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Reminds me of the time, as a young man, that I was pulled over in my ‘64 Skylark convertible for a taillight being out at 1:30am on the way home from the recording studio.

Young kid, with a shaved head, driving an older car with a loose electrical connection to the taillight socket, at 1:30am.... COP MAGNET.

Cops hauled me out of car, hands on the hood treatment while they searched the car... along with the drum kit in the back seat they took offense to the baseball bat and glove and requested I keep that in the trunk.

Then with the whole drumkit pulled out on the side of the road, bat and glove secured in trunk... the cop held up one of the boomerangs I had in the back seat as well (I had a collection of about 9 different boomerangs all of various design and flight characteristics). The cop asked me if I knew how to “use” the boomerang as he held it up, and I said I did... and immediately he says, “Well, since you know how to use this, it could be used as a weapon against an officer of the law. You should secure these in your trunk as well.”

I felt like saying, “Excuse me officers, can you please go stand 30 to 40 yards down the road so I can get a clean shot at you both with my boomerang?”

Instead, I put it in the trunk, jiggled the wire and the taillight came back on, and was on my way home with a warning... an hour and a half later, getting back home at about 3:45am. Oh, and I had to be up at 5am to shovel coal into a steam locomotive’s firebox all day...

Ah to be 20 again... the things I would do differently... like saying, “No you will NOT search my vehicle without a search warrant signed by a judge, you effing fascist”.

I mean, when I was 20, I didn’t drink or smoke or do drugs or ogle slutty women or nothing... I was just a kid... a good kid that played softball on Sundays, helped out friends in a band, and threw boomerangs around out in the middle of a field for fun... when I wasn’t busting my ass working on the railroad for $8/hr.