A Life Wasted

AWOL

April 22, 1974 - 17 years old

I can't remember where I wanted to go when I got to the bus station, but I do remember no bus was going there any time soon. I started walking. I walked until I passed a store with a car sitting out front with the motor running and the driver's door open. A ride left there for me. I can't remember the model, but it was a GTO, or something similar. It was a nice car. Fast. Much better than the bus.

During my Florida drug dealing days I'd met a guy from Detroit. He'd come to Florida to buy a stolen boat, something that could make the trip to Jamaica and back. Told me he knew a big mob guy willing to pay big money for it. I was only sixteen and not really a criminal, just a petty drug dealer, so I declined. But at seventeen, AWOL, on my own and in need of a nest egg, the boat deal had some appeal. After what I experienced in the North Atlantic I was pretty sure I could handle a forty footer in the Caribbean. So I pointed the hot rod towards Detroit and drove even deeper into Yankee Territory.

Somewhere along the way I got into an ugly chase with a state trooper. Unlike the Florida cops I'd outran in my underpowered Pinto, this guy could drive. Since my days of running cops in Florida I'd now been professionally trained and was driving a proper get-away car, yet I still couldn't shake this cop. It was a back road with hills and and tight curves, all surrounded by deep woods. He managed to get on my bumper a few times, but I would pull away by driving aggressively, meaning recklessly. What worked best was passing on a blind curve. I nor the trooper knew if a vehicle was coming around the curve. Survival was a matter of chance. I was so reckless that the cop backed off a little. I could have killed someone, perhaps an entire family. I was too self absorbed to think about this, but not so for the state trooper.

Though he backed off, he was still behind me. Had there been a cross road or a turn I'd have taken it, but there was nothing. It wasn't long before the decision was made for me. I'd just come up behind a pickup truck on a curve, since the trooper wasn't in sight I tapped my breaks instead of passing blind. The break peddle went to the floor. With no breaks I whipped around the truck and passed blind. That time it was the closest I'd come to dying. Another pickup truck was in the opposite lane. The driver made a quick move to the narrow shoulder and saved both our lives. I hit the gas again and got back in my lane. Again I tried the breaks: nothing there. Not even scraping metal when the break pads are worn down.

This was an early lesson that I would pay attention to in future chase situations. The breaks were almost always the first thing to go. In an aggressive run, like this one, the breaks always went. Something I would learn to allow for.

My best option had been to abondon the car and run into the woods. Without brakes that would now take too long. I had already slowed down enough that I could see the trooper in my mirror more often than not as I went t though the curves. To speed up, or even to keep going was an invitation for disaster. I had no idea what to do until I spotted a restaurant with a large gravel parking lot. It was early in the day and the parking lot was empty so I aimed for it at about sixty miles per hour, then used the method I'd learned in the Coast Guard. As soon as I cleared the road I let off the accelerator and turned the wheel hard left. I expected the car to buck up a little and threaten to flip as the tires caught, (which is why I turned the wheel left, to use my own weight to help hold the wheels down) but instead the wheels slid across the loose gravel. It slid across the entire lot only stopping when it hit a railroad tie that marked the end of the lot. I already had my door open so when the car came to a sudden stop I fell out, rolled a few times then came up running.

I didn't look back (you never look back) but did hear the state trooper's screeching stop. I had entered the woods fast, but he wasn't far behind with his keys and handcuffs juggling behind me. Cops are always noisy when they run. I was seventeen, in great shape with boot camp only a few months behind me, and motivated. The cop was a great driver but he couldn't catch me on foot. After he gave up the hot pursuit other units began arriving. Knowing they would focus on the direction I had run in, I made a wide u-turn through the woods then crossed the road about a half mile from where I'd abandoned the car. When the helicopter showed up an hour later it searched the area on the opposite side of the road. When I heard dogs a few hours after that, they too were on the other side of the road. They never expected me to double back so they never got near me.