My Criminal Memoir, Part Ten. High Speed Chase. Louis Shalako.

Mine was Primrose yellow, and was slightly modified...

Louis Shalako

High speed chase. High speed chases are a very bad idea. Zipping across a public park, at night in an Austin Mini, was dumb enough, and yet it was also purely impulsive.

One dark and stormy night, I was alone in my 1971 MGB, heading west along Lakeshore Road in what was then Sarnia Township. It was freezing rain. The road was ice. For that reason, I was probably only doing 60-65 kilometres per hour, admittedly in a 50 kph zone. I’d lived with the car for a while. I had put in a lot of time in that seat. The fact that I had Hooker tube headers, an Ansa free-flow exhaust system, I had ported and polished the head, probably resulted in another five or ten horsepower to an engine that was rated at 94 brake horsepower. I had lightened up the vehicle, and substituted a 12-volt battery in the trunk for two six-volt batteries under a panel behind the seats. The hood was aluminum instead of steel, I’d pulled this off a scrapped ’69, this is also where I got the new cylinder head to work on. This may have improved the forward-rear balance of the car. Looking at the photo, my car had the steel ‘rallye’ wheels, not wire wheels. Even the stock air cleaners were big and heavy, but I had fabbed up a couple of metal plates for each of the dual carbs and used little circular filters from a Pinto or something. This is a frequent mod for the vehicle, one barely frowned-upon by the purists, who could be a real pain the ass sometimes.

Interestingly, I had taken out side-marker lamps, a requirement for the North American market. What did that save, a fucking pound or two? I had removed the air pump, a pollution control device…I had the head milled down by thirty-thousandths of an inch to up the compression. I had driven, (crazy as it was), at night, eighty miles per hour (or more), on gravel roads.

Remember, I wanted to drive Formula One, even though poor boys don’t stand a chance in hell…

And there is a set of oncoming headlights on what was a pretty empty road, understandable considering the weather conditions…it was probably eleven-thirty at night. I was a lonely guy, and long tours around southern Ontario were a form of recreation. I didn’t smoke and I wasn’t drinking…I wasn’t high on drugs. This was before I met my girlfriend.

I was real clean back then, with reflexes like a cat.

As that other car passed in the opposite direction, the reflective markings on the vehicle, and the typical ‘cherries’ on top told me it was a cop. And I just gunned it. I didn’t even think.

Sure enough, the fucker hits the brakes, and I saw the flash in the rear-view mirror.

He is turning into a driveway…he’s backing out, but I had a head start. The sensible thing to do, would be to simply pull over. Admittedly, he never really did put on the flashers, he did not turn on the siren. I could see him, a half a mile back at this point, and I was doing eighty or a hundred kilometres per hour by now. On the map, it looks pretty straight, but it did twist a bit, back and forth. Since then, they’ve leveled out some of the humps and straightened out some of the bends, but even now, it is not dead straight.

One of the things I did on that car was to put on bigger tires. The stock tires were 165 millimeters wide, originally, (on early-sixties cars), they would have been bias-ply tires, not radials. I had 175s on the front, and 195s on the back end, the benefit of a bit of reading up on mild performance modifications for the MGB. People thought I was nuts, of course. I worked at a tire shop, trying to get through the academic upgrading program at Lambton College…I could beat any other MGB in town, and that was just a fact.

The cop car was slowly gaining on me. It’s not a real long stretch, and at that time, Murphy Road was the boundary between the City of Sarnia and Sarnia Township.

The conditions played a role. I could imagine him on the radio, trying to coordinate between the two police forces. If the Sarnia cops could get into position, they could head me off. Just west of Modeland Road is a sharp right-hander, which drops off and then bends back to the left.

At some point, I saw that he wasn’t catching up any more…he was still a good half a kilometre back, and I could imagine the thoughts going through his head. He’s thinking these are really shitty driving conditions, especially in a big, V-8 powered Dodge.

He’s thinking of his wife and kids. He thought of the asshole in the little sports car, what with Dead Man’s curve coming up fast…by this time he might have gotten a ‘negative’ from the dispatcher. Sarnia cops unavailable. He stayed right where he was, probably wondering when I’d lose it and then he’d either have me, or they’d be scraping me off the road and out of the trees.

...you won't come back from Dead Man's Curve...

Rather than hit the brakes, which would show braking lights. I let off on the throttle…rolled on past the end of Modeland Road, down the drop and turn to the right. I haven’t lost him yet. I had just enough time. Turning off all the fucking lights, pitch black out there, I had it in second gear, using the emergency brake just to slow her down a bit. This did not throw brake lights; a good thing to know, right. I hung a left turn at Notre Dame Place, a short stretch, which leads to a right hander onto Sylvan Court.

In the mirrors, I saw the fucking cop car go past the end of the street, still proceeding west along Lakeshore Road. I reckon he was out of his jurisdiction, but whatever. And I popped out onto Cathcart Boulevard, having turned the lights back on as soon as I knew I’d lost him.

It was a bit of a tough call, but to go left would lead back to Modeland Road. Only so many options down that way. I turned right, ending up at the intersection of Cathcart and Murphy Road. I knew the area well, as we had been racing shitty cars through some of the subdivisions, which were made of curving streets, little crescents, cul-de-sacs in a more modern, upscale residential area. I made a left on Murphy, no sign of any cops…

I took the first right, and by this time I was well and truly away, even if they had caught up to me, Sarnia or Township cops. At this point, all I had to do was drive the speed limit, signal my turns and lane changes…

The officer had lost sight of me, which sort of equates with losing the ‘chain of evidence’ or something. Without even a radar reading, what in the hell were they going to say?

I made it home, no problems.

Why did I do it? I could have handled a hundred-dollar ticket. It was just pure testosterone, at that age.

***

Not too many years later, in a similar incident, I outran the Ontario Provincial Police. I was northbound on Highway 19, coming out of Tillsonburg, Ontario. I was working as a reporter in Delhi, Ontario, and this was the best way to get home to Sarnia. I was on the curve at Salford, basically a hamlet at a crossroads, and I was probably doing over seventy in a sixty-mile per hour zone. Not that serious, I would be the first to agree, but there is this cop coming along from the opposite direction, and of course the OPP had the radar, what with policing major and regional highways.

Fuck, ladies and gentlemen. I was driving a 1972 Chrysler New Yorker, I’d paid $750.00 for it. A big, wide, long vehicle, admittedly lower to the ground than the typical modern SUV. It might have even weighed less, basically just a big metal envelope, two-door, with a fucking 440 cubic inch engine—7.2 litres in modern parlance. At a minimum, 225 horsepower, with bags of torque. Okay, bias-ply tires, hell, I had snowies on the back. But those vehicles loved the highway, they could cruise, essentially, at 80-plus miles per hour all day long, (or until you ran out of fuel), with no fuss and bother—also, they were a hell of a lot more comfortable than small, drafty, leaky old British sportscars…

We had adequate power, ladies and gentlemen...

Yes, fuck, ladies and gentlemen. I saw that cop, saw a couple of cars, headlights at least, in my rear-view mirrors. There was a car ahead of the cop and a couple of cars following along pretty close. What with the cop being there, they were all scrupulously going along at about 60 mph. Fuck, I just nailed it, ladies and gentlemen, with barely two and a half kilometres to the overpass just south of Ingersoll.

So, the poor cop has to figure out what’s going on. He has to put on a signal, pull into a driveway. He can’t even accelerate—the other drivers have no idea, and they’re just moseying along. He has cars behind him, and I have a few coming along behind me.

It all clicked in. Going by the map, it’s maybe two and a half kilometres, and then, up and over the overpass. What with the gathering gloom, all I had to go on were headlights in the mirror, but I had gotten lucky in that there wasn’t much ahead of me, and when there was, the road was clear and I could pass. I blew past one or two folks and then onto the overpass, letting her coast on the uphill bit to avoid braking…drop her down one gear, the transmission moans a bit, slowing her some more, back up into drive. I eased on down the ramp and got onto the Highway 401, westbound for London, (and then, the 402, westbound for Sarnia, just for detail.) The trip was about 140 miles.

And he must have caught a glimpse of that action, because he decided to go westbound on the 401. He could have gone eastbound 401, or he could have gone north into Ingersoll.

The 401 is a busy highway. I managed to use the fast lane, get ahead of a few vehicles.

I dropped her down to 65 miles per hour—no metric on those old gauges, and sure enough, someone gets a little pissed off, snapping on a signal and getting into the other lane. He passes, then another. They want to do 70, which is pretty safe as cops would prefer to write a ticket for something real.

...just coming around the Salford curve...

Fuck, at this point, I’m just some little old lady out for a Sunday drive, right.

There were transport trucks behind me, and right about then, that fucking cop car blasts past my door handle at eighty, ninety or a hundred miles per hour. No lights, no siren—just speed, ladies and gentlemen.

I watched him sail off up the highway…

Why did I even do it? We shared weekend duties at good old Cash Crop Farming Publications. With only so many reporters, and so many publications, every third week I had to pull the weekend. That meant two whole weeks away from my girlfriend.

It had been a long two weeks and I just wanted to get home…a young healthy male, right.

I guess.

It just struck me—if they had put the lights and put the sirens on, I might have stopped.

It’s a purely psychological thing, but I probably would have.

END

 

Image. MGB. By Mr.choppers.

Louis has books and stories available from Amazon.

Louis has art on ArtPal.

Listen to his free audiobook, One Million Words ofCrap, here on Google Play.

My Criminal Memoir. (Part One).

My Criminal Memoir, Part Two.

My Criminal Memoir, Part Three.

My Criminal Memoir, Part Four.

My Criminal Memoir, Part Five.

My Criminal Memoir, Part Six.

My Criminal Memoir, Part Seven.

My Criminal Memoir, Part Eight.

My Criminal Memoir, Part Nine.

Thank you for reading, and listening.

 

 

My Criminal Memoir, Part Eight. Growing Dope. Louis Shalako.

 

Basically, just smokeable homegrown pot.

Louis Shalako

Growing dope. The inspiration for this plan actually came from the Sarnia Observer and statements made by Sarnia Police Services. I would like to give proper credit where it is due. Anyhow, it was front-page news at the time.

It seems someone had found a bunch of pot growing down at the old Polysar dump, which was accessed off of Scott Road. I’ve been there myself, working at a company called C.H. Heist, specializing in industrial services, including high-pressure water-blasting, industrial vacuum services, and sand-blasting. We were just dumping water and plastic pellets into a pond, a legitimate occupation even if I say do so myself…

According to the story, police found and destroyed an estimated one thousand pot plants, ranging in height from one foot to eleven feet. This sounds like it was grown from broadcast seed, on prepared or semi-prepared ground. They estimated the gross weight of this homegrown pot at about four hundred pounds. They estimated the street value of this alleged pot at a relatively-conservative sounding one thousand dollars a pound.

We might dispute the cops’ method of weighing wet pot, stalks, roots and dirt, much of which is unsellable. We could also make a case for turning unsellable pot into weed oil, but even so.

And it made me think.

What if we could grow pot—any kind of pot at all. What if all we could grow was indifferent pot.

Pot, good pot, Columbian and Mexican, was going for anything up to $1,800.00 per pound. The real primo California sensimilla, a lime-green, piney-tasting seedless variety, brought anything up to $300.00 per ounce. Sensi, would bring considerably more per pound, assuming you could even grow it. I had regularly paid $15.00 for a gram of sensi, wrapped in a bit of tinfoil, where I would get four, very skinny little joints, and if you saved some decent roaches, you might cut that up with scissors and get an even skimpier roach joint. Fifteen bucks a gram. Guys in high school or college were getting up to $420.00 per ounce, assuming they could find the customers to buy it at that rate, and assuming they didn’t smoke all their own product.

Okay, so we had no knowledge. We had no experience. But good old Stoney, who was nothing if not literate, had gone down to the library and rather than check a book out, never return it and basically just steal it, he had taken the time, had the inspiration, and just this once, a little cash on hand. Otherwise, he might have lost his library card, ladies and gentlemen—

He’d spent ten cents a page, to use the coin-operated machine and photocopy the entire book from front to back, complete with pictures, diagrams, and all the text.

Our fantasy was all too real, when looking at pictures of fourteen-foot pot plants, admittedly grown indoors in California, judging by the architecture of what were some pretty high-end homes. Yeah, we were going to split four ways—we were also going to take our money, head to the west coast and buy a sailboat. The four of us were going to buy a fucking sailboat, load it up with provisions, and head for Tahiti, ladies and gentlemen. It was a nice dream, you have to admit…

I reckon this was about 1985 or 1986, based on the fact I was still driving a Chrysler New Yorker, which will play a role in the rest of this story. It was crazy enough, it might just work, or so we told ourselves at the time.

***

There were four of us, sitting around, smoking pot, watching something shitty on television, and just bullshitting in general.

Four hundred pounds of pot, at a thousand dollars a pound, and this was the basic premise.

That would be a hundred grand each.

A piss-pot full of money, when you thought about it.

Stoney. I haven’t been all that complimentary in a previous chapter, but Stoney had a job, and he was still living at home at the age of thirty-six or whatever. His folks went back to the U.K. pretty much every summer, but only for a few weeks. He couldn’t really do a closet. All he could really do was to pitch in on supplies like peat pots, potting soil, Rapid-Gro plant food, big plastic bales of peat moss, plastic self-watering pots and stuff like that. Willy, had an apartment in the south end. He was good with electricity, and he had a second floor apartment in an old house. He had a closet about four by five feet and this was one of our closets. My brother, the Duke, had a closet. We had a small fluorescent light and an old sun lamp for illumination. We were starting with seeds, and everyone had a bag of fucking seeds back then, what with all the Columbian, Mexican, California sensimilla, Hawaiian, Panama Red, Jamaican, and good old Acapulco Gold. We were growing pot seeds in dirt, and we must have had two or three hundred seedlings ready to go by the May 24 weekend.

When predictably, things began to go awry.

Poor old Willy crashed his motorcycle and no one could get a hold of him. My brother had some work going on, renovating a friend’s kitchen, and he was just as likely to crash on the people’s couch as drive home at the end of a day. It was left to Stoney and I, in late May, to box up all those plants and get the last of the really big ones planted out in the woods. It is true that Willy and the Duke had given some help with our initial plantings. We simply could not do them all at once. We ended up with seven small patches, scattered all over central and north Lambton.

My brother, what with a phone call from a friend and an opportunity, had gone off up to Georgetown, framing houses, which really was his calling in life anyways. But I kept his closet alive…

***

...440 cubic inches up front and otherwise pretty anonymous...

Stoney and I emptied out the last few plants from my brother’s closet. These were the biggest ones, and they took up the entire trunk of my Chrysler New Yorker. We’d been drinking and partying all day, driving all over the county. You can smoke a lot of dope and drink and piss out a lot of beer. We’d dragged a pile of stuff out of the vehicle and into the back of a big field north of Arkona. And it was all wrong—fuck, Stoney was pissed, but it was all wrong. We ended up lugging all that shit back to the car, knapsacks, cardboard boxes with pots and tubs and a bale of fucking peat moss, shovels, water jugs…fuck, it was insane in what turned out to be pretty open country.

We were lucky to get the hell out of there, ending up back at his place, where the poor boy was, by this time, fast asleep, what with all this traipsing around in the woods, over hill and over dale, all the while in long pants, that fucking safari jacket, and bloody big black cowboy boots…it was late at night. I had his keys, I got into his house. I had slept on the couch in the living room before, and his mother, before taking off for Old Blighty for the summer, had laid in a generous supply of frozen entrees and such for her little boy…and his friends. They had a gas barbecue out back as well, incidentally.

And all of a sudden the fucking cops are in the driveway…I can see the lights and the shapes out through the sheer curtains on the front window. Taking the bull by the horns, I stepped out the back door and there they were. One of the neighbours, knowing the folks were away, had called it in. But I had Stoney, (one hell of an alibi), asleep in the car and this was also his home—the pot plants were in the trunk. I asked the cops to help me get poor old Stoney, snoring away in the passenger seat, into the house if not his bed, and this is when they began to lose interest. They had my ID, they had my license. More than anything, they already knew Stoney. One cop said something about the smell and I suggested there might be a minor gas leak somewhere in the neighbourhood—their own radio was squawking, and their priorities were already elsewhere.

I went back out a couple of hours later, slapping him in the face, waking him up, and finally getting him into what was his own house, after all. He must have weighed two hundred sixty pounds, ladies and gentlemen…

What with several different expeditions, all four of us working at it on and off, we ended up with seven different patches, beginning with seedlings and some fairly large plants, and when in doubt, we scattered film canisters full of seeds of all different strains, once we’d dug up the earth and prepped the soil.

Can you show us some ID, sir.

***

We found out later that Willy had been racing another guy on his motorcycle. Hitting a patch of sand on the road, he’d spun off, slammed into a fire hydrant and busted up his ankle, to the extent that he now had three steel pins in his ankle. The plants in his closet had died, due to lack of watering and other care, but he cheerfully handed over a big bag of immature pot, sitting there with one leg up, crutch beside him, and rolling joint after joint of what was a kind of cannabis, after all…

Our best patch was in behind a cemetery in Warwick Township. Farmers go round and round on their tractors, leveling the fields, but the cemetery still held some trace of the original terrain. With all the tombstones, a few trees, once we got to the back, the old vehicle was out of sight, it was also a kind of medium green colour. Stoney and I dug a hole ten feet long and six or eight feet wide. We put in a dozen and a half of our small seedlings, scattered seeds, sprinkled peat moss, and Miracle-Gro, and then dug a few smaller holes in a promising open area. These were mostly Indica, each one a few fairly dense four to six inches tall in a six-inch plastic pot. These ones turned out beautiful. Just beautiful…

Another good patch was along the Ausable River. Looking back, it seems awfully stupid, but we followed some farmer’s laneway, along the edge of a tobacco field, with the forest and the riverbank falling away, somewhere out of sight, off to our right. Again, these were fairly nice potted plants, cannabis, grown from selected seeds, and while it was difficult to actually get back there and water the things, at least they were in the ground and one could always hope for a bit of rain, periodically, throughout the summer.

In some kind of miracle, we managed to find at least some of our little dope-patches, weeks and months later when it had actually grown into some kind of a crop.

***

So, with a bit of dope from Willy’s closet, and allowing for some of the more marginal patches, and allowing for small attempts which we could not even locate, what with open, empty spaces in amongst the forest growing up to five or six-foot underbrush in the intervening weeks, we all ended up with about three quarters of an ounce of some fairly decent buds. They were potent to some degree, and at least tasted like pretty good buds, sweet, perhaps a bit of skunk or pine or even salt-air Hawaii bud in there. And, we each got a plastic bread bag, with about one and three-quarter pounds of a green, leafy home-grown, which, if you stuck two rolling papers together, jammed as much pot in there as you possibly could and still roll a joint, well. It was still all right.

It was better than nothing, and the truth is, if we had succeeded, it might very well have killed us—when you consider a crew of inexperienced sailors, chipping in and buying themselves a good used sailboat, loading her up with a few grand in provisions, and then setting off in all innocence, or possibly just stupidity, for the South Seas.

Nowadays, you can buy an ounce of pot for twenty dollars, which may or may not be all that potent, it may or may not, be all that tasty or flavourful, but I have to think that it probably beats our shit all to hell, and think of all that work that you don’t actually have to do, in order to smoke a fucking joint, after all.

That is literally a 1960s price, in the 21^st Century, and it’s all nice and legal.

At least that’s the way I see it.

Later in the story, I may talk a bit about stealing dope—but that’s a story for another chapter.

END

Louis Shalako has books and stories available fromiTunes.

Louis has art available from Fine Art America.

He’s got this free audiobook, One Million Words ofCrap, from Google Play.

My Criminal Memoir. (Part One).

My Criminal Memoir, Part Two.

My Criminal Memoir, Part Three.

My Criminal Memoir, Part Four.

My Criminal Memoir, Part Five.

My Criminal Memoir, Part Six.

My Criminal Memoir, Part Seven.

Thank you for reading, and listening.