In retrospect, it took a pretty strong woman (Cindy Lou) not to intervene on my behalf and explain that I was not in my right mind. Where’s Hunter S. Thompson when I need him?

GETTING OUT ALIVE

It had been one of those days, and all I wanted to do was get out of town alive. I’d spent three days on horseback and got the job done without incident. Certainly nothing classed as a felony, anyway. Cindy Lou picked me up in the rental car. While loading my belongings I managed to lock the car keys in the trunk. I couldn’t find my guitar and discovered I had left my airline tickets in a restaurant thirty miles away.

Doggedly I pocketknifed my way through the padded backseat to retrieve the keys. I tracked my guitar down to a lonely parking lot where it was waiting faithfully like a good dog. And I located the restaurant, after three calls, to save my tickets.

After arriving at the John Wayne Airport I decided to send a postcard to my Aunt Effie. On the way to the gift shop, I stopped at the stamp machine. Seventy-five cents, it read, for three fifteen-cent stamps. “What a deal,” I thought as I pumped three quarters into the slot. I pulled the lever, and nothing happened. The coin return gave me fifty cents back. Thinking I’d made a mistake, I put seventy-five cents back in, pulled the lever, and nothing happened again. I pushed the coin return and out came two quarters—again.

“Aha!” I said to myself. “That’s how this works!”

I jiggled and shook the machine vigorously. I pounded it. Finally I picked it up and turned it upside down. It weighed about eighty pounds, big as a stop sign. I was so intent on retrieving my quarters, I didn’t hear the screaming. I was interrupted by a tap on the shoulder.

“Is there a problem?” asked the officer, stepping back two paces and unsnapping his holster.

Three of them escorted me through the gathering crowd. I heard the mumblings: “Lynch him!” “Get the vermin off the streets!” “See, Billy, that’s what happens when you don’t eat your broccoli!”

I sat quietly in the steel interrogation chair while the deputy explained that I was being “officially detained” while they ran an FBI check on me.

As he questioned me, witty retorts raced through my mind:

“What do you think you were doing?” (Trying to weigh myself?)

“Do you have some explanation?” (One small step for man, one giant leap for the postmaster.)

“Are you aware that tampering with a stamp machine is a federal offense?” (What’s the difference between tampering and revenge?)

All the while, Cindy Lou stood quietly thumbing through the phone book. “What were you doin?” I asked when I was later released on the condition I leave town.

“Oh, nothing really, just jotting down the number of a bail bondsman.”