PART 1

              I walked into the dance wearing my Navy pea-coat. It was cold out, and the heavy knee length wool great-coat felt good. An instant later, my feet bumped along in reverse as two cops grabbed me under both arms, half carrying, half dragging me straight backward. There was a unique sensation of being pulled and lifted; half floating, half scraping toward the direction from which I’d just arrived. Then came one of the voices I’d grown to know so well, Fat Clint. “We gotcha Walter, there’s information you’re holding drugs to sell in here,” he grated, “so we’re going to search you, is that ok? Ok, let’s go.” Wow, wham bam, in dance, out of dance, hand cuffed and stuffed into a patrol car. Thanks for the invitation, next stop interrogation.

              I’m rushed to the station, where another rough voice says “Strip search, peel 'em off.”  It came to mind nobody read me my rights. However, to the local boys in blue this was a minor oversight, and things were happening fairly quickly. Seconds later, there I am butt naked in front of half a dozen wannabe drug enforcement boys. Keep in mind this is the early nineteen seventies, unfortunately in the seventies most small-town cops are Barney Fife type policeman, big on zeal with little else going. ln this time police schooling is minimal if at all and most of these guys take absolutely the least possible. Tonight, they are full of gusto and want to take a bite out of crime; me. Everyone wants to eat my lunch, and it shows.