0827blog
A Different Time
It was famously known in my circle as the “handcuff, hatchet and flashlight” caper and it was my only mildly serious brush with the law other than a few speeding tickets, a ticket for an overdue inspection sticker and another for having a registration that had expired four years earlier.
It started out innocently enough one summer weekend as I was camping with a friend at Sterling Forest State Park in Tuxedo, N.Y. We were both 17, the same age as the Illinois teen who was charged on Wednesday with fatally shooting two protesters during demonstrations in Kenosha, Wis. More about him later.
We had pitched the tent and we cooked dinner over the fire while I played a bit on the Gibson F-hole hollow body guitar, a pretty valuable instrument that I had borrowed from my friend who later threatened to take me to small claims court but more on that shortly.
On the other side of the lake, we heard a lot of partying. We probably went to sleep around 1 in the morning and the partying was still going on. Some time around 2-ish we were awakened by whispering voices asking if we could help. We stepped outside of the tent and discovered that the voices came from two teenagers who said they were at the party and had run away from the police who had handcuffed them together and wanted us to set them free, which is what we did, using a hatchet to break the cuffs. It didn’t seem like a big deal.
We returned to slumber but not for long. Around 3 a.m. we were awakened by a very bright light shining in our eyes. It was the police flashlight and we were soon handcuffed and told we were under arrest for helping the two youths to escape, after they had been charged with smoking marijuana and underage drinking at the party on the other side of the lake. The youths were so grateful four our aid that when police caught them, they quickly spilled the beans about our allegedly illegal assistance.
They took us to the jail where one prisoner promptly lit some toilet paper on fire, causing the guards to evacuate the cell until the fire was put out. My friend and I made a solemn pledge that neither of us would leave jail unless both of were leaving. My friend’s mother posted bail and he quickly left, abrogating the solemn pledge while I waited a few hours more for my mother to come with the bail money.
I went back to the campsite to get my stuff and found that the valuable F-hole hollow body Gibson guitar had grown legs and vanished, maybe finding a new home with a rocking police officer. Upon arriving home, I told my guitar friend the bad news and he felt sorry for me and told me I owed him $500 for the guitar. I was hurt and said it wasn’t my fault the valuable F-hole hollow body Gibson guitar was taken but my friend persisted and this went on for a few weeks before my friend threatened to take me to small claims court and I agreed to pay him the $500 and our friendship ended.
We hired lawyers and went before the municipal court judge. His name was Judge Fix, I’m not kidding. He tossed the charges which were actually more serious than the pot possession charges against the other kids. I later found that the arrest would remain on my record until the end of time unless I filed to have them legally expunged, which I did and it was not cheaply done.
And that was the “handcuff, hatchet and flashlight” caper and we were two kids who did a stupid thing without thinking. It was the worst thing I’ve ever done, legally speaking.
Which brings me to Kyle Rittenhouse, the 17-year-old who was arrested in his hometown of Antioch, Ill., and charged with first-degree murder. This kid who probably hasn’t been shaving for too long, is accused of crossing the state border with a semiautomatic assault-style rifle and joining a group of heavily armed white vigilantes who sought to “protect” public property in Kenosha.
Rittenhouse is the same age as we were many years ago when our big crime occurred. This teenager must have been so angry and misled that he allegedly took his assault rifle and killed two people. How far we have deteriorated as a culture from those relatively innocent days of my teenage years.
The incident came on the third day of protests in Kenosha after Jacob Blake, a 29-year-old African American man, was shot seven times in the back by police Sunday while his children were nearby. Attorneys for Blake’s family have said he was trying to de-escalate a domestic situation when he walked away from police and back to his car.
The shootings have quickly been weaponized for political purposes as Trump and others along with right wing media claim the real problem is not the vigilantes but rather the violence caused by protesters and a lack of firm police response.
Kenosha Police Chief Daniel Miskinis blamed the deaths on protesters for being out after curfew.
Tucker Carlson, the FOX commentator known for his ultra-right wing views, is also known as the source of many of President Trump’s opinions. After Rittenhouse was arrested, Carlson excused his behavior by asking “How shocked are we that 17-year-olds with rifles decided they had to maintain order when no one else would?”
I posted on my Facebook page about my disgust with the alleged shooting and the need for a ban on assault weapons. One of my Trump backing readers instructed me that “It’s called self-defense when they point a gun at you” and another said I was “only upset because the guy is White.”
And then there was the observation by another reader that “We kill people on the streets, in schools, in places of worship, in nightclubs, at concerts, like Big Game hunters I recall watching on The American Sportsman hosted by Curt Gowdy nearly a half century ago. Why? What is morally right about an adolescent having access to an assault weapon?”
A half century ago I was involved in the handcuff, hatchet and flashlight caper and I thought that was serious. It was peanuts compared to the lawlessness of today and the unbridled anger felt by so many over the shooting deaths by police of unarmed African Americans. Sometimes I’m glad I’m old.