Best Birthday Ever ?

It was one of those to torrential downpours that seem to have no end in Memphis, Tennessee.  It was 1974 and it was my birthday and I was 18 years old.  This should have been a huge celebration for any young man in those days. 

There should have been good friends and some kind of celebration, but I was alone in my little tiny house with my little tiny life.  I decided that I was going to go to the movies. The closest movie theater was around Airways and Lamar. So I donned a rain jacket, my normal baseball cap and set out walking. For some reason my car wasn’t running at that time.  I had gotten just barely passed Airways and Ketchum when a squad car pulled over and they told me to get into the back seat.  Not only was I not having the celebration for my birthday but now I was probably going to jail for something.  They were playing good cop and bad cop.

The good cop asked me what I was doing. I did not want to tell him that I was going to a movie because what moron would walk all the way to the movie theater in this downpour.  I  told him I was on my way to a friend’s house and they asked me what friend. I refused to tell them because it was none of their business. I hadn’t done anything wrong.  Of course, they didn’t believe me. Now it was the bad cop’s turn. He yelled at me “we’ve got a report that you’ve been out here breaking antennas off of cars”.  So I asked him “why would you think I would be out here breaking off antennas in this pouring rain”.  Yelling back it me he said “I can take you to jail, I can take you to jail right now boy”.  The good cop explained to me “he’s having a bad day” like I would care. “We can clear all this up if you’ll just tell us what you’re doing out here”.  I guess they were hard of hearing because I’d told them at least three different times that I was going to a friend’s house.  They finally decided to let me out and I was like another 10 miles out of my way to go to the movie theater.  So to avoid them, I decided I would take all the back streets up to the movie theater.  I knew our neighborhoods of Charjean, Bethel Grove and Cherokee like the back of my hand at that time.  I knew it would take longer but, at least, I wouldn’t be harassed by those two morons in blue.  I would just like to say that I have respect for the law but they had overstepped their authority and had really no reason other than someone walking in the rain and in an extremely heavy rain.  I walked past friends’ houses and no one seemed to be at home so I
continued my journey to the movie theater, crisscrossing from one street to another until I reached where the movie theater had been.  I had not been in that area of Memphis in a longtime and I guess I wasn’t keeping up with the times because it was closed.  While it seemed to add to my perfectly lousy birthday, I just couldn’t catch a break. Not only was it still raining but it was coming down even harder than it was before and it was starting to get dark and I could see lightning in the distance and it didn’t bode well for me.  It was a very unhappy young man that walked all the way back to his parent’s house on Durby and took a shower and went to bed and hoped for a better day tomorrow.