Rage From the Edge

Everybody loves a good barbecue. I am not an exception. I like steaks, ribs, hot dogs, hamburgers, and sausages all piled on a grill under a hot july sun next to a dripping cold cooler full of beer. I have always liked barbecues; there are thirty year old pictures in my parent’s house showing me with ketchup all over my face at a family function out at my dad’s farm. Why is it that meat cooked over an open flame tastes better? Is it some sort of instinct that harkens back to ancient times where men cooked mammoth meat and chased saber-toothed tigers with big clubs?

I have no idea about the science of the stuff, I just know that I love it and I share my love with millions of other people. Just take a look at the successful grill and charcoal industries, not to mention how much a good steak costs these days.

Earlier, I mentioned a farm. The farm had been in my family for a few generations, and until recently, I thought that it would pass to my siblings and I. Alas, that was not to happen for my father sold it. It’s no big deal, but now I have to find some other place to hunt. The farm is approximately one hundred acres and is located about thirty miles away. I used to go there just about every weekend up until I had my own kids and weekends became a precious commodity. Now, it is only a memory, but those memories have so many strange and wonderful tales involved in them.

That farm and my love of BBQ food might just have been a road to a life of corruption, wrong-doing, and jail time. It seems that I could not go to that place and enjoy food without somehow getting into trouble. It started early in my life, probably around the time I first got my driver’s license. We would pack as many high school kids into as many cars as we could, drive up there, cook food and drink beer. Beer being the evil part.

When we would arrive, there was always some sort of evidence of other people trespassing on the property and pretty much doing the same things I was doing now. Gathering people together with the express reason of drinking beer and eating food. It is for that reason, that now several years later, I think that the farm was being watched by every Sherriff in that county. Easy pickins.

And these bastards were smart too. They wouldn’t just roll up in their sleek cruisers as soon as we got there, no sir. They would let us get going for a bit. Let the coals in the fire pit get hot. Let us get the first few rounds of beer in us. Oh yeah, they would roll up with the worst timing ever and start asking questions. Never mind that they were not invited onto the property, they didn’t care. They’d just claim that it was “probable cause” to enter the property because they saw cars parked in the yard. Then came the inevitable search and seizure of the brew and the calling of the parents. By the time I was 18, nobody was allowed to hang out with me because my farm BBQ’s had earned me a “bad kid” status by the parents of my friends.

So I had started down my crooked path, spurred on by my love of bratwurst and sticky ribs to a place that could only end up being the federal penitentiary. Occasionally, I would even cook marinated chicken breasts…gasp! Give that boy the electric chair!

On the particular time that I am thinking of, we had been at the farm for about an hour. While the coals got hot, I decided to get into my truck and drive out to a forest that was about a mile back from the road. Now the field that lay between the farm house and the forest was long and skinny; kind of like an L shaped piece of land that was head high in corn. I took a straight route back to the forest, there used to be a road, but over the years it had become over grown and pitted with deep ruts that could break a truck’s axle. It was far safer to actually drive over the crops…they’d be okay.

The reason I had decided to go to the forest was because I had my then current girlfriend with me and the forest was an excellent make-out spot. We had some time, so why not waste it pleasurably? So there we were, bouncing and giggling in the front seat of the truck, fully knowing what we were going to be doing and very very happy about the prospects. Finally, we reached the end of the field and I parked the vehicle under the huge arms of the first trees that stood there. The trees themselves were very old, they had never been harvested by a logging company at that point, and they were held back by a very rickety fencerow that my grandfather had put up in the 1930s.
Hand in hand, we walked towards that fencerow and looked for a nice easy spot to climb over it. The land on both sides of the fence were my family’s property, so I wasn’t scared about running into any neighbors or some strangers. My grandfather had put the fence up to keep (long gone) cattle out of the forest itself. We found a spot and climbed over. Me, being the perfect gentleman, helped her over and even used a blanket to cover the barbed wire at the top of the rusted old fence. I didn’t want her to scratch herself!

We found a shady spot, and I smoothed the blanket down over the thick accumulation of leaves that had fallen there for centuries. Everything was perfect. The sun was shining in yellow spots through holes in the canopy a hundred feet above us; the stuffy air under the branches was cool and moved with a small wind. We sat down on the blanket and began to make out.

I don’t think I had kissed this girl more than three times and probably didn’t even have my arms around her when I began to hear the horns blowing.

“What the fuck?” I asked with gritted teeth. Horns blowing at the farm was a problem. Somebody was in trouble, hurt, or needed something bad enough to lay on a car horn for a full ten seconds. The people back at the farmhouse and barns needed me…right now.

Cursing, I hauled up the girl and the blanket and we made our way out of the forest. We had to leave our shady love nest behind probably because some dumbass back at the farm had burned himself on the grill. Forgotten the hot dog buns…

I drove back just a little bit faster than I should have. This time, instead of giggling and bouncing over the rough terrain, I was gritting my teeth and hammering the truck forward. I was pissed at the intrusion and I wanted to get back to where I was as soon as possible. I rounded the crook in the L and the full view of the farm yard hit me like a ton of bricks.

There was not going to be any trip back to the forest for hot love. There was not going to be a slow nap, with this girl in my arms and a stomach full of hamburgers and potato chips. There was going to be a shitload of explaining to do to my soon-to-be-furious father.

In the courtyard of the farm, parked neatly in a half circle in front of the fire pit were six county Sherriff cruisers, all of them with the lights on. I stopped the truck and put it in park.

All of my friends were there, their faces twisted into masks of shock, surprise, and agony. One girl, who was not initially busted by the cops, had been peeing behind some weed bushes. Once she had popped up from her spot of privacy, she had been nailed just like the rest of the kids. The officers were now lining all of them up against a barn and searching them and their clothes. I could see another set of officers grabbing cases of beer from the back of one of the kids van. It was going to be a long night.

A million thoughts crossed my mind. I hadn’t been seen yet by the police, owing to the height of the corn and the rusted out color of my truck, they were oblivious to my position or even my existence. I should have driven like a mad man back out to the forest and tried to find a way back to the main road. Get the hell out of there! My mind was yelling. But I couldn’t. For the girl sitting next to me, holding my hand and smiling in a kind of guilty and sad way, there was no escape. Her car was parked down there, in the middle of everything, plates being run by the county Sherriff’s department. I had to swallow my thoughts of escape and face the cops no matter how badly I wanted to cut and run.

I put the truck back into gear and slowly grumbled it down to the farm’s main courtyard. Several of the officers noted me and motioned for me to park next to the rest of the kid’s vehicles. I looked around and noticed that the beer being hauled out of the van was not being poured out, which was normally the case, but it was being hauled to a Sheriff’s cruiser and placed neatly into the trunk. Those dirty rats. I pulled to the spot I was being told to park in and got out of the truck.

“Are you Dan?” a tall, skinny cop asked. He was wearing mirrored sunglasses just like the “Man with no eyes” wears in the movie “Cool Hand Luke.”

My answer was a meek yes, and I entered into a whirlwind of police questions, handcuffs, and a slow ride into town where our parents were going to meet us all at the county courthouse. They immediately separated the boys from the girls; they handcuffed all the guys and put us all into one paddy wagon that left first. Later, I found out from my girlfriend, the officers had waited around at the farm for a female officer to arrive so that she could inspect the girls who had been at the party. They wanted to make sure that none of them had been raped or forced to do anything that was against their will. They also were not cuffed and got to drive their own cars into town (if they weren’t visibly drunk). All of the boy’s vehicles were impounded and towed away by a local wrecker who I am sure made a goldmine off our release fees.

Once all the boys had been processed through the police area of the county courthouse, they escorted us all to what appeared to be an old dining room. This courthouse had actually been a house at one time. It did not resemble what you think a county seat looks like; a large stone building with a dome and a Howitzer on the front lawn. No, this building was more like an old ranch house that had been rebuilt to have a few more offices and storage rooms added on. They sat us around a two hundred year old dining table. The girls were escorted in a minute later and they were asked to sit on the other side of the dining room. Now came the slow long wait for our parents to arrive. During that time, we got “the talk.”

The talk is where the police sit you down and try to get anything more out of you than what you have already been busted for. Our talk began just as the girls had settled down and gotten comfortable. A little Sherriff man walked in holding the largest bag of pot I had ever seen. “So,” he said, “Which one of you belongs to this?”

If you know me, you know that not only do I not smoke pot, I actually hate pot. Most of my friends are the same way. I don’t like the smell of it, I don’t like the way it makes a person act, and I don’t like the whole “mystique” that surrounds pot smoking culture. It just never appealed to me. Cut and dry; there was no marijuana on my farm at the time of the bust. I looked around the room, just to be sure of it. All of my friends were just as incredulous as I was. It simply wasn’t our smoke. Since I seemed to be the leader of our little group, the Sherriff looked at me and repeated his question. He rolled the huge bag around in his hands almost lovingly as he waited for my answer.

“Um…sir, none of us smoke pot…” I said with a squeak.

Oh he was fishing alright. “You mean to tell me a group of kids like you guys, who had all that beer…just doesn’t smoke pot?” He gave the bag a loving pat.

A girl on the other side of the room coughed a little cough and spoke up: “No sir, none of us mess with that stuff…when are our parents getting here?” The Sherriff seemed to deflate. He had picked that bag of pot up out of the evidence room and was hoping to get one of us to roll on the others, eagerly expecting at least one of us to be holding something. We weren’t. The next five minutes were spent in silence until the parents started arriving. One of the parents, I think of the girl who had told the Sherriff that we didn’t smoke pot, was a lawyer. He cast an evil look on the room and then left with his daughter.

As each of our parents got there, we were allowed to leave. As we filed out of the dining room and into the police areas of the courthouse, we were asked to stop off at a desk and sign some paperwork. Each of us were supposed to be charged with minor possession of alcohol and a few of us were charged with resisting arrest. Before I signed anything, I carefully looked over the charges and checked to see the trial date. My father looked on, a dark scowl on his face as black as any deep dark cave.

They had charged us with felony possession of marijuana! The one pound bag had been logged in as evidence against twelve teenagers who had been partying at some farm! Just as I had discovered this and was beginning to mouth my denial of it to my father, the lawyer and his daughter slammed back into the office, banging the door rather loudly. “What is this nonsense?” he yelled at the officer behind the desk as he waved the sheaf of papers around. The officer shriveled under the man’s rage. My father turned to look at him and ask what the problem was. He didn’t need to open his mouth.

“This charge…this motherfucking felony…” he slammed the sheaf down in front of the little officer. “Get me the arresting officer I want to talk to him right now,” he demanded.

To this day, nobody knows how that bag of pot got stuck in with us and the charges brought against us, but all of us have our suspicions. The lawyer eventually got a hold of the arresting officer and as my father and I waited outside we could hear yelling through the thick walls of the old house. Half an hour later, the lawyer, now calm looking and smooth, emerged with his daughter. She was smiling.

Somehow, through browbeating and threats of investigations, the girl’s dad had gotten all the charges thrown out. Seems that the police had no idea where the marijuana had come from, but because it was in the room with us, the people filling out the forms had figured that it was ours. They had just mistakenly put the felony on our sheets because “it was there.” Yeah, fuck you kids, here’s a felony for you right before you go off to college. Who cares if half of you are only seventeen, the other half are eighteen and this will surely screw with your life for years to come.

I don’t know how he managed to have all the charges dropped against all of us, but while I was outside listening as best I could, I had heard the words “drug testing.” The girl had later told me that her father would order a drug test for all of us if the Sherriff group who had arrested us would do the same. I am not certain that my group of friends would all pass, but I know that I would have. The officers who had arrested us were not sure at all. They balked. Why? You have to remember that this was a long time ago, before drug tests grew on trees. Back then, a drug test wasn’t a normal occurrence, but rather a sacred thing only to be invoked by those of us who had “the power to do so.” Drug testing had an arcane quality and threat about it that caused most people to pause…could he really do that? Could he order the police themselves to undergo such invasive and shocking experimentation?

And I still like barbecues to this day…I just don’t have them in that particular county. In fact, if I can help it, I don’t even enter that county anymore.