Friday, April 29, 2005
Flying High In The U.S. Air Force
What I really learned in Air Force Tech School.
I saw in the bird cage liner yesterday that some master criminal out of my ol' home state of New Mexico tried to suck up to his judge by sending the guy a letter of apology. Nice thought maybe, but this Einstein managed to drop a couple of ganja leaves into the envelope and got his ass busted again. Now, we also find out that American Idol heartthrob Bo Bice has been busted not once, but twice for possession. After the second arrest, dude somehow managed to get the charges dismissed by entering a "first offender" program. I already liked Bo, since he's the only Idol who really rocks and seems to have his shit together, but now I have a whole new level of respect for him. Any guy who manages to get his second bust dismissed under a "first offender" program is OK in my book.
Which takes me back to a little incident in 1973. The Crime Dog hasn't always been The Crime Dog. Yes, I dabbled a time or two in the dark art of Reefer Madness. And yes, I inhaled. This particular night in 1973, in Biloxi, MS, I was an 18-year-old dumbass GI hooked up with a couple of dudes of the same mentality at Keesler AFB, where Uncle Sam was learning us to fix radios. We had a line on another GI who lived off-base and had some weed, so we pooled our resources and headed on over there. We were on foot, naturally, since nobody could afford a car on $189 a month and free room and board. This guy had some serious weed - a mountain of shit - he was just bagging up when we got there. For $15 we had a lid and were out the door. I don't think they have "lids" any more, but if they did, it would damn sure cost more than $15. I stuffed it down my pants and we all headed back to the base to get stoned.
As we approached the base gate, all three of us suffered maximum ass-pucker when we saw the K9s were on gate duty. Shit! Those dogs could sit in Biloxi and smell pot in Pascagoula. Taking a quick detour, we skirted the base and ended up climbing the fence to get back in. No sooner did we reach the barracks then we saw cops everywhere, red lights flashing away. They were after somebody else, but paranoia took over, and we turned in to "Keystone Potheads," running into walls and one another, tossing the bag back and forth so as not to be the guy to actually get caught with it, and generally making assholes out of ourselves. We managed to regain a modicum of control, realized the cops had better things to do than chase our sorry asses around, and began to seriously hunt for a place to hide our stash. Dumbass #1 came up with the best idea. There was this huge tree that grew beside the barracks. We could just go up to the second floor, climb out onto a limb, tie our weed to a branch, and go back in. Voila! Dumbass #2 drew the short straw and had to actually climb out there. It was pitch black that night, and we couldn't see shit, but #2 managed to get out there a couple of feet and tie the bag off to a branch.
We couldn't have been more proud of ourselves. Three teenaged bumpkins in fatigues managed to outsmart the entire USAF and safely smuggle in and hide a stash of dope right on the base. Yeah, we were bad-ass pirates, all right. No one, but no one could be as smart as us.
As we formed up to march off to school the next morning, we couldn't help but glance over at our handiwork, which would, of course, be completely camouflaged and invisible to all but us three geniuses. That was when we realized we may have not adequately reconnoitered the area before embarking on our master plan.
The tree was nearly completely bare of leaves.
Our stash was hanging out there in the fresh air and sunshine for all to see. The sun even glinted off the baggy a little bit. And we were not alone: There were at least four other baggies hanging up there on that stupid tree. It seems we weren't the only idiots who freaked out the night before when the cops showed up.
By the time we marched back over that afternoon, the cops had already come through and picked all that lovely fruit. I later learned they came through there a couple of times a week and collected the weed off that tree.
And you all thought Bo was cool. He ain't shit next to
