Pulled Over

Pulled Over

Brad and I used to work the last shift at Hunters together. We were from the opposite ends of the spectrum. I was from San Diego and he was from Wheaton, Ohio. He was the only guy I knew who called Chicago Shytown. So even though that young boy was younger than this old boy, I admired him. He read good stuff, I read good stuff. We both had an interest in photography and the fine art of rolling a proper joint. It was usually Mexican commercial, stank, and tasted like wet cardboard. Sometimes it was better. This was “back in the day” as my son puts it now, and smoking was a highly illegal and clandestine activity.

Hunter’s was an up-scale bookstore in La Jolla, an up-scale, but not a nose-completely-turned-upward neighborhood, overlooking the blue Pacific. It was a one of a kinder. Whispering palms line avenues of brick and stone redesigning every afternoon to gold pavement, when street lights and shop lights in elegant store windows flash on. Even during the day it was pretty. The view tugged on you, even in your sleep, maybe because pacific means calm.

Brad and I worked so well together they trusted us to lock up at night at ten. We had this lady, and I mean that in the finest sense of the word, that was reasonably new, maybe on her fourth paycheck. She was pretty in the same way Beaver’s mother June was pretty. She had a nice voice and pleasing manner, strictly upper crust. I took her for a bored socialite on the make for an affair with Dr. Salk, who came in alone, when he wasn't with Picasso's mistress, Francoise Gilot. Francoise dragged Salk in one time looking for a copy of her book, Life with Picasso. We were a small bookstore and didn't have it. We only had room for books that sold. These rich folks, you learn to get over them after a while and see through their pretense. Just like you, they want love and attention.

So we told her we’d sold out, but they were “on order”.

June, our bored socialite, was giving a dinner party. “Up the hill,” she said, and gestured toward Mount Soledad. She was sporting a white summer dress, printed with scarlet hibiscus. It had narrow straps, and you could see the tan lines on her shoulders. The curves, the curves! My mouth was watering over her curves. Right there in Hunter’s, I was having a Pavlovian experience.

Sorry readers. When I got to the spot when I was making up what her shoulders look like, I took for an image my favorite shoulders, You-Know-Who’s shoulders! I’m ready to wax poetic over them any day of the week. Her curves are superb.

Oops! Back to the story…

It looked like she was trying to hitch a ride with her thumb. She’d never hitched a ride in her life.

I betcha You-Know-Who never hitch-hiked. I’ll have to ask her. She’s always good for a story.

“Oh Jeez, those places always have a view,” crossed my mind.

But we’d have to all pitch in five bucks. We all did, and gladly, because our plan was this. I had a doob and he had a doob and our intent was to go to his house directly after work, take off our ties and change clothes, smoke those two doobies, go up to Mount Soledad with an extreme case of the munchies, and devour with reckless abandon every bit of wondrous high-class sophisticated food in that fancy house.

Consume and consume and consume whatever lay in our path. Lay waste to the hordorves and canapes, whatever canapes are. Oh, and drink ourselves silly too, if there was anything to drink. We had grand plans for a late night feast. In sex and eating, imagination reigns supreme.

Ten came and we were out the door and into my Volkswagen bus. Of course it's a grey and exceedingly ugly Volkswagen bus. It's parked on the street and I fire it up and pop on the lights and away we go, crossing Girard.

That's as far as we get, because a cop turns his lights on us. This wasn't part of the plan. But I'm a positive person and Brad looks a bit concerned, and don't want Brad to ruffle his feathers, so I say,

"Don't worry, it couldn't be anything, we've only crossed the intersection."

And I give him a look and see tiny beads of sweat appear on his forehead.

"Oh, O.K." he says, just as a young officer's head appears at my open window.

to be continued...

©StevenHunley2019

https://youtu.be/Ea79npseZhk Rainy Daze - That Acapulco Gold

Enjoyed your new story, Steven. Curious for the sequel.

Pulled Over Part Two



"Oh, O.K." he says, just as a young officer's head appears at my open window.

“Can I see your license?”

“Sure, Officer…” I give his name tag a look, “Callahan.”

I hand it over.

“Your right brake light is out,” he informs us, “This will take a while” he says and strolls leisurely back to his squad car.

Simultaneously we sigh a sigh of relief, just like in the movies.

“See, I told ya. Not to worry.”

“Yes, you know… I was getting a little tense.”

“It’s OK, no big deal. If I’m lucky it’ll be only a fix-it ticket.”


I can see Callahan in my side-view mirror, back there in his comfortable black and white Ford Crown Victoria with the overstuffed upholstery, the metal cage, and the doors that don’t open from the inside in the back seat, doing his job, filling out paperwork for a blindfolded lady who’s supposed to have scales in her hand, but doesn’t. As soon as he’s done, we’ll be on our way.

I’m feeling better about the whole thing, like it’s already over and we’re in his house changing clothes and about to spark up those two fat doobies, drive up the hill, and eat ourselves to death in a house with a heavenly view. For it was rumored the Gods of Plenty lived on Mount Soledad. You could hear them grumble on stormy nights just like Mount Etna.

“Hey, what’s this?” says Brad. “reinforcements?”

I look at Brad, and out his window pulling up to the curb is another cop with his red lights flashing. An ominous uniformed figure closes a white box, puts his coffee in a mug holder, gets out and waddles our way. He stops and gives the butt-ugly Volkswagen bus a look, then cocks his head down and peers inside scanning the two long-haired young men scanning him right back.

After wiping powdered sugar from a doughnut off his upper lip, he raises his nose in the air sniffing north… then south, and proclaims loudly, “I smell marijuana.”

Right here I know we’ve got trouble.

Then Officer Trouble is my Name tells the young corporal, “Get them out of the vehicle.”

Next thing I know we’re standing on the sidewalk assuming the position and being patted down. We have nothing on us. We’re clean. It’s the bus that’s dirty.
Brad is extra quiet, he’s probably mediating to stay calm, but I’ll never know because just then he bites the dust, collapses in a heap, on the corner of Girard and La Jolla Boulevard.

Cops are funny guys. The only see two kinds of people, Victims and Perps. You’re either one or the other. So, they go into Save The Victim Mode and proceed to help my buddy from Illinois regain consciousness. They loosen his collar, unbutton his cuffs, and hold his head up while removing his boots. But when boot number two comes off and hits the sidewalk, Brad’s doobie rolls out. Under that overhead streetlamp, the neatly wrapped white rice paper with tightened ends proclaims our innocence.

“Look at me! Do I look smoked to you? What am I, a roach? I’m pristine! I’ve never even touched their lips.”

But cops? They never listen to long-haired stoners that go to school and work in upscale bookstores, much less to listen their paraphernalia.

“Bingo,” says the Big Guy and slaps the cuffs on me. “I’ll check the van. Looks like Mr. Cowboy Boots is coming around. You take care of him."




to be continued...

©StevenHunley2021

Cancelled by author

"I look at Brad, and out his window pulling up to the curb is another cop with his red lights flashing. An ominous uniformed figure closes a white box, puts his coffee in a mug holder, gets out and waddles our way. He stops and gives the butt-ugly Volkswagen bus a look, then cocks his head down and peers inside scanning the two long-haired young men scanning him right back."

"Cops are funny guys. The only see two kinds of people, Victims and Perps. You’re either one or the other. So, they go into Save The Victim Mode and proceed to help my buddy from Illinois regain consciousness. They loosen his collar, unbutton his cuffs, and hold his head up while removing his boots. But when boot number two comes off and hits the sidewalk, Brad’s doobie rolls out. Under that overhead streetlamp, the neatly wrapped white rice paper with tightened ends proclaims our innocence."
I was missing this kind of tight, ironic narrative!

Sorry it was so long about making this entry. I had to check with Brad on the facts. There were two of us there and it's all Roshamoned! I promise to finish it soon!

Then it tilts its piggy-nose up and snorts loud enough for the world to hear, “I smell Marijuana.”

Malacheck hears this and gets a hard on. And it’s late too. They were supposed to be on their way back to the station when he pulled us over. Now they’ll both get over time. Double goody for the men of law enforcement who need the bucks to spend on beer.

Sergeant Piggyman puts his left hand on his baton handle and motions us with his right finger while resting his hand on his gun.

“You two, out of the vehicle.”

We hop out and stand on the sidewalk.

From this point on the night begins to go downhill, and more rapidly than I ever imagined, because right then Brad passes out, biting the dust on the corner of Pearl and Girard.

To members of law enforcement, there are only two kinds of people. There are victims, and perpetrators. Victims they help out. Perpetrators they arrest. And right now. Bradley needs help. So, in order to help him breathe, they start to loosen his collar and his cuffs. And when they get down to his boots, they pull them off.

Lo and behold! Brads gnarly doobie rolls out, and lands on the sidewalk on the corner of Pearl and Gerard.

I suddenly feel like I want to be somewhere else.

Now Piggyman and Malachek go into automatic.

“Read them the act.” Says Piggyman. “And I’ll search the vehicle.”

Malacheck has spent many nights memorizing this, and is rabid to use it, after all, it’s his first time.

“You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided for you. Do you understand the rights I have just read to you? With these rights in mind, do you wish to speak to me?”

“No.” is the only answer he’s getting from me since Brad is just coming around and in no condition to answer.

Right then Sergeant Piggyman emerges from my beat-up van and he’s holding my blue pea-coat.

Oh, gee, here’s where more sh*t’s going to hit the fan, my doob was stashed in the pocket, and detective boy has a grin on his face.

Get a load of this! There’s more dope stashed inside of some sort of glass pipe!”

“It’s probably an Opium Pipe. These guys are really sick! They’ll go to any lengths to get high.”

Piggyman gives us an ugly look, like we’re some kind of disgusting insects.

Oh my God! It’s a fricking glass carburetor, meant to cool the smoke. But these twin idiots don’t know that, they don’t work narcotics, they’re fricking traffic cops!

A few seconds later they start going through Brad’s pockets, and guess what? Like magic, something suspicious appears here too. Two small balls of some undesirable something is wrapped up in aluminum foil and the balls take center stage in the minds of our intrepid officers.

I’m going to give these guys in blue a disclaimer. If a cop can’t understand or identify something they naturally assume the worst. The love following orders and enforcing them since individually they lack self. They don’t make up their own rules. For them, it’s easier to follow som

When Malachek pokes one with the tip of his finger, something grey and gritty squeezes out.

“Don’t touch it!” shouts Piggman, “It might be toxic! Just look at that color. It’s probably that Black Tar Opium that Kaminsky in Narcotics told me about yesterday.”

Brad shoots me a glance.

Malacheck examines the end of his finger, a look of terror in his eyes.


“We’ll leave these two bindles for the boys down in the lab. They’ll identify the illegal substances. You can’t hide anything from them. Put ‘em into the evidence bag along with the Reefer and Opium Pipe.”

I shoot Brad a glance back.

“Got it, Sarge. And I’ll use my gloves.”

Of course, if we weren’t already arrested, we could help them out. But, alas, we’ve been Mirandized.

Without our help they’ve made the assumption that Brad and I are two dope fiends and they have found us out. I use an Opium pipe and he carries the opium for me. We’re an evil team of righteous get-highs.

Brad, the socially conscious and earth-aware guy from the mid-west, a dude who loves all of mankind and wants to keep the earth clean, is, in their eyes, a black-hearted dope fiend with evil intent, and I am his partner in crime.

But in reality, Brad is a Black-Jack Chewing Gun Americano who is so socially conscious and so earth-friendly that when he’s through extracting all the sugar and licorice flavor from his gum, he doesn’t just toss it anywhere.

Not on a sidewalk or a roadway or a bicycle track or a hiking trail, and nowhere else either. He wraps it up in its original wrapper until he can find a designated receptacle.

Gee, this just gets better and better…or worse, depending on your viewpoint.

They bundle us into the back seat of their Crown Victoria and jam to the Five South to take us downtown. Now we get to sit on our hands. As usual we have nothing to say. We’re probably a little depressed.

But, at La Jolla Shores, we stop for a streetlight. Beyond this it’s dark until to the until we reach the on-ramp to the Five South. And since we’re so quiet, so handcuffed, and so not going anywhere, they decide to put on a little show.

“You know, Mine Sergeant, I don’t hear anything from the back seat.”

“Of course not, Corporal Malacheck, they’ve been advised not to talk. But don’t worry. Our operatives downtown will loosen their tongues."

“I’ve heard they have ways to make you talk.”

Then they’d laugh. But what’s really disturbing about this routine is that they did it with German accents! Seriously! Now this was back in the day when there was a wildly popular comedy on TV called Hogan’s Heroes about a prisoner of war camp These two were imitating Colonel Clink!

“Well, Obergruppenführer, I hope their papers are in order.”

On they drove to the city, alternating between ‘we have ways to make you talk” and “your papers must be in order.”

Suffering bad German accents, sitting on our hands, feeling miserable missing our catered dinner overlooking the calming Pacific. Instead, rushing through the dark night, dreading what was to come, unable to say a word.

Their Black Tar Opium is Brads (and everybody else’s) Blackjack chewing gum. My glass test-tube carburetor the size of their finger is an Opium Pipe the size of Manhattan, and stuffed with Reefer, don’t forget that, the evil weed whose roots grow in Hell. This is looking real ugly.

On and on the Terrible Twosome continued their torture and continued from where we got on the 5 South, to until we rolled past SeaWorld, and kept the act up past Lindberg Field until we reached the jail.


I’ve probably suppressed a lot about the jail, this was so long ago, the start of the Seventies for me at least was much like the end of the Sixties. They have a saying in U.S. History class, “If you can remember the Sixties, you probably weren’t there.” But I was, and the 70’s was just a hangover from the party.
But I do remember they were still using black ink for prints, we did that, and then we trooped into the Get-Naked Bend Over Spread Your Cheeks Room, where even though they had an overhead florescent light they used flashlights, then they handed us a stained and stinky one inch thick rolled up mattress and tossed us in the fish tank.


The fish tank was a circus.


©StevenHunley2022

The fish tank was a circus. So, we plop our mattresses down on the expressway, relax and watch the show. We conclude it’s a two-ring circus, as the men in Ring Two seem to be in various stages of drunkenness or stupor, whereas our ring, Ring One, is full of fellows much like ourselves, stoners who prefer less traditional, and less toxic, inebriants. We’re lightweights compared to these guys.

But we’re both sharing the misery of arrest and imprisonment all the same, even it we’re found innocent of the crime later. That’s just how The System works. Once you get caught in The System, it grinds you up like meal and squeezes the life out of you.

Brad looks a little depressed. I can see his face under the sickly neon lights they keep on all night long and it looks sad, so I decide to buoy his spirits.

“Brad, I know you’re feeling down and out. But look at it from a different perspective. Plenty of other people have taken advantage of being jailed or imprisoned.”

“What other people?”

“Ken Keysey, William Burroughs, and Sir Thomas Mallory.”

“You mean like Solzhenitsyn, Voltaire, and Cervantes?

“For sure! Like Jean Genet and Oscar Wilde.”

“That doesn’t make me feel one bit better.”

Brad was busy fixating on a drunk sitting on a bench in Ring One, the Drunk Tank. Shivering uncontrollably, red nose running, babbling half sentences at the bars directly in front of his nose.

I felt sorry for him too, but not as sorry as I felt for me. Tomorrow he’d be sober and probably back out on the street. The judge would probably be lenient. After all, he just gone too far with his intake of alcohol. In the judge’s mind alcohol wasn't even a drug. It was a beverage. Society said it was acceptable.

Our crime, however, was different. Marijuana was a schedule two narcotic. It might as well have been morphine or heroin. What if they throw the book at us to “make an example”?
By now my mind was going in the wrong direction too, and that’s usually into the darkness.

You’re lying in the middle of the expressway on a stinky stained-up mattress, trying not to move, because if you do, you might touch the stains with your skin, and the evil, or whatever that dirty stuff is, may soil you irrevocably. And there’s no way you’re going to sleep because they keep the lights on night and day. Unfortunately, you can't shut off your brain, and now it's going through a rigorous set of mental gymnastics.

Like, will I have to do time? Will I end up outdoors in the hot sun breaking rocks into gravel like in Cool Hand Luke? Or could I serve my time in a cell cataloging birds like Burt Lancaster in Bird Man of Alcatraz? And, last but not least, what’s Mom going to think?

And somewhere, sometime, in this darkest of nights, Brad gets his dime phone call to the outside world. And it’s to King Stahlman’s Bailbonds.

Brad remembers it this way:

… the bail bondsman showed up in the middle of the night looking like he'd just started his day, still smelling of aftershave and looking wide awake. I remember he dressed like he would be servicing blue collar workers, no tie, no suit, just a short-sleeved pull-over sweater over a short sleeved off-white-yellow shirt.
I was thinking, “This guy works during the middle of the night to be available for people busted at the time we were.”
It did give him a psychological advantage since we were just woken up from a fitful attempted “sleep” on those "gym" mats, busily causing enough static electricity in our hair to make it looked like it was combed with a cherry bomb.

As you can see, I still remember that guy, our "lifeline" out of there.”

And he was. Out we skated. A few weeks later we coast downtown to the court building on Broadway to be arraigned. Trooping with us is half the employees of Hunter’s Books. Dan, the oldest, conservative but beard-wearing Dan, wearing the widest bell-bottoms in La Jolla, his wife, Elaine, who designed (paisley)and sewed them, and his two kids. Jeanette, curator of the children’s section, and John, a stoner himself.

Up to the courtroom we go, our collective nerves on edge. Just outside the courtroom door there’s piece of paper taped to the door with today’s cases on it. We search through the list.

“Nada,” says Brad.

"But this is supposed to be the day!"

“Go inside,” says John, “and ask the bailiff or clerk or somebody.”

I open the double doors, and everyone marches in. I ask the bailiff and she asks the clerk sitting at that table they put next to the judges’ seat, or podium, or throne, or whatever it’s called.

“Go down to the clerk’s office, you’re not on the list.”,

Out we march, make a column left, head for the elevator. As the troops wait outside the office Brad and I line up inside and soon we’re up at a window with bars. This doesn’t look good to me.

“They’ve dropped the charges.”

“What?”

“The District Attorney dropped the charges.”

I’ve had my mood change suddenly before, but this took the cake. Brad and I were smiling from ear to ear, with toothpaste commercial quality smiles. The room, the day, our lives, suddenly brighten.

A few days later Brad and I were closing the shop again. After we locked the front door, we sauntered in back through the office to the loading dock and sat down at large worktable where we wrapped up books during Christmas next to a 36-inch roll of brown paper. There were stacks of books all around. I guy could learn a lot in this place just by hanging around.

I fired up a pinner and after a while we both got thoughtful and decided to debate what could have happened to make the DA drop the charges. We bounced the ball back and forth. First me to him.

“It could have been because evidence obtained during an illegal stop is inadmissible in court.”

“Illegal stop?”

“Well, the stop was legal because of the light. But not the search, because we weren’t driving crazy. When a person drives crazy, they stop them and do a sobriety test. The crazy driving gives them “probable cause” to stop them. We didn’t drive crazy.”

He passes me the skinny doob back. It’s so skinny it was halfway down already.

But what about the smell?” says Brad.

“We didn’t smoke, and even if he had, why didn’t Malacheck smell it first? I took him ten minutes to write the ticket, and that’s when Piggman showed up.
“The only way Piggman could have smelled smoke was if we smoked the doob while Malacheck was writing the ticket. Did I ever say to you, ‘By the by, Bradster, while this fool writes us this ticket, why don’t you spark up that doobie of yours, we can probably finish it before he gets back.’

“I see what you mean.”

Brad looked up at the expanding cloud between his eyes illuminated the neon light hanging overhead. It was full of ideas, and he believed he perceived a light in the center of its haze.

“Or maybe they dropped it because it was only two joints.”

It was one of those things in life we never found out. The one lesson I took away from this life experience was that whether you were innocent or guilty, once you were arrested you were going to jail. They might drop the charges later, you may end up fighting them in court and become acquitted, win the case hands-down, but in the meantime, you were going down and that alone was worth a story, as story as memorable as a wedding cake, because you’re no longer a spotless virgin, you’ve finally been to jail.

©StevenHunley2022


https://youtu.be/cLTZavs4WAo Humble Pie 30 Days in the Hole

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