James Burleigh
Well-known member
The year was 1973. The place, Palos Verdes Estates. The time, roughly midnight. Four high school boys in one of their parent's borrowed cars are sitting in the car on an unlit, dead-end street overlooking a dark canyon. They are listening to Led Zeppelin at top volume while drinking beers and passing around a pipe containing... Well, if I have to explain, you wouldn't understand--I mean, you wouldn't agree.
Suddenly a car pulls up. A pair of bright headlights blazing through the car and lighting up the boys. And then the christmas tree on the roof lights up. The driver of the car with all the boys--the drive of his mom's car--makes a split-second decision. Leadership material, he yells: "Run!"
Time out.... Let me pick up the story from several years later when I was pumping gas on top of the Hill. One day the mechanic tells me about how he used to ride with the PVPD. Then he goes on to tell me about the worst night of his life. It seems there had been a report of a kidnapping in Palos Verdes. The description of the kidnappers was a car full of men driving a [insert make and model of mom's borrowed car].
The mechanic goes on to describe how the cruiser he was riding in that night came up behind a car matching that description parked at a dead-end. It was packed with men. Then, he says, suddenly the car doors all fly open and the four men jump out of the car and go flying over the guard rail into the dark ravines of the canyon below.
Me: I fly over that guardrail and tumble headfirst into the dirt and sagebrush, running at top speed through the darkness. Then I hear behind me, "Stop! Police!" And then comes the funny part: "BANG! BANG!"
Me: "Hmmm.... This is just me. No one would shoot at me. I'm a nice guy. I'm just a kid." And all the while running and falling and sweating with my heart thrashing in my chest.
Mechanic: "The cop starts firing warning shots in the air as he approaches the guard rail. But he trips and drills one right down the canyon, just as one of the fleeing suspects seems to fall down. So we spent the rest of the night combing that canyon for bodies and evidence, and then the morning filling out reports."
Well, it seems all they found was some empty beer cans in the car and, down in the canyon, a warm pipe smelling of, uh...you know. By the time we got to the driver's house, on foot, the car and the cops were already there. No one got shot. No one even really got in trouble as far as I can recall.
But what's that got to do with motorcycles? Oh, I know. That's when the seed was planted for my being a scoff-law and crossing the double-yellow and speeding. Just another good boy gone bad. Waaaaay bad.
JB
