Stranger Nights

My prior post (in which I described the evening I inadvertently spent hanging out with a bunch of stoners - 8 hours of my life I'll never get back) brought back a lot of memories about the drug subculture in Tyler Texas back in 1970.

I didn't consider myself to be part of that crowd (although I was known to inhale from time to time), but (like them) I tended to be "out and about" in the wee hours of the morning. That was because Wayne started work at 5 AM and slept afterwards (during the day). He usually spent the early evenings with his girlfriend (when they weren't split up). BTW: I was the best man at their wedding - they've been together for 40 years now - surprised the heck out of me... But the point is that when Wayne and I hung out it was usually in the 11 PM to 3 AM time frame.

There were only two places in town that were open 24/7: A convenience store and a Dunkin' Donuts - both excellent sources of munchies for those in need :-) So when Wayne and I stopped by those places we tended to encounter the same people over and over. (Including that blond girl who had the bad trip in my prior post...) The guys who worked graveyard shift at the convenience store were "cool" and seemed to enjoy the company (although they did get a bit irritated when people had "flame thrower" fights with the cigarette lighters and hairspray)... The Dunkin' Donuts wasn't quite as popular because there were usually cops there... Yeah, I know - it's a stereotype - but that doesn't mean it's not true :-) Still - it was an OK place to go if you were in any condition to "act normal".

The other major hub of drug activity was Bergfeld Park. (That's the park where I played tennis.) The south end of the park was where all the dealers were - you could get just about anything there... The transactions were going on totally in the open - there was absolutely no effort to conceal it. Everyone was laughing at how incompetent the Tyler police were because it had been going on for quite a while and the cops seemed oblivious... Personally, I tended to avoid that scene - I've always been "risk averse" - but Wayne was known to hang out there from time to time. Let's just say he was willing to try things I wasn't :-)

Then late one night Wayne and I were cruising up Broadway in his Mustang when we got pulled over. The officer did the usual license and registration bit and said "Wayne, the reason I stopped you is there was a report of a hit and run involving a car like yours a while ago and I just wanted to check for damage". The cop walked around the Mustang (which was intact) and went on his way.
After the cop left I waited for Wayne to start the car but he just sat there staring straight ahead... When I looked over I realized he was trembling... I asked what was wrong and he said "That p*g just called me Wayne..." And I was like "Yeah - what's your point?" He didn't say a word - just handed me his license. That's when I remembered that Wayne was his middle name and his license only showed his middle initial...
He was completely freaked out for the rest of the evening - just kept muttering about how he'd never seen that cop before - how did the guy know his nickname? He decided (wisely) to avoid the south end of the park in the future and not too long afterward there was a major drug bust... We later speculated that the cop might have been a friend of a friend of his family and was giving him a subtle hint... We'll never know.

Aside: We were totally paranoid about the cops in Tyler back then and it later turned out that it was justified... In the late 1970s there was a major scandal involving planted evidence and perjured testimony in a drug case there. The events were later fictionalized and dramatized in the movie "Rush"... So yeah - there was good reason for concern :-)

Now - for the highlight of our Friday nights:
The John Birch Society office in Tyler had a "Dial a Commie Plot" line. (That wasn't the official name - that's just what Wayne and I called it.) You dialed the number and got a recorded message telling you about the latest plot to destroy America... The messages ran the gamut from how Unicef money was used to buy arms for Red China to the assertion that all rock stars had short wave radios and got regular instructions from Moscow on how to corrupt the morals of America's youth... The guy who did the recordings was so incredibly serious - it was hysterically funny :-)
They changed the recording every Friday afternoon and we looked forward to that new message all week... Now - this was back in the days before people had phone extensions all over the house so Wayne and I had to listen to the message one at a time (I remember arguing about whose turn it was to go first). Either way, seeing the other person's reaction made the whole thing that much funnier... I've never laughed so hard :-) It was part of what made living in Tyler almost tolerable.