highline56 Vignettes

As I remember it, the summer that we graduated, Mick McIntyre's (class of '57?) parents took a trip to Europe. Party Time!! Mick lived in a big white house just northeast of Burien, I think. I'm not going to drop names here but those of you who were there, and there were a lot of us, will perhaps recall this particular party. It was a good one, indeed! The beer & booze was flowing just like it was the night the Trojans had just brought the big horse into town. As we were all having so much fun, things got a little out of hand and the noise level began to annoy the neighbors as the later it got, the louder the music and the more difficult to talk over it. This event was not about to be terminated just because the wee hours of the morning had arrived.

The neighbors, who weren't having nearly as much fun as we all were, decided to contact the local law enforcement agencies since they seemed to be having trouble sleeping. (Man, who needed sleep?) As with Homer's Trojans, this great celebration came to a rather tragic end. (Well, it wasn't really that serious.)

The thing that sticks in my memory, and always will, occurred while I was dancing closely with one of our more popular coed classmates to "My Prayer" by the Platters. I was holding her close, feeling no pain, enjoying the wonderful bouquet of her hair, with no clue whatsoever as to how to proceed to the next step in the elusive art of seduction, when I felt a tap on the shoulder. As I turned around, I was looking into a big silver star on the chest, and a big gun on the hip, of a sheriff who told me the party was over and to come with him out to the paddy wagon if I could still walk. (I could.) I think they sent the girls and anyone under 18 home but a few of us who were 18 or over were arrested that night and hauled to downtown Seattle and thrown in the drunk tank because all the individual cells were occupied. Naturally, my main concern was my dad. Not so much that he'd be furious with me, (which he was) but that I had disappointed him. Four of us spent the night in the tank together and were released to our parents the next morning. There wasn't even a cot to sleep on.

If one looks hard enough, it seems like there's always something good that evolves from situations like this one. The incident was deleted from our records and, in my case, I vowed to myself that I would never, ever, do anything to ever get put back into a place like that. So far, so good. As Jim Croce once sang,
"But in looking back at the places I've been, and the changes that I've left behind.
I just look at myself and find, I learned the hard way every time."