A Central Location Problem

Wow, am I tired! The day after Easter I managed to finally crawl out of bed and do a few things, scrub the deck that got muddy during yesterday's rain,some kitchen clean up and cooking, sort out, clean and fill the bird feeders and bird bath, and fold up put away all the laundry I've been washing and leaving in baskets since nearly two weeks ago when the asthma got insane. Whipped by afternoon.

Talked to various feuding elderly relatives again. One of which is upset by the church in Central that keeps busing people in to their services. I am not surprised. How to describe Central, which is a small town right near where several of my elderly aunts live. It's rural, it's backwater, it's the place where if they were going to give the Bible Belt an enema the nozzle would go in.

Of course that could just be my own prejudices against the place and the copious crazy fundamentalist Baptists, Assemblies of God, assorted flavors fundamentalism that lurk there. You see I was arrested in 1976 in Central, Louisiana. Charges were dropped, but it was a strange never to be repeated experience for me. I wasn't even doing anything, in fact I tried to prevent something. It was another one of those incidents that make me question the wisdom of getting married to my first husband, one of those first straws for the camel's back that eventually.

When I first met Dan I was enough of a giggly silly young girl that I was actually impressed with his idiotic feats of derring do. Things like driving and tossing Little Miller bottles at the big overhead signs on the interstate and hitting them. I remember a gig where someone else drove and Dan stood on the top of the truck and handed a beer to an 18 wheeler driver. How he didn't fall off and get squashed I will never know. All sorts of crazy stunts testosterone fueled. Fools and little children. A cut rate "Jackass" Dan was a real Good Time Charlie when we first met, and I'd never known anyone like him before, filled with bullshit and bravado.

Shortly after we got married we decided to spend a rare non-gig day non working day (in a band, how we met) at that local Redneck Riviera, the long gone Thunderbird Beach. The Thunderbird was a large man made lake, lined with white sand, with a long slide, a dock, a fountain in the center and a handful of ancient arcade ride. Beer and faux beach. Thunderbird also featured tons of bands, some semi famous, some not, like us. They had the funniest  sign up through the 1960s "No Hippies Allowed!"

A friend named Roger joined us, and we went to lay on the sand, drink beer and goof around. Dan's stunts had already started to wear thin on me. We were all tired, getting into Dan's truck for a ride down backroads from near Watson to where we were living in Baker. Passing right through Central.  Roger decided as we were whipping down Blackwater Rd to take part the in the stupidest of male traditions when left alone with buddies and too much beer, mail box baseball.

I'm sure you've heard of it. Someone drives, someone else leans out the window with a basebat bat and starts beating the bejesus out of the mailboxes lined up on the road. It's a popular rural pastime, or so I've been told. I was stuck in the truck between Dan and Roger and told both of them off repeatedly, what a stupid idea it was. I finally just gave up and sat there fuming.

As we pulled into the center of Central it appeared, a shiny brand spanking new trash can. That was back when you could still get the shiny galvanized steel ones instead of plastic ones on wheels. Roger saw it and his eyes got big. When he reached out of the window again with the bat, winding up to use that bat on the glittering can I started to shout, "No Roger don't, that's the.." *CLANG* "police station!"

Not only was it a sheriff's substation there was a friendly deputy sitting in a patrol car who witnessed the garbage can desecration. If there is something you do to attract law enforcement attention please do not do it in the parking lot in full view of a cop sitting ready to bust your ass.

Oh of course we were pulled over mere feet from the crime, all brought into the station, all separated into different interrogation rooms. Of course I sang like that proverbial canary, no one had to lean on me as I babbled out how incredibly stupid the guys I was with are. I was pissed, and the cops heard my recitation of the events. I guess I'm that jailhouse stoogie that spills the dumb beans. I wasn't charged, and they let me go. Having to make that humiliating drive home alone while Dan and Roger spent the night in jail before bonding out was bad enough. I'm still not sure how none of us got public intoxication charges.

I stay out of Central and off Blackwater Rd when I'm in the area.