WELL HELL, IDENTITY THEFT AIN'T NOTHING NEW AT OUR HOUSE!

Way back when my late wife, Janice, and I first got married, we lived just outside of Newnan, Georgia in a trailer park. Yes I said a TRAILER PARK! Of course, back then everybody spoke American and went to the same church.

We had a RURAL ROUTE 5 mailing address, since there was no such thing as house numbering, GPS, or the like. Remember the RR5, we'll get back to it.

Well 9 months after the wedding bells sounded, our first child was on the way. Nothing out of the ordinary, a healthy baby boy, Joseph Allen was born. Not being the savvy business man that I am today, I did not have insurance to cover the expenses and had to work two jobs to pay off that child. Still, no problem, it's just what you do. This was October 28, 1975, also remember this date.

Almost two years later, October 12, 1977, to be exact, Janice was again at Newnan Hospital to deliver our next child. As I was waiting to welcome Clayton Daniel into the world, a nurse asked me to go down to the accounting office to see the manager.

When I was seated he informed me that they (the hospital) could not deliver my child. I told that pencil-pusher unless he knew how to stop Janice's contractions, plus had nerve enough to tell her she couldn't have the baby there, he needed to step aside and let nature take its course.

He informed me that the reason was that I had an unpaid balance on the previous child (born 10/28/75) and they had a policy of not giving further service to people with outstanding balances.

I informed him that he was full of s---, and that I had all the receipts at home, with a "paid in full" receipt locked safely away in a lock box for just such an occasion. Flustered, he began to scramble through his paperwork (this was pre-computer printouts) to prove that I was indeed the shiftless deadbeat that he thought I was.

Here comes the identity theft (of sorts) part of the story:

He said, "Aren't you Larry T. Cook?"
Me, "It's actually "G", but close enough.
He, "An your wife is Jan M. Cook?"
Me, "She prefers "Janice".
He, "You live on RR5, Newnan, Ga.?"
Me, "For the last 2 years."
He, "Your wife gave birth here on Oct. 28, 1975?"
Me, "Correct."
He, "And your daughter's name is........?"
Me (as I interrupted), "Only girl in my house is upstairs giving birth!"

Here are the stats:
On the other end of RR5 in Newnan, Ga., lived a guy by the name of Larry T. Cook. His wife was Jan Michelle Cook, while my wife is Janice Marie. They had a healthy baby girl the same day that our son was born. Well that might be the end of the story except------

I started getting calls from local companies such as furniture stores, department stores, and the like, saying that I was behind on my payments. When I tried to tell them it was mistaken identity, it comes to light that the sorry s.o.b. was giving Janice and my work places as references for credit. Back in those days the local stores would just call and ask if you worked at a certain place and the credit clerk would get all the information she needed. This obviously was before all the privacy policies of today.

Well, after some doing, we finally got all that straightened out. Shortly after that we moved and I took a job with another police department in the small town of Franklin, Ga.
During the summer the main event for this sleepy little town was the FRANKLIN MUSIC PARK. Owned and operated by the honorable Mr. Hugh Goodson, the Who's Who in country music would perform there in the course of the summer. Of course my job was to work every Friday and Saturday night, helping direct traffic, as this place drew huge crowds. Because I always worked the nights of the shows, I never got to attend any of the shows.

So you can imagine my surprise when I received a call to report to the magistrate court one afternoon, while I was in uniform and on duty. The judge called me aside and said, "Larry, I'm sorry but I have a bad check warrant for your arrest. I want to see if we can fix this before it goes to court."
"Mrs. Alexander, I don't know how you could have a warrant for me; I don't write the checks at my house, Janice does. Who says that we gave them a bad check?"
"Well the affidavit says that you bought 4 of the best seats in the house at the Charlie Daniels Show at the Music Park and the check is no good."
"First of all Clarise(Mrs. Alexander), you know that I am directing traffic to all the shows, along with everybody else at the Police Dept. and the Sheriff's Dept. The chief and the sheriff are the only two that get to see the concerts. Please let me see the check."

That son-of-a-bitch had come to Franklin, wrote a bad check, and now I was having to again straighten out his mess. I called my former chief in Newnan, and giving him the story, he sent 2 detectives to find this joker and show him the error of his ways. After a few days in a country jail, the message seemed to sink in and I never had my identity stolen or confused again.

p.s. I forget to mention that while we still lived in Newnan, Janice went to a local fast food restaurant known as the WISHBONE (best damn fried shrimp anywhere) and when her order came, she wrote the girl a check which was commonplace back in those days.

The clerk looked at the check, looked at Janice, and then back at the check. With a room full of lunch-time customers, the clerk looked Janice dead in the eyes and announced in a loud voice, "This check ain't no good, the Cooks ain't never wrote a good check here."

Just as Janice was crouching into ninja attack mode, the fry-cook came out to look and just happened to be on the same softball team as Janice. Seeing that death was about to be visited upon the clerk, the lady from the back rushed forward and shouted, "NO! NO! This is a different set of Cooks!"

All of Janice's life, she had been a forgiving person. But until the day she passed away, she still did not see the humor of that day. She was a good Christian woman, but she did have her pride!

larrycook351@yahoo.com
706-302-8902

WE ALL LIVE IN A YELLOW SUBMARINE....

Daryl and Brenda were sweethearts, in a redneck, trailer park sort of way. But man did they love each other! That is for about 10 minutes a day. The other 23 hours and 50 minutes they were cussin' and fussin' and fighting like cats and dogs (sorry cats and dogs for lowering your standards in the world, it just seemed to fit).

For those ever so brief moments, you would have thought the two of them had just wed on "FANTASY ISLAND", with Mr. Roarke as the preacher and Tattoo as the best man. But something in their genetic makeup just would not let that couple go a day without an argument of some kind where one or the other, and sometimes both, would storm off to their respective parents to sulk for a time. And just as soon as they separated, the began to miss each other.

This went on for several years while I was a police officer in the small town of FRANKLIN, GEORGIA. Now when I say small, this could have been the twin of MAYBERRY.  FRANKLIN was the only real city in the whole county and had the distinction of having the only traffic light in the entire county. On a clear night, you could hear banjo music.

Back in those days we (the police) were not encumbered by such finite laws, rules, and regulations. If something was wrong, we fixed it. Writing mounds of paperwork, getting permits and permission were unheard of. Point in case, if a woman said that the low-down bastard that she had been living in sin with had hit her, we went and locked said bastard up--problem solved. Then after a day or two, or at least until he sobered up and she calmed down, he was released with an indefinite court date. Meaning--go home and behave.

Now this worked 99% of the time, but here we go back to Daryl and Brenda. That woman used that privilege (of having drunk husband/boyfriend locked up) more than poor folks play the Lottery. Those two would be rolling along, as happy as could be. Daryl would have one to many (a practice I thought made sense, knowing Brenda), Brenda would say/do something to piss Daryl off. He would say/do something to make Brenda mad, then the fireworks started!

Daryl owned a beautifully restored, Canary Yellow, 1968 Chevy Nova. To give this country boy his due, he had done a first class job on the restoration. I also give him credit for the fact that he had sense enough to never drive that car when he had been drinking, which meant that he seldom got to drive it.

THE PERFECT STORM!

I borrowed that film title because everything came together on that hot summer night back in the mid-1980's to make this tale fun to remember and share!

Unlike usual, in that Brenda usually called us during the day, she came bursting into the Sheriff's Office about midnight on this particular Wednesday night. She was upset and babbling incoherently about Daryl and she had gotten into a fight(news flash!) and that he was drunk (stop the presses!) and that he had driven off in the NOVA! Whoa Nellie! Now that got my attention as that boy could not walk when drinking, much less drive an automobile.

The deputy and I calmed Brenda down as much as possible to try and make sense out of this mess. Unlike the usual scenario of Brenda just picking up the phone and calling when the fight started, she said she was leaving him and ran out the door. Although she just ran around to the back of their apartment, Daryl, in his drunken state, panicked and who knows what went through his mind, other than he had to get his woman back.

Now Brenda's parents lived south of Franklin, while Daryl's parents live north of town. It was decided that the deputy would go to Daryl's parents as he was, I think, some kin to them and had a better relationship with them than I. My job was to drive south and try to locate this guy before he hurt himself, or God forbid, an innocent person.

Off we both went. I was just over a mile south of town when my headlights pick up the sight of a man running towards me in the center of the road. I say running, but that is the nearest word to describe a man, drunk as the proverbial bicycle, sopping-soaking wet (we'll get to that in a minute), running up an incline.

Well yes, it was Daryl! I had stopped far enough back so that he could get plenty of exercise out of his run(so shoot me, I'm a little devil). He stuck his drunk, dripping, head in my window, blubbering, burbing, and baptizing  me with filthy, sinking pond water(?).

"Brenda's dead! I killed her! Oh GOD! Oh GOD!" He repeated this over and over. I would have been duly concerned had I not just spoken and seen Brenda less than 10 minutes earlier and the fact that I had dealt with hundreds and hundreds of drunks like this. Well, not exactly like this, but close enough.

As Daryl was crying, confessing, and begging for forgiveness, I called the deputy and told him my location and that I had the suspect. The deputy was already on his way towards me, as he had checked with Daryl's parents and knew the only other place he could be was south of town. The deputy arrived within a few minutes and I brought him up to speed.

Now to set the stage so that you can get the picture, if you are not familiar with the area, here is the layout. Just around the curve from where we found Daryl is a small, shallow lake on the left. If you are heading north, as Daryl was, the lake will be on your right, in a "hard" curve to the right. For some reason not known to me was a pile of dirt that made an excellent ramp of sorts.

Well the three of us went to the scene. walked up the "ramp" and looked into the shallow lake. Daryl had gone into the curve much too fast, down the embankment, up the ramp, and momentum cause the vehicle to do a 180 degree turn, belly-flopped into that lake, with the top barely two feet under water. The headlights were still on, illuminating the fish as they swam in front of them. 

It was also a full moon(which might explain part of this story) and it was bright enough, along with the headlights, that you could see that beautiful, totally ruined Nova just sitting in the water. The deputy and I both just wanted to smack Daryl, if for nothing else, destroying such a wonderful car.

Standing there in silence, it just came to me! Although I can not carry a tune in a bucket, I at least know the words: "WE ALL LIVE IN A YELLOW SUBMARINE, YELLOW SUBMARINE............"

The deputy turned and looked at me, shook his head and said, "Cook, you ain't got a lick of sense."

As I sit here, typing this story, I tend to agree with him!

Oh, after letting Daryl "stew" for a while, confess all his sins to GOD, promise to stop drinking, etc., etc., I finally told him that Brenda was safe at the Sheriff's Office. SEE, I can be a good guy, sometimes.

larrycook351@yahoo.com

706-302-8902

MOVING GRAVES IN NEWNAN, GEORGIA!

Recently, in the news has been a sad story of a vehicle that lost
control on Jefferson Street and plowed into the cemetery there and
destroyed many grave makers, some because they are so old, it is
difficult to contact the descendents. This is not an article about right
or wrong, it just brought up a story about that cemetery.

Back in the beginnings of the 1970's, the City of Newnan was in the
process of making Bullsboro Drive to connect to the new I-85, which
ended at Palmetto at the time and did not resume again until the Alabama
State Line.

Part of that process was to move part of the Cemetery to be able to
 widen the road in the name of progress. It happens all the time. I think if
 done with respect, it a good thing.Lord knows I would not want my dead
 body keeping someone from getting to Wal-Mart on time.

The part of the cemetery that was to be moved was not just ordinary citizens
 who had passed. NOOOO! It was the CONFEDERATE SOLDIERS section.

Saying that in today's climate would not even raise an eyebrow. However,
 this was a time when feelings for the OLD SOUTH and all things Southern
still ran deep, very deep in Newnan, Georgia.

This was a time when most, if not all, the
hands on labor was done by the black community.  Back in this era, the
Blacks were very weary and respectful  of the dead. Getting Black men to
exhume a grave was tenuous at best, getting them to exhume Confederate
Soldiers, I am told, had the air electric with emotions.

ENTER THOSE DAMNED POLICE!

The City of Newnan Police Dept. was there to keep things moving along,
or so it was supposed. There were the usual curiosity seekers who tend
to get in the way, concerned citizens, and others for various reasons,
all of whom slow down the work.

Having the onlookers
sufficiently out of the way, AND  out of ear shot, one particular Police
Officer decided to have some fun. The men would dig down to the
appropriate depth, usually finding nothing of the casket or skeleton,
since the bodies had been buried in wooden boxes over 100 years ago. I
am told a metal detector was used to find buttons, buckles, swords,
anything metal that could be transferred to the new resting place.

As this was the last grave, the Officer on Duty could not let the opportunity to have a little fun.

Every day at noon, work would stop for an hour for everyone to rest and
have lunch. Even the onlookers would take a break. The only one left
was the Officer on Duty to guard the open grave against an accident or
theft. The Officer on Duty decided it would be fun to play a little
trick on the grave diggers, as he knew them all and everybody worked
together. He went down the ladder, put his back-up walkie-talkie in a
paper bag and lightly covered it with dirt. He then went back up the
ladder and waited. When the men came back from lunch, they assumed their
usual duties. The lead man would go down with the small metal detector
and small hand trowel to find the objects, the second man would be half
way down the ladder to take whatever was handed to him, the third man
stood at the top of the grave to receive the items, and 3 or 4 peered in
watching and waiting until it was their turn to fill in the dirt.

Just as the lead man ran the metal detector across the hidden
walkie-talkie and a loud squeal erupted, the Police Officer spoke into
his other walkie-talkie, "Get that damn contraption out of my face Boy, I
am a Confederate General!"

I don't know if it is true or not,
but it was told that the lead man in the bottom of the grave past the
man on the ladder as he was getting out of the grave and the whole gang
ran as if their lives depended on it.

In the confusion, the
Officer went down and retrieved his radio and acted as dumbfounded as
everyone else. He said that they had to hire a whole new crew to finish
the job.

The Officer that told me that story is dead now and I
would not tell anything that he could not confirm or deny on his own.
He always said it was not him, but with that tinkle in his eyes, well, I will go to
to my grave knowing that he was the rascal that he was.

THE DAIRY BAR-HOME OF THE PLENTY BURGER!

The Dairy Bar-Home of the Plenty Burger!

There was a time long ago when the world had not heard of Buffalo Wings.

Ed had the best fried chicken. You could get a breast, leg, or thigh. Why? "Cause that's all that people ordered back then.

What happened to the rest? Well, Ole Ed did like most folks back then
and bought whole chickens and cut them up himself. He would give away
the neck, back and wings. Lot of meat left there.

When you
have a family of five to feed, things like that go a long way to stretch
the budget. We quietly ate pounds of wings because we could not afford a
whole chicken.

Now, I could host a Super Bowl Party with 10 pounds of wings that we regularly kept in the refrigerator.

I know I told you before, but let me tell you again: THANKS ED, YOU ARE A GREAT GUY!

HE TORE THE DAMN MAN'S LEGS OFF!

THE PLENTY BURGER

A Great American and a Great Man by the name of Ed Anderson owned and operated THE DAIRY BAR-Home of the PLENTY BURGER!

When I worked on the Police Dept. for Newnan, Georgia, the Dairy Bar
was located on Greenville Street next to Weddington Chevrolet.

A police officer on duty never had to pay over half price for his meal.
If you were short on cash, you didn't have to pay at all. Ed would not
let an officer go hungry.

I once got a call from Shirley(one
of the girls who worked there) who said a drunk had bumped into the
building with his car after picking up his order at the window and was
parked in the parking lot.

When I arrived, she pointed him out.
I walked over to the open car window on the driver's side and
immediately smelled the tell-tale odor of alcoholic beverages(that's the
way you word it to get a conviction, as alcohol does not smell).

"Sir, have you been drinking alcoholic beverages tonight?"
"You mean bourbon and stuff?"
"Yeah, like that."
"Sure(with a slurred chuckle)."
"Sir, you need to step out of the car."
"Can't do it!"
"Put your d..... feet on the ground right now(blood beginning to boil)!"
"You got it!"( some shuffling about as if he were unbuckling his seat belt.

The out the window drops TWO ARTIFICIAL LEGS!!!
"What else can I do for you, FLAT FOOT?"

Then the Sherlock Holmes in me kicked in and I noticed that he was driving a car with hand controls.

He refused to put his legs back on, so I had another officer assist me
in loading him into my patrol car and later helping me set him at the
intoximeter at the station house.

While we had been at the Dairy Bar, the LT. had driven by to make sure
everything was OK. It took a short while to wait for a wrecker to come
and impound the vehicle.
In the meantime, the LT. had gone back
to the station and began to tell the new civilian dispatcher, that I
had gone ballistic and had threatened to rip that drunk's legs off if he
didn't co-operate.
The dispatcher/booking
officer had been out of the room when we arrived. The LT. had told him
to go to the bathroom because we were going to be busy and he would not
have a chance later. As he sat down at his desk, I tossed both legs into
his lap, saying tag those as property.

He jumped up, screamed like a little girl and run out of the station, not to be seen again that night.
I ended up dispatching for the rest of the shift. I later got my revenge on the LT.!

BAPTISTING A ROOKIE!

When I went to work at Newnan Police Dept. there were already black police
officers there. As a matter of fact, Sgt. Moses Martin was my mentor and friend and years later, when he died, I cried for our loss.

However, there was a big push to hire more "minorities". It is not a
good idea to hire quantity instead of quality. One case in point,
Cornell Copeland, the sorriest man to ever put on a uniform, of any race. He single-handedly added to stereotyping his race.

When he wasn't sleeping on the job(which we all did-more on that in a
minute), he was very arrogant, had a chip on his shoulder, and yes,
racist.

Back to sleeping. Most, if not all, police officers had
two or more jobs to make ends meet. Naturally, when the third shift
rotated around, we caught up on our sleep if it was a quite night. We
had a simple unwritten rule. If two officers were in the same car, after
checking the first round, the rider would catch some sleep while the
driver kept an eye out. After mid-shift, the two would change, and then
the driver would catch a few winks. In Newnan in those days, there was
not one single business open after 11pm, so things were very, very quite
during the week.

Well, Officer Copeland would jump into the
passenger seat at the beginning of the shift and proceed to sleep the
entire night. No amount of reasoning on my part mattered to him. I
really did try!

Newnan Water Works has several lakes inside the
city which most people at that time had never seen, especially black
people. The property was posted and off-limits to everyone except Water
Works employees and the Police. At the upper lake there is an overflow
with an asphalt underlayment to prevent erosion. At 1am in the morning
that asphalt with 3 inches of water rushing over the top of it looks to
be bottomless. You would routinely drive thru it and continue your
patrol.

Officer Copeland had never seen that little piece of
Newnan, so when I woke him out of sound sleep, at the edge of the
spillway, and told him I thought I could jump it in the patrol car, well
his baby brown eyes got big as saucers!

I backed up about 20 feet, gunned the engine, took off, slinging gravel, and doing the Rebel Yell at the top of my lungs.

Copeland thought we were seconds away from drowning. He started
screaming, cussing, threatening to to shoot me, and crying a little.
Just as we drove through the water, that nut(him not me) opened the door
to jump out, but we were on the other side before he had time to jump.

We both got soaked, but it was worth it. For some reason, he refused to
ride with me again. The Lt. put him on foot patrol when it was his turn
to ride with me.

A short time later he was caught with a
stolen gun and went to jail, but not before we had a few more good times
at his expense. No, I am not sorry.

SCREWING WITH YOUR CO-WORKERS!

Well, who doesn't like to screw with their co-workers!?

To set the stage, there is a type of fireworks called a BOOBIE-TRAP, a
little firecracker with strings on both ends, when pulled sharply,
explodes with the sound of a BLACK CAT firecracker.

Now, if you
take fishing line(nearly invisible) and extend each end of the TRAP,
you can position it to explode, oh I don't know, next to the driver's side window? Now this does not make sense to you now, unless you know what I did for many years--Police Patrolman(in a very, very rural area).

Both the city officer and the Sheriff's patrol office had to check the
security of all businesses late at night. This was very routine and VERY
boring. Well enter ME!

First, after the deputy had called in
the building he had just checked(in code so that criminals could not
come in behind him and rob the place), I would hurry out into the county
to the same building and string up the Boobie-trap.

Sometimes,
just to add a little spice to night, since we did not have 911, I would
get the clerk at the all night convenience store to call in and say
that she had just driven past the rigged building and thought she saw
someone trying to break in. Since she would call the Jailer at the
Sheriff's office, in those days, there was not Caller ID(you have to
cover all the bases).

Of course the unsuspecting deputy would
rush to the building, expecting the worse. If the Trap was at window
height, he may temporarily loose control of the steering wheel(since
that deputy has passed away, yes I caused you to dent the right fender
of your patrol car--sorry).

The most fun was to put it at ankle height around the dark side of the building. I can claim that I made one guy pee his pants.

If I had patrolled in a larger city, I would not have been so mischievous.

Well, actually that's not true. I worked in Newnan and had many more uniformed victims!

Oh, and in closing, SAD FACT #927: Boobie Traps seldom involve Boobies!