I'm Away Map'.

As luck would have it he was alerted by the awakened couple in bed.  He charged down the stairs and cracked his skull on where the ceiling and wall meet halfway down.  This made him eligible for a rare stretcher run to the Hospital

Sergeant and Later lieutenant Collins was the nicest of all.  He was held in great esteem.  In 38 years of Policing, he had never fired his gun.

Many of the Police/Fireman were womanizers.  Women seemed to like Police Officers. It was not the same with Fireman, but luckily all the guys had both outfits. The funny hats the Fireman wore might have caused a diminished attraction. 

Quite often the Policemen would tell us at the desk to call a number and not use the radio because they would be doing off the beat duty for a while.  In other words they were visiting their girl friends for a quick hug.

We had one Bank in the Town.  It had a bad security system.  The alarm was always going off.  There was never a real robbery, but the Police would respond like it was a Big City Heist with Willie Sutton at work.

I was on duty one night reading before 10 pm.  An old man burst into the entrance.  He was about 70.  I asked him if I could help him.  He pulled a gun and leaned over my counter brandishing a silver plated hand gun. 

He said:  "Do I look like I need help?"  He then shoved the gun barrel onto my forehead and unlocked the safety.  It happened so fast, I did not know what to do.  Suddenly a couple of Police entered and saw what was going on clearer than I did.  The old guy was a bounty hunter and well known to the police.  He wanted to log his visit to somebody who had skipped bail.   Not a pleasant guy.  He must have been practicing his tough guy act.

Years later I was present at a real Bank Robbery with bullets flying, glass shattering and robber wrestling at my feet for possession of a bouncing gun.  That will make a good sequel.

A couple of things nobody liked including Tony and I.  One was family disputes.  For example, there was a man in Town who beat his wife. Always a danger, even for us.  The beatings would come every few months.  She would call, and the Police would arrest him and toss him into Jail after booking him with us.  She would forgive him and the whole cycle would repeat.  It was sad to see her swollen face, broken nose and blue-black arms.  She seemed to find solace in seeing uniformed men ushering her husband off to jail, but then, she would pardon him.

The little Town bordered on an 8 lane highway.  There were routine high damage car and truck crashes.  Tony and I did not like these.  If they were off to the hospital, we were ok, but  if it was a drunken driver gets tough arrest, we did not like it at all.

I remember one late night crash.   A man was accosted by two dumb teens after a crash.  They argued and the teens beat the man up.  They all were arrested.  For a while I was left with the man... a big guy.  He was a teamster organizer.  Later I was with the teens alone.  They were bragging about beating up the 'old' man.  I could not help myself.  I told them the possible ramifications of their hubris.

Tony and I had other adventures.  One was a call from an irate resident complaining about the orangutans in their pear tree.  Our town bordered a Zoo with above average primates.  They were way, way above average.

The most amazing story that Tony told me recently concerns women or young girls at that time.  Tony would invite them over to the station at night sometimes.  I did not know this because we worked different shifts.  If he was on, I could not be on and visa versa.  I never saw the girls.

He would go into the Chief's Office and romance a bit.   I was shocked.  "How many times?"  He replied, "oh quite often".  Tony was a charming young man, sturdy and good looking with a zest for life.  He was a natural.  He didn't even have to wear a uniform.  He was selective with his girlfriends.

I asked him what he did with the incoming calls.  He said that he shut the phone off and routed the calls to the adjacent town's radio operator.  We were 911 operators before they invented the term.

I said ... "Tony, you shut off the phone?" Yes, he thought that was what he was supposed to do, disregarding the girls.  The girls kind of tarnished his argument, but they could not be avoided.

"More than one girl at a time, I asked?"  "No", he replied. I took another look at Tony.  I guess he is still a handsome guy with a magnetic personality.  And, he was never an overbearing womanizer.  Never a chaser or bottom pincher.  

Uniforms and all that, were they a catalyst? But, we did not have uniforms.  Oh, we did have them in the Laundry Caper, but shed them after the Great Laundry Sale.

I'll have to question him again about the chutzpah that it took.   How did they escape, when the officers came in with a drunk?

The Town had a judge ....  He was a WWII vet and a nice person.  Highly educated and erudite.

Evidently he  had been watching Tony and I study. I don't know if he noticed the girls.  I studied mostly mathematics and had plenty of time to do so.  Other subjects did not interest me in the least.

One day he brought me the classic book 'Men of Mathematics' by Eric Temple Bell as a present.  That was thoughtful and I devoured it.   Later, he got me a job at the General Motors Research Laboratories.  Our jobs never quit helping us.

More later .... Maybe about the big Bank Robbery?

Mike Sterling 7/26/2021  1 PM