Bullies & Cowards

Greetings one and all. Let's see: Gas prices went down and the government gave all our money to Big Business. That'll take our minds off the election?! Read on.

The bully and the coward

As a professional newspaperman, I spent 12 years in Idaho, working for The Blackfoot News.

That was a career record for me. My other professional jobs lasted a year or less. All of my writing jobs ended in part because I was too good at what I was doing.

What was I doing? Digging up the dirt. I found out some incredible things, and wrote about and published a lot of the information.

Eventually, I wore out my welcome everywhere, but somehow the process took longer in Blackfoot.

About midway through the dozen years there, I was approached by "Woody," who made an interesting offer.

Woody said he would be my bodyguard, if I ever needed him. He also suggested he would take me places I might otherwise be foolish to go.

Woody was a bodyguard, a "chauffeur," for other people – but there was a fee involved. Woody's services, in my case, would be pro bono. He had somehow taken a liking to me.

I did take advantage of Woody's offer. I visited "The Spa" and "Ted's Bar," to get the flavor of things. Woody's presence prevented me from being killed outright.

Those two places were the "Indian bars" in Blackfoot; they were hell-holes, dives, any word you can think of for seamy places.

Woody took me with him several times. These sojourns gave me what I thought was valuable insight and perspective into that ugly Indian reservation netherworld.

But even more, it gave me insight and perspective into Woody.

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One night I took a break and went next door from the newspaper office to the Cathay Café.

At the bachelor's counter sat Woody. He had bandages on his hands and face. Black eye. The works.

What happened?

"It was the Green Triangle," Woody said. I knew it well. It was a notorious bar on the north end of Pocatello, situated in the triangle formed by a fork in the road.

The Green Triangle was a small country music club with a huge parking lot.

Woody had gotten in over his head with some really bad guys – bikers, cowboys, Indians, drunks and criminals. Woody had acquired a formidable list of people who didn't particularly care for him. That night, some of them got together. Woody was as good as toast.

"I got away from 'em and ran outside. The only thing I could see to do was roll under a car. They found me, but they couldn't get me out from under there. I got all beat up but I held on to the car frame and they couldn't drag me out."

The baddest of the bad finally gave up on their sport, and Woody escaped, living to tell the story.

So I questioned, what did you do while they were poking sticks at you and throwing rocks under there at you?

"I cried like a baby, I begged for my life. I sobbed, I screamed like a girl." You mean, you acted like a coward?

"Yes, I am a coward," Woody said. "All bullies are cowards."

The superintendent

The superintendent of schools in Blackfoot didn't look like a bully.

To the contrary, he was tall, handsome, well-groomed, well-dressed, a visibly fine example of a man with short-cropped salt-and-pepper hair.

I did my best to be his nemesis during all of my years there. Like many school districts, there was wholesale corruption, nepotism, favoritism, scandalous sexual hanky-panky, senseless waste, excessive spending, lying, cheating, thievery, embezzlement. To say nothing of the quality of the educational product.

It was always my impression that my work as an investigative reporter barely scratched the surface of the corruption in the school district.

By and by, when I had worn out my welcome in Blackfoot, there was no choice but to go on to other things. To support myself, I reached back into my past experience and took a job as a school bus driver in Pocatello.

One day I was assigned to drive the "pep squad" from a high school to the athletic field of another school. I was required to wait there until the track and field events were over, then drive the girls back to their own school.

I parked the bus a good distance away from the field, and stood atop a rather steep hill, a grassy cliff, smoking cigarettes, waiting.

Suddenly, I found myself in the viselike grip of a very strong man who had grabbed me from behind. This man pushed me, wrestled me, toward the precipice. He was trying to push me over!

Somehow, through the grace of God, I managed to get away. Who was it? Getting to my feet, I looked, and guess who.

It was the superintendent, running away rapidly. He had come from Blackfoot to watch the sports, and had spotted me. He apparently saw an opportunity.

He tried to kill me. There was never any question in my mind that vengeance was his goal.

What a bully. Woody's words came back to me then, and they stay with me now.

All bullies are cowards.

Call 9-1-1 ?

Sometimes, you'd like to speak with a policeman, in person.

Perhaps it really isn't an emergency. Maybe a neighbor has parked blocking your driveway.

It isn't Freddie from the movies, come to cut you up with a chain saw. In your less-than-an-emergency situation, you'd like to find out what a real policeman would advise, but dialing "9-1-1" seems like overkill.

You can dial that "non-emergency" number, and sometimes someone will answer. But still, the person answering will be from an entirely different world than the real police.

On every occasion in the last 20 years where we have expressed a need, the Greeley Police have responded quickly, politely, efficiently, even kindly.

But also on every occasion – one hundred percent of those occasions – we have faced the formidable roadblock known as "dispatch."

Dispatchers may be former policemen, or just people who got a job inside the bureaucracy. Good luck getting past any of these obstructionist bastards.

They seem to have decided that their job is to make sure the citizens don't have communications access to their police.

The dispatcher's main job seems to be to verify that the Mr. Tom who is listed on caller ID is the very same Mr. Tom who is calling.

The dispatcher's job is to waste precious seconds on tertiary issues rather than getting information to the real police.

Have you learned how to circumvent the bureaucracy? Do you have a non-violent way to communicate with the police without involving the dispatch department?

If so, let us know. We want to hear your anecdotes, anonymously or bravely identified. You know how to reach us.

Word of the week:
Interlude. Again, from Latin, inter, between, and ludus, a play. Darn. It has mostly to do with play-acting. It means a type of short humorous skit between acts of a morality play, sort of to break up the seriousness of such a production. Fifth in similar definitions is "anything that fills time between two events."

This isn't what I wanted it to mean. I wanted it to be a soft synonym for "episode." Darn dictionary anyway.

Next week's word: Peccadillo.

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Gripes? Complaints? Whines? or Comments? Adoration? Puppy love? Reciprocal rant? Feel free to express yourself in the comment section below!