The second time that I was put in jail...

It was spring in 1980. I was going to see my brother Dan in Baltimore. I was driving my Alfa Romero, and it was running like a top. The first day I averaged 65MPH on I-70; it was beautiful weather, top-down all day long, just me and the radio and a six-pack of Coors' light. Well, OK, two six-packs. The speed limit was 55, but there were no cops in evidence, so I kept up with the semis. I'd gotten started later than I wanted to, so I stopped at the half-way point, I think it was Lexington, Kentucky... or maybe it wasn't. It doesn't matter... anyway, I got a motel and sacked out.

Got up the next morning to a cloudy day and I knew that it would be getting worse. I replenished the ice and beer in my cooler and started off. It was a pretty bad day for driving a little gray car... I was really afraid that the semis couldn't see me, and frequently I couldn't see them, or anything else, because of the spray from the rain. It was literally pouring.

I finally broke out of the rain about 20:00 and continued northward. I was pretty sure that I remembered the turnoff to get to Dan's house, but I had his phone number just in case.

I had gone through my last twelve-pack early, because I was driving much slower and I was frazzled by the road conditions, so I stopped and bought another six-pack. It was about 23:00 when I got to what I thought was the turn-off to Furnace Branch, but I realized that it wasn't as soon as I got off the main road.

There was a dark governmenty-looking building to my left, and up ahead to the right was a shopping mall. Well, I was in the left lane on a four-lane road, so I moved into the right lane, thinking that there would be a phone booth in the shopping center. But...O'wait! There was a filling station on the left... so I pulled back into the left lane.

Well, the building on the left was a government building, all right... a highway patrol station. And, in the exit of this highway patrol station... was a highway patrolman. Observing my antics. And he mistook my driving for that of someone who was inebriated.

By my standards, I was not inebriated. Hell, even by Kansas standards, I was not inebriated. But more on this aspect of the situation later.

Adding to the patrolman's certainty that I was drunk, my speech was slurred. In fact, I had not spoken to anyone (except for saying "thanks" to the liquor store clerk a couple of hours earlier) in twelve hours... it takes me a while to get my voice warmed up... you should hear me first thing in the morning. Anyway, there was also the fact that I had a half-consumed can of beer on the seat next to me.

The patrolman asked me to hand him the beer and I did; he then ceremoniously poured it out on the wet pavement... in order to get it on his video-camera. He them asked me to step out of the car and he hand-cuffed me and read me my rights.

We then locked up the Alfa and took a short trip across the road to the HP station, where I was given a breathalyzerbreathalizer test: 0.18%. At that time, in Maryland, anything over 0.16% was considered inebriated; in Kansas, it was then 0.20%.

In fact, up until the first of that month, it was 0.20% in Maryland; they had recently lowered the limit.

And here comes the ironic part: My brother Dan had played a big part on getting the limits lowered. He had done this with a series of articles in the Baltimore Sun about the evils of drunk driving, and started a public outcry to get the laws changed.

Back to the story: Brother Dan then got a call from me. Unfortunately, I could not be released that night; I would have to be arraigned at the courthouse before I could be bailed out. In the meantime, I was put in a cell with a cot and a toilet. The cot was hard as a board but it didn't bother me any, I went right to sleep. This was probably sometime around 01:00. At 03:30, I was roused out of my cell and taken to the Anne Arundel County Courthouse and incarcerated in the "oldest still-in-use jail" in the United States.

At this time, I had a beard down to the middle of my chest and I was wearing blue jeans and a turtleneck shirt; The rest of the inmates that morning were relatively young black men. We were in a holding cell, and there were about fifteen of us altogether, with frequent comings and goings.

Well, these guys were amazed to see a white guy in their jail. Especially one that was dressed funny and talked funny and had a long beard. I was asked a number of times if I was Jewish, and I told them no, I was a midwestern atheist.

They had an idea what "midwestern" was, but they could not make a connection with the term "atheist". To say that I was uneasy during that time would be an understatement. But there were some guys there that kinda kept the others from picking on me too badly. One of them was a young dope-dealer, and the rest of the guys either knew him or knew of him. He was very friendly and earnestly wanted to know what atheism was all about.

Eventually it was my turn to face the judge, or whoever it was. Dan posted bail for me , and I was free. The legal stuff would continue for another year, of course, but eventually I paid my fine and the lawyer and it was over.

That should have been a turning-point in my life, but it wasn't.

Stay tuned for the story of the third (and final, so far) time that I went to jail.

And some of you might have missed The first time I went to jail.

I'm back on my see-saw sleeping pattern again... I slept eleven hours on Wednesday, getting up at 19:30, feeling very well-rested. And today I probably won't be able to get to sleep at all.

I stopped by the tavern this morning to talk to Leon, my counterpart on the night shift. Leon owns the tavern, so I always know where to find him... Anyway, I had heard that he was unhappy with the schedule, and I was hoping that he wanted to go back to the seven-on-seven-off, but he didn't. He just doesn't like working nights at all, and he won't really be happy with any schedule that includes nights in it. O'well, I was hoping...

Maybe my only hope is getting the day job as systems manager. Of course, simply working days won't guarantee that my sleeping patterns will normalize... I've had trouble sleeping all of my life, and I don't really expect that to change any no matter what I do or what shift I work.

I received some disquieting email yesterday from a fellow online journaler: a few months back, I'd heartily endorsed Mint Dreams without adding this disclaimer: Do not ingest this product unless you have the proven ability to resist the temptation of the food of the gods! Sorry, Amanda, it won't happen again!

Mint dreams... I haven't bought one for quite a while, myself. Karen buys them for me, though, whenever she thinks I need rewarding (which, I might add, is quite frequent!) for some good deed or another. I'm gonna have to try to get her to stop doing that. Unfortunately, I'm not very highly motivated to get her to stop...

The night is wearing on slowly.... 03:25 now. I'm not very busy at all, but that can change in a minute. Got all my work done, just waiting until 05:00 when I'll start on the ICU portable chest films.

I need to start remembering to go up and down the stairs. When my leg was hurting, I got in the habit of taking the elevator even up one flight... and there's no reason to do that anymore at all. Maybe I can burn some extra calories and eat another Mint Dream!