“Family member Dr. Werner Weissenhofer reports from Vienna. It seems that a felon armed with a .357 revolver robbed a bank. As he left the bank, he was accosted by a policeman whom he murdered with one shot. Great excitement ensued, with the felon taking hostages and racing madly around from one store to another. When the forces of law and order had been mobilized and surrounded the goblin, a policeman volunteered to trade himself to the goblin for two hostages. This offer was accepted, at which time the felon fired at the policeman and seriously wounded him. The forces of law and order opened up with everything they had, which was mostly AUG and Glock fire. Shortly, the goblin killed himself with one round. He had fired three times and achieved three hits. The police, according to their official report, fired 1,261 rounds without drawing blood.
At one time, we used to refer to an event of this sort as a “Chinese Fire Drill.” Later we came to call if “Father's Day in Harlem.” After the interment of the Ayatollah Khomeini, we began to call it “An Iranian Funeral.” Now, I guess we can call it “A Viennese Bank Robbery.”
As I have often stated, if someone wants to shoot at me, I sure hope he does it on full-auto.”
“Father’s Day in Harlem”
While I realize that Jeff Cooper was referring to the joke, that phrase brings back memories.
In 1972 I had a summer job working in a warehouse on Long Island at the same company where my father worked. I was riding to work with him on Monday, June 12, 1972, when the radio newscaster began reading about the Father’s Day shooting in Harlem the day before.
It seems the family gathering got a little testy. Shots were fired (more that 100 rounds IIRC). The family dog died. A vehicle burst into flames and was destroyed. A multi-story wooden porch collapsed. Numerous windows were shot out.
No human beings were hurt in this production. Not even a scratch.
There were no witnesses. Nobody saw anything.
As of that Monday morning, there were no arrests. “Police were investigating.”
They had an audio clip of the family matriarch in her rocking chair on what was left of the porch that essentially said: “I kept telling them to play nice.”
As we crawled are way along the Long Island Expressway in heavy traffic, my Dad and I were laughing so hard, we had tears in our eyes.