Now it all started two Thanksgivings ago, was on–two years ago on Thanksgiving, when my friend and I went up to visit Alice at the restaurant, but Alice doesn’t live in the restaurant, she lives in the church nearby the restaurant, in the bell tower, with her husband Ray and Fasha the dog. And livin’ in the bell tower like that, they got a lot of room downstairs where the pews used to be in.
Havin’ all that room, seein’ as how they took out all the pews, they decided that they didn’t have to take out their garbage for a long time. We got up there, we found all the garbage in there, and we decided it’d be a friendly gesture for us to take the garbage down to the city dump. So we took the half a ton of garbage, put it in the back of a red VW microbus, took shovels and rakes and implements of destruction and headed on toward the city dump.
He said, “Kid, we found your name on an envelope at the bottom of a half a ton of garbage, and just wanted to know if you had any information about it.” And I said, “Yes, sir, Officer Obie, I cannot tell a lie, I put that envelope under that garbage.”
Now, friends, there was only one or two things that Obie coulda done at the police station, and the first was he could have given us a medal for being so brave and honest on the telephone, which wasn’t very likely, and we didn’t expect it, and the other thing was he could have bawled us out and told us never to be seen driving garbage around the vicinity again, which is what we expected…
…but when we got to the police officers’ station there was a third possibility that we hadn’t even counted upon, and we was both immediately arrested. Handcuffed. And I said “Obie, I don’t think I can pick up the garbage with these handcuffs on.” He said, “Shut up, kid. Get in the back of the patrol car.”
And that’s what we did, sat in the back of the patrol car and drove to the, quote, scene of the crime, unquote. I want tell you about the town of Stockbridge, Massachusetts, where this happened here. They got three stop signs, two police officers, and one police car, but when we got to the “scene of the crime,” there was five police officers and three police cars, being the biggest crime of the last fifty years, and everybody wanted to get in the newspaper story about it.
And they was using up all kinds of cop equipment that they had hanging around the police officers’ station. They was taking plaster tire tracks, foot prints, dog smelling prints, and they took twenty-seven 8-by-10 color glossy photographs with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what each one was to be used as evidence against us.
After the ordeal, we went back to the jail. Obie said he was going to put us in the cell. Said, “Kid, I’m going to put you in the cell, I want your wallet and your belt.” And I said, “Obie, I can understand you wanting my wallet, so I don’t have any money to spend in the cell, but what do you want my belt for?”
I said, “Obie, did you think I was going to hang myself for littering?” Obie said he was making sure—and friends, Obie was, cause he took out the toilet seat so I couldn’t hit myself over the head and drown, and he took put the toilet paper so I couldn’t bend the bars, roll out the—roll the toilet paper out the window, slide down the roll and have an escape. Obie was making sure, and it was about four or five hours later that Alice–
—Alice came by and with a few nasty words to Obie on the side, bailed us out of jail, and we went back to the church, had another Thanksgiving dinner that couldn’t be beat, and didn’t get up until the next morning, when we all had to go to court. We walked in, sat down, Obie came in with the twenty-seven eight-by-ten color glossy pictures with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one, sat down.
Man came in, said, “All rise.” We all stood up, and Obie stood up with the twenty-seven 8-by-10 color glossy pictures, and the judge walked in, sat down with a seeing-eye dog, and he sat down, we sat down. Obie looked at the seeing-eye dog–and then at the twenty-seven 8-by-10 color glossy pictures with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one–and looked at the seeing-eye dog—
—and then at the twenty-seven 8-by-10 color glossy pictures with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one—and began to cry ‘cause Obie came to the realization that it was a typical case of American blind justice, and there wasn’t nothing he could do about it, and the judge wasn’t going to look at the twenty-seven 8-by-10 color glossy pictures with the circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what each one was to be used as evidence against us.
They got a building down New York City, it’s called Whitehall Street, where you walk in, you get injected, inspected, detected, infected, neglected and selected. I went down to get my physical examination one day, and I walked in, I sat down, got good and drunk the night before, so I looked and felt my best when I went in that morning.
‘Cause I wanted to look like the all-American kid from New York City, man; I wanted—I wanted to feel like the all—I wanted to be the all-American kid from New York, and I walked in, sat down, I was hung down, brung down, hung up, and all kinds o’ mean nasty ugly things. And I waked in and sat down and they gave me a piece of paper, said, “Kid, see the psychiatrist, room 604.”
And I went up there, I said, “Shrink, I wanna kill. I mean, I wanna—I wanna kill. Kill. I wanna—I wanna see—I wanna see blood and gore and guts and veins in my teeth. Eat dead burnt bodies. I mean kill, Kill,
KILL, KILL.” And I started jumpin’ up and down yelling, “KILL, KILL, “ and he started jumpin’ up and down with me and we was both jumpin’ up and down yelling, “KILL, KILL.” And the sergeant came over, pinned a medal on me, sent me down the hall, said, “You’re our boy.”
After speaking to Obie for about forty-five minutes on the telephone, we finally arrived at the truth of the matter and said that we had to go down and pick up the garbage, and also had to go down and speak to him at the police officers’ station. So we got in the red VW microbus with the shovels and rakes and implements of destruction and headed on toward the police officers’ station.