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String of Events

This kind of thing doesn’t happen very often. Two friends of mine and I went to a movie called “Deliverance” in the early 1970s. In this movie an unfortunate character is forced to squeal like a pig.

My two friends and I worked at a local grocery store and one day shortly after having seen this movie the delivery truck showed up and we began unloading it. The driver of this truck had the misfortune of looking almost identical to the character in the film.

So, as we are out stocking the shelves, putting up the Welch’s grape jelly, the Duncan Hines cake mix and such, about every ten minutes one of us three would let out a pig squeal. “Reeee”. We were having quite a good time at this, laughing and stocking the shelves. When we got done, the store manager let us out the front door and we all started squealing like pigs.

Then one of us noticed a cop standing on the corner across the street and said, “Guys, that cop thinks we are calling him a pig.” (This was a standard in the protests of the 1960’s.) My friend was exactly correct in his assessment. So, we quieted down and walked down to the local tavern to get our after work traditional drink of an RC Cola.

As we were sitting there, enjoying our colas, every few minutes one of us would get up and go look out the window. The cop had crossed the street and was standing on the corner of the courthouse sidewalk. After a while, he moved back into the bushes next to the courthouse and was standing there waiting for us.

We didn’t know exactly what to do about this, we discussed some possibilities, none of which were well received. Then one of my buddies stands up and says, “I know what to do.” But he wouldn’t tell us what that was. He walked to the back of the bar and picked up the phone. We followed him not knowing what he had in mind.

He began talking, “Yeah, I wanted to give you a call to tell you that there is a suspicious looking guy digging around in the bushes on the northeast corner of the courthouse. (Pause) Oh, I’m just a concerned citizen.” He had just called the cops on the cop.

We all went to the front of the bar and looked out the window to see what would be the consequences of our friend’s call. About five minutes later a police car swung around the corner, the lights came on, followed by the spotlight shining on the cop in the bushes. We thought this was hilarious and went out of the bar to our jalopies and took off.

I can tell you that that particular cop would now pull us over for any minor infraction he could make up, one of which I had to defend myself against in that very same courthouse.