Travis,
his eighteen 'month' old daughter and I had just been
out to the edge of town to pick up one ounce of pot for
a few lazy summer afternoons of fun when he spotted the
police car in the rear vision mirror of his 1977 Ford
Escort. Given that I was still entertaining thoughts of
practicing law at the time, I believe my initial reaction
was to have an embolism and say the word 'fuck' about
three 'hundred' thousand times, especially once the police
fired up their siren and, lights flashing, motioned us
to pull over.
To
his credit, having been in these kinds of situations before,
Travis, the ever'unshaven local council worker with a
specialty in tricking cars to make their exhausts louder,
was as cool as could be. Pulling over, he carefully stuffed
the marijuana into the plastic housing cased around the
gearstick. He then calmly asked if I might refrain from
saying the word 'fuck' in front of his daughter and, motioning
towards the gearstick, promptly assured me, 'These cunts'll
never find it in there... Well, unless they have a dog.'
With a flash of panic in his eyes, Travis leered into
the rear vision mirror. 'Do they have a fucking dog?'
Increasingly
worried, and now certain we'd probably been under surveillance
throughout the entire course of the drug pick'up, I turned
around to see if there were any German Shepherds being
led over to maul my groin into oblivion in the search
for illicit substances. Instead, I was immediately met
by a police officer crouching at my door asking if I might
open the window.
'Righto
guys, nothing to be concerned about' the officer explained.
'If you'll just follow us to the station.'
With
that, the officer returned to his police car, veered out
into the road and waited for us to follow. Travis and
I looked at each other uneasily. Now we were being led
into the proverbial lion's den 'the local police station'
with an ounce of pot hidden in the gearstick. His eighteen'month
old daughter also conveniently picked this exact moment
to cheerily cry out 'fuck!'
Excellent.
Thankfully,
after a tense five'minute drive to the police station,
all was revealed in the rear parking lot. A mobile Roads
and Traffic Authority vehicle inspection station had been
set up in conjunction with the police, who were now pulling
over 'hotted'up' looking cars and taking them in for assessment
of roadworthiness. Even with the impressive female Viking,
sword in hand, spray'painted topless along the side of
the car, Travis' rather decrepit and worn out Ford Escort,
most certainly merited inspection to the eyes of the local
constabulary.
The
carpark was a veritable rainbow of shit'chariots big and
small from across town that had largely been pieced together
by weekend'hot'rod enthusiasts into environmental and
safety disasters. Everyone of course knew each other as
well, and above the din of thundering, leaking engines
you could faintly hear cries of 'Hey Baz, they got you
too?', 'Yo, Lozza, how'd they pull you in for that piece
of shit?' and the occasionally irrelevant 'Hey Gaz, I
fucked your mum!' If the excited drivers had decided to
crank up some AC/DC on the car stereo and start smoking
the pot in Travis' car 'and if this wasn't actually a
police operation' things would have looked no different
from any other Saturday in the small town.
Unable
to dump the drugs given the large police presence, when
time came for the Ford Escort to be examined, things really
started to get problematic. As ordered, Travis drove his
vehicle up onto the inspection station, and we all emptied
out of the car and anxiously watched as the R.T.A inspectors
began poring over the vehicle with flashlights, screwdrivers
and a checklist. With another police officer hovering
nearby and watching the proceedings, we figured it was
only a matter of time before the fastidious inspectors
gave the officer a wink, called him over, and the game
was up' one ounce of pot discovered stashed in a gearstick.
Resigned to our fate, Travis and I shared a cigarette
and began rehearsing our respective explanations for his
wife and my parents as to how we'd landed in such a mess.
Again,
but only to a point, the Gods were indeed smiling upon
us that afternoon, for even after a lengthy twenty'minute
inspection the R.T.A workers didn't uncover the secret
shrubbery. Still, as noted, the Gods were only smiling
up to a point, for at the end of the inspection, Travis
was informed that his car had been deemed unfit and unsafe
for driving on NSW roads. He was handed a sheet that contained
some twenty'three infractions on the vehicle,
everything from faulty spark'plugs and unsatisfactory
wiring, through to unsafe seat'belts and an incorrectly
installed speedometer. But perhaps the most damaging news
for Travis was regarding his engine. An old hunk of junk
he had largely recovered from scrap several years before
and soldered into the Escort, the R.T.A inspector now
declared, 'About your engine... It's not clearing any
of the tests. It's deficient across the board, not only
barely running, but a legitimate fire hazard. It could
well explode at any moment if you allowed things to overheat
at high speed or under intense strain.'
A
shiver rushed through me as I silently counted the number
of times Travis had taken us rally driving on the edge
of town at dusk over the previous six weeks after we'd
knocked out a good three to four bongs each. Somewhere
along the way he'd discovered that the rapid bumps and
shifts of his car racing along unlit dirt roads was
one of the best ways to send his daughter to sleep before
putting her down to bed back at home. Indeed, one of
the more surreal experiences of my life had been tripping
out in the back seat of the Escort in the dim light,
looking down to see a baby fast asleep in her car safety'seat.
All the while Travis and Graham respectively drove and
navigated us through hairpins and across flat plains
at over 150 kilometres an hour, occasionally only mustering
up the strength to say something like 'Dude, big corner
up ahead', and 'Fuck yeah, that was nice, mate.' So
perhaps that acrid smell of melting steel I'd always
picked up toward the end of our rally tours of the central
west at nine in the evening was in fact the engine preparing
itself to blow us all to pieces. Perhaps this police
intervention hadn't been such a bad idea after all...
'So...'
mulled Travis, as he puffed thoughtfully at his cigarette.
'What you're saying is''
'Mate the engine is fucked' replied the inspector. 'And
not just fucked up, real fucked up. I'd just
as soon have this entire car dumped immediately. But
what we're gonna' do is this. We'll give you a week
'that's all' within which time you can either get the
car roadworthy, or declare it for the trash heap.' He
pointed at the repair sheet. 'Do what you've gotta'
do.'
Scratching
his head deep in thought, Travis nodded, and strapped
his daughter back into the car. As I climbed back in
I nervously glanced at the gearstick. While they'd managed
to find twenty'three things wrong with the vehicle,
they inexplicably hadn't managed to find our marijuana.
With
all of us wincing nervously, Travis started up his dangerous
engine and we headed for home. Travis earned approximately
$14 an hour working four part'time shifts a week for
the local council on a road gang. His wife worked night
shifts at a factory packing frozen vegetables and earning
about the same. They had a daughter to raise, they had
bills to pay and pot to buy. He needed his car for work
or he'd be fired. And yet the R.T.A's checklist demanded
at least $8,500 worth of repairs to be made within a
week. Travis didn't have that kind of money. Later that
night, as he enthusiastically tucked into the ounce
of pot, he came up with a plan.
And
a heinously stoned plan at that.
Next
Issue: High Times in Country NSW Part II' Of Savage
Dogs at the Auto Wreckers
