Ready, Fire, Aim!

From a recent email from Meredith, fiance of my best friend Van:

An Orientation:

Hillsboro: A rural Missouri town.

Marlborough: A municipality of the greater St. Louis Area.

Schnucks: A grocery store.

DeSoto: A town hell and gone from both St. Louis and Hillsboro

Trusty Rusty: Van's old conversion van. Known to host many a mobile party and once died for three days after returning from Oklahoma. Sold to illegal Mexican immigrants for $400.00

Timber: Meredith's son from a previous marriage.

Johnny O's: An adult boutique specializing in porno videos, sex toys and lingerie.

Daisy: Van & Meredith's golden lab.

Duchess: Van & Meredith's german shepherd.

LaChoy Knife: A small two inch pocket knife Van got when he purchased a LaChoy meal. It's been confiscated at an airport, Six Flags and now in the Jefferson County jail. It's worthless, yet Van feels it necessary to get it out of hock every time it's taken.

So, it's a Tuesday afternoon, I'm at work like the rest of the law abiding productive citizens of this country and I get the call. "Meredith, can you comepick me up from Hillsboro." so I don't know what's going on and he says "well I'm up here at the sheriff's department office, you know, by the Schnucks and you know that ticket? Well I have to go pay it down in hillsboro."

You see Van has this ticket for improper registration from 2002 when he overnight parked trusty rusty in the parking lot of George's in the city of Marlborough. I never asked and don't even want to know where he spent the night. So of course he has a warrant. And he has the notice to pay complete with envelope and instructions to remit $75 to the city of marlborough but this has been sitting in our bill basket since last year despite me having told him NUMEROUS times to pay it so he doesn't get pulled over somewhere and get arrested with Timber and/or the dog in the car. But of course adding to his stein collection, getting a big screen, getting a new car, all that came first. He actually asked me (after this whole ordeal) "Meredith, when did I have $75.00 to pay that?" I just looked at him blankly. We ALWAYS had $75.00 to pay that. I can't think of one time where coming up with $75.00 was hard for us. I don't know what he was talking
about.

So anyway I ask him "are you arrested?" to which he responds "I don't think so but they are driving me to hillsboro". So I'm like "they are physically taking you somewhere yet you are not arrested?" and he says "Meredith, I don't know, just meet me down there." so he gives me directions. Now, I have never been to Hillsboro and as he's giving me directions I know they aren't good. I just had that feeling. I kept trying to get clarification on the directions which had information like "take that road 10 miles and make a right at the first right..." but he was so distracted he couldn't explain any better. So I leave work and set off for hillsboro. About an hour and a half later I am "now entering de soto" and I know I've gone to far. So I go
into a gas station and get normal (non-Van) directions and I make it to the courthouse another 15 minutes later. After perusing the courthouse I find out I am (of course) in the wrong place and that I need to go down to the jail "that there building with the razor wire". I then wait in the smallest waiting room ever with about 6 other people, 2 bail bondsmen, 2
sets of parents and someone's boyfriend and am told by a very impatient department of correction's clerk that I'll have to wait and there are a bunch of people ahead of me.

So I waited for 4 hours. During that time I made frantic arrangements for someone to pick up Timber before his day care closed, I listened intently to what the bail bondsmen and various lawyers were telling my fellow "waitees", I walked around outside, I looked for the dog to which the giant "beware of dog" sign belonged, I stared at rocks, I tried to think of who I could call and chat with on my cell phone, etc. Eventually I got into discussions with my fellow waitees about what their "people" were in for, their lives, etc. The other waitees were in the various phases of the slow progression to get their people out so I was with most of them the full 4 hours. Meanwhile Van is on the "inside" watching his cellmate sleep and holding his pee so he doesn't have to use the in-cell stainless steel toilet. Finally Van is ready to be released and as soon as I see him he gives me a big smile and wave, he's wearing a nice yellow Hawaiian shirt that's too small to button so he's wearing it like a vest over his white t-shirt. I stare back at him with no expression and his smile quickly fades. So we leave and I'm not really in the mood to talk. And I outrightly refused to turn around to go back and get the La Choy knife which was still at the jail. I was however in the mood for Cracker Barrel and at this point he couldn't very well argue with me about how we shouldn't be eating out.

Life on the inside:
Van told me that when he initially went up to the sheriff's department he was going up there to pay the ticket. Now we all know that he was going up there to get a gun license. Van's theory on this ticket was that since he's been pulled over twice since he got it and neither time was arrested that this ticket and it's ensuing warrant somehow "didn't matter". So I think he knew that while they would see he had a warrant they all would just laugh it off and scoff at how "stupid it was". So while Van was there waiting to be taken down to hillsboro some young "cutie" comes in to get her background check for her new job at Johnny O's. Well she has several warrants and has to wait with vince to go down to hillsboro. Van and she discuss their tattoos and her ex boyfriend (who the police there knew when she mentioned his name) and her brother (who just got out of jail the other day) and her 3 year-old child, etc. So Van gets searched and the cop finds all his blood pressure and other medication in his pocket and chastises him for not having the prescription bottles with him as required by law. The cop then gives Van the option of taking the pills or throwing them away. So Van throws them away. I guess by then he was all flustered and thought throwing expensive pills your body NEEDS was the right choice. Then of course they make him hand over the La Choy knife. Then he gets 2 sets of hand-cuffs to make him more comfortable and gets cuffed to the wall to wait for a while. While he was waiting another guy gets chained to the wall and remarks to Van how there are "too many fucking snitches out there." to which Van nods in agreement (what else can you do when someone says that). Then they bring another guy in who was about 16 and Van heard the police remarking on how that 16 year-old was the next
charles manson and how "he's going away for a while" and something about a "baby in the hospital" and how it would have "been cheaper if he kept it in his pants". Now we all know that men are not the great getter's of details so they could have been talking about 8 different things here. So then Van gets placed in his cell with the afore mentioned sleeping cell mate
and is told that he can make collect calls but when he tries my cell phone won't accept them. Then, eventually, he got out.

Epilogue:
Today Van called me and proudly announced that he got his gun license and that he was on his way out to hillsboro to get the la choy knife back. He decided to take Gracie (Duchess) with him because Daisy took off right before he left. And remember that STUPID Looney Toons leather checkbook he got to go with his equally STUPID looney toons checks? Well, the dog chewed it up last night into tiny pieces.