Okay Gang, here it is ... sheesh! ... January 1 ... 2011! Where in hell did the time fly to? So anyways... just got off the phone with Gene Steinberg, you know ... the guy that makes The Paracast possible ... and I was doing some "house-cleaning" of computer files while dealing with some back problems. (Sorry, didn't mean to whine!)
Anyways, in case you didn't know it, I have also been a "freelancer" writer type in my off hours. I came across a blog posting I posted 2 years ago with a magazine article I had written that never was published. However it was a true and funny story I thought I would share! It is from when I was a uniformed police officer and really happened to me and my partner. At any rate ... here it is and the original post is from January 2009 on the DMR blogsite.
Decker
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I Wus A Freelancer!!
Back in the early 90′s I was mainly tied up with doing research and media for UFO Magazine. During those years I was also doing lots of appearances in the television media along with public speaking engagements for UFO Magazine. Still finding myself with a bit of spare time I decided to expand my freelance writing activities. I knew someone that (at that time) done several articles for Soldier of Fortune Magazine, and he told me it paid damned well. I was interested. I was familar with SOF Magazine from reading it back in the late 70′s and 1980′s, so I sent them an inquiry.
I haven’t read SOF in years but back then (early 1990′s) they had a column called “I Was There.” This column mainly dealt with either military happenings or police incidents. A lot of those articles, by neccessity, were of a very serious nature but .. not always. I decided to give this some thought. Now, back when I was a cop I had some serious things happen .. but I also had some damn funny things (in retrospect) occur to! Then I remembered an incident, one night in about the summer of 1974, and I started laughing out loud. I put it down in an article, sent it off to SOF .. and after they read it .. they passed! Well I filed it and forgot about it.
This past weekend my wife was out in the garage doing some “straightening out” (we finally got all the Christmas decorations packed away again) and came back inside carrying some papers. She popped into my office and said “hey, look what I found!” I checked and it was that old forgotten article I had written for SOF Magazine. I read it again, laughed and then thought “What the hell? Maybe somebody here might find it enjoyable. Here it is .. A True Story .. for your reading pleasure.
I WAS THERE
SOLDIER OF FORTUNE Magazine (Rejected by them)
by Don Ecker
Cops, Keys, Drunks and Old Plymouths
It was late summer in 1974. It had been a gruelling last couple of weeks. My partner, R. Bruce Soliday and I were on patrol during “swing shift” and the last couple of weeks had been pretty damn stressful.
Soliday had just finished 20 years with the U. S. Army, and had retired the year before. Like me Bruce had done a tour in Viet Nam, and had survived Tet in ’68′ during some pretty intense fighting in Saigon. He had done his last ten years as an Army M.P. and had done some work with C. I. D. I had done my time with the Army A.S.A. SOD.
I returned back to the world in early fall, 1972, after spending almost six months in Army hospitals. I had been caught up in the almost forgotten “Easter Invasion” of spring 1972. When the NVA swarmed across the 17th parallel in March 30, 1972, I had been stationed on the “Z” with my team at a forgotten firebase called Alpha 4. We were overrun by elements of the NVA 308th division, E & Eed out to be picked up by a Huey Slick, and then I managed to get dinged at a MAC V compound in Quang Tri.
I re-entered back to the “world” to return to school, but after one semester gave it up to go to work for HEW, Social Security Administration. I hated it, but spent almost a year there until the Police Department opened up, I applied and was hired.
Starting in January of 1974, I found the job challenging. But until I started, I had not realized how much I missed the action, or any action. One of the problems with a small town PD such as this was a lack of funding. The city administration got by hiring qualified part timers such as Soliday.
Anyway, we had been working long hours the last several weeks. There was an outlaw biker club that had been causing problems, also a couple of rapes, and a smash and bash burglary gang. We also had some intelligence that the outlaw bikers were pretty p.o.ed because of the heat we had been giving them, and were going to get even.
After midnight while on patrol, we were driving along a deserted residential street when we saw “the car” in the middle of the street. Parked, lights out and no one visible. I pulled the cruiser over and turned on the 4-way flashers.
Bruce and I looked at each other. Setup? Ambush? All the juices began flowing in both of us. I exited the drivers side, Bruce the passenger side, and we both unsnapped our holsters. The car was an old “58″ or “59″ Plymouth with Tennessee plates. We both approached the car using extreme caution, swinging our flashlights around looking for anything suspicious. Looking into the rear of the suspect vehicle, I noticed trash all over the rear seat, and by the time I reached the front seat, I had drawn my pistol.
Sprawled across the seat was the body of a man. Seeing me draw, Bruce drew and took aim at the right rear of the car. Looking further, I noticed the man was breathing, and ordered him to sit up and raise his hands. All I got was a long and very satisfying snore! Holstering my revolver, I took my flashlight and poked the guy on his shoulder.
“Huh? Whash amatter?” as he struggled to sit up. Then he let me have it. A blast hit me, a blast of Milwaukee’s finest. Oh Boy, I thought. Another damn drunk, and parked in the middle of the damn street.
By this time Bruce was on my side of the car covering me as I ordered the man out. I took the keys from the ignition, and not thinking, I tossed them on the dashboard as I patted the guy down. Trouble was, the heater vent on the old dash had a hole in it the size of a manhole, and clunk, the keys fell inside.
The suspect looked at me and started to giggle. I cuffed the guy and had him stand off to the side, as Bruce helped him stand up. He kept falling to the side. Looking inside, I noticed that the car’s heater ran down from the dash through the floorboards. “How the hell we gonna get the keys out?” I asked Bruce. He stepped over to look, and the suspect promptly fell down and went back to sleep.
Bruce looked inside and said “Well, we could call a tow truck, but then the whole night is shot ;or … lets see if we can pry the heater up from the floor boards, and maybe the keys will fallout.”
I woke the guy up, and asked if he minded if we did that. “Sure ting offisher, no problem“, except we didn’t have a pry bar. “No problem sir” the drunk mumbled lurching over to his trunk, and then he kicked the trunk hatch popping it open as he fell back to the street.
Inside were tools, the guy was a carpenter. Among his tools was on old rusty crow bar. For the next 20 minutes we worked on the car hoping we got no calls.
“They made these things damned good didn’t they” Bruce said as he smashed some fingers on the now torn metal.
I took over, and with a final herculean smash, the steel wall of the heater tore up from the floor. Out dropped the guy’s keys, and Bruce and I looked at each other with a satisfied smirk. Having worked with such diligence, I never took note of the damage we did to the inside of the car. Bruce took one final look and said with a note of awe in his voice, “God Don, it looks like someone fragged the car!” Taking a good look I agreed. Bruce, with a wife and 3 kids on his mind said, “You don’t think we will have to pay for this do you?”
Suddenly that thought hit me too. We were not the best paid cops in the world, and I had visions of my next pay check sorely depleted. “Well, what do you want to do?” I asked my partner. “Well, other than being parked in the middle of the street, the guy wasn’t doing anything. Do you want to pull his car off the street and put him back in?”
That sounded like a great idea, so we stuck the sleeping drunk in the back seat, and I drove the car off the side of the road. sticking his keys into the glove box, we took one final look at that old Plymouth and its owner, broke into a belly laugh and quickly left the scene.
The next morning I drove by and he was gone. I often wondered what he thought when he saw the mess under his dash, and then I grinned.
———————————————–
Damn, and to think SOF passed on this Gem!
Anyways, in case you didn't know it, I have also been a "freelancer" writer type in my off hours. I came across a blog posting I posted 2 years ago with a magazine article I had written that never was published. However it was a true and funny story I thought I would share! It is from when I was a uniformed police officer and really happened to me and my partner. At any rate ... here it is and the original post is from January 2009 on the DMR blogsite.
Decker
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I Wus A Freelancer!!
Back in the early 90′s I was mainly tied up with doing research and media for UFO Magazine. During those years I was also doing lots of appearances in the television media along with public speaking engagements for UFO Magazine. Still finding myself with a bit of spare time I decided to expand my freelance writing activities. I knew someone that (at that time) done several articles for Soldier of Fortune Magazine, and he told me it paid damned well. I was interested. I was familar with SOF Magazine from reading it back in the late 70′s and 1980′s, so I sent them an inquiry.
I haven’t read SOF in years but back then (early 1990′s) they had a column called “I Was There.” This column mainly dealt with either military happenings or police incidents. A lot of those articles, by neccessity, were of a very serious nature but .. not always. I decided to give this some thought. Now, back when I was a cop I had some serious things happen .. but I also had some damn funny things (in retrospect) occur to! Then I remembered an incident, one night in about the summer of 1974, and I started laughing out loud. I put it down in an article, sent it off to SOF .. and after they read it .. they passed! Well I filed it and forgot about it.
This past weekend my wife was out in the garage doing some “straightening out” (we finally got all the Christmas decorations packed away again) and came back inside carrying some papers. She popped into my office and said “hey, look what I found!” I checked and it was that old forgotten article I had written for SOF Magazine. I read it again, laughed and then thought “What the hell? Maybe somebody here might find it enjoyable. Here it is .. A True Story .. for your reading pleasure.
I WAS THERE
SOLDIER OF FORTUNE Magazine (Rejected by them)
by Don Ecker
Cops, Keys, Drunks and Old Plymouths
It was late summer in 1974. It had been a gruelling last couple of weeks. My partner, R. Bruce Soliday and I were on patrol during “swing shift” and the last couple of weeks had been pretty damn stressful.
Soliday had just finished 20 years with the U. S. Army, and had retired the year before. Like me Bruce had done a tour in Viet Nam, and had survived Tet in ’68′ during some pretty intense fighting in Saigon. He had done his last ten years as an Army M.P. and had done some work with C. I. D. I had done my time with the Army A.S.A. SOD.
I returned back to the world in early fall, 1972, after spending almost six months in Army hospitals. I had been caught up in the almost forgotten “Easter Invasion” of spring 1972. When the NVA swarmed across the 17th parallel in March 30, 1972, I had been stationed on the “Z” with my team at a forgotten firebase called Alpha 4. We were overrun by elements of the NVA 308th division, E & Eed out to be picked up by a Huey Slick, and then I managed to get dinged at a MAC V compound in Quang Tri.
I re-entered back to the “world” to return to school, but after one semester gave it up to go to work for HEW, Social Security Administration. I hated it, but spent almost a year there until the Police Department opened up, I applied and was hired.
Starting in January of 1974, I found the job challenging. But until I started, I had not realized how much I missed the action, or any action. One of the problems with a small town PD such as this was a lack of funding. The city administration got by hiring qualified part timers such as Soliday.
Anyway, we had been working long hours the last several weeks. There was an outlaw biker club that had been causing problems, also a couple of rapes, and a smash and bash burglary gang. We also had some intelligence that the outlaw bikers were pretty p.o.ed because of the heat we had been giving them, and were going to get even.
After midnight while on patrol, we were driving along a deserted residential street when we saw “the car” in the middle of the street. Parked, lights out and no one visible. I pulled the cruiser over and turned on the 4-way flashers.
Bruce and I looked at each other. Setup? Ambush? All the juices began flowing in both of us. I exited the drivers side, Bruce the passenger side, and we both unsnapped our holsters. The car was an old “58″ or “59″ Plymouth with Tennessee plates. We both approached the car using extreme caution, swinging our flashlights around looking for anything suspicious. Looking into the rear of the suspect vehicle, I noticed trash all over the rear seat, and by the time I reached the front seat, I had drawn my pistol.
Sprawled across the seat was the body of a man. Seeing me draw, Bruce drew and took aim at the right rear of the car. Looking further, I noticed the man was breathing, and ordered him to sit up and raise his hands. All I got was a long and very satisfying snore! Holstering my revolver, I took my flashlight and poked the guy on his shoulder.
“Huh? Whash amatter?” as he struggled to sit up. Then he let me have it. A blast hit me, a blast of Milwaukee’s finest. Oh Boy, I thought. Another damn drunk, and parked in the middle of the damn street.
By this time Bruce was on my side of the car covering me as I ordered the man out. I took the keys from the ignition, and not thinking, I tossed them on the dashboard as I patted the guy down. Trouble was, the heater vent on the old dash had a hole in it the size of a manhole, and clunk, the keys fell inside.
The suspect looked at me and started to giggle. I cuffed the guy and had him stand off to the side, as Bruce helped him stand up. He kept falling to the side. Looking inside, I noticed that the car’s heater ran down from the dash through the floorboards. “How the hell we gonna get the keys out?” I asked Bruce. He stepped over to look, and the suspect promptly fell down and went back to sleep.
Bruce looked inside and said “Well, we could call a tow truck, but then the whole night is shot ;or … lets see if we can pry the heater up from the floor boards, and maybe the keys will fallout.”
I woke the guy up, and asked if he minded if we did that. “Sure ting offisher, no problem“, except we didn’t have a pry bar. “No problem sir” the drunk mumbled lurching over to his trunk, and then he kicked the trunk hatch popping it open as he fell back to the street.
Inside were tools, the guy was a carpenter. Among his tools was on old rusty crow bar. For the next 20 minutes we worked on the car hoping we got no calls.
“They made these things damned good didn’t they” Bruce said as he smashed some fingers on the now torn metal.
I took over, and with a final herculean smash, the steel wall of the heater tore up from the floor. Out dropped the guy’s keys, and Bruce and I looked at each other with a satisfied smirk. Having worked with such diligence, I never took note of the damage we did to the inside of the car. Bruce took one final look and said with a note of awe in his voice, “God Don, it looks like someone fragged the car!” Taking a good look I agreed. Bruce, with a wife and 3 kids on his mind said, “You don’t think we will have to pay for this do you?”
Suddenly that thought hit me too. We were not the best paid cops in the world, and I had visions of my next pay check sorely depleted. “Well, what do you want to do?” I asked my partner. “Well, other than being parked in the middle of the street, the guy wasn’t doing anything. Do you want to pull his car off the street and put him back in?”
That sounded like a great idea, so we stuck the sleeping drunk in the back seat, and I drove the car off the side of the road. sticking his keys into the glove box, we took one final look at that old Plymouth and its owner, broke into a belly laugh and quickly left the scene.
The next morning I drove by and he was gone. I often wondered what he thought when he saw the mess under his dash, and then I grinned.
———————————————–
Damn, and to think SOF passed on this Gem!
