...that no one will believe but are true. Even if you include getting stopped for a traffic violation, I still have less than 100 police encounters in my life, but most are memorable. October 1977. I hitchhike home from ZooMass, Amherst and pick up my brother's car in Framingham. My purpose is to drive to Boston, buy 2 pounds of weed, bring it back, split it up between my sales force (2 brothers) and then hitchhike back to college.His vehicle? 1967 Pontiac Grand Prix, painted black, with house paint, drips and all. Literally the single worst car I have ever seen.
Drive to the Fenway area, buy my weed, get back on the Mass Pike and head home. Go through the toll booths and then 7 miles from home a loud bang, black smoke and the car dies. Open the hood. No fucking oil. OK I will hitchhike home and get my mom's car and some oil. Trunk lock punched out. No locks work on the car and I am not leaving $900.00 worth of weed in the car to be stolen. I pick up my brown paper shopping back with 2 pounds of weed in a ziplock bag, stick out my thumb as I turn to face traffic and good luck, first car stops....great ....state police officer ....not so great. Like an idiot I grab the door handle with my right hand, leaving the bag in my left hand so it is now on the seat between us after I get in.
I told him what happened, we chatted red sox and if you have ever read Edgar Allen Poe's short story "the Telltale Heart" you would understand why I was going nuts inside waiting for him to say something. I mean the smell was overwhelming, at least to me. I kept thinking I know you smell it, we both do, for God's sake say something, arrest me, don't torture me like this. It was a 7-minute ride to the exit. felt like 107, but he dropped me off told me to take care and left. When my brother accused me of burning up 6 quarts of oil on a 30 mile drive, thereby ruining his car, I went fucking berserk. To this day I still don't understand how I walked away unscathed, but luckily, nothing bad can ever happen to me because back then that was 5 years in jail.
What's your wild story?


Two friends and I were in the parking lot at Great Woods before a Van Halen concert. We were sitting on the back trunk of my parents' car smoking a joint when a guy comes up to my friend sitting next to me and asks if he has any to sell. When he says yes, the guy pulls a badge out of his shirt. Undercover Mansfield PD. Fuck. Friend has a half ounce in his pocket. Cop: "is there anything else in the car that I should know about?" Me: "Yeah, there's a bag of pot in the glove compartment, roaches in the ashtray and a case of Labatt Blue in the trunk." We were all under 21, hence disclosing the beer.
The cop and his partner are talking to each other about exactly what they are going to do. I assume my friend with the bag is getting arrested and that as the driver of the car, I'm getting arrested as well. I'm asking my third friend, who probably would not be getting arrested if he can drive a stick shift (parents' car was a manual") and that he should follow us to the police station and bail us out and we'd probably miss the opening acts but still get to see Van Halen.
Then like a gift from God, a scalper walks up to the 2 undercovers and offers to scalp them tickets and they completely turn their attention to him. They ended up making my friend dump the weed out on the ground, mash it around with his foot and poured two of the beers on it. Then they let us go and actually left us with a 12 pack, didn't even take all of the beer. One of the luckiest close calls of my youth. Van Halen was great that night too...